Clapper implicates Obama!

Have you noticed that James Clapper is blaming Obama for starting the investigation of President Trump? Jon Dougherty writes about it here.

Understanding China

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes a thoughtful post about China.

Because of the oppressive nature of the Chinese compliant culture, in the aggregate the citizens within China do not necessarily innovate well or create new innovation. The “Compliance Mindset” is part of the intellectual DNA strain of a Chinese citizen.

Broadly speaking, the modern era Chinese are not able to think outside the box per se’ because the reference of all civil activity has been a history of box control by government, and compliance to stay (think) only within the approved box. The lack of intellectual thought mapping needed for innovation is why China relies on intellectual theft of innovation created by others.

Historically American culture is based around freedom of thought and severe disdain of government telling us what to do; THAT freedom is necessary for innovation. That freedom actually creates innovation.

Again, broadly speaking Chinese are better students in American schools and universities because the Chinese are culturally compliant. They work well with academics and established formulas, and within established systems, but they cannot create the formula or system themselves. The modern Chinese strategy has been to compensate for this deficit by having Western universities train and educate their youth.

The Chinese Planning Authority skipped the economic cornerstone. When China planned out their economic entry, they did so from a top-down perspective. They immediately wanted to be manufacturers of stuff. They saw their worker population as a strategic advantage, but they never put the source origination infrastructure into place in order to supply their manufacturing needs. China has no infrastructure for raw material extraction or exploitation.

China relies on: importing raw material, applying their economic skill set (manufacturing), and then exporting finished goods. This is the basic economic structure of the Chinese economy.

See the flaw?

Cut off the raw material, and the China economy slows, contracts, and if nations react severely enough with export material boycotts the entire Chinese economy implodes.

Insert big flashy sign for: “One-Belt / One-Road” HERE


It takes a population of young avg-skilled workers to do the hard work of building a raw material infrastructure. Mine workers, dredge builders, roads and railways, bridges and tunnels etc. All of these require young strong bodies. The Chinese cultural/population decisions amid the economic builders precluded this proactive outlook; now they have an aging population and are incapable of doing it. They also rely on a labor workforce from North Korea that few people ever discuss.

There is much more, and it just keeps getting better here.

Senator Graham on North Korea: "Everybody before Trump talked a lot but did nothing!"

Asking Schiff to step down

I have to ask you, Mr. Gowdy, who are the members of the "crazy caucus?"

Hitler finds out the Mueller investigation is over!

Unplanned

Today at Clash Daily, Wes Walker writes about a new pro-life movie that opened in theaters across the country. It is called Unplanned.

Abby Johnson was one of the youngest Planned Parenthood clinic directors in the nation until the day she saw something that changed everything.

Watch the trailer and read more here.

The great pretender

In Big League Politics Peter D'Abrosca shows how John McCain lied to reporters about leaking the Hillary-funded dossier to Buzzfeed. McCain pretended to be offended and accused the reporter of questioning his integrity. He never admitted that he had sent a long-time associate to Britain to pick up the dirty dossier.
Read more here.

Referring John Brennan for criminal prosecution

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes,

CIA Director John Brennan didn’t stop with simply originating the FBI investigation, he went on to promote additional material from his knowledge of the Christopher Steele Dossier.

This is the part that John Brennan has denied; however, the evidence proving his lies is overwhelming.

...Brennan was leaking to the media and pushing hard on this same Russia narrative during the transition period. It’s almost bizarre to see Brennan now saying “perhaps he had bad information”… BRENNAN IS THE INFORMATION !!

...In essence we can see that John Brennan was the initiator manipulating everything, somewhat behind the scenes, for all of the activity (tangentially noted by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in their text messages about the CIA leaks). After the 2016 election, Brennan continued pushing the Steele Dossier into the media bloodstream as it carried the Russian Conspiracy virus he created.

...Lastly, unlike other DOJ and FBI officials connected to the fraudulent exploitation of the FISA court, John Brennan is not attached to the ongoing DOJ Inspector General investigation being conducted by IG Horowitz. The inspector general is only looking at the process, procedures and people who were involved in submitting an unverified and likely fraudulent FISA application. The list of the participants does not include anyone outside the DOJ and FBI process.

This means John Brennan, or any other Obama-era official outside the DOJ and FBI, can be referred for criminal investigation and that referral will not impede any ongoing investigation by IG Michael Horowitz.

That’s why Devin Nunes could likely submit a criminal referral for ¹John Brennan.

¹Or, NSA Advisor Susan Rice, ODNI James Clapper, or former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power (unmasking); or any other administration official who may have engaged in leaking and/or disseminating classified intelligence information.

Read more here.

Hiding documents

When you realize the same DOJ/FBI investigators from 2016 (Crossfire Hurricane) transferred into the Mueller probe in 2017, then you realize exactly who did the redactions/edits in the released Page/Strzok texts; and also who was then, and is currently, hiding documents. pic.twitter.com/2q40Bna8jh

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) March 30, 2019

Finally we have leaders who are taking seriously the threat of EMPs!

In the Hill, Peter Pry reports,

...The Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats, signed on March 26 by President Trump, is an excellent first step toward achieving national preparedness. It seeks to implement core recommendations of the Congressional EMP Commission on an accelerated basis.

Among the best and strongest features of the EMP Executive Order is putting the White House in charge of national EMP preparedness, rather than relying on the Department of Energy (DOE) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lead.

The order states that the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), working with the National Security Council and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, “shall coordinate the development and implementation of executive branch actions to assess, prioritize, and manage the risks of EMPs.”

White House leadership on EMP preparedness is imperative. Both Energy and Homeland Security have a long history of underestimating and under-prioritizing the EMP threat.

Among its many strong features, President Trump’s executive order combines EMP and cybersecurity. It directs DHS’s secretary to coordinate with the Energy and Defense secretaries, other agencies and the private sector to “develop a plan to mitigate the effects of EMPs on the vulnerable priority-critical infrastructures.”

The president’s order recognizes that an EMP attack, in adversary military doctrine and planning, is a dimension of cyber warfare. Worst-case cyber attack scenarios that could kill millions of Americans — by, for example, causing a protracted blackout of electric grids through cyber-induced over-voltages, or by manipulating controls to destroy transformers — can be addressed by many of the protective measures long recommended by the Congressional EMP Commission.

One of the most welcome and needed features of the EMP Executive Order is the requirement that the vulnerability of vital critical-infrastructure equipment be established through empirical testing in EMP simulators.

Read more here.

Weaponizing the transgender world view

Bookworm writes,

...it’s terrifying to watch the speed with which the government is weaponizing the transgender world view. ...Governments are enthusiastically weaponizing the Leftist trend of sexualizing children, because doing so dramatically increases government power.

...the Left is intent upon sexualizing children as fast as possible. A significant part of this sexualization has to do with the transgender movement, which was the train the Left hopped on the moment the Supreme Court found the previously invisible gay marriage clause in the Constitution.

Read more here.

"Then the American people can decide who is the real traitor."

Julie Kelly writes in American Greatness,

...For two years, Brennan has tried to finish what he failed to do while in office: Doom the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Senator Paul should follow through on his threat to have Brennan appear before a public congressional committee as soon as possible. President Trump should authorize the immediate declassification of Brennan’s January 2017 Intelligence Community report to determine whether any of the evidence included political opposition research authored by a British operative and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Then the American people can decide who is the real traitor.

Read more here.

Trump plans to close a portion of the US-Mexico border next week.

Sundance reports in the Conservative Treehouse,

President Trump tweeted earlier today that he plans to close at least a portion of the U.S-Mexico border next week in an effort to force Mexico to take action and stop the constant caravans of migrants.

