“Attorneys for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign lawyer filed a motion Thursday to dismiss special counsel John Durham’s case against him, calling the matter “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach.”
The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, was charged last year in Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation after he was accused of lying to an FBI agent when he told the bureau he wasn’t advising Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In the motion to dismiss, Sussmann’s legal team said he did not make false statements to the FBI — and argued that prosecutors were pursuing him on a technicality.
His lawyers argued that Sussmann voluntarily met with FBI agents in September 2016 to “pass along information that raised national security concerns.”
Sussmann had raised concerns with the FBI about purported ties between the Trump Organization and Moscow’s Alfa-Bank. Further review suggested the supposed digital fingerprints were likely the result of junk email.”
———-
Junk, like the Clintons, who just refuse to ever take responsibility for their many crimes.
“TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It’s fair to say that Quintez Brown is not your average white supremacist. For one thing, he is black. He’s also a BLM activist who was singled out for praise by no less than Barack Obama’s personal foundation. Until recently, Quintez Brown was a progressive columnist for the very progressive newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky.
As such, he argued very passionately for gun control: “Every time voters vote against gun safety and thus the lives of our most vulnerable, they show their hearts can be as cold as the steel of the guns they praise.”
Now, we can’t assess the temperature of Quintez Brown’s hearth but we can say he wasn’t very good at gun safety. On Monday, Quintez Brown walked into the campaign office of a man running for mayor of Louisville, pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol, and started firing wildly. A bullet grazed the candidate’s sweater. Thankfully, he was not hurt. So that’s the story. What is the headline here?
‘Gun safety educator fails test?’
‘Gun grabber grabs gun and shoots?’
‘Common sense gun reform for thee, but for me?’
Editors at the Las Vegas Sun newspaper got the picture, it’s hard not to get the picture, but they decided to lie about it. In the most grotesque way. Las Vegas is almost 2,000 miles away from Louisville. They probably figured their readers would not know the difference, they can say anything.
So here is the first line of the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial on the Quintez Brown shooting. “A terrifying incident in Louisville, Kentuck, this week revealed the dangers of the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.” Okay, so when Barack Obama’s favorited BLM-affiliated gun activists tries to assassinate someone, you are looking to prov that conservatives are dangerous. “While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations,” the paper conceded generously since Brown had already been identified as a progressive activist when this editorial ran in the paper.
“The shooting comes amid a rise at threats to politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.” So it was extremist Republicans, not that Quintez Brown technically is an extremist Republican, but extremist Republicans exist, the paper wants you to know. So as long as there is a shooting while there are extremist Republicans afoot it’s the fault of extremist Republicans.”
“If it wasn’t obvious before, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that science has become thoroughly politicized. Though normally focused on observable and verifiable causes and effects in the natural world, many scientists, especially government employed ones, have taken on a political role and have shaped scientific findings in the service of those political ends. The truth eventually came out, but at a massive cost to people’s mental health, finances and trust. President Dwight Eisenhower foresaw this abuse by government scientists, and he shows us the way out.
Public health officials initially insisted on the wet-market origin story for the novel coronavirus, but the lab-leak theory has become just as plausible. Cloth masks once deemed essential are now labeled “facial decorations.” Schools have opened without becoming super spreaders. A John Hopkins University study recently concluded that lockdowns had a minuscule impact on virus morbidity.
With all of these issues, some of the federal government’s top scientists made a concerted effort to stifle debate. Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, requested a “devastating takedown” of those who disagreed with his insistence on lockdowns, referring to dissenting scholars from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford as “fringe.” He and other public health officials selectively ignored real data. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to the president, declared that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”
Collins’ approach and Fauci’s sentiment are exactly what President Eisenhower warned the American public about in his Farewell Address. He advised vigilance against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” These “task forces of scientists,” Eisenhower cautioned, would lead to the “domination of the nation’s scholars.”
One reason that so few infectious disease scientists disagreed with Fauci is quite simple: the power of money. America offers around $5 billion per year to support infectious disease research, and almost all of it runs through the agency led by Collins and Fauci. Any infectious disease researcher would therefore be disinclined to run afoul of Dr. Fauci, as future grant funding or professional advancement may depend on the director’s approval. Grants like those from NIAID give the project a stamp of legitimacy and open the door to other supporters. This system offers Fauci monopoly-like power over infectious disease research.
