“Every year, without fail, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for religious freedom. Persecution of religious minorities is rampant and deeply ingrained in government institutions, and Christians are high on the list of those at risk, especially Christians who have converted from Islam.
The most recent State Department report on international religious freedom notes that between 2010 and 2017, more than 600 Christians were imprisoned solely for the practice of their faith. The same report points to an upsurge in anti-Christian sentiment within Iranian state media, accompanied by more frequent and aggressive raids on home-based churches.
International human rights groups can naturally be counted on to back up the State Department’s findings and to push for activism on behalf of at-risk individuals and populations in the Islamic Republic.
This goes to show how deeply Islamic extremism is ingrained into the identity of Iran’s theocratic regime. Every time that regime prosecutes someone for national security crimes on the basis of membership in a religious minority, it is effectively admitting that the regime cannot survive in the presence of religious freedom. As such, the mullahs tacitly admit this fact almost every single day.
There is no sensible reason for any modern, democratic government to dispute that fact. Yet the previous White House did just that when it joined the European Union in pursuing negotiations with the Iranian regime on the expectation that this would promote “moderation” among the leadership. More than three years after the signing of a nuclear deal that was supposed to usher in this moderation, the naïveté of this view has been clearly exposed.
As was revealed recently, some of the Obama administration officials have not given up hope for keeping this deal afloat. John Kerry, for instance, has met with his Iranian counterparts and advised the ayatollahs to wait until the Trump administration is out. His conduct is hard to fathom, and it is very damaging to U.S. national security imperatives as well as prospects for promoting religious liberty in the Middle East.
Fortunately, the current presidential administration has no such impulse to turn away from systematic violations of religious freedom and other human rights while waiting for Tehran to correct its own behavior.
In fact, the Trump administration has commendably made religious freedom a major focus of its foreign policy. This was demonstrated in July, when the State Department hosted its first ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. It will be demonstrated again this week when secretary of state Mike Pompeo attends the Values Voter Summit to participate in a discussion of international religious liberty. None of his predecessors in the office has done the same.
The significance of these gestures is amplified, particularly where Iran policy is concerned, by the fact that the Trump administration has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to assertive foreign policies that will actually hold Tehran and other repressive governments accountable for violations of the rights of Christians and other minorities. The U.S. is now in the midst of re-imposing the sanctions that were suspended in the wake of shortsighted international negotiations, and this is being done with the express purpose of compelling the Iranian regime toward a comprehensive change of behavior.”
“I have repeatedly observed here that if the so-called Steele dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign is what it purports to be, it disseminates intelligence supplied by Russian authorities and, further, the intelligence is highly likely to constitute Russian disinformation. Eric Felten comes at the related issues from different angles in articles carried in the past two issues of the Weekly Standard.
In “The Romanian ruse” Eric traces the origin of the Steele dossier’s allegations about Trump attorney Michael Cohen going to Prague to collude with Russia on Trump’s behalf. He asks: “Where did [the dossier’s] baroque tales of illicit meetings to pay Romanian hackers come from?” Based on “the exhaustive investigative work done for the Mueller team,” Eric suggests that the Steele dossier incorporated the fictitious story provided by Russian military intelligence. “Steele,” he concludes, “seems to have fallen for it.”
In his most recent article Eric raises the question whether whether Steele was disseminating Russian disinformation to the State Department. Eric notes that before Steele compiled the dossier (assuming that the dossier is indeed his work), Steele “had for years been funneling reports on Russia and Ukraine to senior State Department Russia analysts. Materials recently turned over to Congress show that while Steele was giving memos to State he also maintained close ties to the billionaire Russian industrialist Oleg V. Deripaska. Some congressional investigators are thus concerned that his memos may have been a channel of Russian disinformation.””
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Here’s the link to the other story. Tell me again who the Russian crony is, because it’s not Trump.
“Even in the thick of compiling the Trump dossier, Steele found time to look out for Deripaska’s interests. In the middle of October 2016, the president of Ukraine issued sanctions against more than 100 Russian companies, including Deripaska’s aluminum giant, Rusal. Within a day, Steele emailed Ohr that he had information about “the unfolding Government of Ukraine-RUSAL dispute” that “Paul H” had asked him to pass along to Ohr. “Naturally he [Hauser] wants to protect the client’s interests and reputation,” Steele wrote.
Steele’s extensive interactions with Deripaska and Deripaska’s lawyers make it unlikely that the succession of memos on Russia and Ukraine he offered to Winer and the State Departmen were not “related in any way” to Deripaska. Ukraine was a pressing issue for Deripaska and the crisis there was the main topic Steele was analyzing.
Does the fact that those memos were distributed at State for years mean U.S. policy might have been warped by Russian disinformation, as some on Capitol Hill fear? No, says a senior State Department official who was serving at the time—because the Russia hands weren’t naïve. Asked about the Russia and Ukraine memos Steele provided to State, the official tells The Weekly Standard, “We were not aware of his specific sources but assumed that many of them were close to Putin and were peddling information that was useful to the Kremlin.”
The official says the Putinesque spin of the memos led them to take Steele’s analysis with more than a grain of salt: “There was a huge discount factor for that reason.”
This was the reputation Steele had at the upper reaches of State: Among the people who saw his work most frequently and who had the most expertise in Russian issues, the onetime MI6 officer was seen as “peddling information that was useful to the Kremlin.””
“But for that blue wave to reach shore, a bunch of Republicans need to vote Democrat and the New Democratic Base, young people and a list of minorities longer than a CVS receipt, must vote in numbers never before seen. The second part of that plan has its own questions. But my recent travels make it pretty clear that depending on Republicans to vote Democrat because they no longer support Trump is out to sea.
I met plenty of people as ideologically committed, albeit 180 degrees to the Right, as their East Coast vegan socialist cousins. But most of those I spoke to could be better described as light purple voters. More than a handful enthusiastically voted for their first ever Democrat in 2008, then backed away from Obama in 2012, before returning to the Republicans, albeit Trump, in 2016. The idea today is that Trump’s boorishness will send them back to Democratic candidates.
Or maybe not. The endless stream of Trump atrocities large and small talked about on Sunday morning TV is not what voters were talking about. Everybody knew about Stormy but nobody cared; they had processed Trump’s affairs in 2016 and that makes them old news even if they’re still on Rachel Maddow every night. In response to the daily bombings of hall monitor gossip, one person said, “I get it, I don’t like what he says all the time either, but let the man try and do his job. Enough already.” It’s like buying outrage in bulk at Costco: at some point you realize a five-pound shaker of nutmeg is too much to deal with and you hide it in the garage.
Out here candidates are not described as fierce or nasty. Social media is for kids and cats, marches for folks who don’t have to work a weekend job. Racism and pronouns matter, but only after figuring out how to pay for health care. Anything else stinks of indifference from those whose pensions didn’t disappear in the last merger. There is a sense that being black, brown, gay, Muslim, or female is not by itself a qualification for office. To some it seems that men, old people, straight people, entire regions of the country, are being excluded or deemed unworthy. It isn’t status anxiety, really, but a sense that what used to be a difference of political opinion now makes someone illegitimate as a person—“deplorable” came up more than once.
So it’s not all about Trump. And when it is about him, most support the part of Trumpism that affects them financially.
Democrats campaigning against the economy? It matters, however modest and fragile, that under Trump median household income has risen 1.8 percent and poverty has declined .4 percent. A voter will support anything that brings his nose above water. Economists misunderstand it as a bad thing that most middle income families are only now clawing back to 2008 levels: the actual middle income families see that as a pretty good thing. I heard the word “results” a lot. “Optimism” about the future now counts as much as “hope” once did.”
Telling people economic progress is a result of the former administration is a punch line. It is hard to overstate how deeply these Americans despise the Obama response to the 2008 financial crisis. Many saw the values of their homes, the largest investments they will ever make, dramatically decrease. They don’t own much stock outside of flaccid IRAs, and so they benefited little from a recovery that first bailed out Wall Street. Obama’s decisions still aren’t done with them 10 years later, because their retirements are dependent on home prices rising enough so downsizing sales can cover them late in life.
When people are excluded from the most important decisions affecting their basic livelihoods, they lose faith. That bitter lived experience fueled distrust and an ideological drift that manifested itself in electing Trump. And that distrust hasn’t dissipated enough for them to vote Democrat again. Many of the people of color I met felt the same way as their white neighbors. Having started at the same place in the factories and fallen together into poverty, they ended up in the same dismal state as whites. A big difference, however, is that black frustration often shows up as low voter turnout, while whites vote Republican.
These are a practical people, who, in one Kansas author’s words, “speak a firm sort of poetry, made of things and actions.” It wasn’t racism or Russian Facebook ads; ask and these people will give you specifics. While darkly certain all politicians will hand them the dirty end of the same stick, the people I spoke with at least felt they understood what the Republican candidates would give them. With an eye on the 2008 bailout, they seemed less sure of the Democratic side.
I didn’t see what The New York Times thinks it sees: “Democrats Embrace Liberal Insurgents.” I didn’t find many looking for the local version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though I found a lot who asked me, “Alexandria who?” People told me that if someone promises Medicare for all, they need to also hear how she plans to deliver it. Because unlike folks who tweet about it from Brooklyn, they tried—and in many cases, tried and failed—to get health care instead of just insurance out of Obamacare. They remember that not fixing the system was part of the Democratic platform and question changes of heart that coincide with changes in polling.
