McConnell and Ryan probably need to call him in to give the following pep talk to their Members:
‘You may have thought that you were elected to fight against socialism, abortionists, Islamic terrorism and Organized Perversion. However, we must first fight a toxic outbreak of ignorance, dishonesty and lunacy in our own party. Up! To battle against the evil naked emperor and his cult!”
There have been few real alternatives open to Republican voters for a long time. The choices have been little more than mild flavor variations between Globalist new world order candidates.
Jeff Flake: “ Now, it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it. “
When I first heard Bannon say they were planning to challenge the entire line-up of Republican Senators, I did not think it was a good idea. But I am now convinced that it is part of a wise strategy. If more traditional candidates don’t step forward, we will not have people prepared to take the place of Senators who resign suddenly, and we could be caught flat-footed when other politicians besides Corker and Flake decide to throw in the towel without much warning.
As Flake’s speech shows, the entrenched, establishment Senate will never give up Bush’s ‘New World Order’. They will never accept the traditional order that reflects our country’s founding. So, eventually all of those who have been and continue to be complicit in New World Order thinking need to be pushed from power. And apparently, if they cannot have it all their own way, some of them are going to leave of their own accord. So much the better.
“George H. W. Bush has apologized to an actress who accused him of sexually assaulting her while they posed for a photograph together four years ago.
The actress, Heather Lind, wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that she was standing next to the former president when he “touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side.” Lind also alleges Bush told her a “dirty joke.”
The 93-year-old apologized to Lind in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.”
————————————
“How should we apportion blame on this one? Show of hands: Does anyone think Pelosi and Schumer would agree to an enforcement measure as useful as E-Verify for an amnesty as limited as a DREAM bill? E-Verify won’t be put on the table by Democrats unless and until a mass amnesty for all adult illegals is on the table too. There’s no point in the GOP insisting on a demand they know the other party won’t accept if they’re serious about getting a deal done. A “minor” amnesty gets only “minor” enforcement improvements in return.
On the other hand, show of hands: Does anyone believe Senate Republicans are eager to expand E-Verify? If Pelosi and Schumer turned around tomorrow and said they’re open to including that in a DREAM deal, the Chamber of Commerce and agricultural lobby would descend and demand a meeting with Mitch McConnell post haste. Democratic support for open borders remains the chief obstacle to immigration reform in the United States, but lord knows it ain’t the only obstacle.
[S]ome outlines of an agreement are becoming clearer. For instance, the [Republican] senators [working on a bill] have all but ruled out including a mandatory workplace verification system known as E-Verify in a final DACA agreement, according to multiple lawmakers engaged in the talks…
Several of the GOP senators involved in the immigration discussions are fine with punting negotiations over a nationwide mandatory E-Verify system, particularly since Democrats will not accept any policy provision that will help identify other immigrants here illegally…
“There are large segments of some important sectors, like agriculture, where we need to do E-Verify with immigration reform to make sure that there’s an adequate legal workforce,” Cornyn said. “And if we start adding too much stuff to the DACA-border security approach, then we get back into comprehensive immigration reform and nothing happens.”
Instead of E-Verify they’re going to try to get a “down payment” on ending chain migration by barring newly legalized DREAMers from bringing their relatives to the United States too — at least until they’re naturalized. How that ends chain migration rather than simply delays it by a few years, I don’t know. It’s going to make the bill exceptionally difficult to sell to populists. If they’re essentially signing off on turning a DREAM amnesty into a mass amnesty, albeit with a delay of a decade or so before the “mass” part fully begins, why shouldn’t Republicans insist on E-Verify as the price?”
——————–
“Here’s a story consistent with what has been reported in the press—how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited stories from their supposedly “connected” sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime.
The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.
We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief James Comey’s intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.
OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI’s own actions are necessarily a concern.
But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.
Here’s another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.
The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia’s U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation.
This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.
For anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story.
The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy. More recently, if just one of two things is true—Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey’s email intervention—then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there’s a molehill anywhere nearby.
Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Mr. Mueller’s tenure may not have bridged the two investigations, but James Comey’s, Rod Rosenstein’s , Andrew Weissmann’s , and Andrew McCabe’s did. Mr. Rosenstein appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel. Mr. Weissmann now serves on Mr. Mueller’s team. Mr. McCabe remains deputy FBI director. All were involved in the nuclear racketeering matter and the Russia meddling matter.”
Well, my one remaining working Senator is pushing this bi-partisan healthcare fix. I haven’t had time to dig into it, but I hope it’s a good one. :–)
– Congressional Budget Office report, October 25, 2017
WASHINGTON, October 25, 2017—Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today released the following statement on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) report on the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017:
“This nonpartisan analysis shows that our bill provides savings and ensures that funding two years of cost-sharing payments will benefit taxpayers and low-income Americans, not insurance companies.
“CBO has also told us that if CSRs are not paid, premiums in 2018 will go up an average of 20%, the federal debt will increase by $194 billion over ten years, due to the extra cost of subsidies to pay the higher premiums, and up to 16 million Americans may live in counties where they are not able to buy any insurance in the individual market.
“Last week, an unusually large group of cosponsors—12 Republican and 12 Democratic United States Senators—released this legislation, which was based on four hearings in the Senate’s health committee plus four meetings for senators not on the committee. All in all, 60 senators participated in the process, and the sooner Congress and the president act, the better.
Well, my one remaining working Senator is pushing this bi-partisan healthcare fix, so I hope it’s a good one. I haven’t had time to dig into it yet. :–)
– Congressional Budget Office report, October 25, 2017
WASHINGTON, October 25, 2017—Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today released the following statement on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) report on the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017:
“This nonpartisan analysis shows that our bill provides savings and ensures that funding two years of cost-sharing payments will benefit taxpayers and low-income Americans, not insurance companies.
“CBO has also told us that if CSRs are not paid, premiums in 2018 will go up an average of 20%, the federal debt will increase by $194 billion over ten years, due to the extra cost of subsidies to pay the higher premiums, and up to 16 million Americans may live in counties where they are not able to buy any insurance in the individual market.
“Last week, an unusually large group of cosponsors—12 Republican and 12 Democratic United States Senators—released this legislation, which was based on four hearings in the Senate’s health committee plus four meetings for senators not on the committee. All in all, 60 senators participated in the process, and the sooner Congress and the president act, the better.
” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) privately conceded to a group of House conservatives on Tuesday that he plans to include a legislative fix for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children in a year-end spending deal.
Asked if he envisioned a December omnibus spending bill including Cost Sharing Reductions for Obamacare or some sort of solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Ryan told leaders of the Republican Study Committee that he didn’t believe CSR payments would be part of the deal with Democrats, but that DACA would.
“He did talk about the fact that that would be good if we could get ahead of that as opposed to being reactionary,” RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told HuffPost Tuesday night.
When HuffPost asked Walker if Ryan had said Republicans didn’t have the votes to do something on DACA alone, and therefore needed Democratic support, Walker said, “It wasn’t as clear cut as that ― and it rarely is, actually ― but he did make reference that [DACA provisions] would be something that might be part of the whole ball of wax.”
“Here, the Clinton campaign and the DNC retained the law firm of Perkins Coie; in turn, one of its partners, Marc E. Elias, retained Fusion GPS. We don’t know how much Fusion GPS was paid, but the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $9.1 million to Perkins Coie during the 2016 campaign (i.e., between mid-2015 and late 2016). A friend draws my attention to an intriguing coincidence. In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked. Interesting: Despite the patent importance of the physical server system to the FBI and Intelligence-Community investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Bureau never examined the DNC servers. Evidently, the DNC declined to cooperate to that degree, and the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue a subpoena to demand that the servers be turned over (just like the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue subpoenas to demand the surrender of critical physical evidence in the Clinton e-mails investigation). Instead, the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike. Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers. The most significant pressing question about the so-called Trump Dossier is whether it was used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to get a warrant from the FISA court to conduct national-security surveillance on people connected to the Trump campaign. As I have previously pointed out, this would not be as scandalous as it sounds if (a) the Justice Department had a good faith basis to believe the people the Bureau wanted to surveil were acting as agents of Russia, and (b) the FBI first corroborated whatever information it took from the dossier before presenting it to the FISA court.”
