“President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States has recovered Danny Burch, an American citizen who was being held hostage in Yemen for the last year and a half.
“It is my honor today to announce that Danny Burch, a United States citizen who has been held hostage in Yemen for 18 months, has been recovered and reunited with his wife and children,” Trump tweeted. “I appreciate the support of the United Arab Emirates in bringing Danny home. Danny’s recovery reflects the best of what the United States & its partners can accomplish.”
He continued, “We work every day to bring Americans home. We maintain constant and intensive diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation within the United States Government and with our foreign partners. Recovering American hostages is a priority of my Admin, and with Danny’s release, we have now secured freedom for 20 American captives since my election victory. We will not rest as we continue our work to bring the remaining American hostages back home!””
In fact, nothing at all to do with Trump. And a special counsel was unnecessary, it all could have been handled by the US Attorney’s office in the jurisdiction, as other such cases are.
“If the media and Democrats hoped to get a sense where Robert Mueller might be heading from the final required filing in the Paul Manafort case, they came up empty. Mueller ripped the man who briefly served as Donald Trump’s campaign manager as a “bold” career criminal and liar, but never mentions anything in the sentencing recommendation about the core special-counsel mission. In fact, the words “Trump,” “Russia,” “collusion,” and “intelligence” never once appear in the document — at least in the unredacted portion of it.
Politico’s Josh Gerstein noticed it too, although it’s not going to make Manafort any more comfortable. Mueller wants Judge Amy Berman Jackson to give him a sentence of as much as 22 years:
The latest submission from Mueller accuses Manafort of a bold, brazen and wide-ranging series of crimes carried out over decades and continuing while Manafort was managing the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, although prosecutors seemed to avoid mentioning the president directly in their new filing.
“Manafort chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law—whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” prosecutors wrote.
“His criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign chairman and, later, while he was on bail from this Court,” they added.
In fact, Mueller’s team said, “Given the breadth of Manafort’s criminal activity, the government has not located a comparable case with the unique array of crimes and aggravating factor.”
Mueller argues that Manafort “presents many aggravating sentencing factors and no warranted mitigating factors,” and the recap of the case against Manafort certainly supports that declaration. The filing accuses Manafort of lying to practically everyone — the FBI, the special counsel office, the grand jury, and even “his own legal counsel.” Manafort has no hard-luck story of childhood to mitigate a potential sentence, or at least Mueller claims, and the need for deterrence is so strong that it requires Manafort to get a prison term that would likely end up being a life sentence.”
But don’t worry, the Witch Hunt will continue regardless of the facts. The Democrat comrades in The House will make sure of it with their show trials. They’re already on it, conflicts be damned….
“The Trump Organization fired back at investigations into its business Monday, demanding a House panel end its probe because of ethical conflicts.
Separately, President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., accused federal prosecutors in a “Fox & Friends” interview of resorting to “Stalinist” tactics as they investigate the president’s inaugural committee and company.
The Trump Organization said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that a lawyer assisting its investigation, Barry Berke, has tainted the panel’s work because he is partner at a law firm that has represented the family company for more than a quarter of a century.
In his letter to the House panel, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Futerfas said hiring Berke, a partner at Kramer Levin in New York, violates “basic ethical precepts that govern the legal profession” and his help “irreparably taints the Committee’s work.””
————–
Tainted is the perfect word for this ridiculous charade.
“Smollett’s story had gaping holes in it from Day One.
Why couldn’t the cops recover any video footage of the attack despite a plethora of cameras working around the scene of the “crime?”
Who plans to mug someone in sub-sub zero temperature at 2 a.m.?
Why did Smollett ask the police to turn off their body cameras during the initial interrogation?
Just how many loud and proud MAGA-wearing souls live in hard-left Chicago?
Bleach freezes around 19 degrees Fahrenheit. How could it be liquid during the attack?
That’s just a partial list.
Still, most media outlets focused on the alleged attack over those critical questions. The narrative proved irresistible for our biased press. A gay black man assaulted by Trump supporters?
Stop the cyber presses!
Kyle Smith serves up a strong recap of their malfeasance at the New York Post.
The story seemed scientifically engineered for The Resistance TM. And, sadly, today’s reporters too often belong to that group.
Smollett insisted this weekend he didn’t stage the attack in question, even while lawyering up. It’s a perfect time to look back and see what we’ve learned from this news cycle.
The short version? It isn’t pretty. The longer one? It’s a seven-step process.