You don’t have to always understand it but you do have to realize there are truths at work here. Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and housing assistance are a way of life now. One can accept food stamps but still think handouts are for the lazy. People can feel cheated working for minimum wage at a Walmart full of junk made overseas without being anti-immigrant racists. Trump understands all this better than the Democrats now speaking for their party, and that makes his voters ignore a lot of other things.
So polls asking whether a midterm voter supports Trump, or approves of his performance, may be asking the wrong question. If Democrats insist on November being Trump versus Trump, a referendum on the first half of his term to see if he gets to play out the second half, all without themselves bringing something new and real forward, they may not like the answer that voters give.”
A helpful timeline of Russian interference in the election, their contacts with Trumpsters and the federal investigation.
Russia clearly interfered in the election. Trump may have been a co-conspirator (HRW’s view) or he may have simply been a beneficiary of the interference who stupidly made himself look guilty by clumsily and dishonestly trying to obstruct the US investigation of the interference (my view).
View of the line outside Las Vegas Convention Center of those waiting to get into the @realDonaldTrump#MAGA rally. (Photos sent to me from someone who prefers to remain anonymous) pic.twitter.com/0QOflZzPHL
You know what I think about people who voted for both Obama and Trump. Here is an article that addresses how the Congressional Districts that voted for both Obama and Trump are voting in 2018.
“A massive fire struck a four-story Southeast Washington housing complex for seniors Wednesday afternoon.
Some of the first responders were neighbors, including Marines from the Barracks Washington at 8th & I, located just down the street.
Dramatic videos on social media show large plumes of smoke billowing from the building and even the complex’s roof collapsing. One showed Marines rushing from the barracks to help rescue seniors. They pushed wheelchairs and stretchers toward the burning building.
“Marines rushed into the building to rescue those who needed assistance and evacuated residents to the Marine Barracks Washington Annex where they were checked and treated for any injuries and sheltered until their loved ones arrived,” said a post on the Barracks “
@ 7:13 Conversely, no educated conservatives have ever cared what Hannity, Judge Pirro, Alex Jones, The Black Sparrow or the rest of The Trump Cult media have said.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday released new details of its investigation into the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, revealing that staff have contacted a fourth person who may have attended the high school party where the alleged incident occurred.”
These 3 “witnesses” testified under oath, the accuser refuses to show and do the same.
Staff contacted Mark Judge and obtained a statement under penalty of felony. Staff contacted third person allegedly at party described by Dr. Ford and obtained a statement under penalty of felony. Staff contacted fourth person allegedly at party.
On Monday, staff interviewed Judge Kavanaugh under penalty of felony. Democratic staff was invited and could have asked any question of Judge Kavanaugh. They declined to participate.
“New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is facing accusations of hypocrisy over his calls to delay the confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh amid sexual misconduct allegations, as he once admitted groping a friend without her consent in high school.
The senator, who urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to first let the FBI conduct an investigation after California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused the high court nominee of sexual assault over 35 years ago, once wrote an article detailing an instance where he groped a female friend. “
Over the last 30 years as we lost Bill Buckley and as conservative newspaper columnists also died or became less important, conservatism was “dumbed down” by people such as Hannity, Michael Savage, Judge Pirro, Limbaugh, Alex Jones and YouTube and internet buffoons. They did this by misinforming the less educated conservatives and appealing to their prejudices and biases. That made the field ripe for a demagogue such as Trump. The saddest thing is when some actual intelligent conservatives like Byron York and Tucker Carlson decided to cash in on this change by pretending they were Trumpian nitwits on TV and in print.
So I guess we really have arrived at the Idiocracy as portrayed in the movie. Trump confessed to obstruction of justice on live TV to Lester Holt and the King of the Deep State confessed to “doing stuff he is not supposed to be doing” to Project Veritas.
@ 7:00 That’s a mighty long article and I didn’t read it all.
But it’s from “The Times”, so I have to believe it.
I don’t have facebook or twitter, so I missed being affected. But I voted against Hillary anyhow. I didn’t need any help.
Sounds like she wants to run again.
She just won’t go away.
AJ @ 6:36 “…John Kerry, for instance, has met with his Iranian counterparts and advised the ayatollahs to wait until the Trump administration is out….”
I’m curious to know exactly what/who are Kerry’s ‘counterparts’ in Iran? Ousted politicians like himself? Or current players or businessmen? If he is actually meeting with the government, I can’t understand how this would not be actionable. Seriously. Unless the whole law and order thing only applies to Deplorables and people who are not part of the elite establishment.
This phenomenon is also a byproduct of globalism I think, and the privatization of legitimate government duties. US businessmen have no qualm in meeting with politicians and even dictators of other nations to make private deals. This is the job of governments, not the private sector. Dictators do not make deals that are disadvantageous to their powerbase, and businessmen do not consider the effects of their deals on the US government or it’s citizenry.
Uh-oh. Cult leadership has placed Debra on the suspected “traitor” list for contending that US businessmen should not meet with agents of foreign governments to make private deals. Dear Leader is not pleased.
It’s okay Ricky. Leadership will be pleased that I’ve focused on people like Kerry and Bill Gates (who has a deal selling nuclear reactors to China—what could possibly go wrong there).
Maybe China will even give us a special deal on a Trump Tower Nuclear reactor. We can pay an exorbitant rent for a front row seat to see the world exploding in WW3. If we must go out, at least we should have gold plated toilets and faucets from which to make our exit from this life into the next.
You can mock it, but the DoJ thinks it matters. You buy any fantasy that comes along about Trump, but video evidence you dismiss as irrelevant. You can’t admit the truth, I get it, you’re too deeply invested now, so you’re doubling down. And yet you still insist you’re a rule of law guy. Sure it’s fun to watch, but it’s a little sad too.
“The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday said it is assessing allegations of improper behavior by one of its employees in a video published by the conservative activist organization Project Veritas.
The video, titled “Deep State Unmasked,” depicts a DOJ employee and a former Health and Human Services (HHS) employee separately telling an off-screen individual that there are efforts to resist aspects of the Trump administration.
“These allegations are deeply concerning,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “Department policy prohibits misuse of government resources to advance personal interests. We are looking into this immediately and have referred this matter to the Inspector General as well.”
“Women’s March, Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPD Action) — both 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations — and Housing Works, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, took ownership of the disruptions and the arrests of more than 200 activists between Sept. 4 and Sept. 7.
“If you do not have access to your cash we will certainly be able to arrange to get it to you before the action,” Davis said, noting that they had done so at previous anti-Kavanaugh protests.
Women’s March senior adviser Winnie Wong previously told CNN that her organization provided the anti-Kavanaugh protesters with “a script where we suggest certain messaging that may resonate more.”
Wong told CNN her group raised more than six figures in the first two days of Kavanaugh’s hearings, funds that were used to provide travel, accommodation, legal training and bail for its members who engaged in illegal activity.
But organizing such conduct isn’t allowed under IRS rules and is “incompatible with charity and social welfare,” according to IRS rules. Ruling 75-384 “holds that an organization … that planned and sponsored protest demonstrations at which members were urged to commit acts of civil disobedience did not qualify for IRC 501(c)(3) or (4) exemption,” the IRS states in a document detailing activities that would bar organizations from tax exemption.
Organizers on Monday’s call consistently described the planned disruptions as acts of “civil disobedience.”
A top campaign finance lawyer and conservative activist, Cleta Mitchell, believes the nonprofit groups’ tax-exempt status should be scrutinized for their involvement in advocating and funding criminal activity.
“These groups should lose their tax-exempt status because of these actions, which are in violation of established IRS precedent,” Mitchell told TheDCNF.
IRS rulings are clear that nonprofit activities must be consistent with the law, conservative campaign finance lawyer Elliot Berke told TheDCNF
“If these groups were actually financing illegality, their tax-exempt status most certainly could be in jeopardy,” Berke said.”
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“CPD Action is the political arm of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-wing nonprofit funded by billionaire George Soros. Women’s March lists Planned Parenthood as its “exclusive premier sponsor” and environmentalist group Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. as its “presenting platinum sponsor.”
Housing Works is a charity that receives tax-deductible donations and raked in nearly $4.2 million in federal and New York state funding in 2017 alone, according to its most recent tax return.
“In addition to the IRS rules that they have violated, these groups should lose any government funding they receive — taxpayers should not be subsidizing bail money for people hired by these groups to break the law,” Mitchell told TheDCNF.
“There are no doubt many rules and regulations which they have violated for grantees in receipt of federal funds,” she added. “They should be required to return the funds to the U.S. Treasury and be permanently barred from receiving additional federal funds.””
“In the memoir Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit List (written with Stephen Saltarelli), Howard Root tells the story of his experience as chief executive officer of Vascular Solutions caught in the crosshairs of the federal government when prosecutors sought to put his company out of business and to send him to the big house. Howard touched on one aspect of his story in the Wall Street Journal column “Sally Yates’s legacy of injustice at the Department of Justice.”
Howard is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Among other things, he is a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate executive.
Howard faced down the government. The jury didn’t think much of the government’s case. It returned with a verdict of acquittal on all charges after a day of deliberations, and that includes the time spent electing a foreman.