Read more here.

"I know if they got everything they demanded, they still would not be happy. Spoiled children never are."

In his blog, Don Surber writes about Obama's Fast 'n Furious Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Holder's bitterness toward the country resonates throughout Washington and the Democrat Party. They see Americans as rubes. Holder and the rest portray the nation as irredeemably racist, genocidal, and intolerant.

If true, why do they want to live here? They should move far, far away.

They are an unhappy lot. I know if they got everything they demanded, they still would not be happy. Spoiled children never are.

We have a great country. I know because it survived eight years of hate in the White House by Holder's boss.

Read more here.

Obama is proud of her

She expressed hatred of President Trump and attacked pro-Israel senators, so what is her reward? Barack Obama tells her, "I'm proud of you!" Jeffrey Cimmino reports in the Free Beacon,

Former president Barack Obama allegedly told Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) he was "proud" of her during a meeting yesterday.

The freshman Democrat tweeted a picture of her standing with Obama, writing that he "met with us new members of Congress and we had a thoughtful discussion about serving our country."

"The best part was when he looked straight at me and said, ‘I'm proud of you,'" Tlaib continued.

In January, the Michigan Democrat promised attendees at a left-wing MoveOn reception in Washington, D.C., that Democrats would "impeach the motherfucker," referring to President Donald Trump.

Less than a week later, Tlaib attacked pro-Israel senators, suggesting "they forgot what country they represent," as the Senate prepared to vote on legislation that would permit the federal government to refrain from working with groups that refuse to work with Israel's government. Tlaib's remark was widely condemned as anti-Semitic, the Free Beacon reported:

...Tlaib once contributed an article to the Final Call, the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's publication known for promoting anti-Semitism. Tlaib also supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which advocates for the boycott of Israeli organizations and companies to support Palestinian interests.

Earlier this week, Tlaib introduced a resolution urging the impeachment of Trump, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying impeachment is "not worth it" in an interview earlier this month.

Read more here.

Spygate, a history of the plot to take down President Trump

Jeff Carlson lays out for us in the EpochTimes the timeline of Spygate, the alleged plot to take down Donald Trump. Read his very thorough report here.

"The Middle East is in a war of two competing blocs."

In his blog, Ace of Spades writes,

If you don't know -- and it's a mystery why the media doesn't tell you this more often, because it's a well-known fact and it's pretty simple and explains a lot of the otherwise confusing moves in the Middle East -- the Middle East is in a war of two competing blocs.

In one bloc is Iran, Turkey, and Qatar. Qatar, which has less of a negative public profile than Turkey and certainly Iran, and also has a ton of money to spread around, is in charge of shaping US policy (and putting money in the hands of those who can shape US policy) in favor of the Iran-Turkey-Qatar troika.

I think people feel more comfortable being on the Qatari payroll than they would be being on Iran's.

But being on Qatar's payroll is essentially the same as being on Iran's. They're partners in this troika. Qatar is just the less-scary frontman for the troika.

This troika supports the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the other bloc is Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, most of the other Gulf States (Bahrain, etc.), and... Israel.

This group, by and large, opposes the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is why the Jamal Kashoggi assassination was such a major public spectacle: Khashoggi was a Qatari information officer assassinated for being a Qatari information officer, not for being a "journalist." This is why Turkey was so eager to milk the story for all the PR, and why American media who have for some reason partnered with Qatar really wanted to make this a huge event -- it was part of the Iran-Turkey-Qatar information ops against a major player in the rival bloc.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing to murder fairly minor intelligence assets like Kashoggi. But it does explain why there was so much storm and thunder about it.

Because Qatar was paying money so that there should be storm and thunder about it. And Turkey was lending a hand.

And the parts of the American media which have allied softly with Iran since Ben Rhodes' echo chamber, and since Obama decided to support Iran over Israel, were happy to play their part.

Read more here.

The worst disease ever recorded!

Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic about

the worst disease ever recorded. A doomsday fungus known as Bd has condemned more species to extinction than any other pathogen.

A century ago, a strain of pandemic flu killed up to 100 million people—5 percent of the world’s population. In 2013, a new mystery illness swept the western coast of North America, causing starfish to disintegrate. In 2015, a big-nosed Asian antelope known as the saiga lost two-thirds of its population—some 200,000 individuals—to what now looks to be a bacterial infection. But none of these devastating infections comes close to the destructive power of Bd—a singularly apocalyptic fungus that’s unrivaled in its ability not only to kill animals, but to delete entire species from existence.

Bd—Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in full—kills frogs and other amphibians by eating away at their skin and triggering fatal heart attacks. It’s often said that the fungus has caused the decline or extinction of 200 amphibian species, but that figure is almost two decades out-of-date. New figures, compiled by a team led by Ben Scheele from the Australian National University, are much worse.

Scheele’s team estimates that the fungus has caused the decline of 501 amphibian species—about 6.5 percent of the known total. Of these, 90 have been wiped out entirely. Another 124 have fallen by more than 90 percent, and their odds of recovery are slim. Never in recorded history has a single disease burned down so much of the tree of life. “It rewrote our understanding of what disease could do to wildlife,” Scheele says.

Read more here.

What the Trump candidacy and election hath wrought

An excerpt from JJ Sefton's Morning Report:

The end of another crazy week and almost the end of March. With all of the insanity swirling around us, if you step back and survey the cultural and political landscape of America (and the two are virtually intertwined in this day and age) from a high level, the picture presented is abject chaos. All of it emanates from the Democrat-Left-Media-Academia Complex and is catalyzed by a single entity that day after day proves to be a force of nature: President Donald J. Trump.

Look what his candidacy and even election have wrought. The dropping of whatever fig leaf of a pretense of objectivity the media may have had, the exposure of what has come to be known as a Deep State of both political appointees and bureaucratic lifers within our national law enforcement and intelligence communities who conspire and, er, collude, with one another and even foreign entities to abuse their power to subvert the will of the people and steer the nation to an unnatural globalist destiny. Then, having failed to sabotage the election to install their hand-picked figurehead (Hillary couldn't drive a Hoveround let alone an agenda), they used phony opposition "research" that no one believed, attached it to an intelligence file and used that as a pretext to smear the President-elect as a foreign agent who stole the 2016 election.

But while all of this was going on, the one thing that they did not count on was that Donald J. Trump punches back. Twice as hard, and right in the throat. And the harder he fought back the more shrill and nakedly partisan were the voices from the Democrats, Media and NeverTrumper Coup-Cuck-Clansters, which fomented incidents of violence and intimidation against ordinary people and political leaders. The other thing it did was touch off an internecine war within the Democrat Party between the pseudo-stealth Socialist old guard and the naked, in your face Shining Path Maoists. Suddenly, anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity, open borders, actual infanticide, killing field-level ludditism and the setting alight of whatever fragments of our Constitution and heritage remain in a Reichstag fire made by the Up-Talk-Brown-Shirt-Brigades was mainstream and playing all over the nightly news like a Sunday night Disney movie. This cannot be playing well in Peoria.

And all of this is happening because of the election of Donald J. Trump. But make no mistake; Trump himself is not really the cause of all this. Or at least, he is just half of the equation. The other half is a sizable number of Americans having lived through and survived the 24-year period from 1992-2016 - especially the last 8 - understood full well that something was wrong with the nation. Trump merely articulated the rage and more importantly the promise that something could and would be done about it.

Read more here.

All the way!

Ethics

"Put up or shut up!"