Research scientists then toe the line, or at least remain silent. This creates the appearance of unanimous agreement as, in Eisenhower’s words, “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
It is hard to prove intentional silence. But there are signs. When mask mandates were first introduced, for example, numerous virologists should have pointed to published RCT studies that cast doubt on masks’ effectiveness in preventing transmission of airborne viruses. One May 2020 CDC paper “did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”
Likewise, the World Health Organization’s 2019 program for an influenza pandemic does not recommend facemask use for the non-symptomatic or uninfected, and only recommends business and school closures in the most severe circumstances, even while acknowledging that these measures lack good evidence of effectiveness. This too was missing from COVID policy discussions.
Ike correctly assessed that “the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop” is no longer the driving force behind scientific and technological progress. Research has become more “formalized, complex and costly.” A 21st-century Benjamin Franklin can no longer purchase the expensive equipment or devote the time needed to make world-changing inventions or discoveries. Therefore, an “increasing share [of research] is conducted for, by or at the direction of the federal government.”
But it is still possible to steer clear of the dangers of politicized bias in science by maintaining the core of scientific inquiry: “intellectual curiosity.” Intellectual curiosity is what enables us to figure out the truth of the reality that confronts us.
A pivot towards government research grants need not remove “the solitary inventor” from the picture. Those inventors may not be able to conduct the research on their own, but they can surely analyze the data. Government funded scientific data should always be open for scrutiny, because transparency enables the curious to understand the truth for themselves. Time and again, public officials attempted to force consensus over COVID. Government funded research that encourages competition and debate, rather than uniformity of thought, can help us figure out the truth.
But Ike proposed a second, more important principle. To avoid the “domination of the nation’s scholars” he declared that “it is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” Scientists can tell us their best understanding of reality and its consequences, like the dangers of a new virus. But multifaceted decisions that affect people in different ways, such as closing schools or businesses, are not questions of science but judgements about the best way to navigate reality. That is the role of politicians elected by the people.”
The NBA continues to enable communists and turn a blind eye to their atrocities.
Speak out, get blackballed.
This is outrageous. Enes Kanter Freedom, the only NBA player brave enough to speak out against China’s human rights atrocities gets traded from the Celtics to the Rockets and then immediately waived (ie fired). A disastrous precedent. https://t.co/QiV9UfX7eV
Former Kentucky Wildcat @EnesFreedom is a champion for human rights & freedom. He is still at the top of his game. Now, the @NBA is disgracefully punishing him for his criticism of the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party. #DoTheRightThinghttps://t.co/Y8ylDfcDnr
The world can use more athletes like @EnesFreedom willing to use their platform to advance human rights. He left an oppressive country only to be canceled by the @NBA here in America for exercising his freedom of speech against the Chinese Communist Party.
More on the BLM terrorist Tucker mentioned above. He’s the attempted murderer who got bail even though Jan 6th paraders are locked up without bail that I mentioned yesterday.
Connect the dots and follow the money.
On the 2019 990, they reported giving $227,000 to Assata’s Daughters.
They gave $29,000 to @huwaidaarraf’s outfit “New Generation Palestine”, the Detroit Democrat running for Congress who called for an internationally backed Palestinian intifada pic.twitter.com/dAe3VCeDw0
Unbelievable. The cornerstone of classical liberalism is that the individual comes before the state. The fact that dissent is being crushed as it is here is egregious. This is statism. And history has shown us how this ends for the electorate.
“There is a word for secretly collecting information about enemies or competitors to use against them.
According to the latest court filing by Special Counsel John Durham, the Hillary Clinton campaign surreptitiously and likely illegally reached into protected White House and Trump communications data to try and show some link between Trump and Russia. The Clinton campaign during the election hid from FBI, CIA and the media that it was the source of the information gathered. Durham doesn’t use the word “spy,” but that in no way changes what happened.
The recent filing relates to Durham’s September indictment of Michael Sussmann, an attorney who represented the Clinton campaign while at the Perkins Coie law firm. Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI at a September 2016 meeting when he presented documents claiming to show internet communications between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank. The indictment says Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was presenting this information as a good citizen, purposely hiding his ties to Clinton. The allegations about the bank were false.
The new filing is at its heart legal housekeeping, asking that a waiver be considered to allow Sussmann to retain his current law firm. A potential conflict of interest exists because Sussmann’s representative works for a law firm which also represents others Durham may be going after, and may have been involved in the larger events under investigation, perhaps as witnesses. While that is interesting in itself, what is newsworthy are broader details of what really happened around Russiagate that potentially point to crimes on a Watergate scale.
The filing says tech company Neustar executive Rodney Joffe (who was also a law client of Michael Sussmann) worked with the indicted Clinton campaign lawyer to access “dedicated servers for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).” Joffe then “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”
Joffe also “enlisted the assistance of researchers at a US-based university” (likely Georgia Tech) who had access to “large amounts of internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.” This would have been how Joffe got access to data from Trump’s private computers. “[Joffe] tasked these researchers to mine internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” he added. “In doing so, [Joffe] indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign.”