Howard’s case is important in its own way. The crimes charged were bogus. The government procured testimony through serious prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecution represented fruit of the poisonous Yates Memo tree. Howard had the resources to fight the government’s case against him and his company, but it exacted an enormous toll. The case cries out for study and reform.
Howard has thus sought to engage prosecutors in discussion of the case in person before professional audiences of lawyers and businessmen for whom it holds immediate relevance. The prosecutors and their superiors in the department have sought to keep Howard from speaking to such audiences. When I wrote the Department of Justice to request its explanation for what it was doing, it declined to comment (a week after I asked the question).
Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy was more forthcoming. He called out the Department of Justice’s behavior as “a disgrace.”
The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me but it has at long last responded to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. I posted the Grassley/Lee letter in “Fear & loathing at the DoJ, cont’d.”
In their letter Senators Grassley and Lee noted that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the Department’s disappointment with the outcome of a particular case. This not only casts doubt on the Department’s ability to accept the results of judicial proceedings in a professional manner befitting the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, but it significantly undermines our confidence in its commitment to hold government attorneys accountable for questionable actions that may have occurred in the course of this case or other cases.” The letter posed seven questions and asked for response by April 5, 2018. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, incidentally, rested on her right to remain silent.”
“Over the last two years, Republicans have disappointed on the deficit. But giving control of the budget back to Democrats at this time would be quite stupid. That’s because the bill for the Democrats’ deficits under Obama will start coming due on October 1, which is the start of fiscal 2019 and will mark the ten-year anniversary of Pelosi’s first trillion-dollar deficit.
Any ten-year securities sold in 2009 will mature in 2019. And here’s the thing: most of the public debt is Treasury notes, not bonds, and T-notes have a max term of ten years. Democrats actually expect voters to put them back in charge of the budget at the exact moment that we start paying back the bulk of the trillion-dollar deficits that they, the Democrats, ran up under Obama.
The federal government will soon be rolling over an unprecedented amount of debt, which will cause the interest rates on those U.S. securities to rise. Now is long past time for Congress to cut spending, but all you hear from Democrat candidates for Congress is more spending: “free” college, single-payer government health care, and other “free” stuff.
When Nancy Pelosi was campaigning to take control of Congress back in 2006, she touted PAYGO, pay-as-you-go financing meant to keep the deficit from rising. But her first budget, FY2008, had the largest deficit up to that point; her second deficit was nearly a trillion higher; and trillion-dollar deficits followed. In the midst of running her $1.4T deficit in 2009, Pelosi shamelessly flogged her fraudulent PAYGO at a House news conference. Talk about chutzpah.
On June 6 this year at The Hill, we read: “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other top Democrats are vowing to abide by fiscally hawkish pay-as-you-go rules if they seize the majority next year, rejecting calls from liberals who feel they’d be an impediment to big legislative gains.”
Also on June 6 at The Nation, we read: “Bold progressivism and ‘pay-go’ fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive.”
On June 7 at the Washington Post, we read: “If they’re successful in winning back Congress this year and winning the White House next year, it [PAYGO] could seriously hamper their ability to pass progressive legislation.”
On September 4 at The Intercept, we read: “Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made the public a big promise, vowing to handcuff her party’s progressive ambitions, including in the event that a Democratic president succeeds Donald Trump, by resurrecting the ‘pay-go’ rule that mandates all new spending is offset with budget cuts or tax increases.”
Fret not, my progressive friends: Pelosi’s promise to abide by PAYGO was a lie in 2006, and it’s a lie today. Voters should remember that in the middle of the Great Recession and a trillion-dollar deficit, Democrats passed a huge new entitlement: Obamacare. If Democrats really cared about fiscal responsibility, then rather than the easily ignored PAYGO, they’d be urging a balanced budget amendment.
On Sep. 10, former speaker Pelosi told CNN that she feels comfortable with the support she has in the Democrat caucus and that after the midterms, she will again be speaker. Decency would dictate that the person who ushered through the nation’s first trillion-dollar deficit might demur from commenting on smaller deficits run by others, but not Nancy.
If it becomes ever larger in comparison to the economy, the debt will someday become unmanageable and America will have a “debt crisis.” Leading up to that dreadful day, there’ll be interest rate hikes, which are already underway. These rate hikes are coming at the very time when we’ll be rolling over more government securities than ever. Politicians of both parties are responsible for this scary situation, but Democrats are worse. Democrats belong to the only party that has run trillion-dollar deficits while controlling both the Congress and the presidency.
Rather than a “blue wave,” Democrats need to be spanked in November. When Democrats told us in 2006 that they would not make the deficit worse and would abide by the constraints of PAYGO, we gave them power, and they made the deficit far worse than it’d ever been. Now, twelve years later, Democrats again tell us they’ll abide by PAYGO and expect us to put them back in power. And this, at the very moment the bill for their extravagant borrowing and spending under Obama is starting to come due. Holders of U.S. securities aren’t like Obama’s General Motors bondholders – they must be paid.
If there’s even a remote possibility that Democrats might retake Congress and again control the budget and spending, real Americans should run to the polls on Election Day and vote Republican.”
“The left is making hay for itself in claiming that President Trump’s tax cuts are bad. Leftists call it a scam, say that only the rich get the benefits of the cuts, and other canards, but one of their dumbest arguments is that tax cuts “cost” us.
Yet the farther we get into the faster economy that has occurred because of President Trump’s tax cuts and reduction of regulations, the clearer it is that the corporate and individual tax cuts more than pay for themselves, just as President Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts paid for themselves.
Just take a look at this piece by Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page:
Compare the August 2018 economic forecast from the Congressional Budget Office with the one from June 2017, before the tax cuts passed, and we discover some very good news. The much higher than expected economic growth in the wake of the Trump tax cut means that U.S. gross domestic product will be higher than expected every year over the next decade.
Even if we assume a reversion to the pre-Trump 1.9% growth path, the ratchet up in GDP this year translates into $179 billion in unexpected output this year, $465 billion next year, $654 billion in 2020, and so on. This magic of compounding yields more than $6 trillion additional GDP over the decade thanks to the faster growth already achieved.
The federal government is expected to capture a bit more than 18% of that extra output in tax revenue – about $1.1 trillion over the 10-year window. That’s well above the $400 billion to $500 billion expected revenue loss from the corporate tax-rate cut. …
Perversely, because the economy is bigger now than expected, the CBO has revised upward its estimated “cost” of the tax cut. Because of lower tax rates, the government will get a smaller share of the larger-than-projected economy – even though the tax cut encouraged the faster growth.
The faster economic growth is expected to yield an additional $1.1 trillion in tax revenues versus the original projected $400-$500 billion that the CBO projected the corporate tax cuts would “cost.”
If anyone wants to see the problems with government projections via the CBO, economics opinion-writer Stephen Moore puts his finger on the extent of the problem with his use of the term “perversely.” But I say it shows abject ignorance or intentional deception.
Essentially, the economy is growing faster than projected because of the tax cuts, yet the CBO is now pretending the economy would have grown that fast even without the tax cuts, so it now has upped its projected “costs” of the tax cuts. You see, that way, the swamp creatures can continue to say tax cuts are bad and justify higher taxes. Pretending the economy would be growing as fast without the tax cuts is like pretending President Obama’s economic policies are why the economy is growing so fast today.”
A third-grader could be taught that if individuals and businesses have more money in their pockets, they can spend more and therefore make their companies – and the economy – grow more. Sadly, the CBO bureaucrats and Democrats, including journalists, can’t seem to grasp this simple concept.
The same CBO that has been so far off in underestimating revenue and underestimating economic growth relating to the tax cuts somehow massively underestimated costs and overestimated results of Obamacare. Somehow these bureaucrats unrealistically estimated that Obamacare would reduce the deficit. That was as much of a joke or lie as the continuous knowing lie that Obamacare would reduce premiums. It seems that the CBO likes big government. W hat a shock.
It is a shame that most of the media just repeat what they are told instead of doing actual research. Why do journalists treat the CBO so respectfully when most of its projections are so far off and essentially just wild guesses? The Democrat agenda is obviously more important than telling the public the truth.”
“The FBI had concerns with the intelligence community’s (IC) January 2017 assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the presidential election with the specific intent of electing President Trump over Hillary Clinton.
In newly obtained emails, bureau officials noted there was not enough intelligence to support the January 2017 findings by the CIA which concluded Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, according to a numerous documents and text messages obtained by SaraACarter.com.”
———————
“Man, our intel submission is going to be a BOMB,” said Strzok in a text on Dec. 18, 2016.
“Oh god, why do you say that?” said Page. “Was planning to try to go in early to reach it before our mtg with Jim,“ referencing the FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki.
“Oh it’s fine. You’ve heard it all. I’m just saying the C (classified) portion is absolutely different from the bulk of the stuff in the community. And the community and especially the WH will jump all over it since it’s what they WANT to say and they can attribute it to us, not themselves,” Strzok texted back. “All the benefit, none of the political risk. We get all of that.”
On December 19, 2016, Strzok and Page boast about the number of stories they had a hand in shaping. Page sends a text at 20:17 saying “And this. It will make your head spin to realize how many stories we played a personal role in. Sheesh, this has been quite a year… NYTimes: The most-read stories of 2016 (with a link).”