ONE: The Media Will Never, Ever Learn
The Smollett “attack” story came directly on the heels of the Covington kids news cycle. That’s where virtually every media outlet pounced on a selectively edited video rather than root out the truth. The mea culpas came slowly but surely in that case, but the damage was done. Reporters didn’t do their due diligence.
Again.
If said reporters couldn’t approach Smollett’s claims with the skepticism they deserved, it meant they hadn’t learned a thing from the Covington debacle.
TWO: Celebrities Won’t Apologize (And Here’s Why)
A gaggle of stars rushed to attack both President Donald Trump and his supporters following the alleged attack. Ellen Page lead the way, savaging the Trump administration for directly leading to the attack.
They were wrong. Will they apologize? Why on earth would they? No reporter will ask them to clarify their initial remarks. Their industry peers won’t expect an apology of any sort. There’s no incentive for them to say they’re sorry … so they won’t.”
“The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, which would have ensured that babies who survive abortions are given medical attention, failed to pass the U.S. Senate Monday evening.
The bill failed by a vote of 53 to 44. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would have mandated that babies born alive after an abortion would receive the “same protection of law as any newborn.” The bill required 60 votes to pass.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts voted against the bill. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also voted against the measure. Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described the bill as an obvious effort “to bully doctors out of giving reproductive care,” and voted against it.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Doug Jones of Alabama voted in favor of the bill.”
“Jackson gay rights leader accused of burning down own home”
“When the home of Nikki Joly burned down in 2017, killing five pets, the FBI investigated it as a hate crime.
After all, the transgender man and gay rights activist had received threats after having a banner year in this conservative town.
In the prior six months, he helped open the city’s first gay community center, organized the first gay festival and, after 18 years of failed attempts, helped lead a bruising battle for an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays.
For his efforts, a local paper named him the Citizen of the Year.
Authorities later determined the fire was intentionally set, but the person they arrested came as a shock to both supporters and opponents of the gay rights movement. It was the citizen of the year — Nikki Joly.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Travis Trombley, a gay resident who fought for the ordinance. “How do you do it to the community you have put so much effort into helping?”
Why Joly, 54, would allegedly burn down his home remains a mystery. He didn’t own the house, which was insured by its owner, police said.
His attorney said the lack of a motive cast doubt on the case.
Meanwhile, a police investigative report suggests a possible reason for the fire.
Two people who worked with Joly at St. Johns United Church of Christ, where the Jackson Pride Center was located, said he had been frustrated the controversy over gay rights had died down with the passage of the nondiscrimination law, according to the report.”
“Fake Hate, Fake Collusion: All in the Name of Destroying the Trump Presidency”
In more ways than one, hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollet is far from alone. He’s simply the latest in a long line of unhinged leftists with evil intent bent on destroying Donald Trump’s presidency. Be it fake hate or fake collusion, for nearly three years now, Donald Trump has been the target of an unprecedented campaign meant to end his candidacy and his presidency.
After the recent revelations of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, there should now be no doubt as to the existence of a nefarious “Deep State.” As revealed by McCabe himself in his soon to be published book, in May of 2017, angered by President Trump’s firing of his boss, then–FBI director James Comey, McCabe, and his like-minded cronies at the FBI and the Justice Department foolishly plotted as to how they might invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the duly elected president from office.
As former Clinton pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn recently put it:
Justice Department and FBI officials spied on U.S. citizens with false warrants, gave a pass to one presidential campaign with a predetermined investigation, investigated another political campaign on the basis of no verified evidence, and illegally leaked information on investigations. They discussed wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove President Trump, and appointed a special counsel as a retaliatory move for Comey’s firing.
The Manhattan Institute’s Roger Kimball is right: “this plot to destroy a presidency is the most serious political scandal in our history.” Kimball notes:
The FBI didn’t like the President, so they plotted to remove him from office. That is the irreducible minimum, class, that you should take away from this whole sordid lesson. Top figures in the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not approve of the President. Therefore, they took steps to destroy him. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, several times offered to wear a wire to entrap the President.
“The most serious political scandal in our history,” and, at best, most of the media yawn. At its worst, the left-wing media — the vast majority of print and TV media — aided and abetted this despicable, deceitful plot. The ever elusive Trump-Russia election collusion unicorn, like the always looming but never present global warming apocalypse, has led the left-wing media into dozens of significant falsehoods, which has led to thousands of fake media reports.”
Dems in the House will vote later today on a bill to block Trump’s emergency declaration. They prefer a lawless southern border, for well known reasons. Even if this show vote (there’s gonna be tons) makes it thru the Senate because of a couple of traitorous R’s, it still gets vetoed and they don’t have anywhere near the numbers to override that. It’ the very definition of a show vote.