Antifa wants to create anarchy, the Trumpkins want to “burn it down”, and the President has already created a comic version of anarchy in the White House. It is no wonder that Corker and Flake have decided to go home.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on tax reform and ideas to make changes to 401(k) retirement funds have caught my eye. At first, tax writers wanted to tax your earnings before you place money in the fund. Then over the weekend they floated the idea of changing the pre-tax limit to $2,400 instead of $18,000.
Of course this has caused an uproar, which led President Donald Trump to tweet out on Monday that tax reform will not include changes to your 401(k). House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) has said not so fast and the option remains on the table.
Brady is not alone. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is also open to other changes. From The Washington Post:
The Texas congressman, speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, said, “We think in tax reform we can create incentives for people to save more and save sooner.”
He said he was “working very closely with the president” on the issue and added that many people who have tax-incentivized retirement accounts contribute $200 per month or less, a level he thought was too low. “We think we can do better,” Brady said. “We are continuing discussions with the president, all focused on saving more and saving sooner.”
Several hours later, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) also said he would oppose Trump’s vow to protect 401(k) plans but that he was open to changes if they made sense. “I’m open to look at anything,” Hatch said Wednesday morning. “I don’t have any problem looking at everything.”
He also said he doesn’t feel pressure to change the Senate’s eventual tax bill because of pressure from the White House. “No I don’t think so,” Hatch said. “He has his point of view, and he may prove to be right in the end. We’ll just have to see. But I’m open-minded about it.”
FIRST OFF, it is not the government’s business how much a person puts into the 401(k) account. People also shouldn’t be punished for putting a small amount of money into their account. If they don’t want to save a lot then that’s their choice.
SECONDLY, as I blogged this weekend, if the government is in need of money, become a sane person and slash the budget. When I run out of money I look at my budget to determine what I can cut out.
Also, Brady wouldn’t provide “details about how he planned to change incentives to encourage more savings.” He said “that the current construct of 401(k) accounts and Individual Retirement Accounts was not working well.”
Excuse me?
Investment Company Institute said that “Americans have saved $7.5 trillion in 401(k)-type accounts, plus $8.4 trillion in individual retirement accounts.” WaPo reported that “more than 50 million Americans had active 401(k) accounts” in 2015. Seems to be working just fine and dandy.”
——————————-
“For the first seven days after The Hill published startling new information about the Clinton/Russia/Uranium scandal, the 24-hour cable news giant CNN had produced less than five minutes (3 minutes, 54 seconds) of actual news coverage about the case.
From 7am ET October 17 through 7am ET October 24, CNN’s reporters and anchors only mentioned the scandal twice: first, on October 19, after President Trump scolded reporters for failing to cover the story, anchor Wolf Blitzer offered a 19-second explanation of what Trump was talking about.
Then, on October 20, Blitzer’s 5pm Situation Room included an interview with an ex-Obama administration official, Jake Sullivan, who told Blitzer that Trump’s charge of corruption against the Bill and Hillary Clinton “had no basis in fact.” Blitzer, to his credit, at least pushed back, asking Sullivan about how “some of these Russians who were involved were giving the Clinton Foundation thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Bill Clinton was going to Russia to deliver speeches for huge speaking fees?”
That interview lasted a total of 3 minutes, 35 seconds. CNN also aired live coverage of a Wednesday morning hearing in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley discussed the case for 4 minutes, 53 seconds, without any additional comment by CNN. Additionally, the network carried live coverage of President Trump on Thursday talking about the need for more attention — his remarks on this subject totaled 61 seconds, followed by Blitzer’s short comment (noted above).”