Some nerd stuff. Remember metadata, the info about a communication Edward Snowden showed us the NSA gathers? This is like that. Metadata shows, among other things, when and where a communication started, and where it ended up. DNS data, a kind of metadata, comes from a Dynamic Name Server. When you use a smartphone or type http://www.spectatorworld.com into your browser, it contacts a DNS server, which translates those English words into the numbers the internet actually runs on.
DNS is like a phone lookup; you want to speak with Mom, who the phone knows only as 212-555-1212. Same thing for email, TikTok, anything online. If you have access to DNS data, such as Joffe did, you know who the White House and Trump were communicating with. DNS data is a road map and if you have enough of it, patterns, such as perhaps regular communication with Russia, emerge. That’s why the NSA does the same thing against its enemies or competitors.
The Clinton people got access to all this information via a private contractor, Joffe’s Neustar, which provided the actual DNS servers to the White House. Durham wrote, starting in July 2016, that Joffe’s company “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.” In quid pro quo, and despite a fraud-laden past, Joffe was offered a top cybersecurity job in the future Clinton administration.
The data gathering on the Trump campaign began while Obama was still in office (and the EOP portion could have been to establish a baseline of “normal” White House-Russia communications) and continued into February 2017, after Trump took office and all attention turned to impeachment. Having failed to stop his campaign, the data was lined up to aid in driving him out of the White House.
But no one stole or hacked the data, right? Not so fast. Contractors working on sensitive data systems do not own the data they see. Their scope of usage is very specific to the job they were hired to do. It does not include exploiting high-security government contracts for political purposes and personal gain. Sort of like your doctor, who knows your medical information but cannot just share it with his brother who sells life insurance.
Indictments by Durham against Joffe are sure to be coming. It is also curious that FBI and CIA did not question where Sussmann got his data, given that it could have only come from White House servers. In addition, if researchers at Georgia Tech who were being paid by the US government via a DARPA grant were freelancing the data they collected to help the Clinton campaign smear Trump, that would be another area Durham will be looking into.”
———
“So call it what you will — spying, hacking, infiltrating, a rebut to “but her emails” — but here is what it is: Durham asserts Neustar, on behalf of the Clinton campaign, gathered data likely illegally and certainly surreptitiously from White House and Trump computers, seeking a connection to Russia. Lawyer Michael Sussmann, hiding his connection to Clinton and Joffe, brought false conclusions drawn from this data to FBI and CIA (and perhaps the DOJ inspector general) in hopes they would turn their enormous resources toward investigating Trump. The con worked with the FBI.
This would mean Hillary and her lawyers masterminded a coordinated electronic conspiracy against Trump when he was a candidate and later president, while simultaneously perpetuating the dossier hoax. As with the dossier, everything Clinton peddled was fake. There was no pee tape, no payoffs from Putin, no connection to Alfa Bank and no Russian-made smartphones.
But this is not a fake scandal. Durham has potentially uncovered the most destructive political assassination attempt since Kennedy.”
“Special counsel John Durham destroyed the last shreds of Mr. Steele’s credibility last year, proving that the paid-for-hire spook had relied on fabrications for the infamous dossier the Federal Bureau of Investigation used in its Trump probe. The special counsel is now dismantling that other big claim of Trump-Russia “collusion”—the Alfa Bank narrative. The wonder is that the press and others are stepping up for another humiliation—when the disturbing actions of the creators of the Alfa narrative are already so easy to document, and in their own words.
The Alfa story came to life in October 2016, when Franklin Foer of Slate was gulled into writing that a largely anonymous “benevolent posse” of “computer scientists,” “spurred by a sense of shared idealism,” had discovered data showing secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank. Cybersecurity professionals instantly ridiculed the data as nonsense, and the FBI dismissed it, but the liberal media kept it alive. In October 2018, the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins devoted a 7,600-word panegyric to the “self-appointed guardians of the Internet” who continued to flog the claims.
In recent court filings, Mr. Durham explains that these tech experts—including Rodney Joffe, formerly of Neustar, Inc.—were in cahoots with the same crew as Mr. Steele, using the same playbook. They worked with Democratic lawyers at Perkins Coie and opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, with the goal of dredging up “derogatory” information on Mr. Trump that would please “VIPs” in the Clinton campaign. The techies did so, the Durham indictment says, in part by mining protected internet data that had been supplied to a government contractor—allowing them to snoop on the White House as well as Trump Tower and Mr. Trump’s Manhattan apartment.