And note that there will be no 60 vote threshold for this garbage either. But try to save some lives and they throw that hurdle up every time. Nuke ’em all. Simple majority, as intended. Just ask Harry Reid.
“Democrats are moving quickly to try to roll back President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to siphon billions of dollars from the military to fund construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Tuesday’s vote in the Democratic-controlled House comes on legislation to revoke Trump’s executive order from earlier this month and would send it to the Republican-held Senate, where it would take only a handful of GOP defections to pass it.
Trump is likely to prevail in the end since he could use his first-ever veto to kill the measure if it passes Congress, but the White House is seeking to minimize defections among the president’s GOP allies to avoid embarrassment.”
——————-
They lose here either way, it’s just obstruction at this point, as are the lawsuits, which Trump’ll also win, again, because the law is on his side.
CHICAGO — The first thing that caused newsman Rafer Weigel to blink when reading the TMZ report on “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett being brutally attacked by Trump-supporting, noose-wielding, racial-slurring assailants was the neighborhood in which the attack was reported to have happened.
The Streeterville neighborhood is not exactly “MAGA country” at any time, let alone 2 a.m.
“It is our job as reporters to be skeptical,” said Weigel, a local Fox affiliate news anchor and reporter who grew up in Chicago.
How skeptical?
“Well as the old adage goes, ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out,’ so from the get go, when we heard this about Smollett, there were eyebrows raised for a whole host of reasons, just because we know the city well,” he said. …
… Local news organizations were doing what local news organizations do best: staying in constant contact with the local police, local officials and the community, and pursing the past behavior of the victim to look for additional red flags before going in head first with a narrative.
A news organization’s relationship with the police, local officials and the community is critical, Weigel said, explaining that as a local news reporter, you often have to report on things that aren’t favorable to the community or a local official or the police force. “But because you build trust by being honest and not sensational, those relationships remain intact,” he said. …
… National news organizations, the ones with the most Twitter followers or influence on social media, cannot possibly work those kinds of relationships in a meaningful way. But many of them let the story stand without using “alleged” in their reporting, often retweeting celebrities, presidential candidates and influencers who personally condemn the attack, rather than prefacing the attack as an alleged attack.
That kind of omission, including any inference used in the delivery of a story, is damaging to our credibility as dispassionate deliverers of the news. …
… The most important lesson of this debacle is not that national news is bad but that local news matters at the very same time it is dying.
It is a death that does no one good, certainly not the cities and towns and municipalities that need someone holding their water authorities, school boards, police officers, mayors and city councils in check. …
… We need more reporters like the ones I used to work with in Pittsburgh. But there is no quick fix, or perhaps any fix, to this crisis. Technology has changed the media industry.
Like any industry changed by automation, the horse is out of the barn.
I have never understood this “60 vote requirement”. I know that it takes 60 votes to close filibuster. But I say, let them talk as long as they want, then vote. I think Strom Thurmond spoke almost a full day. They still passed the no segregation legislation.
Let them talk, I say.
“The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly instructed the FBI to ignore “gross negligence” as a reason for charging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server to conduct classified government business.
The direction might have enabled the DOJ to ensure a favorable outcome for the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email, the Epoch Times reported Monday regarding private testimony it says it has obtained.
Private congressional testimony discussed an email reportedly sent from a nameless individual in the FBI general counsel’s office to Bill Priestap, the bureau’s assistant director of counterintelligence. The correspondence dictated the “available statutes for prosecuting the former Secretary of State,” and these did not include “gross negligence,” according to the Epoch Times.
Ryan Breitenbach, who was then the House majority counsel, expressed bewilderment that gross negligence was not included in the reasons for charging Clinton while the same criterion was utilized to issue a search warrant to gather information in the Clinton investigation.”
—————
“WSJ: Man Convicted Of Lying To Congress To Tell House Committee That Trump Is A Liar And Cheat, Or Something”
“Guess who’s coming to Washington — again? Michael Cohen has finally managed to squeeze an appearance at the House Oversight Committee into his busy schedule tomorrow, a schedule which has been complicated by a pending three-year federal prison sentence. Cohen earned that from his previous Congressional appearance, but Cohen wants to atone for his earlier sins by dishing out the dirt on his former client, Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Cohen has a prodigious amount of dirt to dish, too:
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, will for the first time publicly accuse the president of criminal conduct while in office related to a hush-money payment to a porn star, a person familiar with his planned testimony before Congress said.