I remember when I was younger that we would refer to “Orientals”, & at some point in time, we were told it was more proper to say “Asians”. Does anyone know what was wrong with the word “Orientals”?
President Trump: "I think the press makes me more uncivil than I am… I went to an Ivy League college… I'm a very intelligent person." pic.twitter.com/7TAg6RFiCM
Ricky@7:17 :–) I don’t know which is more ridiculous, some of the President’s tweets, or your commentary on them. I hope you both find it de-stressing.
“Flake’s announcement that he will retire at the end of his term rather than run for re-election has been coming for a long time. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you’ve seen I’ve argued this needed to happen since July. Flake is by all accounts a nice and decent fellow, but he was confronted by a situation likely to confront many Republican politicians over the coming year: that he exists out of time, a vestige of the pre-Donald Trump fusionism of the Republican Party, and that continuing to function in the GOP as redefined by Trump proved very challenging for him. Again: the GOP as it was died in Cleveland. Flake’s decision authenticates this.
Flake is also one of the rare politicians whose brand changed dramatically. In the 2000s, he was a Jim DeMint ally who took a strong libertarian stand on several issues, and criticized the George W. Bush administration from that perspective. In the Senate, his brand shifted significantly – and not just because of the Gang of Eight. The list of fights he joined in the House was long – it’s hard to remember what major fight he chose to advance in the Senate. In response to his speech on the floor today, Mitch McConnell said “We’ve just witnessed a speech from a very fine man,” and called him a “team player”. Exactly – Flake left his populism behind, and became less a part of the internal critics of McConnell and his style of governing the body (despite the fact that if such methods had changed, Flake might not be in the predicament he is now).
In a sense Flake had the worst of both worlds – he was a McConnell team player who voted very much in line with Donald Trump and the GOP agenda, while also being one of the president’s most prominent public critics. Stepping down makes it much more likely that someone will jump into the primary against Kelli Ward who has the potential to win the seat (keep an eye on Rep. Martha McSally in particular), and is thus different than the calculation on Bob Corker’s part. This decision is Flake recognizing reality has shifted, but it is also about recognizing that he – just like Corker and others who will likely bail – is incapable of making anything happen. This is less a changing of the guard, because Flake is not the guard, he’s more of a bystander to the guard, and he knows it.
There is, at least a theory, a version of rightist populism that is coherent and sane, but no one in Washington is in a position to make it a reality. Until that happens there is going to be the continued tension between the zombie Reaganism of the older members of the GOP and its post-Trump directive on what their voters want. Claims will be made that Steve Bannon was the deciding factor here. He wasn’t – Flake’s fundamentals were bad well before Bannon was even a factor, in much the same way that Luther Strange’s fundamentals were bad before Bannon swung in to push Roy Moore. There is a bigger story here, which is that for once, Bannon and Republican donors are more in agreement – not about what is to be done, but about who they blame for not getting things done.”
The differences between Flake and Trump are clear. Flake is decent and Trump is indecent. Flake is knowledgeable; Trump is ignorant. Flake is a conservative; Trump is an opportunistic demagogue. Flake is a statesman while Trump is a con man. Flake is an adult and Trump is a child. Unfortunately, Americans are increasingly indecent, dumb, gullible and childish. Trump looks and acts like America.
Wandering Views 
Douthat had an interesting take on Flake:
McConnell and Ryan probably need to call him in to give the following pep talk to their Members:
‘You may have thought that you were elected to fight against socialism, abortionists, Islamic terrorism and Organized Perversion. However, we must first fight a toxic outbreak of ignorance, dishonesty and lunacy in our own party. Up! To battle against the evil naked emperor and his cult!”
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if the fact that Hillary’s financing of the Trump dossier is so big, why isn’t it on CNN?
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There have been few real alternatives open to Republican voters for a long time. The choices have been little more than mild flavor variations between Globalist new world order candidates.