Oregon Muse writes in Ace of Spades,

"In my opinion, the lyingest sh*tweasel in this whole Russian collusion clown show has been Congressman Adam Schiff. He's been insisting all along that he's seen "conclusive evidence" of Trump's involvement with shady Russian operatives who helped him steal the presidency from Hillary, the rightful winner of the 2016 election. Which would be news to Robert Mueller, who's been looking for precisely this evidence for 2 whole years. Which raises the question: If Schiff actually had evidence, why didn't he put it on a thumb drive and walk it over to Mueller's office? Was that so hard? If he's been sitting on it all of this time, wouldn't that be obstruction of justice. If I were Mueller, I'd be thoroughly p*ssed. So does Schiff have the goods on Trump or not? Because if he's got nothing (as I suspect), then what he did is the equivalent of shouting 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater when there is no fire. There should be consequences. At the very least, Schiff needs to put up or shut up."

Manufactured News For Hire

Ace of Spades writes,

We're living in a cyberpunk world where the "news" isn't the news, it's commercial advertisements for corporations and information ops paid for by political parties put into a form resembling that of what we used to call "news," bought and paid for by deep-pocketed interested parties.

"The News Media" is now just a delivery medium for these paid commercial advertisements and information ops slightly rewritten to resemble dispassionately-gathered news.

Read more here.

Did we just have a "turning point?"

Andrew plays clips from Joe Biden and Eric Holder wanting us to be ashamed of America's past. Americans need to be re-educated to think like Eric Holder and Joe Biden!

Catastrophic flooding hits Nebraska

Tyler Durden reports in Zero Hedge,

According to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue, there “may be as many as a million calves lost in Nebraska” due to the catastrophic flooding that has hit the state.

America’s farmers have been utterly devastated. America’s cattle producers have been utterly devastated. Food production is going to be way, way below expectations, and food prices are going to escalate dramatically in the coming months. This is the kind of scenario that I have been warning about, and this crisis is going to continue to get worse as all the snow from one of the snowiest winters on record melts. In Minnesota, there are still more than 20 inches of snow on the ground in some places, and all of that water has to go somewhere.

This is the biggest national crisis that has hit the United States in many years, but the mainstream media and millions of Americans that do not live in the affected areas still do not seem to get it.

Of course once food prices start getting painfully high at our supermarkets everyone will start complaining, but there will not be any easy solutions.

Read more here.

Minority liberal race-hustling has its privileges.

Michelle Malkin writes about the

crime huckster Jussie Smollett. How did he get away with it? All crooked roads in Chicago lead back to the Obamas. On Tuesday, as part of a sealed deal, the Illinois state attorney’s office dismissed 16 felony charges brought by a grand jury against the Trump-hating actor, who blamed phantom white MAGA supporters for a brutal racist “assault” that left him with a teensy-weensy scratch under his eye. The day before the “attack,” Smollett’s two bodybuilding friends were caught on surveillance tape buying costumery (red hat, ski masks, bandanas, sunglasses and gloves) that just happened to match Smollett’s descriptions of what his still-fugitive assailants were wearing.

...To atone for the-fakery-that-shall-not-be-named, Smollett performed 18 hours of “community service” with Jesse Jackson’s PUSH Coalition and forfeited his $10,000 bond.

...To minimize Tchen’s role in the Obamas’ political lives as merely an “aide” is journalistic malpractice. As I have previously reported:

–Tchen personally shoveled more than $200,000 into the 2008 Obama presidential campaign coffers while a high-powered lawyer at white-shoe Skadden Arps.

–Tchen served as special assistant to President Obama, and then took over as chief of staff in the East Wing for Mrs. Obama.

–Tchen headed up the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, spearheaded by longtime Chicago pal and fellow corporate lawyer/bundler Valerie Jarrett.

–Tchen coordinated Hollywood celebrities to promote Obama’s domestic policy agenda through the taxpayer-subsidized National Endowment for the Arts.

–Tchen was listed in 2009 White House visitor logs I reviewed as having met there with radical left-wing billionaire George Soros.

–As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak noted, Soros donated a total of $408,000 to super PACs supporting Foxx’s successful primary and general campaigns for Cook County state attorney.

Given Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s hand-holding friendship with Tchen, Tchen’s intimacy with the Obamas, and Michelle Obama’s chumminess with Jussie Smollett (she hosted him at a musical event at the White House in 2016 and danced with him on stage at a College Signing Day Event in 2018), it is not unreasonable to wonder how much direct knowledge the Obamas themselves may have had about Tchen’s role as Smollett’s fixer.

...Tchen has made quite the career out of exploiting her Obama connections, including cushy spots on VICE’s Diversity and Inclusion Board, Uber’s #MeToo advisory board, and the Grammys’ task force for inclusion and diversity. But those plum jobs and her role in Smollett’s Folly all pale in comparison to her newest gig: playing watchdog over the crumbling Southern Poverty Law Center.

After decades of manufacturing “hate” against peaceful, law-abiding conservatives, sharia opponents, Christian activists and immigration enforcement hawks, the junk mail order house that grifter Morris Dees built is in chaos amid long-brewing strife over internal gender and racial discrimination — not to mention a slew of outside defamation lawsuits. Fresh off assisting one celebrity hate crime huckster, Tchen will now be doing damage control for the granddaddy of all racial hoax rackets.

Read more here.

How to restore General Flynn's good name

Michael Ledeen writes in PJ Media,

...The accusations against Flynn were fanciful from the outset, and need to be undone. If justice is to prevail for this distinguished officer, he should be pardoned at once, and then the president has the opportunity for a positive step: create a high-powered commission to investigate the many sins of the intelligence community. Flynn’s plan to audit their budgets—no such appraisal has been carried out since World War II—was worthy and important. The president should make General Flynn the chair of that committee, to restore his good name and give intelligence the kind of serious evaluation we badly need.

Read more here.

"How Obama, Hillary, and Brennan carried out the crime of the century."

In Big League Politics, Patrick Howley reveals details of how Obama, Hillary, and Brennan carried out the crime of the century.

The “Operation Crossfire Hurricane” plot against President Donald Trump is now exposed for the world to see, with special counsel Robert Mueller coming up empty in his quest to pin Trump with Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.

We have explosive information about this scheme, including the involvement of former president Barack Obama, Obama intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper, failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, the Fusion GPS set-up agent Natalia Veselnitskaya, and even foreign leaders including Angela Merkel.

This article will firmly demonstrate the following:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign used the Christopher Steele dossier before their involvement was covered up
Senior Obama administration officials secretly plotted to involve senators in the “Russia” conspiracy
James Clapper tried to use the “Russia” narrative to get the Supreme Court to invalidate Trump’s presidency
Natalia Veselnitskaya was a Fusion GPS set-up agent who worked out of an Obama official’s office in D.C.
Peter Strzok ran point on destroying General Flynn and covering up for Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama used foreign powers to keep the scheme going, even after he left the Oval Office to President Trump.

Read more here.

How the media works

Joe Schoffstall reports in the Free Beacon,

Liberal billionaire George Soros bankrolled a massive "hate crime" database that is used by more than 100 media partners—including Google News Labs, New York Times Opinion, and ABC News—to report alleged hate crimes, according to tax documents and interviews.

The database, launched following the election of President Donald Trump, is "unverified" and receives stories of alleged "hate" from the likes of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization currently in upheaval over charges of institutional racism perpetrated by its recently fired co-founder, Morris Dees, and the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group that was previously listed as an unindicted co-conspirator of terrorism.

Media partners involved in the initiative have access to the unverified database, and use it to report stories of hate in the Trump era.