Appearing on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, Mr. Cohen also will make public some of Mr. Trump’s private financial statements and allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes, the person said. The financial statements were developed by Mr. Trump’s accountant, the person said. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t seen those statements.
Mr. Cohen’s testimony is expected to focus on his “behind-the-scenes” accounts of working for Mr. Trump for over a decade, a period during which Mr. Cohen will say he witnessed “lies, racism and cheating” by Mr. Trump, the person said.
Mr. Cohen is expected to recount racist remarks Mr. Trump allegedly made to him, including instances in which Mr. Trump allegedly questioned the intelligence of African-Americans and criticized their lifestyle choices, the person said.”
——————
This circus isn’t designed to get to new facts and info. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s designed to hide inconvenient facts.
“Former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is scheduled to appear before three congressional committees this week before he heads to jail to serve a sentence for tax evasion and lying to Congress. On Tuesday, Cohen will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. On Wednesday, he will go before the House Oversight Committee. And on Thursday, he will testify before the House Intelligence Committee.
It would be a great service if the Cohen appearances helped increase the store of public information on the Trump-Russia furor. But even though Cohen is a key figure in the matter — his name is mentioned 24 times in the so-called Trump dossier — the hearings appear designed to prevent the public from learning anything new about the Russia matter.
First, two of the three hearings will be held in secret; both the Senate and House Intelligence committees plan to question Cohen behind closed doors. Those are the hearings that will delve into Russia. The hearing that is public, before House Oversight, is specifically structured not to touch on the Russia matter.
There is good reason for all the questioning to be public. Cohen is not a government official and has no classified information to share. His 24 mentions in the dossier have been publicly available for two years. His conviction on lying to Congress — specifically, his falsehood about the timing of Trump Tower Moscow discussions — is also public. His own case is over and done with, and he will soon be behind bars.
Furthermore, Cohen has already answered questions from the House Intelligence Committee, and all members, Democrat and Republican, voted to make those answers public. “There’s no reason to prevent him from testifying publicly since he previously spoke to us in an unclassified setting, and the Democrats supported our motion in the last Congress to publish our interview transcripts,” said Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a former chairman of the committee. (The Cohen transcript has still not been publicly released; GOP lawmakers say the intelligence community is dragging its feet on a routine pre-release review.)”
AOC Declares Herself ‘The Boss’ Thanks To Climate Change. This Is Wrong, Stupid, And Dangerous.
________________________________
“Like I just introduced the Green New Deal two weeks ago, and it’s creating all of this conversation. Why? Because no one else has even tried. Because no one else has even tried. So people are like, ‘Oh it’s unrealistic. Oh it’s vague. Oh it doesn’t address this little minute thing,'” she added. “And I’m like, ‘You try. You do it. Cuz you’re not. Cuz you’re not. So, until you do it, I’m the boss.’ How about that?”
The sheer intellectual firepower is nearly overwhelming.
____________________________________
Wandering Views 
First up, some good news……
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/donald-trump-daniel-burch-yemen-hostage/index.html
“President Donald Trump announced Monday that the United States has recovered Danny Burch, an American citizen who was being held hostage in Yemen for the last year and a half.
“It is my honor today to announce that Danny Burch, a United States citizen who has been held hostage in Yemen for 18 months, has been recovered and reunited with his wife and children,” Trump tweeted. “I appreciate the support of the United Arab Emirates in bringing Danny home. Danny’s recovery reflects the best of what the United States & its partners can accomplish.”
He continued, “We work every day to bring Americans home. We maintain constant and intensive diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation within the United States Government and with our foreign partners. Recovering American hostages is a priority of my Admin, and with Danny’s release, we have now secured freedom for 20 American captives since my election victory. We will not rest as we continue our work to bring the remaining American hostages back home!””
LikeLiked by 5 people
Still. No. Collusion.
In fact, nothing at all to do with Trump. And a special counsel was unnecessary, it all could have been handled by the US Attorney’s office in the jurisdiction, as other such cases are.
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/02/24/muellers-final-word-manafort-no-open-mention-trump-russia-collusion/
“If the media and Democrats hoped to get a sense where Robert Mueller might be heading from the final required filing in the Paul Manafort case, they came up empty. Mueller ripped the man who briefly served as Donald Trump’s campaign manager as a “bold” career criminal and liar, but never mentions anything in the sentencing recommendation about the core special-counsel mission. In fact, the words “Trump,” “Russia,” “collusion,” and “intelligence” never once appear in the document — at least in the unredacted portion of it.