Strzok responds “Jesus, I want to take people out for a drink. I want to take YOU out for a drink. I hope this upcoming presidency doesn’t fill my years with regret wondering what we might have done differently.”
Then page responds to Strzok with a “sad” emoji face.”
@11:49 But The Trump Cult has been telling us for months that the DOJ is the heart of the Deep State and the Silent Coup. Dear Leader told us just this week that he had no Attorney General. A Deep State divided against itself can not stand!
Tell Dear Leader and the Cult hierarchy that they must keep their fairy tales straight.
But Ricky, a book of fairy tales need not be kept straight. That’s the beauty of it: each one can stand on it’s own, for each illustrates a different aspect of …whatever. The ‘deep state’, ‘silent coup’, ‘witch hunt’ are all stories meant to illustrate different aspects of Trump Derangement Syndrome and/or an elite bureaucracy run amok. The tales may be dramatic, but that’s because most people (including yourself) will not bother with the more mundane truths of entrenched and normalized corruption. And who will trouble themselves to read even truthful news that is not fresh off the press (or Twitter) today? :–)
As has been said to you repeatedly for months, it’s DoJ and FBI leadership that’s the problem. But you already know this. You’re just playing dumb again. At least you’re good at it, right?
Meanwhile the stuff he swears never happened keeps happening.
“This is not exactly shocking, but at least there is proof of it. The Daily Caller received emails and text messages from the special counsel’s office that show Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has a pretty close relationship with the press. The Daily Caller reported:
The documents, released in September, span months of communication and include messages from reporters ranging from a variety of outlets, including TheDCNF, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed.
While the vast majority of correspondences between Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr and a variety of journalists ends with a “no comment,” the messages expose Mueller’s team was willing to meet with a number of reporters in private meetings and over the phone.
Coordinating such meetings cuts against the narrative that the special counsel has been hesitant to give information to the press, instead opting to give information only through public announcements and statements.
The documents contain no evidence that Carr preferred any outlet or reporter over another.
The Daily Caller pointed out that at one point Vox claimed that Mueller’s team was “immune to leaks,” but the documents show otherwise and the reporter never mentioned Carr in his article:
During one interaction, Alex Ward asks Carr off the record if the investigation would continue should President Donald Trump fire Mueller.
“As guidance only, the [Deputy Attorney General] testified last week that he, not the President, would be the one to make the decision. 28 CFR 600 outlines under what circumstances a Special Counsel can be removed. If it came to that, a replacement would likely be found,” Carr answers.
A day later, Carr aids Ward in describing the room in which the investigation takes place. Despite Carr’s assistance, he is never mentioned in Ward’s piece published over a month later.
From late July until the end of September 2017, Carr held at least dozens of meetings with various reporters. Those meetings have rarely been discussed with the public, by both the government or the press, until the release of these documents.”
“New York Times: Rosentein Offered to Tape Trump, Discuss Invoking 25th Amendment With Cabinet Members”
“President Donald Trump will go on a Twitter tirade in 3…2…1…
The New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensetin, the man who hired Special Counsel Robert Mueller, offered to wear a wire to tape Trump and rally “cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.”
He suggested that he could bring Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-DHS Secretary John Kelly to his side. Kelly now serves as Trump’s chief of staff.
When did all of this supposedly begin? May 2016. Rosenstein and Sessions joined Trump in the Oval Office and the president suggested firing Comey. Everyone in the room tried to talk Trump out of it…except Rosenstein. He offered “to write the memo about the Clinton email inquiry” and gave it to Trump “shortly after.”
The day after that, Trump fired Trump and his aides released the memo and described it as “the basis for Mr. Comey’s dismissal.”
That led to intense criticism from Democrats and others, which angered Rosenstein:
The president’s reliance on his memo caught Mr. Rosenstein by surprise, and he became angry at Mr. Trump, according to people who spoke to Mr. Rosenstein at the time. He grew concerned that his reputation had suffered harm and wondered whether Mr. Trump had motives beyond Mr. Comey’s treatment of Mrs. Clinton for ousting him, the people said.
A determined Mr. Rosenstein began telling associates that he would ultimately be “vindicated” for his role in the matter. One week after the firing, Mr. Rosenstein met with Mr. McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.
During their discussion, Mr. Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Mr. Trump had conducted the search for a new F.B.I. director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including Mr. McCabe, were under consideration.
To Mr. Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
That’s when Rosenstein brought up the idea of wearing a wire. A person in the meeting asked him if he was serious “and he replied animatedly that he was.” Plus, he said that if he didn’t do it, he suggested McCabe or other FBI officials wear the wire. He also said that no one checked his phone during meetings with Trump, “implying it would be easy to secretly record” the president.”
Or B. are the NYT and their “anonymous” coward sources just lying again?
I’d lean more toward B, but your mileage may vary.
Rosenstein denies it.
“Rosenstein has denied the accounts given to The New York Times:
“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.”
If Rosenstein really thought the Comey firing was this bad, why would he agree to put his name on a letter recommending Comey be fired? I don’t buy this story, especially without any on the record sourcing. https://t.co/R1Ud3Rr1w5
Important to note also that Rosenstein’s statement is a non-denial denial. He dismisses the report as inaccurate and says there’s no basis for the 25th amendment, but doesn’t deny that he discussed it with DOJ/FBI officials.
3:52 The 25th Amendment stuff is funny. Have I not said from the beginning that your guy is a lunatic. The whole cabinet knows it. Tillerson called him a moron. McMaster said he was an idiot. Mattis said he had the intelligence of a 5th grader. Cohn said he was a dunce. They all know he is unfit. He is still unfit. The problem is that he was unfit and crazy on the day he was elected.
Note it wasn’t the high ranking bureaucrats in some agency who were calling Trump a moron, idiot, child, dunce etc. It was the cabinet officers he appointed. The Deep State didn’t appoint Rosenstein. Trump appointed Rosenstein.
The historians who write the history of this era are going to be instantly turned into comedy writers.
Hannity, Pirro and other high priests of The Cult had been encouraging Dear Leader to declassify these documents. I wonder what really caused him to change his mind.
Sasse has been quiet about the Kavanaugh/Ford matter until more facts are known. Other conservatives were not so discreet and they lived to regret their indiscretions.
So maybe it was just a joke. It is hard to blame anyone for taking it seriously. There was a lot of 25th Amendment talk around Washington last spring. I remember Douthat wrote a column about it.
Participants who were in the room have now told Fox News it was a sarcastic crack in the midst of an argument, along the lines of “what do you want me to do, wear a wire?” https://t.co/LjNeKMQFkK
“NY Times Reporter Stands by Rod Rosenstein Bombshell: ‘This Wasn’t a Flippant Remark’”
“In the wake of reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein‘s comments about secretly recording President Donald Trump were made in jest, New York Times reporter Adam Goldman is defending his reporting.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, Goldman — one of the two reporters who wrote the Times bombshell — said as far as he was concerned, it was not a flippant remark.
“You know, my understanding of what happened is that this wasn’t a flippant remark,” Goldman said. “And he was, in fact, very serious. And the circumstances in which it was described to me are different now than what’s being put out I guess by the government.”
You can’t make this stuff up. Is Trump Cult High Priest Sean Hannity a Traitor? Has Sean become a globalist Deep Stater? Has he read an 11th grade economics textbook and come over to our side?
Hannity warns Dear Leader not to fire Rosenstein!
Sean Hannity on Rosenstein: "I have a message for the president tonight. Under zero circumstances should the president fire anybody. These actors, tonight, and I have multiple sources confirming this … it is all a set up" pic.twitter.com/xAjHLcfDh3
Wandering Views 
Trump Expected to Advance Religious Liberty at the UN
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/trump_expected_to_advance_religious_liberty_at_the_un.html
“Every year, without fail, the Islamic Republic of Iran is ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for religious freedom. Persecution of religious minorities is rampant and deeply ingrained in government institutions, and Christians are high on the list of those at risk, especially Christians who have converted from Islam.
The most recent State Department report on international religious freedom notes that between 2010 and 2017, more than 600 Christians were imprisoned solely for the practice of their faith. The same report points to an upsurge in anti-Christian sentiment within Iranian state media, accompanied by more frequent and aggressive raids on home-based churches.
International human rights groups can naturally be counted on to back up the State Department’s findings and to push for activism on behalf of at-risk individuals and populations in the Islamic Republic.
This goes to show how deeply Islamic extremism is ingrained into the identity of Iran’s theocratic regime. Every time that regime prosecutes someone for national security crimes on the basis of membership in a religious minority, it is effectively admitting that the regime cannot survive in the presence of religious freedom. As such, the mullahs tacitly admit this fact almost every single day.
There is no sensible reason for any modern, democratic government to dispute that fact. Yet the previous White House did just that when it joined the European Union in pursuing negotiations with the Iranian regime on the expectation that this would promote “moderation” among the leadership. More than three years after the signing of a nuclear deal that was supposed to usher in this moderation, the naïveté of this view has been clearly exposed.
As was revealed recently, some of the Obama administration officials have not given up hope for keeping this deal afloat. John Kerry, for instance, has met with his Iranian counterparts and advised the ayatollahs to wait until the Trump administration is out. His conduct is hard to fathom, and it is very damaging to U.S. national security imperatives as well as prospects for promoting religious liberty in the Middle East.