ProPublica, an investigative reporting nonprofit based in New York City, launched the project, known as "Documenting Hate," in 2017. The New York Times backed the project in January 2017 editorial, "Why We Need a Project to Document Hate Crimes."

...Soros vowed to put $10 million into combating hate crimes following Trump's election.

...The project does not contain any right-leaning publications or organizations.

..."The partners include organizations you'd think of as legitimate-but-liberal news outlets—the Los Angeles Times, PBS and ABC News. But they partner with blatantly left-wing outlets with little credibility like The Root, TPM and Vox," said Dan Gainor, the vice president for Business and Culture at the Media Research Center. "They actually partner with far-left Splinter, which doxed White House aide Stephen Miller by posting his cell phone number so readers could harass him. AJ Plus is another partner. It's owned by Al Jazeera, the state-run propaganda site from Qatar."

Many hate crime incidents that have been reported by major news outlets in recent years have turned out to be false.

...Wilfred Reilly, an assistant professor of political science at Kentucky State University, found more than 400 hate crime hoaxes while conducting research for a book, Hate Crime Hoax.

"A great many hate crime stories turn out to be hoaxes. Simply looking at what happened to the most widely reported hate crime stories over the past 4-5 years illustrates this: not only the Smollett case but also the Yasmin Seweid, Air Force Academy, Eastern Michigan, Wisconsin-Parkside, Kean College, Covington Catholic, and "Hopewell Baptist burning" racial scandals all turned out to be fakes. And, these cases are not isolated outliers," Reilly wrote in USA Today following the Jussie Smollett incident.

...UPDATE: Following publication, Tofel specified that the $375,000 grant from Soros was used in 2017 while the $200,000 grant was used in 2018, adding that they had expired in December. Google is now funding the project, according to Tofel. This post has been updated to reflect this information.

Read more here.

Ace of Spades adds,

Lee Smith brilliantly laid this all out more than a year ago -- as "news" media lose money and get lazier and more incompetent, they become more and more reliant on private propaganda outfits -- like Fusion GPS, most famously -- to write their "news" for them.

The media isn't "digging up stories" any longer. They are merely printing the stories written for them by privately-funded, hidden-agenda (but not that hidden) leftist Mercenary Media organizations who create stories according to the wishes of whatever corporation or political patron is paying them to.

The "media" isn't the real media. The "media" you see on tv and in newsstands is just the clearinghouse for narratives created by the real media, the Mercenary Media, whose hand is kept hidden.

I trust Devin Nunes. Senator Graham has been impressive lately, but what about his history of tight association with John McCain?

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes,

Two MAGA freight trains are heading full-speed toward each other and there ain’t no spur between em’.

The conductor of one engine is HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes who will be sending criminal referrals to AG Barr next week based on existing evidence and testimony. The conductor of the opposing engine is Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, who wants AG Barr to ignore the criminal referrals and instead launch another Special Counsel which will be guaranteed to carry into the 2020 election year.

Read more here.

It's all about who you know

Luke Rosiak reports in the Daily Caller,

A former Senate aide charged with doxxing Republican senators and extorting a witness reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Washington after his wealthy and well-connected family brought in experts to talk about his mental health and the private supervision they could provide him.

A judge signaled that Jackson Cosko had allegedly taken large quantities of sensitive information from the Senate, but banned media from hearing the details. A hearing had been scheduled for Thursday, but on Tuesday, the court canceled it and indicated that a deal had been struck behind the scenes. A plea agreement hearing, where the deal is to be officially signed, was set for April 5.

During Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s September 2018 confirmation hearing, Cosko — a former IT aide who once managed Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan’s office computer accounts — allegedly posted to Wikipedia the home addresses of Republican senators who supported the Supreme Court justice.

“I own EVERYTHING,” Cosko told a Hassan aide who caught him in the act, according to prosecutors. “If you tell anyone I will leak it all. Emails, signal conversations, gmails.”

Information revealed in court since then suggested that might not have been a bluff. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan on Jan. 24 said Cosko allegedly possessed terabytes of information, including Senate data so sensitive that it could not be discussed in open court.

“He downloaded more information than was originally understood. There is no combination of conditions that could ensure the safety of the community,” Hogan said in December 2018.

Brian W. Stolarz, Cosko’s attorney, did not return a request for comment on the plea deal.

Prosecutors had underscored that he was a flight risk and that they had concerns he would engage in obstruction of justice.

Read more here.

Two systems of justice in America

JJ Sefton writes in the Ace of Spades blog,

Michael Flynn and Jussie Smollett are the perfect illustration of the fact that there are two systems of "justice" in America; one for the elite and powerful, or others on the Left and intersectional color chart of an approved victim class, and one for actual Americans. And there is also the court of public opinion where the propaganda machine will do everything in its power to destroy you and everything and everyone you hold dear if it deems necessary. Just ask Nick Sandmann or the Duke lacrosse team, or Tom Delay, or Michael Steinhardt. Or Michael Flynn. Or Donald J. Trump.

Read more here.

About guns

Stressed

700 days later, the man who came into a courtroom an innocent man, walked out an innocent man!

Valerie Richardson reports in the Washington Times,

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy could have spent the rest of his life in jail, but instead, he walked away Monday a free man, the case against him and his sons thrown out over what the judge decried as “outrageous” misconduct by federal prosecutors.

...Judge Navarro admonished the government for “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” and withholding “potentially exculpatory” evidence, including FBI logs on surveillance and sniper activity, threat-assessment reports indicating that the Bundys were not dangerous, and internal reports about misconduct involving BLM agents.

Outside the courthouse, Cliven Bundy said that he had a “15-second defense: I grazed my cattle only on Clark County, Nevada, land, and I have no contract with the federal government.”

He criticized local government officials, including the Clark County sheriff, asking why they allowed federal officers to “come in with an army against us and stick their guns down our throat?”

Read more here.

The chickens have come home to roost!

For eight years the media closed its eyes to the corruption of the administration of Barack Obama. The chickens have come home to roost, right, Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama?

The New York Times says Donald Trump "has survived the scandal." What scandal? The media haven't covered the real scandal! The scandal was that the Obama administration people felt free to act in the way that they did! The entire communications industry, including show biz and the academy, was involved in the scandal.

"There are no legal consequences for filing a hoax report of a hate crime!"

So writes Ace of Spades on the news of all charges being dropped against Jussie Smollett. Read more here.

Drip, Drip, Drop!

Sundance writes at the Conservative Treehouse,

The Russian Interference narrative was constructed ex-post-facto to cover for a political surveillance operation that was targeting candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. The Carter Page FISA warrant (an insurance policy) was needed as cover for the investigative data trail and time spent by FBI officials enlisted in the surveillance operation.

Read more here.

Proudly displayed hallucinations

Bookworm tackles the subject of Progressives and #NeverTrumpers proudly displaying their hallucinations about Trump.

These permanently sundowning Proggies and #NeverTrumpers who proudly display their hallucinations for all to see on Twitter and Facebook, and in MSM articles and TV shows, can’t claim age-related dementia. They’re in the primes of their lives.

Instead, like drug addicts, they did this to themselves. They’ve wallowed for years in unwholesome, destructive, dishonest, and deranged fantasies, and now they’re trapped in a state of permanent sundowning, completely unable to distinguish their sick fantasies from reality.

Read more here.

Obstruction of justice

In the American Spectator, Dov Fischer has some things to say about obstruction of justice.

......Not a pretty package of proposals for the 2020 Presidential election cycle. So the Democrats need something that might actually get votes from people eligible to vote. Now that the Collusion Hoax/Witch Hunt is over, all they have left is “Obstruction of Justice.” On the one hand, not enough to charge. But — hey! — not enough to exonerate on first blush either!