Mr. Joffe’s legal team continues to insist he is “apolitical” and wasn’t aware his lawyer, Michael Sussmann, was billing Team Clinton. (A grand jury impaneled by Mr. Durham indicted Mr. Sussmann in September on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI. Mr. Sussmann pleaded not guilty.) The press initially tried to ignore the story, then resorted to parsing the definition of “spying,” justifying the accused, and trashing Mr. Durham.
The problem for the last-gaspers is that the techies they seek to defend have already put too much on the record that suggests their real concern was a President Trump, not national security. Start with the company that the “apolitical” Mr. Joffe kept. One of his colleagues involved in the project and referenced in the Sussmann indictment is Paul Vixie, whose Twitter feed sports a long record of liberal, anti-Trump sentiments. Another member of the circle—who took on the job of publishing the Joffe data—is L. Jean Camp, an Indiana University computer-science professor and Clinton supporter who called on Americans to join the “resistance” against Mr. Trump. So much for the media’s description of a gang of politically innocent nerds.
The researchers claim that by July 2016 they were alarmed by the security implications of their data, mined from government information. Yet they didn’t go to the government. Mr. Joffe instead went to Democrats—namely Mr. Sussmann, the Perkins Coie lawyer who in the summer of 2016 was regularly identified in the press as an attorney for the Democratic National Committee. The Sussmann indictment notes a meeting Mr. Joffe had with Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie attorney for the Clinton campaign. And a deposition by a Fusion GPS staffer as part of continuing Alfa Bank litigation says Mr. Joffe attended a meeting with Peter Fritsch, a co-founder of Fusion GPS. Was he still confused about the partisan nature of this project?
He certainly couldn’t have been two years later. By that point, the roles Perkins Coie and Fusion played in funneling information to the FBI for Clinton were well known, while Fusion had gone on to team up with former Democratic staffer Dan Jones to keep advancing the claims. Mr. Joffe sat for that October 2018 New Yorker piece that pushed the Alfa claims, anonymously calling himself “Max” and admitting in the piece that he’d continued to help that effort long after the election, providing Mr. Jones’s team with 37 million internet records to examine. (A deposition in the Alfa litigation identified Mr. Joffe as Max.)
Here’s the most revealing bit: “Max” also explained to the New Yorker how vitally important it was in 2016 to make sure the threat his team discovered was “known before the election.” Which was why he and his lawyer first went with their information to the press. The Sussmann indictment says Mr. Sussmann tried peddling the data to the New York Times in late August 2016. He didn’t approach the FBI until the middle of September. Mr. Joffe’s spokesperson declined to comment.”
More on that story above from Tucker about how dishonest our garbage media is.The gaslighting is strong in this one….
“Las Vegas Sun Blames ‘the Right’ for BLM Activist’s Alleged Assassination Attempt of Mayoral Candidate
“While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.””
“I’ve seen some crazy newspaper editorials in my time, but one that went up Wednesday by the Las Vegas Sun may just take the case for the craziest and most predictable ever.
The piece was written in response to the attempted assassination of Louisville, Ky. mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg, a Jewish Democrat who was reportedly in his office with members of his campaign team Monday morning when 21-year-old Black Lives Matter activist and gun control advocate Quintez Brown allegedly opened fire.
According to Greenberg, one of the bullets allegedly fired by Brown grazed the sweater he wore. Fortunately, no one was hurt thanks to a quick-thinking campaign staffer.
Before Monday, Brown was running as an independent candidate for the Louisville Metro Council. I think it’s safe to say that his campaign has been put on hold for the foreseeable future.
As for the Las Vegas Sun editorial board, they managed to devote about 90% of their lengthy diatribe to blaming … “violent rhetoric from extremist Republicans” for Brown’s alleged murder attempt on Greenberg. In the original piece they published, the Sun merely noted that Brown – who was named, arrested, and in police custody by the time the editorial went live – was a “political activist,” leaving out his extensive ties to the BLM movement.
Here’s how it started out:
—
A terrifying incident in Louisville, Ky., this week revealed the dangers of the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.
When they got to talking about Brown, the Sun also managed to leave out his name in addition to not noting that he was a well-known BLM activist in the Louisville area as well as a columnist for the Courier-Journal. Again, from the editorial:
The alleged shooter, a 21-year-old political activist, was arrested near the scene and later charged with attempted murder along with four counts of wanton endangerment.
While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.”
“Gas in California hit a record high of $4.72 a gallon on average on Wednesday — and experts say a whopping $5 a gallon will likely be the norm there in a matter of months, if not sooner.