Fortunately, the current presidential administration has no such impulse to turn away from systematic violations of religious freedom and other human rights while waiting for Tehran to correct its own behavior.
In fact, the Trump administration has commendably made religious freedom a major focus of its foreign policy. This was demonstrated in July, when the State Department hosted its first ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. It will be demonstrated again this week when secretary of state Mike Pompeo attends the Values Voter Summit to participate in a discussion of international religious liberty. None of his predecessors in the office has done the same.
The significance of these gestures is amplified, particularly where Iran policy is concerned, by the fact that the Trump administration has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to assertive foreign policies that will actually hold Tehran and other repressive governments accountable for violations of the rights of Christians and other minorities. The U.S. is now in the midst of re-imposing the sanctions that were suspended in the wake of shortsighted international negotiations, and this is being done with the express purpose of compelling the Iranian regime toward a comprehensive change of behavior.”
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Colluding with the Russians to prove Trump colluded with the Russians.
So the only ones really colluding with he Russians are the Democrats and Fusion GPS.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/whose-stuff-did-steele-shovel.php
“I have repeatedly observed here that if the so-called Steele dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign is what it purports to be, it disseminates intelligence supplied by Russian authorities and, further, the intelligence is highly likely to constitute Russian disinformation. Eric Felten comes at the related issues from different angles in articles carried in the past two issues of the Weekly Standard.
In “The Romanian ruse” Eric traces the origin of the Steele dossier’s allegations about Trump attorney Michael Cohen going to Prague to collude with Russia on Trump’s behalf. He asks: “Where did [the dossier’s] baroque tales of illicit meetings to pay Romanian hackers come from?” Based on “the exhaustive investigative work done for the Mueller team,” Eric suggests that the Steele dossier incorporated the fictitious story provided by Russian military intelligence. “Steele,” he concludes, “seems to have fallen for it.”
In his most recent article Eric raises the question whether whether Steele was disseminating Russian disinformation to the State Department. Eric notes that before Steele compiled the dossier (assuming that the dossier is indeed his work), Steele “had for years been funneling reports on Russia and Ukraine to senior State Department Russia analysts. Materials recently turned over to Congress show that while Steele was giving memos to State he also maintained close ties to the billionaire Russian industrialist Oleg V. Deripaska. Some congressional investigators are thus concerned that his memos may have been a channel of Russian disinformation.””
———————-
Here’s the link to the other story. Tell me again who the Russian crony is, because it’s not Trump.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/eric-felten/was-christopher-steele-disseminating-russian-disinformation-to-the-fbi
“Even in the thick of compiling the Trump dossier, Steele found time to look out for Deripaska’s interests. In the middle of October 2016, the president of Ukraine issued sanctions against more than 100 Russian companies, including Deripaska’s aluminum giant, Rusal. Within a day, Steele emailed Ohr that he had information about “the unfolding Government of Ukraine-RUSAL dispute” that “Paul H” had asked him to pass along to Ohr. “Naturally he [Hauser] wants to protect the client’s interests and reputation,” Steele wrote.
Steele’s extensive interactions with Deripaska and Deripaska’s lawyers make it unlikely that the succession of memos on Russia and Ukraine he offered to Winer and the State Departmen were not “related in any way” to Deripaska. Ukraine was a pressing issue for Deripaska and the crisis there was the main topic Steele was analyzing.
Does the fact that those memos were distributed at State for years mean U.S. policy might have been warped by Russian disinformation, as some on Capitol Hill fear? No, says a senior State Department official who was serving at the time—because the Russia hands weren’t naïve. Asked about the Russia and Ukraine memos Steele provided to State, the official tells The Weekly Standard, “We were not aware of his specific sources but assumed that many of them were close to Putin and were peddling information that was useful to the Kremlin.”
The official says the Putinesque spin of the memos led them to take Steele’s analysis with more than a grain of salt: “There was a huge discount factor for that reason.”
This was the reputation Steele had at the upper reaches of State: Among the people who saw his work most frequently and who had the most expertise in Russian issues, the onetime MI6 officer was seen as “peddling information that was useful to the Kremlin.””
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What do we want?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-ohios-deplorables-really-want/
“But for that blue wave to reach shore, a bunch of Republicans need to vote Democrat and the New Democratic Base, young people and a list of minorities longer than a CVS receipt, must vote in numbers never before seen. The second part of that plan has its own questions. But my recent travels make it pretty clear that depending on Republicans to vote Democrat because they no longer support Trump is out to sea.
I met plenty of people as ideologically committed, albeit 180 degrees to the Right, as their East Coast vegan socialist cousins. But most of those I spoke to could be better described as light purple voters. More than a handful enthusiastically voted for their first ever Democrat in 2008, then backed away from Obama in 2012, before returning to the Republicans, albeit Trump, in 2016. The idea today is that Trump’s boorishness will send them back to Democratic candidates.
Or maybe not. The endless stream of Trump atrocities large and small talked about on Sunday morning TV is not what voters were talking about. Everybody knew about Stormy but nobody cared; they had processed Trump’s affairs in 2016 and that makes them old news even if they’re still on Rachel Maddow every night. In response to the daily bombings of hall monitor gossip, one person said, “I get it, I don’t like what he says all the time either, but let the man try and do his job. Enough already.” It’s like buying outrage in bulk at Costco: at some point you realize a five-pound shaker of nutmeg is too much to deal with and you hide it in the garage.
Out here candidates are not described as fierce or nasty. Social media is for kids and cats, marches for folks who don’t have to work a weekend job. Racism and pronouns matter, but only after figuring out how to pay for health care. Anything else stinks of indifference from those whose pensions didn’t disappear in the last merger. There is a sense that being black, brown, gay, Muslim, or female is not by itself a qualification for office. To some it seems that men, old people, straight people, entire regions of the country, are being excluded or deemed unworthy. It isn’t status anxiety, really, but a sense that what used to be a difference of political opinion now makes someone illegitimate as a person—“deplorable” came up more than once.
So it’s not all about Trump. And when it is about him, most support the part of Trumpism that affects them financially.
Democrats campaigning against the economy? It matters, however modest and fragile, that under Trump median household income has risen 1.8 percent and poverty has declined .4 percent. A voter will support anything that brings his nose above water. Economists misunderstand it as a bad thing that most middle income families are only now clawing back to 2008 levels: the actual middle income families see that as a pretty good thing. I heard the word “results” a lot. “Optimism” about the future now counts as much as “hope” once did.”
Telling people economic progress is a result of the former administration is a punch line. It is hard to overstate how deeply these Americans despise the Obama response to the 2008 financial crisis. Many saw the values of their homes, the largest investments they will ever make, dramatically decrease. They don’t own much stock outside of flaccid IRAs, and so they benefited little from a recovery that first bailed out Wall Street. Obama’s decisions still aren’t done with them 10 years later, because their retirements are dependent on home prices rising enough so downsizing sales can cover them late in life.
When people are excluded from the most important decisions affecting their basic livelihoods, they lose faith. That bitter lived experience fueled distrust and an ideological drift that manifested itself in electing Trump. And that distrust hasn’t dissipated enough for them to vote Democrat again. Many of the people of color I met felt the same way as their white neighbors. Having started at the same place in the factories and fallen together into poverty, they ended up in the same dismal state as whites. A big difference, however, is that black frustration often shows up as low voter turnout, while whites vote Republican.
These are a practical people, who, in one Kansas author’s words, “speak a firm sort of poetry, made of things and actions.” It wasn’t racism or Russian Facebook ads; ask and these people will give you specifics. While darkly certain all politicians will hand them the dirty end of the same stick, the people I spoke with at least felt they understood what the Republican candidates would give them. With an eye on the 2008 bailout, they seemed less sure of the Democratic side.
I didn’t see what The New York Times thinks it sees: “Democrats Embrace Liberal Insurgents.” I didn’t find many looking for the local version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though I found a lot who asked me, “Alexandria who?” People told me that if someone promises Medicare for all, they need to also hear how she plans to deliver it. Because unlike folks who tweet about it from Brooklyn, they tried—and in many cases, tried and failed—to get health care instead of just insurance out of Obamacare. They remember that not fixing the system was part of the Democratic platform and question changes of heart that coincide with changes in polling.
You don’t have to always understand it but you do have to realize there are truths at work here. Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and housing assistance are a way of life now. One can accept food stamps but still think handouts are for the lazy. People can feel cheated working for minimum wage at a Walmart full of junk made overseas without being anti-immigrant racists. Trump understands all this better than the Democrats now speaking for their party, and that makes his voters ignore a lot of other things.
So polls asking whether a midterm voter supports Trump, or approves of his performance, may be asking the wrong question. If Democrats insist on November being Trump versus Trump, a referendum on the first half of his term to see if he gets to play out the second half, all without themselves bringing something new and real forward, they may not like the answer that voters give.”
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An answer to Chas’ question. Fox News has not told you about this.
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A helpful timeline of Russian interference in the election, their contacts with Trumpsters and the federal investigation.
Russia clearly interfered in the election. Trump may have been a co-conspirator (HRW’s view) or he may have simply been a beneficiary of the interference who stupidly made himself look guilty by clumsily and dishonestly trying to obstruct the US investigation of the interference (my view).
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The writer above is on to something…..
—————
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Sorry Ricky,
No one but Dems and never-Trumpers even care what the NYT says anymore.