And so it shall go. More House investigations for two more years. More tens of millions of dollars of our money to be thrown away and wasted on nonsense and lies. And all we can hope and wait for is that someone in Washington, like Mr. Barr, now will turn around and name a Special Counsel to investigate:

The players involved in obtaining the FISA warrant, how they colluded to get it, and whether they lied to the FISA court.
The lawfulness of the unmaskings of Michael Flynn and others.
The plotting within the Comey FBI and the Obama-Lynch Department of Justice in relation to laying a groundwork for the collusion accusations, the interrelationship of those connivings with the FBI-DOJ handling of the Clinton E-Mail investigation, and whether blind justice was compromised at the highest levels of the Obama Justice Department and the Comey FBI in the interest of raw and ruthless politics.
The Clinton Foundation and the “Pay-to-Play” access to the Secretary of State.
The weaponizing of the IRS for political purposes to protect the Obama reelection campaign.
That is where we now are heading. Those are the next steps we await — those and the declassification of the FISA warrant documents.

Because, really, anything less would be an obstruction of justice.

Read more here.

A turning point in the Trump presidency

photo via Bookworm

"Going forward, we'll begin to unpack the other side of the story!"

Today Senator Lindsey Graham held one of the most interesting press conferences I have ever seen. "The cloud has been removed!...Donald Trump got scrutiny like nobody else in the history of the presidency...There's a good reason you wouldn't want a bunch of politicians prosecuting other politicians!...The Russians have done a good job dividing us against each other, and, by the way, they are still doing it! I want to see if Attorney General Barr will appoint a Special Counsel to look into what happened with the FISA warrant, what happened with the counter-intelligence investigation."

She knows it's there

It's over there, around the corner

Not one of the thousands of so-called journalists who spent years peddling Russia Birtherism has apologized for getting it all wrong. They're instead doing what nutjob conspiracy theorists always do: claiming the REAL evidence is still out there somewhere. https://t.co/hWTWAxPEiY

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 24, 2019

"A livelier than usual Friday-night news-dump"

You should have seen the one that got away...
Mark Steyn writes in Steyn On America,

Late yesterday afternoon, there was a livelier than usual Friday-night news-dump, when the Attorney-General of the United States announced that Robert Mueller had wrapped up his "Russia investigation" and there would be no further indictments.

For two years, the prefatory "Russia" has been intended to give the word "investigation" more heft, to make it seem as if there was something more than let's-get-Trump-on-anything. But even the unlimited resources of a wretchedly corrupt federal justice system couldn't keep that going without something more than Michael Cohen's taxi medallions (only in America) and a few Russian troll farms, one of whom has amusingly decided to push back in court against Mueller and his showboating cronies.

Other than that, there are, as I said almost two years ago, no Russians in the Russia investigation - and what foreign "interference" with the 2016 election there was from Russia seems to have been amateur and minimal, unless you count MI6 spook Christopher Steele working his Moscow Rolodex on behalf of Hillary Clinton and her Deep State allies. There was, however, extensive domestic interference with the election, in that at the behest of the sitting administration the most powerful figures in the permanent bureaucracy set to work on a sophisticated surveillance operation against its political opposition: "Republics" in the Americas have been invariably prefaced by the qualifier "banana"; it just took Washington a little longer to sign up.

I'm tied up with trial preparation this weekend, but I don't really have much to say that I haven't said in the previous two years. We will see in the next few days whose version of these last three years prevails - mine or, say, John Brennan's. We begin in November 2016, on the morning after the election night before:

Mostly she was mad - mad that she'd lost and that the country would have to endure a Trump presidency... Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. 'She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way,' this person said.

No problem, because oddly enough that was what virtually the entire leadership of the DOJ and FBI were planning anyway, and indeed had been working on for months. And one of the most idiotic features of "the peaceful transfer of power" gave them all the cover they needed:

During the stupid and anachronistic two-and-a-half-month electoral "transition", the outgoing Administration worked round the clock to de-legitimize and cripple their successors.

Thus Susan Rice and Samantha Power, neither of whom is Judi Dench in the Bond pics, began frantically "unmasking" hundreds and hundreds of surveilled individuals all the way up to high noon on inauguration day. The object was to turn an improper months-long investigation of the outgoing administration's political opponents into a years-long investigation of the incoming administration's non-existent "collusion" - a brilliantly chosen term because it has no legal meaning. So the same people who'd been running the Trump investigation ordered up a new set of business cards - and hey presto, welcome to the "Russia investigation":

It started in April 2016, when it became clear that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination. The Hillary campaign and the DNC gave millions of dollars to Marc Elias, a Clinton lawyer, who in turn hired Fusion GPS, who in turn hired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Why use Mr Elias as a cutout? Because Hillary and the DNC could then itemize the expense as "legal services" rather than list payments to Mr Steele, which would be in breach of federal law...

Steele's dossier was passed along to the FBI. It seems a reasonable inference, to put it as blandly as possible, that the dossier was used to justify the opening of what the Feds call an "FI" (Full Investigation), which in turn was used to justify a FISA order permitting the FBI to put Trump's associates under surveillance. Indeed, it seems a reasonable inference that the dossier was created and supplied to friendly forces within the bureau in order to provide a pretext for an FI, without which surveillance of the Trump campaign would not be possible.

But that's all you need. The dossier is a remarkable thing. It self-regenerates and corroborates itself as it ricochets back and forth between corrupt bureaucrats, biddable hacks and rubber-stamp judges:

At the FISA court, the FBI, to bolster their reliance on the Steele dossier, pointed to newspaper stories appearing to corroborate aspects of it - even though, as he subsequently testified under oath at the Old Bailey, those stories were in fact fed to those reporters by Steele himself. Nevertheless, it works like a charm on gullible FISA judges. You take one thing and you make it two things. Or even better, you take nothing and you make it a thing: Here, from yesterday's letter by Senator Ron Johnson, are McCabe, Sally Yates and other FBI/DOJ honchos arranging for Comey to brief Trump on the Steele dossier for the sole purpose of giving CNN a news peg for leaking details about what's in it.

Read more here.

Will the woke bubble survive?

Do you like satire? In the New Criterion, Roger Kimball tells us about Andrew Doyle.

The absolutely brilliant thing about Titania McGrath, as the world just discovered last month, is that she is really the satirical invention of Andrew Doyle, a former Oxford postgraduate student and clearly a very clever man.

...We think Andrew Doyle, blessed with a pitch perfect ear for absurdity, has revealed the malign hilarity of woke culture. Twitter was right to ban him four times. He is dangerous to the perpetuation of the woke bubble they love.

Read more here.

Confusion Thy Name is Democrat

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

I can barely keep track of what the Democrats believe anymore. Of course, this is partly ‘cause they themselves seem to be having trouble keeping their lies . . . ummm . . . I mean, stories, straight. Of course, part of the problem with those pesky things like truth and facts might well be that they pretty much live in a fantasy world made up almost entirely of their opinions and perceptions which often have little to do with reality.

They claim they need to rid citizens of guns in an effort to save the lives of children and babies, yet support the right to not only kill unborn children, but to extend so-called abortion legislation beyond the womb to the killing of newborns who survive the abortion process. If even one life needs to be saved, why not start with those most innocent and in need of protection?

Then, there is the constant cry from the Left about Women’s Rights. Fighting for equality for women. Not allowing the male patriarchy to run roughshod over women. And, yet, these same so-called feminists are supporting transgenders over biological females. They are allowing females who are transitioning to male and males who are transitioning to female to compete in athletics against biological females who do not have the assistance of male hormone advantages due to either birth or medical intervention. Yes, feminists are actually championing males (of one variety or another) over females. Not exactly ladies first in my book!