Politico’s Josh Gerstein noticed it too, although it’s not going to make Manafort any more comfortable. Mueller wants Judge Amy Berman Jackson to give him a sentence of as much as 22 years:
The latest submission from Mueller accuses Manafort of a bold, brazen and wide-ranging series of crimes carried out over decades and continuing while Manafort was managing the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, although prosecutors seemed to avoid mentioning the president directly in their new filing.
“Manafort chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law—whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” prosecutors wrote.
“His criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign chairman and, later, while he was on bail from this Court,” they added.
In fact, Mueller’s team said, “Given the breadth of Manafort’s criminal activity, the government has not located a comparable case with the unique array of crimes and aggravating factor.”
Mueller argues that Manafort “presents many aggravating sentencing factors and no warranted mitigating factors,” and the recap of the case against Manafort certainly supports that declaration. The filing accuses Manafort of lying to practically everyone — the FBI, the special counsel office, the grand jury, and even “his own legal counsel.” Manafort has no hard-luck story of childhood to mitigate a potential sentence, or at least Mueller claims, and the need for deterrence is so strong that it requires Manafort to get a prison term that would likely end up being a life sentence.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
But don’t worry, the Witch Hunt will continue regardless of the facts. The Democrat comrades in The House will make sure of it with their show trials. They’re already on it, conflicts be damned….
https://apnews.com/a0912533d1cc439185273d84ac5ad4b4
“The Trump Organization fired back at investigations into its business Monday, demanding a House panel end its probe because of ethical conflicts.
Separately, President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., accused federal prosecutors in a “Fox & Friends” interview of resorting to “Stalinist” tactics as they investigate the president’s inaugural committee and company.
The Trump Organization said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that a lawyer assisting its investigation, Barry Berke, has tainted the panel’s work because he is partner at a law firm that has represented the family company for more than a quarter of a century.
In his letter to the House panel, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Futerfas said hiring Berke, a partner at Kramer Levin in New York, violates “basic ethical precepts that govern the legal profession” and his help “irreparably taints the Committee’s work.””
————–
Tainted is the perfect word for this ridiculous charade.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Seven ugly lessons.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/christian-toto/2019/02/23/seven-ugly-lessons-jussie-smollett-debacle
“Smollett’s story had gaping holes in it from Day One.
Why couldn’t the cops recover any video footage of the attack despite a plethora of cameras working around the scene of the “crime?”
Who plans to mug someone in sub-sub zero temperature at 2 a.m.?
Why did Smollett ask the police to turn off their body cameras during the initial interrogation?
Just how many loud and proud MAGA-wearing souls live in hard-left Chicago?
Bleach freezes around 19 degrees Fahrenheit. How could it be liquid during the attack?
That’s just a partial list.
Still, most media outlets focused on the alleged attack over those critical questions. The narrative proved irresistible for our biased press. A gay black man assaulted by Trump supporters?
Stop the cyber presses!
Kyle Smith serves up a strong recap of their malfeasance at the New York Post.
The story seemed scientifically engineered for The Resistance TM. And, sadly, today’s reporters too often belong to that group.
Smollett insisted this weekend he didn’t stage the attack in question, even while lawyering up. It’s a perfect time to look back and see what we’ve learned from this news cycle.
The short version? It isn’t pretty. The longer one? It’s a seven-step process.
ONE: The Media Will Never, Ever Learn
The Smollett “attack” story came directly on the heels of the Covington kids news cycle. That’s where virtually every media outlet pounced on a selectively edited video rather than root out the truth. The mea culpas came slowly but surely in that case, but the damage was done. Reporters didn’t do their due diligence.
Again.
If said reporters couldn’t approach Smollett’s claims with the skepticism they deserved, it meant they hadn’t learned a thing from the Covington debacle.
TWO: Celebrities Won’t Apologize (And Here’s Why)
A gaggle of stars rushed to attack both President Donald Trump and his supporters following the alleged attack. Ellen Page lead the way, savaging the Trump administration for directly leading to the attack.
They were wrong. Will they apologize? Why on earth would they? No reporter will ask them to clarify their initial remarks. Their industry peers won’t expect an apology of any sort. There’s no incentive for them to say they’re sorry … so they won’t.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
More on something NancyJill mentioned last night.
Evil. Democrats and their love of abortion.
And the 60 vote threshold is BS. A simple majority should suffice, but R’s don’t have the stones for the nuke option. Cowards.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/25/senate-born-alive-act-abortion/
“The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, which would have ensured that babies who survive abortions are given medical attention, failed to pass the U.S. Senate Monday evening.