Most voters are more worried about important things, things that actually matter to their lives.
Things like this.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/wall-street-us-china-trade-spat-takes-a-backseat.html
“Dow rallies more than 250 points to first record close since January”
—————-
And this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-jobless-claims-fall-to-49-year-low-for-third-straight-week-1537446974
“U.S. Jobless Claims Fall to 49-Year Low for Third Straight Week
Initial claims touch the lowest level since December 1969”
—————-
And they know they have Trump to thank for it.
You need better material.
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You know what I think about people who voted for both Obama and Trump. Here is an article that addresses how the Congressional Districts that voted for both Obama and Trump are voting in 2018.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-whos-leading-in-obama-trump-districts/
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Oorah. 🙂
————————
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/newsletters/good-news-report/2018/09/19/barracks-marines-help-rescue-senior-citizens-caught-in-housing-complex-fire/
“A massive fire struck a four-story Southeast Washington housing complex for seniors Wednesday afternoon.
Some of the first responders were neighbors, including Marines from the Barracks Washington at 8th & I, located just down the street.
Dramatic videos on social media show large plumes of smoke billowing from the building and even the complex’s roof collapsing. One showed Marines rushing from the barracks to help rescue seniors. They pushed wheelchairs and stretchers toward the burning building.
“Marines rushed into the building to rescue those who needed assistance and evacuated residents to the Marine Barracks Washington Annex where they were checked and treated for any injuries and sheltered until their loved ones arrived,” said a post on the Barracks “
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@ 7:13 Conversely, no educated conservatives have ever cared what Hannity, Judge Pirro, Alex Jones, The Black Sparrow or the rest of The Trump Cult media have said.
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More witnesses to the alleged incident have been contacted.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/senate-judiciary-contacts-fourth-person-said-attended-party-alleged-kavanaugh-incident/
“The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday released new details of its investigation into the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, revealing that staff have contacted a fourth person who may have attended the high school party where the alleged incident occurred.”
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See the difference here?
These 3 “witnesses” testified under oath, the accuser refuses to show and do the same.
———————-
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So CNBC and the WSJ are now Trump media?
Good. I knew there was a reason I actually liked them. 🙂
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Corey should be removed from office immediately…….
Good for the goose, good for the gander, right?….
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/09/20/bookers-push-for-kavanaugh-vote-delay-called-out-over-his-1992-column-detailing-teenage-groping.html
“New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is facing accusations of hypocrisy over his calls to delay the confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh amid sexual misconduct allegations, as he once admitted groping a friend without her consent in high school.
The senator, who urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to first let the FBI conduct an investigation after California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused the high court nominee of sexual assault over 35 years ago, once wrote an article detailing an instance where he groped a female friend. “
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Over the last 30 years as we lost Bill Buckley and as conservative newspaper columnists also died or became less important, conservatism was “dumbed down” by people such as Hannity, Michael Savage, Judge Pirro, Limbaugh, Alex Jones and YouTube and internet buffoons. They did this by misinforming the less educated conservatives and appealing to their prejudices and biases. That made the field ripe for a demagogue such as Trump. The saddest thing is when some actual intelligent conservatives like Byron York and Tucker Carlson decided to cash in on this change by pretending they were Trumpian nitwits on TV and in print.
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Oh look, more video of yet another deep stater admitting to doing his dirty deeds.
Odd, because Ricky told me they don’t exist.
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@7:38 Do Trumpkins think that guy is the King of the Deep State and the Planner of the Soft Coup?
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So I guess we really have arrived at the Idiocracy as portrayed in the movie. Trump confessed to obstruction of justice on live TV to Lester Holt and the King of the Deep State confessed to “doing stuff he is not supposed to be doing” to Project Veritas.
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@ 7:00 That’s a mighty long article and I didn’t read it all.
But it’s from “The Times”, so I have to believe it.
I don’t have facebook or twitter, so I missed being affected. But I voted against Hillary anyhow. I didn’t need any help.
Sounds like she wants to run again.
She just won’t go away.
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AJ @ 6:36 “…John Kerry, for instance, has met with his Iranian counterparts and advised the ayatollahs to wait until the Trump administration is out….”
I’m curious to know exactly what/who are Kerry’s ‘counterparts’ in Iran? Ousted politicians like himself? Or current players or businessmen? If he is actually meeting with the government, I can’t understand how this would not be actionable. Seriously. Unless the whole law and order thing only applies to Deplorables and people who are not part of the elite establishment.
This phenomenon is also a byproduct of globalism I think, and the privatization of legitimate government duties. US businessmen have no qualm in meeting with politicians and even dictators of other nations to make private deals. This is the job of governments, not the private sector. Dictators do not make deals that are disadvantageous to their powerbase, and businessmen do not consider the effects of their deals on the US government or it’s citizenry.
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Debra, You should go talk to the guy on the video @7:38. He seems to be in the inner circle of the “elite establishment”.
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Uh-oh. Cult leadership has placed Debra on the suspected “traitor” list for contending that US businessmen should not meet with agents of foreign governments to make private deals. Dear Leader is not pleased.
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It’s okay Ricky. Leadership will be pleased that I’ve focused on people like Kerry and Bill Gates (who has a deal selling nuclear reactors to China—what could possibly go wrong there).
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Good! So long as the various Trump Tower deals around the world are not affected.
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Maybe China will even give us a special deal on a Trump Tower Nuclear reactor. We can pay an exorbitant rent for a front row seat to see the world exploding in WW3. If we must go out, at least we should have gold plated toilets and faucets from which to make our exit from this life into the next.
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Ricky,
You can mock it, but the DoJ thinks it matters. You buy any fantasy that comes along about Trump, but video evidence you dismiss as irrelevant. You can’t admit the truth, I get it, you’re too deeply invested now, so you’re doubling down. And yet you still insist you’re a rule of law guy. Sure it’s fun to watch, but it’s a little sad too.
The feds aren’t laughing though….
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/407450-doj-looking-into-concerning-behavior-in-project-veritas-video
“The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday said it is assessing allegations of improper behavior by one of its employees in a video published by the conservative activist organization Project Veritas.
The video, titled “Deep State Unmasked,” depicts a DOJ employee and a former Health and Human Services (HHS) employee separately telling an off-screen individual that there are efforts to resist aspects of the Trump administration.
“These allegations are deeply concerning,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “Department policy prohibits misuse of government resources to advance personal interests. We are looking into this immediately and have referred this matter to the Inspector General as well.”
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Time to yank their tax exempt status for violating the law.
Make ’em pay.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/09/20/liberal-groups-kavanaugh-nonprofit/
“Women’s March, Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPD Action) — both 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations — and Housing Works, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, took ownership of the disruptions and the arrests of more than 200 activists between Sept. 4 and Sept. 7.
“If you do not have access to your cash we will certainly be able to arrange to get it to you before the action,” Davis said, noting that they had done so at previous anti-Kavanaugh protests.
Women’s March senior adviser Winnie Wong previously told CNN that her organization provided the anti-Kavanaugh protesters with “a script where we suggest certain messaging that may resonate more.”
Wong told CNN her group raised more than six figures in the first two days of Kavanaugh’s hearings, funds that were used to provide travel, accommodation, legal training and bail for its members who engaged in illegal activity.
But organizing such conduct isn’t allowed under IRS rules and is “incompatible with charity and social welfare,” according to IRS rules. Ruling 75-384 “holds that an organization … that planned and sponsored protest demonstrations at which members were urged to commit acts of civil disobedience did not qualify for IRC 501(c)(3) or (4) exemption,” the IRS states in a document detailing activities that would bar organizations from tax exemption.
Organizers on Monday’s call consistently described the planned disruptions as acts of “civil disobedience.”
A top campaign finance lawyer and conservative activist, Cleta Mitchell, believes the nonprofit groups’ tax-exempt status should be scrutinized for their involvement in advocating and funding criminal activity.
“These groups should lose their tax-exempt status because of these actions, which are in violation of established IRS precedent,” Mitchell told TheDCNF.
IRS rulings are clear that nonprofit activities must be consistent with the law, conservative campaign finance lawyer Elliot Berke told TheDCNF
“If these groups were actually financing illegality, their tax-exempt status most certainly could be in jeopardy,” Berke said.”
———————
“CPD Action is the political arm of the Center for Popular Democracy, a left-wing nonprofit funded by billionaire George Soros. Women’s March lists Planned Parenthood as its “exclusive premier sponsor” and environmentalist group Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. as its “presenting platinum sponsor.”
Housing Works is a charity that receives tax-deductible donations and raked in nearly $4.2 million in federal and New York state funding in 2017 alone, according to its most recent tax return.
“In addition to the IRS rules that they have violated, these groups should lose any government funding they receive — taxpayers should not be subsidizing bail money for people hired by these groups to break the law,” Mitchell told TheDCNF.
“There are no doubt many rules and regulations which they have violated for grantees in receipt of federal funds,” she added. “They should be required to return the funds to the U.S. Treasury and be permanently barred from receiving additional federal funds.””
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More questionable behavior by some of the same suspects.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/fear-loathing-at-the-doj-finale.php
“In the memoir Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit List (written with Stephen Saltarelli), Howard Root tells the story of his experience as chief executive officer of Vascular Solutions caught in the crosshairs of the federal government when prosecutors sought to put his company out of business and to send him to the big house. Howard touched on one aspect of his story in the Wall Street Journal column “Sally Yates’s legacy of injustice at the Department of Justice.”