Jeff Flake: “ Now, it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it. “
When I first heard Bannon say they were planning to challenge the entire line-up of Republican Senators, I did not think it was a good idea. But I am now convinced that it is part of a wise strategy. If more traditional candidates don’t step forward, we will not have people prepared to take the place of Senators who resign suddenly, and we could be caught flat-footed when other politicians besides Corker and Flake decide to throw in the towel without much warning.
As Flake’s speech shows, the entrenched, establishment Senate will never give up Bush’s ‘New World Order’. They will never accept the traditional order that reflects our country’s founding. So, eventually all of those who have been and continue to be complicit in New World Order thinking need to be pushed from power. And apparently, if they cannot have it all their own way, some of them are going to leave of their own accord. So much the better.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2017/10/24/sen-jeff-flake-senate-speech-full-text/794958001/
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Chas, because no one has figured out a way to blame Trump for it.
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It’s on CNN & MSNBC nowj.
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This ad ran during ‘This is Us’ last night
http://sfist.com/2017/10/23/local_billionaire_drops_10_million.php
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At least Ricky now knows who was colluding with the Russians…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/25/fusion-gps-fallout-dnc-clinton-fbi-take-heat-after-bombshell-that-dems-funded-trump-dossier.html
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Good luck with that Tychicus.
He’s living in Denial, Texas, the capital of Donna’s State of Denial. 🙂
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Et tu George?
And here your son was just railing against what he called the uncouth behavior of Presidents. I thought he meant Trump, but now I have to wonder.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/george-h-w-bush-apologizes-055154853.html
“George H. W. Bush has apologized to an actress who accused him of sexually assaulting her while they posed for a photograph together four years ago.
The actress, Heather Lind, wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that she was standing next to the former president when he “touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side.” Lind also alleges Bush told her a “dirty joke.”
The 93-year-old apologized to Lind in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.”
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Once again, doing the bidding of their moneyed overlords instead of what’s best for the US, it’s workers, and the people who’s identity get stolen so their overlords can have a cheap labor pool. .
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/24/e-verify-off-table-senate-dream-negotiations-thanks-gop/
“How should we apportion blame on this one? Show of hands: Does anyone think Pelosi and Schumer would agree to an enforcement measure as useful as E-Verify for an amnesty as limited as a DREAM bill? E-Verify won’t be put on the table by Democrats unless and until a mass amnesty for all adult illegals is on the table too. There’s no point in the GOP insisting on a demand they know the other party won’t accept if they’re serious about getting a deal done. A “minor” amnesty gets only “minor” enforcement improvements in return.
On the other hand, show of hands: Does anyone believe Senate Republicans are eager to expand E-Verify? If Pelosi and Schumer turned around tomorrow and said they’re open to including that in a DREAM deal, the Chamber of Commerce and agricultural lobby would descend and demand a meeting with Mitch McConnell post haste. Democratic support for open borders remains the chief obstacle to immigration reform in the United States, but lord knows it ain’t the only obstacle.
[S]ome outlines of an agreement are becoming clearer. For instance, the [Republican] senators [working on a bill] have all but ruled out including a mandatory workplace verification system known as E-Verify in a final DACA agreement, according to multiple lawmakers engaged in the talks…
Several of the GOP senators involved in the immigration discussions are fine with punting negotiations over a nationwide mandatory E-Verify system, particularly since Democrats will not accept any policy provision that will help identify other immigrants here illegally…
“There are large segments of some important sectors, like agriculture, where we need to do E-Verify with immigration reform to make sure that there’s an adequate legal workforce,” Cornyn said. “And if we start adding too much stuff to the DACA-border security approach, then we get back into comprehensive immigration reform and nothing happens.”
Instead of E-Verify they’re going to try to get a “down payment” on ending chain migration by barring newly legalized DREAMers from bringing their relatives to the United States too — at least until they’re naturalized. How that ends chain migration rather than simply delays it by a few years, I don’t know. It’s going to make the bill exceptionally difficult to sell to populists. If they’re essentially signing off on turning a DREAM amnesty into a mass amnesty, albeit with a delay of a decade or so before the “mass” part fully begins, why shouldn’t Republicans insist on E-Verify as the price?”