The bill failed by a vote of 53 to 44. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would have mandated that babies born alive after an abortion would receive the “same protection of law as any newborn.” The bill required 60 votes to pass.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts voted against the bill. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also voted against the measure. Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth described the bill as an obvious effort “to bully doctors out of giving reproductive care,” and voted against it.
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Doug Jones of Alabama voted in favor of the bill.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Another hoax hate crime.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/02/25/gay-rights-leader-accused-burning-down-home/2816523002/
“Jackson gay rights leader accused of burning down own home”
“When the home of Nikki Joly burned down in 2017, killing five pets, the FBI investigated it as a hate crime.
After all, the transgender man and gay rights activist had received threats after having a banner year in this conservative town.
In the prior six months, he helped open the city’s first gay community center, organized the first gay festival and, after 18 years of failed attempts, helped lead a bruising battle for an ordinance that prohibits discrimination against gays.
For his efforts, a local paper named him the Citizen of the Year.
Authorities later determined the fire was intentionally set, but the person they arrested came as a shock to both supporters and opponents of the gay rights movement. It was the citizen of the year — Nikki Joly.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Travis Trombley, a gay resident who fought for the ordinance. “How do you do it to the community you have put so much effort into helping?”
Why Joly, 54, would allegedly burn down his home remains a mystery. He didn’t own the house, which was insured by its owner, police said.
His attorney said the lack of a motive cast doubt on the case.
Meanwhile, a police investigative report suggests a possible reason for the fire.
Two people who worked with Joly at St. Johns United Church of Christ, where the Jackson Pride Center was located, said he had been frustrated the controversy over gay rights had died down with the passage of the nondiscrimination law, according to the report.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Shhhhhhhh….
Be berry, berry qwiet……..
We’re hunting
wabbitswitches…..https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/fake_hate_fake_collusion_all_in_the_name_of_destroying_the_trump_presidency.html
“Fake Hate, Fake Collusion: All in the Name of Destroying the Trump Presidency”
In more ways than one, hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollet is far from alone. He’s simply the latest in a long line of unhinged leftists with evil intent bent on destroying Donald Trump’s presidency. Be it fake hate or fake collusion, for nearly three years now, Donald Trump has been the target of an unprecedented campaign meant to end his candidacy and his presidency.
After the recent revelations of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, there should now be no doubt as to the existence of a nefarious “Deep State.” As revealed by McCabe himself in his soon to be published book, in May of 2017, angered by President Trump’s firing of his boss, then–FBI director James Comey, McCabe, and his like-minded cronies at the FBI and the Justice Department foolishly plotted as to how they might invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the duly elected president from office.
As former Clinton pollster and chief strategist Mark Penn recently put it:
Justice Department and FBI officials spied on U.S. citizens with false warrants, gave a pass to one presidential campaign with a predetermined investigation, investigated another political campaign on the basis of no verified evidence, and illegally leaked information on investigations. They discussed wiretapping and using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove President Trump, and appointed a special counsel as a retaliatory move for Comey’s firing.
The Manhattan Institute’s Roger Kimball is right: “this plot to destroy a presidency is the most serious political scandal in our history.” Kimball notes:
The FBI didn’t like the President, so they plotted to remove him from office. That is the irreducible minimum, class, that you should take away from this whole sordid lesson. Top figures in the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not approve of the President. Therefore, they took steps to destroy him. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, several times offered to wear a wire to entrap the President.
“The most serious political scandal in our history,” and, at best, most of the media yawn. At its worst, the left-wing media — the vast majority of print and TV media — aided and abetted this despicable, deceitful plot. The ever elusive Trump-Russia election collusion unicorn, like the always looming but never present global warming apocalypse, has led the left-wing media into dozens of significant falsehoods, which has led to thousands of fake media reports.”
LikeLike
Ocasio-Cortez says there is a ‘legitimate question’ that needs to be asked: ‘Is it okay to still have children?
This time I agree with Cortez. People of her mindset should not have children.
😆
LikeLiked by 3 people
Dems in the House will vote later today on a bill to block Trump’s emergency declaration. They prefer a lawless southern border, for well known reasons. Even if this show vote (there’s gonna be tons) makes it thru the Senate because of a couple of traitorous R’s, it still gets vetoed and they don’t have anywhere near the numbers to override that. It’ the very definition of a show vote.