Howard is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Among other things, he is a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate executive.
Howard faced down the government. The jury didn’t think much of the government’s case. It returned with a verdict of acquittal on all charges after a day of deliberations, and that includes the time spent electing a foreman.
Howard’s case is important in its own way. The crimes charged were bogus. The government procured testimony through serious prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecution represented fruit of the poisonous Yates Memo tree. Howard had the resources to fight the government’s case against him and his company, but it exacted an enormous toll. The case cries out for study and reform.
Howard has thus sought to engage prosecutors in discussion of the case in person before professional audiences of lawyers and businessmen for whom it holds immediate relevance. The prosecutors and their superiors in the department have sought to keep Howard from speaking to such audiences. When I wrote the Department of Justice to request its explanation for what it was doing, it declined to comment (a week after I asked the question).
Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy was more forthcoming. He called out the Department of Justice’s behavior as “a disgrace.”
The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me but it has at long last responded to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. I posted the Grassley/Lee letter in “Fear & loathing at the DoJ, cont’d.”
In their letter Senators Grassley and Lee noted that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the Department’s disappointment with the outcome of a particular case. This not only casts doubt on the Department’s ability to accept the results of judicial proceedings in a professional manner befitting the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, but it significantly undermines our confidence in its commitment to hold government attorneys accountable for questionable actions that may have occurred in the course of this case or other cases.” The letter posed seven questions and asked for response by April 5, 2018. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, incidentally, rested on her right to remain silent.”
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Blue wave?
More like a green wave.
As in wave goodbye to your green if you’re stupid enough to vote for Democrats.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_fiscal_lunacy_of_electing_democrats_to_congress.html
“Over the last two years, Republicans have disappointed on the deficit. But giving control of the budget back to Democrats at this time would be quite stupid. That’s because the bill for the Democrats’ deficits under Obama will start coming due on October 1, which is the start of fiscal 2019 and will mark the ten-year anniversary of Pelosi’s first trillion-dollar deficit.
Any ten-year securities sold in 2009 will mature in 2019. And here’s the thing: most of the public debt is Treasury notes, not bonds, and T-notes have a max term of ten years. Democrats actually expect voters to put them back in charge of the budget at the exact moment that we start paying back the bulk of the trillion-dollar deficits that they, the Democrats, ran up under Obama.
The federal government will soon be rolling over an unprecedented amount of debt, which will cause the interest rates on those U.S. securities to rise. Now is long past time for Congress to cut spending, but all you hear from Democrat candidates for Congress is more spending: “free” college, single-payer government health care, and other “free” stuff.
When Nancy Pelosi was campaigning to take control of Congress back in 2006, she touted PAYGO, pay-as-you-go financing meant to keep the deficit from rising. But her first budget, FY2008, had the largest deficit up to that point; her second deficit was nearly a trillion higher; and trillion-dollar deficits followed. In the midst of running her $1.4T deficit in 2009, Pelosi shamelessly flogged her fraudulent PAYGO at a House news conference. Talk about chutzpah.
On June 6 this year at The Hill, we read: “House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other top Democrats are vowing to abide by fiscally hawkish pay-as-you-go rules if they seize the majority next year, rejecting calls from liberals who feel they’d be an impediment to big legislative gains.”
Also on June 6 at The Nation, we read: “Bold progressivism and ‘pay-go’ fiscal conservatism are mutually exclusive.”
On June 7 at the Washington Post, we read: “If they’re successful in winning back Congress this year and winning the White House next year, it [PAYGO] could seriously hamper their ability to pass progressive legislation.”
On September 4 at The Intercept, we read: “Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made the public a big promise, vowing to handcuff her party’s progressive ambitions, including in the event that a Democratic president succeeds Donald Trump, by resurrecting the ‘pay-go’ rule that mandates all new spending is offset with budget cuts or tax increases.”
Fret not, my progressive friends: Pelosi’s promise to abide by PAYGO was a lie in 2006, and it’s a lie today. Voters should remember that in the middle of the Great Recession and a trillion-dollar deficit, Democrats passed a huge new entitlement: Obamacare. If Democrats really cared about fiscal responsibility, then rather than the easily ignored PAYGO, they’d be urging a balanced budget amendment.
On Sep. 10, former speaker Pelosi told CNN that she feels comfortable with the support she has in the Democrat caucus and that after the midterms, she will again be speaker. Decency would dictate that the person who ushered through the nation’s first trillion-dollar deficit might demur from commenting on smaller deficits run by others, but not Nancy.
If it becomes ever larger in comparison to the economy, the debt will someday become unmanageable and America will have a “debt crisis.” Leading up to that dreadful day, there’ll be interest rate hikes, which are already underway. These rate hikes are coming at the very time when we’ll be rolling over more government securities than ever. Politicians of both parties are responsible for this scary situation, but Democrats are worse. Democrats belong to the only party that has run trillion-dollar deficits while controlling both the Congress and the presidency.
Rather than a “blue wave,” Democrats need to be spanked in November. When Democrats told us in 2006 that they would not make the deficit worse and would abide by the constraints of PAYGO, we gave them power, and they made the deficit far worse than it’d ever been. Now, twelve years later, Democrats again tell us they’ll abide by PAYGO and expect us to put them back in power. And this, at the very moment the bill for their extravagant borrowing and spending under Obama is starting to come due. Holders of U.S. securities aren’t like Obama’s General Motors bondholders – they must be paid.
If there’s even a remote possibility that Democrats might retake Congress and again control the budget and spending, real Americans should run to the polls on Election Day and vote Republican.”
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Despite the current narrative from Dems and the media (but I repeat myself), the tax cuts are already paying for themselves.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/trumps_tax_cuts_already_paying_for_themselves.html
“The left is making hay for itself in claiming that President Trump’s tax cuts are bad. Leftists call it a scam, say that only the rich get the benefits of the cuts, and other canards, but one of their dumbest arguments is that tax cuts “cost” us.
Yet the farther we get into the faster economy that has occurred because of President Trump’s tax cuts and reduction of regulations, the clearer it is that the corporate and individual tax cuts more than pay for themselves, just as President Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts paid for themselves.
Just take a look at this piece by Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page:
Compare the August 2018 economic forecast from the Congressional Budget Office with the one from June 2017, before the tax cuts passed, and we discover some very good news. The much higher than expected economic growth in the wake of the Trump tax cut means that U.S. gross domestic product will be higher than expected every year over the next decade.
Even if we assume a reversion to the pre-Trump 1.9% growth path, the ratchet up in GDP this year translates into $179 billion in unexpected output this year, $465 billion next year, $654 billion in 2020, and so on. This magic of compounding yields more than $6 trillion additional GDP over the decade thanks to the faster growth already achieved.
The federal government is expected to capture a bit more than 18% of that extra output in tax revenue – about $1.1 trillion over the 10-year window. That’s well above the $400 billion to $500 billion expected revenue loss from the corporate tax-rate cut. …
Perversely, because the economy is bigger now than expected, the CBO has revised upward its estimated “cost” of the tax cut. Because of lower tax rates, the government will get a smaller share of the larger-than-projected economy – even though the tax cut encouraged the faster growth.
The faster economic growth is expected to yield an additional $1.1 trillion in tax revenues versus the original projected $400-$500 billion that the CBO projected the corporate tax cuts would “cost.”
If anyone wants to see the problems with government projections via the CBO, economics opinion-writer Stephen Moore puts his finger on the extent of the problem with his use of the term “perversely.” But I say it shows abject ignorance or intentional deception.
Essentially, the economy is growing faster than projected because of the tax cuts, yet the CBO is now pretending the economy would have grown that fast even without the tax cuts, so it now has upped its projected “costs” of the tax cuts. You see, that way, the swamp creatures can continue to say tax cuts are bad and justify higher taxes. Pretending the economy would be growing as fast without the tax cuts is like pretending President Obama’s economic policies are why the economy is growing so fast today.”
A third-grader could be taught that if individuals and businesses have more money in their pockets, they can spend more and therefore make their companies – and the economy – grow more. Sadly, the CBO bureaucrats and Democrats, including journalists, can’t seem to grasp this simple concept.
The same CBO that has been so far off in underestimating revenue and underestimating economic growth relating to the tax cuts somehow massively underestimated costs and overestimated results of Obamacare. Somehow these bureaucrats unrealistically estimated that Obamacare would reduce the deficit. That was as much of a joke or lie as the continuous knowing lie that Obamacare would reduce premiums. It seems that the CBO likes big government. W hat a shock.
It is a shame that most of the media just repeat what they are told instead of doing actual research. Why do journalists treat the CBO so respectfully when most of its projections are so far off and essentially just wild guesses? The Democrat agenda is obviously more important than telling the public the truth.”
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More Russia narrative fail. The more we know, the worse it looks, and another black eye for the leaking and lying feds and their media pals..
Well, at least those of us not in ostrich mode.
https://saraacarter.com/fbi-memos-raise-deep-questions-about-russia-trump-intel-assessment/
“The FBI had concerns with the intelligence community’s (IC) January 2017 assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the presidential election with the specific intent of electing President Trump over Hillary Clinton.