Now they have found a new which which is which. Are 16 year olds mature or immature? On the one hand they are excusing bad behaviors of some of their favorites by claiming they were just 16 or just teenagers or very young, and thus their immature actions should be excused. On the other hand they want to lower the national voting age to 16 ‘cause teenagers are mature enough to make such decisions as who will be president. HUH???

Of course, if we look back in time, we can see that this dichotomy is very much embedded in the Democratic Party. For example, their stance on border security and illegal immigration has gone from party leaders saying virtually the same things as President Trump . . . when it wasn’t President Trump in office . . . to them now siding with the illegal immigrants against their own American citizen constituents. This is another example of them using the “if it’ll save just one life” and then going directly against that idea. They ignore the number of American lives lost regularly due to the unsecured border. Crime and violence by gang members and criminals that we did not deport or returned after deportation. Drugs being brought in. Terrorists crossing over. Numerous cases where one life (or more) could have been saved if they would have just built the wall already!

I find it terribly terrifying that the lunatic people on the Left side of the aisle are so close to being in power. In my opinion, having even one Democrat in one office at even the lowest level of government is one Democrat too many. Perhaps not all Democrats are mentally unstable as individuals, but as a mob they are definitely unhinged. As a party they are deranged beyond all doubt. No one but crazy people could put together a platform that reads like something from the Alice in Wonderland from Hell playbook. Add that to their constant anger and you get a whole new take on mad as a March Hare. You remember him? The good buddy of the Mad Hatter! Talk about an insane tea party. That is exactly what the D party has become. A bunch of bizarre characters around a table speaking nonsense.

I guess when you live in the dark places where plots to steal freedoms are hatched it is a lot like falling down a rabbit hole and no longer being aware of the truth that lives in the light of day. When you spend all your time trying to simply steal ever more power and think you can actually be like the Queen of Hearts and go around demanding “off with his head” whenever anyone displeases you, one is apt to get a bit weird when trying to interact normally with real folks.

Maybe a cure for some of the political insanity we see in government would be across the board term limits. If politicians were required to step away from their world of make-believe and return to just being an average citizen, maybe they would become a bit more grounded as to what Americans really need to not just survive but to actually thrive. Take away their lifetime benefits and maybe they would care a bit more about Social Security, health care costs, the price of fuel, the affordability of food, and other everyday concerns facing citizens all across this country.

Maybe some time in reality would make the Democrats a little less confused. Everyday struggles have a way of bringing things a little more into focus. When you actually have to care about money, money gets real. Real fast! Until this happens, I will continue voting a straight Republican ticket. While the Republicans are not perfect, they are a little less freakin’ bat-turd crazy!!!

ISIS territory is now WAS-WAS

Wes Walker reports in Clash Daily,

As of last week, The Black Flag of ISIS is officially homeless.

...While there’s still much work to be done, the war against ISIS just crossed a ‘YUGE’ milestone.

The renegade Caliphate has just been starved of a major claim on its legitimacy: they no longer hold any physical territory.

Read more here.

What did not happen in the Mueller investigation?

In the Washington Examiner, Byron York writes about five things that we now know did not happen in the Mueller investigation.

Robert Mueller has delivered his report on the Trump-Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr. Sometime soon, perhaps within hours, Barr will send the report's "principal conclusions" to Congress. It will first go to the chairperson and ranking member of both the House and Senate Judiciary committees. It is unclear what will happen after that, but certainly other lawmakers will see the document, and there will be a steady stream of leaks of what is in the report.

The Mueller investigation is over, and it is apparently the case that Mueller does not recommend any new indictments.

At this point, it is not possible to say what is in the report. But even at this early moment, it is possible to note some things did not happen during the Mueller investigation.

1. Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

2. Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

3. Mueller did not subpoena the president, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

4. The president did not fire Mueller, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

5. The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year. In his letter to Congress, Barr noted the requirement that he notify lawmakers if top Justice Department officials ever interfered with the Mueller investigation. "There were no such instances," Barr wrote.

So Mueller is finished. Not long after the news broke, Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts said, "The feeling [at the White House] right now is that this is finally over." Yes and no. Mueller's decision to file a report and not to recommend any more indictments does not mean that the broader Trump-Russia investigation is over. Anticipating just this possibility, House Democrats ramped up new Trump-Russia investigations in recent weeks to make sure that it will never be over. There is little doubt that such investigations will still be going, at least until the 2020 elections.

Politics of the Witch Hunt

Wes Walker writes in part at Clash Daily about the soon-to-be-released findings from the Mueller witch hunt,

Truth be told, it’s the #Resistance Democrats and RINOs who are suddenly having a problem with the findings.

Adam Schiff — who once told us all that he had personally seen ‘more than circumstantial evidence that Trump associated colluded with Russia’ is looking really pathetic at this point. Is he slinking back under whichever rock he came out from?

Of course not. He’s front-and-center promising to ‘subpoena Mueller’ AND his evidence if necessary.

‘AND his evidence?’ Oh, really..? We’ll come back to that in a moment.

Schumer and Pelosi are also demanding the full release.

Stop for a moment and think about what it is they are demanding.

“Democrats seem to be demanding that the Justice Department reveal derogatory information about Mueller’s witnesses even if they’re not charged with a crime.” — Politico

They think the public has some right to the full release of everything Mueller has dug up, not just the report, but the evidence he used to write it up.

That would include, don’t forget, all manner of confidential communications between Trump and his lawyer for which attorney-client privilege has already been violated by the State.

That would include millions of documents supplied willingly by the White House to comply with a criminal and/or intelligence investigation…

That would include any grand jury testimony which might include some combination of valid and invalid accusations against parties not present to defend themselves. Allegations which were not subject to cross-examination or even given with a judge present…

What are they really after?
Ultimately, the Democrats are REALLY demanding free oppo research be given to them courtesy of the government dime.

Mueller’s job was that of Prosecutor, to gather information sufficient to condemn or indict if it existed. The evidence was either sufficient for that purpose or it was not.

The Democrats want not just the reports, but also the unfiltered, untested allegations made against Trump and his associates.

Can you, in your wildest dreams, imagine Democrats making such demands if Mueller had been looking into Hillary?

Where were these same Democrats and their demands for transparency when Obama’s ‘Wingman’ was in contempt of Congress concerning the Fast and Furious investigation which was directly linked to the death of an American Law Enforcement Officer?

Last we checked, criminal prosecution is not the job of Congress. The powers of investigation and prosecution fall within the scope of the Executive Branch.

But the Democrats don’t like the idea of separation if it interferes with a witchhunt… it’s looking more and more that what they REALLY wanted was to be Trump’s judge, jury and executioner.

Which means if they don’t get the result they want with Mueller, they’ll just keep fishing. This from the same people who held Mueller up as the Gold Standard for so long, and insisted that we accept whatever findings he come up with.

Isn’t this exactly like what Hillary did when she accused Trump of being unwilling to accept the results of the election (remember her ‘smooth transition of power’ speech?) — and then spending the next couple of years refusing to accept the results when she herself lost?

The Trumpinator: every time his rivals think they’ve got him down and out, he stands back up and keeps on coming.

They laughed when Trump announced his candidacy. They thought of him like some kind of a circus act. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Read more here.

The dance with the dragon

Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse reports that President Trump has stepped in to prevent additional sanctions against China. Beijing is showing the Panda mask (during Beijing trade negotiations).