——————–
Because the CoC won’t let them.
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Fire him. His impartiality was always in question. But now so is his character and credentials.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-political-meddling-1508883468
“Here’s a story consistent with what has been reported in the press—how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited stories from their supposedly “connected” sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime.
The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.
We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief James Comey’s intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.
OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI’s own actions are necessarily a concern.
But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.
Here’s another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.
The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia’s U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation.
This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.
For anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story.
The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy. More recently, if just one of two things is true—Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey’s email intervention—then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there’s a molehill anywhere nearby.
Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
Mr. Mueller’s tenure may not have bridged the two investigations, but James Comey’s, Rod Rosenstein’s , Andrew Weissmann’s , and Andrew McCabe’s did. Mr. Rosenstein appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel. Mr. Weissmann now serves on Mr. Mueller’s team. Mr. McCabe remains deputy FBI director. All were involved in the nuclear racketeering matter and the Russia meddling matter.”
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Well, my one remaining working Senator is pushing this bi-partisan healthcare fix. I haven’t had time to dig into it, but I hope it’s a good one. :–)
https://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=4DE1A51F-80DB-4D29-BE46-AD9C2C3679F4
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Well, my one remaining working Senator is pushing this bi-partisan healthcare fix, so I hope it’s a good one. I haven’t had time to dig into it yet. :–)
https://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=4DE1A51F-80DB-4D29-BE46-AD9C2C3679F4
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Deja vu. 😉
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Ah yes. Here comes the sellout.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-daca-omnibus-conservatives_us_59efd21ce4b0b7e63265bb76
” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) privately conceded to a group of House conservatives on Tuesday that he plans to include a legislative fix for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children in a year-end spending deal.
Asked if he envisioned a December omnibus spending bill including Cost Sharing Reductions for Obamacare or some sort of solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Ryan told leaders of the Republican Study Committee that he didn’t believe CSR payments would be part of the deal with Democrats, but that DACA would.
“He did talk about the fact that that would be good if we could get ahead of that as opposed to being reactionary,” RSC Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told HuffPost Tuesday night.
When HuffPost asked Walker if Ryan had said Republicans didn’t have the votes to do something on DACA alone, and therefore needed Democratic support, Walker said, “It wasn’t as clear cut as that ― and it rarely is, actually ― but he did make reference that [DACA provisions] would be something that might be part of the whole ball of wax.”
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Maybe Ryan is just taking Hannity’s advice, and finally getting something done. For Democrats.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/25/hannity-pathetic-weak-gutless-spineless-nevertrumper-republicans-need-pass-bills/
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When scandals collide.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/453092/scandals-collide-dossier-dnc-server-perkins-coie
“Here, the Clinton campaign and the DNC retained the law firm of Perkins Coie; in turn, one of its partners, Marc E. Elias, retained Fusion GPS. We don’t know how much Fusion GPS was paid, but the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $9.1 million to Perkins Coie during the 2016 campaign (i.e., between mid-2015 and late 2016). A friend draws my attention to an intriguing coincidence. In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked. Interesting: Despite the patent importance of the physical server system to the FBI and Intelligence-Community investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Bureau never examined the DNC servers. Evidently, the DNC declined to cooperate to that degree, and the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue a subpoena to demand that the servers be turned over (just like the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue subpoenas to demand the surrender of critical physical evidence in the Clinton e-mails investigation). Instead, the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike. Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers. The most significant pressing question about the so-called Trump Dossier is whether it was used by the FBI and the Obama Justice Department to get a warrant from the FISA court to conduct national-security surveillance on people connected to the Trump campaign. As I have previously pointed out, this would not be as scandalous as it sounds if (a) the Justice Department had a good faith basis to believe the people the Bureau wanted to surveil were acting as agents of Russia, and (b) the FBI first corroborated whatever information it took from the dossier before presenting it to the FISA court.”