In newly obtained emails, bureau officials noted there was not enough intelligence to support the January 2017 findings by the CIA which concluded Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, according to a numerous documents and text messages obtained by SaraACarter.com.”
———————
“Man, our intel submission is going to be a BOMB,” said Strzok in a text on Dec. 18, 2016.
“Oh god, why do you say that?” said Page. “Was planning to try to go in early to reach it before our mtg with Jim,“ referencing the FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki.
“Oh it’s fine. You’ve heard it all. I’m just saying the C (classified) portion is absolutely different from the bulk of the stuff in the community. And the community and especially the WH will jump all over it since it’s what they WANT to say and they can attribute it to us, not themselves,” Strzok texted back. “All the benefit, none of the political risk. We get all of that.”
On December 19, 2016, Strzok and Page boast about the number of stories they had a hand in shaping. Page sends a text at 20:17 saying “And this. It will make your head spin to realize how many stories we played a personal role in. Sheesh, this has been quite a year… NYTimes: The most-read stories of 2016 (with a link).”
Strzok responds “Jesus, I want to take people out for a drink. I want to take YOU out for a drink. I hope this upcoming presidency doesn’t fill my years with regret wondering what we might have done differently.”
Then page responds to Strzok with a “sad” emoji face.”
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@11:49 But The Trump Cult has been telling us for months that the DOJ is the heart of the Deep State and the Silent Coup. Dear Leader told us just this week that he had no Attorney General. A Deep State divided against itself can not stand!
Tell Dear Leader and the Cult hierarchy that they must keep their fairy tales straight.
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But Ricky, a book of fairy tales need not be kept straight. That’s the beauty of it: each one can stand on it’s own, for each illustrates a different aspect of …whatever. The ‘deep state’, ‘silent coup’, ‘witch hunt’ are all stories meant to illustrate different aspects of Trump Derangement Syndrome and/or an elite bureaucracy run amok. The tales may be dramatic, but that’s because most people (including yourself) will not bother with the more mundane truths of entrenched and normalized corruption. And who will trouble themselves to read even truthful news that is not fresh off the press (or Twitter) today? :–)
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Ricky’s in denial.
As has been said to you repeatedly for months, it’s DoJ and FBI leadership that’s the problem. But you already know this. You’re just playing dumb again. At least you’re good at it, right?
Meanwhile the stuff he swears never happened keeps happening.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/09/report-muellers-team-has-a-close-relationship-with-the-press/
“This is not exactly shocking, but at least there is proof of it. The Daily Caller received emails and text messages from the special counsel’s office that show Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has a pretty close relationship with the press. The Daily Caller reported:
The documents, released in September, span months of communication and include messages from reporters ranging from a variety of outlets, including TheDCNF, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed.
While the vast majority of correspondences between Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr and a variety of journalists ends with a “no comment,” the messages expose Mueller’s team was willing to meet with a number of reporters in private meetings and over the phone.
Coordinating such meetings cuts against the narrative that the special counsel has been hesitant to give information to the press, instead opting to give information only through public announcements and statements.
The documents contain no evidence that Carr preferred any outlet or reporter over another.
The Daily Caller pointed out that at one point Vox claimed that Mueller’s team was “immune to leaks,” but the documents show otherwise and the reporter never mentioned Carr in his article:
During one interaction, Alex Ward asks Carr off the record if the investigation would continue should President Donald Trump fire Mueller.
“As guidance only, the [Deputy Attorney General] testified last week that he, not the President, would be the one to make the decision. 28 CFR 600 outlines under what circumstances a Special Counsel can be removed. If it came to that, a replacement would likely be found,” Carr answers.
A day later, Carr aids Ward in describing the room in which the investigation takes place. Despite Carr’s assistance, he is never mentioned in Ward’s piece published over a month later.
From late July until the end of September 2017, Carr held at least dozens of meetings with various reporters. Those meetings have rarely been discussed with the public, by both the government or the press, until the release of these documents.”
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Nope, no deep state coup here….
Trying to entrap the president?
And note Ricky it’s your favorite liberal rag saying this is true.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/09/new-york-times-rosentein-offered-to-tape-trump-discuss-invoking-25th-amendment-with-cabinet-members/
“New York Times: Rosentein Offered to Tape Trump, Discuss Invoking 25th Amendment With Cabinet Members”
“President Donald Trump will go on a Twitter tirade in 3…2…1…
The New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensetin, the man who hired Special Counsel Robert Mueller, offered to wear a wire to tape Trump and rally “cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.”
He suggested that he could bring Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-DHS Secretary John Kelly to his side. Kelly now serves as Trump’s chief of staff.
When did all of this supposedly begin? May 2016. Rosenstein and Sessions joined Trump in the Oval Office and the president suggested firing Comey. Everyone in the room tried to talk Trump out of it…except Rosenstein. He offered “to write the memo about the Clinton email inquiry” and gave it to Trump “shortly after.”
The day after that, Trump fired Trump and his aides released the memo and described it as “the basis for Mr. Comey’s dismissal.”
That led to intense criticism from Democrats and others, which angered Rosenstein:
The president’s reliance on his memo caught Mr. Rosenstein by surprise, and he became angry at Mr. Trump, according to people who spoke to Mr. Rosenstein at the time. He grew concerned that his reputation had suffered harm and wondered whether Mr. Trump had motives beyond Mr. Comey’s treatment of Mrs. Clinton for ousting him, the people said.
A determined Mr. Rosenstein began telling associates that he would ultimately be “vindicated” for his role in the matter. One week after the firing, Mr. Rosenstein met with Mr. McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.
During their discussion, Mr. Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Mr. Trump had conducted the search for a new F.B.I. director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including Mr. McCabe, were under consideration.
To Mr. Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.
That’s when Rosenstein brought up the idea of wearing a wire. A person in the meeting asked him if he was serious “and he replied animatedly that he was.” Plus, he said that if he didn’t do it, he suggested McCabe or other FBI officials wear the wire. He also said that no one checked his phone during meetings with Trump, “implying it would be easy to secretly record” the president.”
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Or B. are the NYT and their “anonymous” coward sources just lying again?
I’d lean more toward B, but your mileage may vary.
Rosenstein denies it.
“Rosenstein has denied the accounts given to The New York Times:
“The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.”
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Somebody’s lyin’……..
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—-
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So which is it Ricky?
Is it A.- The deep state is really a thing and this proves it and it’s nefarious deeds as the NYT clams?….
Or B.- Your favorite paper is printing falsehoods again?
I patiently await your response to this catch 22.
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3:52 The 25th Amendment stuff is funny. Have I not said from the beginning that your guy is a lunatic. The whole cabinet knows it. Tillerson called him a moron. McMaster said he was an idiot. Mattis said he had the intelligence of a 5th grader. Cohn said he was a dunce. They all know he is unfit. He is still unfit. The problem is that he was unfit and crazy on the day he was elected.
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Note it wasn’t the high ranking bureaucrats in some agency who were calling Trump a moron, idiot, child, dunce etc. It was the cabinet officers he appointed. The Deep State didn’t appoint Rosenstein. Trump appointed Rosenstein.
The historians who write the history of this era are going to be instantly turned into comedy writers.
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Hannity, Pirro and other high priests of The Cult had been encouraging Dear Leader to declassify these documents. I wonder what really caused him to change his mind.
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Sasse has been quiet about the Kavanaugh/Ford matter until more facts are known. Other conservatives were not so discreet and they lived to regret their indiscretions.
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So maybe it was just a joke. It is hard to blame anyone for taking it seriously. There was a lot of 25th Amendment talk around Washington last spring. I remember Douthat wrote a column about it.
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Here it is. The column ages well. It is as true today as when it was written.
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As I was saying:
The comments to this Tweet are also good.
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And we’re off…..
On the next made up farce of a reason to remove a quite successful president by the still bitter losers.
You are persistent, I’ll give you that. Misguided and grasping at straws, but persistent nonetheless.
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The NYT is standing by their story and that it was no joke.
So who’s lying, Rosenstein, Britt and his sources, or the NYT?
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/ny-times-reporter-stands-by-rod-rosenstein-bombshell-this-wasnt-a-flippant-remark/
“NY Times Reporter Stands by Rod Rosenstein Bombshell: ‘This Wasn’t a Flippant Remark’”
“In the wake of reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein‘s comments about secretly recording President Donald Trump were made in jest, New York Times reporter Adam Goldman is defending his reporting.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, Goldman — one of the two reporters who wrote the Times bombshell — said as far as he was concerned, it was not a flippant remark.
“You know, my understanding of what happened is that this wasn’t a flippant remark,” Goldman said. “And he was, in fact, very serious. And the circumstances in which it was described to me are different now than what’s being put out I guess by the government.”
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No rush to judgement here though, where it actually matters right?
Good thing there’s no rushing to judgement by others.
Oh wait…….
https://news.grabien.com/story-democrats-we-already-know-know-kavanaugh-guilty-montage
https://caching.grabien.com/c/streams/0463/8OyudxEyNG6-_QOAr33ncw/1537625313/463345.mp4?key=8OyudxEyNG6-_QOAr33ncw
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You can’t make this stuff up. Is Trump Cult High Priest Sean Hannity a Traitor? Has Sean become a globalist Deep Stater? Has he read an 11th grade economics textbook and come over to our side?
Hannity warns Dear Leader not to fire Rosenstein!
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