President Trump and USTR Lighthizer know the nuance and subtlety needed in the dance with the dragon. The larger issue of DPRK denuclearization, the bottom-line reason for the North Korea sanctions, will be solved within the U.S.-China trade discussion.

...In the dance with the dragon, all action must take place toward the face that is currently visible. Beijing is currently showing the Panda face. The U.S. Team know the Panda mask is just that, a mask. This is one of the nuances in dealing with China.

It would be poor form, and ultimately result in little progress, to approach the Panda mask using dragon hostility. This is not how successful outcomes against the Chinese are reached.

The dragon weapons, in this case brutal sanctions, are saved for when the Panda mask is visibly removed; and/or when the Chinese opponent knows you are aware of their duplicity. Deploy countermeasures too early, and your give an excuse for the Panda to drop the mask.



...President Trump already has the Chinese government controlled economy in a state of worry. That worry keeps companies away from engaging with China. That worry is a negative position for Beijing. The elimination of that worry is a positive outcome. China will negotiate terms if they can gain the value of eliminating economic worry.

Thus, the dance with the dragon.

Read more here.

Run up the tab!

They know whom to blame!

I don't blame Trump for his criticisms of John McCain!

Andrew is critical of Donald Trump for Trump's criticisms of John McCain. I don't agree. We finally have a Republican president who fights back, even if his enemy is dead! McCain did Trump dirty. McCain got the ball rolling accusing Trump of colluding with Russia. McCain kept Obamacare alive. Andrew later gives Trump credit for so many important accomplishments. He wants Trump to be careful not to alienate voters who might otherwise appreciate what Trump is doing with the economy and foreign policy, for example.

Matt Fradd, the author of The Porn Myth, is Andrew's guest on this podcast. Do you experience sexual desire? If not, you may be dead!

Andrew concludes the podcast by referring to Trump's efforts to force educational institutions to uphold First Amendment freedoms. We are in a battle between the Left and free speech, the Left and liberalism. Our extremists are in the comments section at Breitbart. Their extremists are in the government!

"...the only thing standing between voters and socialism"

Can Trump win again in 2020? In PJ Media, Victor Davis Hanson answers,

if things at home and abroad stay about the same or improve, without a war or recession, Trump will likely win enough swing states to repeat his 2016 Electoral College victory.

If, however, unemployment spikes, inflation returns or we get into a war, he may not.

...It's also worth remembering that Trump does not exist in a vacuum. In 2016, many voters preferred Trump because he was not the unpopular Hillary Clinton.

In 2020, there will be an even starker choice. Trump, now an incumbent, will likely run on the premise that he is the only thing standing between voters and socialism.

Read more analysis here.

$Billions in remittances being sent back to Guatamala, El Salvador, and Honduras

Jason Hopkins reports at the Daily Caller,

Foreign nationals from three Central American countries that send some of the highest numbers of illegal immigrants to the U.S. are sending back a record amount of money to their home countries.

Immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras sent back a record $120 billion in remittances this decade, according to an immigration expert who spoke to the Washington Examiner using U.N. and Latin American banking statistics. The numbers are expected to keep rising, with immigrants from these three nations having sent $17 billion in 2018 alone, and Central American bank data indicates that the trend will keeping going.

…the enormous size of the remittances play a significant role in the Central American economies — creating an incentive for their governments to not seek reform. Remittances to Honduras and El Salvador made up over 20 percent of their economies, with over 90 percent of remittances sent to these countries originating from the U.S.

Read more here.

Super-progressives

Ace of Spades writes,

That's super-progressive, super-concerned-about-the-poor-and-disadvantaged and super-interested in "fairness" William Macy and Felicity Huffman showing off their I-Voted-for-Hillary stickers. It was probably about the time of this picture's taking that they were scheming how best to game the system and lie and bribe the gatekeepers of the Gilded Class to let their deficient daughter into a somewhat-above-average college.

"Can we muster the resolve to take them on and defeat them?"

Michael Ledeen writes in Frontpage Magazine,

...We are more corrupt and less educated than we once were. The would-be totalitarians today generate myths that would have been the envy of the ideologues of the last century. Can we muster the resolve to take them on and defeat them?

That this question is very much unanswered shows how hard it’s going to be.

Read more here.

Islands of Clinton voters

Thanks to Oregon Muse

Click to enlarge

Looking forward to backpedaling

Oregon Muse writes at the Ace of Spades blog,

"Since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, various Democrats have proposed to abolish the Senate, abolish the Electoral College, assign electors according to the popular vote, expand the Supreme Court, set term limits on the Supreme Court, lower the voting age to 16. So their strategy is, we're losing, so we need to change all of the rules. But it'll be great when Trump wins the popular vote in 2020; their backpedaling will be enough to make Niagara Falls run backwards."

Not good news at Fox

Sundance writes in the Conservative Treehouse,

A week after saying any Democrat who made the 2020 presidential race about “Trump’s personality” will beat him, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch hires Paul Ryan to serve as a board member for the news organization. This announcement follows on the heels of Fox News hiring the former head of the DNC, Donna “Debate-Gate” Brazile, as a contributor.

Yes, it is clear to see the direction and intent of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.

It must also be remembered that in 2013 Fox News worked behind the scenes to facilitate the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform platform. Additionally, a year later, Murdoch himself advocated for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as the preferred candidates in 2016, using Megyn Kelly to achieve their objective. Yes, it is all one unfortunate, political and ideological continuum.

Read more here

The decades pile up

At the Ace of Spades blog, Misanthropic Humanitarian provided this joke for us to ponder.

Two men grow up together, but after college one moves to Maryland and the other to Texas. They agree to meet every ten years in Florida to play golf and catch up with each other.

At age 32 they meet, finish their round of golf and head for lunch.

“Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why Hooters?”

“They have those servers with the beautiful bosoms, the tight shorts, and the gorgeous legs.”

“You’re on.”

At age 42, they meet and play golf again.

“Where you wanna go for lunch?”

“Hooters.”

“Again? Why?”

“They have cold beer, big screen TVs, and side action on the games.”

“OK.”

At age 52 they meet and play again. “So where you wanna go for lunch?”

“Hooters.

“Why?”

“The food is pretty good and there’s plenty of parking.”

“OK.”

At age 62 they meet again.

After a round of golf, one says, “Where you wanna go?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“Wings are half price and the food isn’t too spicy.”

“Good choice”

At age 72 they meet again.

Once again, after a round of golf, one says, “Where shall we go for lunch?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“They have six handicapped parking spaces right by the door and they have senior discounts.”

“Great choice.”

At age 82 they meet and play again. “Where should we go for lunch?”

“Hooters.”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve never been there before.”

“Okay.”

Is he consumed with jealousy?

I am glad to see that PJ Media's Roger L. Simon has written a post taking on George Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway.

10 times bigger than the atomic bomb used in Hiroshima in 1945

Here is one that all the news media missed. This meteor exploded above the Bering Sea on December 18, 2018. MIT's Technology Review reports,

A meteor exploded over Earth with 10 times the energy of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb
Nobody saw or was even aware of the fireball that exploded above the Bering Sea on December 18, 2018—until now. (The image above is a stock one.)

The scale: It’s the biggest blast since the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2015—and the second-biggest in 30 years, says the BBC. It was 10 meters across, and the energy released as it exploded in Earth's atmosphere was equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT. That’s about 10 times bigger than the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima in 1945.

Discovery: NASA eventually found out about the blast from military satellites that spotted light it emitted when it exploded. The fireball was also spotted by Peter Brown at Canada’s University of Western Ontario, who announced his finding on Twitter. He looked at data taken from around 16 different infrared stations that were originally set up to listen for covert nuclear tests.