And note that there will be no 60 vote threshold for this garbage either. But try to save some lives and they throw that hurdle up every time. Nuke ’em all. Simple majority, as intended. Just ask Harry Reid.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-to-vote-on-measure-revoking-trumps-emergency-order/ar-BBU5mev?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
“Democrats are moving quickly to try to roll back President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to siphon billions of dollars from the military to fund construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Tuesday’s vote in the Democratic-controlled House comes on legislation to revoke Trump’s executive order from earlier this month and would send it to the Republican-held Senate, where it would take only a handful of GOP defections to pass it.
Trump is likely to prevail in the end since he could use his first-ever veto to kill the measure if it passes Congress, but the White House is seeking to minimize defections among the president’s GOP allies to avoid embarrassment.”
——————-
They lose here either way, it’s just obstruction at this point, as are the lawsuits, which Trump’ll also win, again, because the law is on his side.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ah, but let’s not forget the media that got it right and why local news matters.
While National Media Carried Water for Jussie Smollett, Local Media Did It Right
https://townhall.com/columnists/salenazito/2019/02/26/while-national-media-carried-water-for-jussie-smollett-local-media-did-it-right-n2542193
________________________________
CHICAGO — The first thing that caused newsman Rafer Weigel to blink when reading the TMZ report on “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett being brutally attacked by Trump-supporting, noose-wielding, racial-slurring assailants was the neighborhood in which the attack was reported to have happened.
The Streeterville neighborhood is not exactly “MAGA country” at any time, let alone 2 a.m.
“It is our job as reporters to be skeptical,” said Weigel, a local Fox affiliate news anchor and reporter who grew up in Chicago.
How skeptical?
“Well as the old adage goes, ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out,’ so from the get go, when we heard this about Smollett, there were eyebrows raised for a whole host of reasons, just because we know the city well,” he said. …
… Local news organizations were doing what local news organizations do best: staying in constant contact with the local police, local officials and the community, and pursing the past behavior of the victim to look for additional red flags before going in head first with a narrative.
A news organization’s relationship with the police, local officials and the community is critical, Weigel said, explaining that as a local news reporter, you often have to report on things that aren’t favorable to the community or a local official or the police force. “But because you build trust by being honest and not sensational, those relationships remain intact,” he said. …
… National news organizations, the ones with the most Twitter followers or influence on social media, cannot possibly work those kinds of relationships in a meaningful way. But many of them let the story stand without using “alleged” in their reporting, often retweeting celebrities, presidential candidates and influencers who personally condemn the attack, rather than prefacing the attack as an alleged attack.
That kind of omission, including any inference used in the delivery of a story, is damaging to our credibility as dispassionate deliverers of the news. …
… The most important lesson of this debacle is not that national news is bad but that local news matters at the very same time it is dying.
It is a death that does no one good, certainly not the cities and towns and municipalities that need someone holding their water authorities, school boards, police officers, mayors and city councils in check. …
… We need more reporters like the ones I used to work with in Pittsburgh. But there is no quick fix, or perhaps any fix, to this crisis. Technology has changed the media industry.
Like any industry changed by automation, the horse is out of the barn.
_______________________________________
LikeLiked by 4 people
I have never understood this “60 vote requirement”. I know that it takes 60 votes to close filibuster. But I say, let them talk as long as they want, then vote. I think Strom Thurmond spoke almost a full day. They still passed the no segregation legislation.
Let them talk, I say.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So when deciding if a crime was committed, they were told to ignore the most obvious and easily provable?
Nope. Not interference here…..
https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/26/report-doj-fbi-clinton-classified-emails-negligence/
“The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly instructed the FBI to ignore “gross negligence” as a reason for charging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server to conduct classified government business.
The direction might have enabled the DOJ to ensure a favorable outcome for the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email, the Epoch Times reported Monday regarding private testimony it says it has obtained.
Private congressional testimony discussed an email reportedly sent from a nameless individual in the FBI general counsel’s office to Bill Priestap, the bureau’s assistant director of counterintelligence. The correspondence dictated the “available statutes for prosecuting the former Secretary of State,” and these did not include “gross negligence,” according to the Epoch Times.
Ryan Breitenbach, who was then the House majority counsel, expressed bewilderment that gross negligence was not included in the reasons for charging Clinton while the same criterion was utilized to issue a search warrant to gather information in the Clinton investigation.”
—————
Funny that….. 🙄
LikeLike
Send in the clowns…..
If all of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s old, rehashed news.