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Check this out, then prepare to take cover…
http://www.anonews.co/antifa-november-4th/
ANTIFA Website Planning Nationwide Anarchy On November 4th
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Antifa wants to create anarchy, the Trumpkins want to “burn it down”, and the President has already created a comic version of anarchy in the White House. It is no wonder that Corker and Flake have decided to go home.
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P. T. Barnum does put on an interesting show:
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Good thing Republicans are looking out for the middle class.
Oh wait, never mind.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/10/rep-brady-insists-changes-to-401k-funds-still-an-option-with-tax-reform/
“I’ve been keeping an eye on tax reform and ideas to make changes to 401(k) retirement funds have caught my eye. At first, tax writers wanted to tax your earnings before you place money in the fund. Then over the weekend they floated the idea of changing the pre-tax limit to $2,400 instead of $18,000.
Of course this has caused an uproar, which led President Donald Trump to tweet out on Monday that tax reform will not include changes to your 401(k). House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) has said not so fast and the option remains on the table.
Brady is not alone. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is also open to other changes. From The Washington Post:
The Texas congressman, speaking at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, said, “We think in tax reform we can create incentives for people to save more and save sooner.”
He said he was “working very closely with the president” on the issue and added that many people who have tax-incentivized retirement accounts contribute $200 per month or less, a level he thought was too low. “We think we can do better,” Brady said. “We are continuing discussions with the president, all focused on saving more and saving sooner.”
Several hours later, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) also said he would oppose Trump’s vow to protect 401(k) plans but that he was open to changes if they made sense. “I’m open to look at anything,” Hatch said Wednesday morning. “I don’t have any problem looking at everything.”
He also said he doesn’t feel pressure to change the Senate’s eventual tax bill because of pressure from the White House. “No I don’t think so,” Hatch said. “He has his point of view, and he may prove to be right in the end. We’ll just have to see. But I’m open-minded about it.”
FIRST OFF, it is not the government’s business how much a person puts into the 401(k) account. People also shouldn’t be punished for putting a small amount of money into their account. If they don’t want to save a lot then that’s their choice.
SECONDLY, as I blogged this weekend, if the government is in need of money, become a sane person and slash the budget. When I run out of money I look at my budget to determine what I can cut out.
Also, Brady wouldn’t provide “details about how he planned to change incentives to encourage more savings.” He said “that the current construct of 401(k) accounts and Individual Retirement Accounts was not working well.”
Excuse me?
Investment Company Institute said that “Americans have saved $7.5 trillion in 401(k)-type accounts, plus $8.4 trillion in individual retirement accounts.” WaPo reported that “more than 50 million Americans had active 401(k) accounts” in 2015. Seems to be working just fine and dandy.”
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CNN can always be relied on to carry the Clinton’s water.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mike-ciandella/2017/10/24/cnn-after-7-days-only-4-minutes-clinton-uranium-scandal
“For the first seven days after The Hill published startling new information about the Clinton/Russia/Uranium scandal, the 24-hour cable news giant CNN had produced less than five minutes (3 minutes, 54 seconds) of actual news coverage about the case.
From 7am ET October 17 through 7am ET October 24, CNN’s reporters and anchors only mentioned the scandal twice: first, on October 19, after President Trump scolded reporters for failing to cover the story, anchor Wolf Blitzer offered a 19-second explanation of what Trump was talking about.
Then, on October 20, Blitzer’s 5pm Situation Room included an interview with an ex-Obama administration official, Jake Sullivan, who told Blitzer that Trump’s charge of corruption against the Bill and Hillary Clinton “had no basis in fact.” Blitzer, to his credit, at least pushed back, asking Sullivan about how “some of these Russians who were involved were giving the Clinton Foundation thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Bill Clinton was going to Russia to deliver speeches for huge speaking fees?”
That interview lasted a total of 3 minutes, 35 seconds. CNN also aired live coverage of a Wednesday morning hearing in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley discussed the case for 4 minutes, 53 seconds, without any additional comment by CNN. Additionally, the network carried live coverage of President Trump on Thursday talking about the need for more attention — his remarks on this subject totaled 61 seconds, followed by Blitzer’s short comment (noted above).”