Rare: Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA, told the BBC an explosion of this size takes place about two or three times every 100 years.

"The left’s pressure to ‘Roseanne’ their political enemies continues…"

Wes Walker writes an excellent post in Clash Daily today about Fox News's suspension of Jeanine Pirro. President Trump weighs in in support of Judge Jeanine and Tucker Carlson. Read what Pirro said and what Walker wrote here.

Social justice progressivism and the West

In Quillette, Bo Winegard writes about Progressivism and the West.

...I have come to believe that the hostility to the West embedded in this kind of thinking and activism is a serious and growing problem. It is therefore critical that we understand the motives that drive it and the conditions that enable it, and that we challenge its erroneous assumptions and persuade others of its corrosiveness, preferably without alienating those who find it appealing but are also willing to listen to reasonable objections.

Social justice progressivism encourages at least six tendencies that are inimical to the norms, values, and ideas that have allowed the West to flourish.

...1. Misunderstanding Human Nature

...2. Elevating Victims and Encouraging Victimhood

...3. Encouraging the Censorship of Speech and Inquiry
Freedom of speech is likely “unnatural” in that humans do not readily create societies that protect and champion it; consequently, it took many centuries of near-incessant battle for those in the West to win it. The temptation, of course, is always to promote freedom for opinions one likes while encouraging censorship for those one doesn’t, especially if the disliked opinions are perceived as legitimately harmful to vulnerable populations. Because of its emphasis on victims and its contention that Western society is teeming with bigotry, progressivism makes this temptation virtually irresistible to believers.

...4. Eroding Due Process and the Presumption of Innocence

...5. Encouraging Mobocracy and Disproportionate Punishment

...6. Encouraging Contempt for the West and Its Icons

Go here to read how the author fills in his analysis of each of these six points.

This Is Who They Are

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

The top of the line Democrats, Socialists, Progressives, Liberals, the Left, and Celebrities make a big deal about equality and tolerance and fairness and lots of other feel good buzz words or phrases. But, do not be fooled. This recent college bribery scandal is who they are! Who they really are. If you have doubts, just look at their history. They have always been elitists or worked as fast as possible to become part of the elite class. Usually through additional forms of corruption. I mean, come on, you don’t actually think all those folks from regular backgrounds became almost millionaires without selling a wee bit of their soul along the way, do you???

Hollywood became outraged about the sexual abuse only after it became so public that they could not keep it covered up. Until then, they were going along with the status quo and allowing women and children to be coerced at will by the power players of movie land. Same thing in Washington, DC. They only get huffy if a Democrat is outed or a Conservative has committed an erotic error. Otherwise they use the Congressional Hush Honey Slush Money and pay for the accusers to go away.

The same thing with this college bribery scandal. They do not believe in fair play. They do not believe in equal treatment for all. They fully expect to be treated special and given what they want. And, acts of outrage by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, who got her own preferential treatment through cheating, is just hypocrisy. And, the Obamas are now on their second-generation of preferential treatment, so don’t think they are not just as guilty as others.

People get all upset about the wealth of President Trump. But, the man came from wealth. I am more upset about the politicians like Bernie Sanders who came from nothing and is now a millionaire. How did a sitting politician who has never really held a job or owned a business get so much money??? Seems like that is deserving of more investigating than the fantasy of the Russian Trump “nothing to see here” that has come to light so far in Mueller’s investigation. And, let’s not forget the Clintons' non-charitable charity. Millions here. Millions there. Millions, millions everywhere. But barely a cent to those in need!

One of my personal pet peeves about leftist elitism is their attitude about guns. They want to take guns away from citizens . . . but seem to be perfectly okay with their armed security teams. Another example of regular folks being seen as less deserving than those who would be rulers.

If these people do not care enough to play fair about college admissions and personal protection, what makes anyone think they will play fair anywhere else in our society. They are just like Socialists, Communists, and Democratic Socialists have always been. Lots of common folk and poor people making do with what crumbs they are allowed while an elite ruling class takes the cream off the top to live like royalty. If anyone doubts this, just look at history books and Venezuela. Oh, and you might check into the “wonderful” socialized medicine programs all over Europe!!! Do you actually think the Euro-Rich are waiting months and years for their chance at treatment??? I think not!

We need to wake up and smell the corruption. In reality the corruption of Psuedo-Socialism being sold by the Left smells far worse than the horse manure used to fertilize roses. Nothing is free when you must steal from others to pay for it. And, that is what excessive taxation becomes. Just grand theft on a national and “legal” level. But, it is immoral no matter what laws are passed. To tax hard-working people into poverty is criminal. The criminals just happen to own the printing press for “get out of jail free cards” ‘cause they essentially own the corrupt government bureaucracies. Not to mention they are now working to undermine our nation by importing illegal immigrants and allowing non-citizens to vote.

Don’t be fooled by their claims of concern for the poor or the middle class or the children. Their only concern is for their continued power and wealth. Power is money and money is power. This is the law that rules their world. To keep this law in their favor they will throw every single American citizen under the bus and fairness be damned.

They keep the poor reliant on welfare to maintain their voting base. They tax the middle class into poverty to pay for their overspending. And, they will vote for any bill that kills babies through abortion. So, that kinda sums up their concern for any of us. Yeah, like I said at the beginning, “This is who they are!”

Blame it on capitalism!

hat tip Bookworm

Role Model?

hat tip Bookworm

The psychedelic warlord is running skateboarding!

Shh!

"Worms, vampires, and bloodsuckers" (Worse than deplorables?)

We hear a lot about Venezuela these days, but how is our old friend Daniel Ortega doing down in Nicaragua? Jay Norlinger writes in National Review,

...As the chavista regime in Venezuela began to slip, economically, so did Ortega. The petro-dollars did not flow so freely. In April of last year, Ortega announced social-welfare cuts and tax increases. Citizens, especially students, protested in the streets — and the regime fired on them. “Once the students saw their friends killed, and others tortured,” says Felix Maradiaga, “the protests were no longer about economic reform. They were about the Ortega Issue.”

Paramilitaries roam the country, looking for enemies of the state. These thugs are, if anything, worse than the “official” thugs. The Sandinista Youth are a particular menace. We have seen these situations in other times, in other places, such as the Duvaliers’ Haiti and the Castros’ Cuba.

The Ortegas and their lieutenants routinely denounce their opponents as “bloodsuckers” and “vampires.” (Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s successor in Venezuela, uses just this language, especially “vampires.” In Cuba, the Castroites have always called their opponents “worms.”) They also denounce reports by human-rights groups as “noticias falsas,” or “fake news.”

...Here in Mexico City, at a meeting of the Oslo Freedom Forum, journalists and activists from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba are comparing notes. It seems — astonishingly — that there is now less room for free expression in Nicaragua than there is in those other two despotisms. Protests in Nicaragua are illegal. So are tweets critical of the regime. So is the singing of the national anthem. So is the raising of the national flag. (Those last two acts are interpreted as anti-Ortega.)

...Then there is the matter of exile. More than 80,000 people have fled the country, half of them to Costa Rica.

...Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti.

...“In Nicaragua, there is a dictatorship. And the people of Nicaragua are working very hard against it. They are working to reestablish a democratic space. They are fighting for the right to decide what kind of country we want to live in. For the release of all political prisoners. For the disarmament of paramilitary groups. For civil rights and liberties. Even though we are human beings, people who get caught by the police are treated worse than animals.” Finally, “no one wants to leave his country. The people who have left, have left to save their lives.”

Read more here.