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/02/26/wsj-cohen-tell-house-committee-trump-lying-cheating-racist-behind-scenes/
“WSJ: Man Convicted Of Lying To Congress To Tell House Committee That Trump Is A Liar And Cheat, Or Something”
“Guess who’s coming to Washington — again? Michael Cohen has finally managed to squeeze an appearance at the House Oversight Committee into his busy schedule tomorrow, a schedule which has been complicated by a pending three-year federal prison sentence. Cohen earned that from his previous Congressional appearance, but Cohen wants to atone for his earlier sins by dishing out the dirt on his former client, Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Cohen has a prodigious amount of dirt to dish, too:
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, will for the first time publicly accuse the president of criminal conduct while in office related to a hush-money payment to a porn star, a person familiar with his planned testimony before Congress said.
Appearing on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, Mr. Cohen also will make public some of Mr. Trump’s private financial statements and allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes, the person said. The financial statements were developed by Mr. Trump’s accountant, the person said. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t seen those statements.
Mr. Cohen’s testimony is expected to focus on his “behind-the-scenes” accounts of working for Mr. Trump for over a decade, a period during which Mr. Cohen will say he witnessed “lies, racism and cheating” by Mr. Trump, the person said.
Mr. Cohen is expected to recount racist remarks Mr. Trump allegedly made to him, including instances in which Mr. Trump allegedly questioned the intelligence of African-Americans and criticized their lifestyle choices, the person said.”
——————
This circus isn’t designed to get to new facts and info. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s designed to hide inconvenient facts.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-cohen-hearings-designed-to-keep-public-in-dark-about-russia
“Former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is scheduled to appear before three congressional committees this week before he heads to jail to serve a sentence for tax evasion and lying to Congress. On Tuesday, Cohen will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. On Wednesday, he will go before the House Oversight Committee. And on Thursday, he will testify before the House Intelligence Committee.
It would be a great service if the Cohen appearances helped increase the store of public information on the Trump-Russia furor. But even though Cohen is a key figure in the matter — his name is mentioned 24 times in the so-called Trump dossier — the hearings appear designed to prevent the public from learning anything new about the Russia matter.
First, two of the three hearings will be held in secret; both the Senate and House Intelligence committees plan to question Cohen behind closed doors. Those are the hearings that will delve into Russia. The hearing that is public, before House Oversight, is specifically structured not to touch on the Russia matter.
There is good reason for all the questioning to be public. Cohen is not a government official and has no classified information to share. His 24 mentions in the dossier have been publicly available for two years. His conviction on lying to Congress — specifically, his falsehood about the timing of Trump Tower Moscow discussions — is also public. His own case is over and done with, and he will soon be behind bars.
Furthermore, Cohen has already answered questions from the House Intelligence Committee, and all members, Democrat and Republican, voted to make those answers public. “There’s no reason to prevent him from testifying publicly since he previously spoke to us in an unclassified setting, and the Democrats supported our motion in the last Congress to publish our interview transcripts,” said Intelligence Committee ranking Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a former chairman of the committee. (The Cohen transcript has still not been publicly released; GOP lawmakers say the intelligence community is dragging its feet on a routine pre-release review.)”
LikeLike
Ain’t diversity the best?
https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/25/ncaa-transgender-franklin-pierce/
“BIOLOGICAL MALE IS TOP-RANKED NCAA WOMEN’S TRACK STAR”
“One of the fastest sprinters in NCAA women’s track is a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman.
Franklin Pierce University runner CeCe Telfer competed on the men’s track team in early 2018 before switching to the women’s team.
Telfer has dominated the NCAA Division II competition and led the women’s team into the top 25 for the first time ever.
A top-ranked runner in NCAA women’s track is dominating the competition and setting records one year after competing as a man at the same level.”
LikeLike
AOC is turning into a real gift for the Republicans.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/43922/aoc-declares-herself-boss-thanks-climate-change-ben-shapiro
AOC Declares Herself ‘The Boss’ Thanks To Climate Change. This Is Wrong, Stupid, And Dangerous.
________________________________
“Like I just introduced the Green New Deal two weeks ago, and it’s creating all of this conversation. Why? Because no one else has even tried. Because no one else has even tried. So people are like, ‘Oh it’s unrealistic. Oh it’s vague. Oh it doesn’t address this little minute thing,'” she added. “And I’m like, ‘You try. You do it. Cuz you’re not. Cuz you’re not. So, until you do it, I’m the boss.’ How about that?”
The sheer intellectual firepower is nearly overwhelming.
____________________________________
LikeLiked by 4 people
what is *wrong* with that girl???
LikeLike