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Debra, I told you yesterday that someone would be impressed and jealous that Xi is now in the Chinese Constitution.
I understand The Cult now is proposing that ours be called: The US Constitution brought to you by Donald Trump.
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DJ, I think the Rangers and the Astros could match you Mexican for Mexican, but we are a little short on Orientals.
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Best Tweet I’ve seen in a while:
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Aw, Fernando throwing out the first pitch. My mom loved him.
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Asians, Ricky. 🙂
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I remember when I was younger that we would refer to “Orientals”, & at some point in time, we were told it was more proper to say “Asians”. Does anyone know what was wrong with the word “Orientals”?
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Twitter is good tonight. First there was this:
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Followed quickly by this:
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Ricky@7:17 :–) I don’t know which is more ridiculous, some of the President’s tweets, or your commentary on them. I hope you both find it de-stressing.
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Being a sellout and being dishonest to voters comes with a price.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/24/jeff-flake-authenticates-the-party-of-trump/
“Flake’s announcement that he will retire at the end of his term rather than run for re-election has been coming for a long time. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you’ve seen I’ve argued this needed to happen since July. Flake is by all accounts a nice and decent fellow, but he was confronted by a situation likely to confront many Republican politicians over the coming year: that he exists out of time, a vestige of the pre-Donald Trump fusionism of the Republican Party, and that continuing to function in the GOP as redefined by Trump proved very challenging for him. Again: the GOP as it was died in Cleveland. Flake’s decision authenticates this.
Flake is also one of the rare politicians whose brand changed dramatically. In the 2000s, he was a Jim DeMint ally who took a strong libertarian stand on several issues, and criticized the George W. Bush administration from that perspective. In the Senate, his brand shifted significantly – and not just because of the Gang of Eight. The list of fights he joined in the House was long – it’s hard to remember what major fight he chose to advance in the Senate. In response to his speech on the floor today, Mitch McConnell said “We’ve just witnessed a speech from a very fine man,” and called him a “team player”. Exactly – Flake left his populism behind, and became less a part of the internal critics of McConnell and his style of governing the body (despite the fact that if such methods had changed, Flake might not be in the predicament he is now).
In a sense Flake had the worst of both worlds – he was a McConnell team player who voted very much in line with Donald Trump and the GOP agenda, while also being one of the president’s most prominent public critics. Stepping down makes it much more likely that someone will jump into the primary against Kelli Ward who has the potential to win the seat (keep an eye on Rep. Martha McSally in particular), and is thus different than the calculation on Bob Corker’s part. This decision is Flake recognizing reality has shifted, but it is also about recognizing that he – just like Corker and others who will likely bail – is incapable of making anything happen. This is less a changing of the guard, because Flake is not the guard, he’s more of a bystander to the guard, and he knows it.
There is, at least a theory, a version of rightist populism that is coherent and sane, but no one in Washington is in a position to make it a reality. Until that happens there is going to be the continued tension between the zombie Reaganism of the older members of the GOP and its post-Trump directive on what their voters want. Claims will be made that Steve Bannon was the deciding factor here. He wasn’t – Flake’s fundamentals were bad well before Bannon was even a factor, in much the same way that Luther Strange’s fundamentals were bad before Bannon swung in to push Roy Moore. There is a bigger story here, which is that for once, Bannon and Republican donors are more in agreement – not about what is to be done, but about who they blame for not getting things done.”
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The differences between Flake and Trump are clear. Flake is decent and Trump is indecent. Flake is knowledgeable; Trump is ignorant. Flake is a conservative; Trump is an opportunistic demagogue. Flake is a statesman while Trump is a con man. Flake is an adult and Trump is a child. Unfortunately, Americans are increasingly indecent, dumb, gullible and childish. Trump looks and acts like America.
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Flake can speak English. Trump … not so much.
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