This isn’t just an issue for West Coasters: Some of the factors behind the record prices, particularly those related to the switch to renewable fuels, could affect US gas costs nationally in the next few years.
The US national average is currently $3.51 a gallon. Prices in California have long been among the highest, but they’ve soared in recent years in part because of changes at some West Coast refineries. Facilities have closed in some cases, while others are being modified to refine renewable fuels like diesel made from vegetable oil.
“California is the proxy for what will happen with the energy transition,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, the firm that tracks gas data for AAA. “A number of refineries have closed permanently….Getting people away from fossil fuels might be the right thing to do, but it is not without pain.”
So that’s one factor: With less refining capacity, the West Coast’s previous 2.5 million barrels of daily production heading into the pandemic has plummeted by nearly a quarter.
Kloza thinks $5 a gallon could come to California some point in the second quarter, and perhaps sooner if the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major oil producer, comes to pass. Other western states are also feeling the pain, like Hawaii — the only state with an average over $4, at $4.49 a gallon — as well as Washington, Oregon and Nevada, where prices are in the $3.90s.
The switch to renewables affects prices in another way: higher taxes.
California state gas taxes and fees are about 68 cents a gallon, compared to a national average of 39 cents, according to the American Petroleum Institute. California also levies taxes and carbon fees of roughly $1.35 a gallon on wholesale gasoline, a cost that gets passed on to consumers, Kloza said.
“Most states don’t have those [wholesale] fees. But it is a coming attraction to a number of blue states,” Kloza said. “If you want to move people away from fossil fuels, you have to start charging for carbon.””
I did watch the report on Q. Brown on ABC and was thoroughly disgusted. Then they wonder why people do not trust them. Sad to see. We sure need to pray for reporters. It must be very difficult to do the right thing in that atmosphere.
Reliable, dispassionate and fair news sources are out there, but news consumers need to be more savvy these days. There are fewer of them now. And don’t accept social media (of all things) as a news source, it’s mostly opinion and should be taken as such — with skepticism, always, and then checked out with another source. Or two.
In a free country, the media is not regulated — and I don’t think we’d want that to change, amen? But the market-driven 24-hour news cycle and “social” media has done us no favors. It’s like watching heads blowing up, constantly. This is not good for democracy or a stable society, let alone one’s mental or spiritual health.
Some outlets are better than others, but it takes some homework.
As for thoughtful conservative opinion, I’ve been enjoying The Dispatch (free version). For national news, the Wall Street Journal is fairly reliable; the paper also features some excellent opinion page writers. I pay for an online subscription to that and have not been sorry (though it is a bit pricey).
I also pay for a subscription to the LA Times which has some good LA pieces and which I mainly need to see due to my job.
I’ve given up on Fox and CNN for now, just can’t tolerate the outrage and both outlets’ move away from real news toward nearly constant “opinion” now. I will still watch news segments on both those stations, but I can rarely find them on those cable outlets anymore. And I find that to be not helpful to the culture at large.
Local TV news is not great when it comes to any substance (they basically take our stories and report just the headline), but I’m finding it better than the partisan cable alternatives for my own peace of mind right now. I like to watch a bit of “tv” news after my work day ends and local stations seem the best option out there right now.
While Twitter has some good sources who use it for valid news and good links, it also tends to RAISE THE VOLUME on the bias scale and play loose with the facts when it comes to providing a fair report in some quarters (I try to just stay clear of those, I don’t think I follow anything like that anyway which is just as well).
I liked Tucker Carlson years ago when he was just getting started as a thoughtful conservative guest on many of the news programs. Those were his “bow-tie” days. I always wondered why he didn’t have a show of his own.
But now? He seems much different — I’m afraid he’s discovered a “schtick” that has boosted his ratings and paychecks so I am cautious about his frankly partisan reporting, to be honest. I wouldn’t take it at face value without checking into it further.
Not saying he’s always wrong, but now that he’s got a big and very conservative audience, I’ve definitely noticed a change in his demeanor and approach to stories. But these days I simply don’t watch him much.
And, of course, there are many liberal counterparts one could point too as well, spinning the news into something unrecognizable but with a political motive and narrative to push. It’s the other side of the very same coin, in my view.
(and thanks for the suggestion to pray for reporters, Kathaleena 🙂 )
I would recommend a couple of the panel discussion programs usually airing on Fox on weekends, one of which is made up of Wall Street Journal writers and editors as panel guests. These are often thoughtful programs and yield understanding of news events, with typically different viewpoints are expressed.
We used to watch the McLaughlin group every Saturday evening and enjoyed the rousing discussion amongst conservatives and liberals alike. I’m thinking a forum such as that needs a comeback…
Kathy Hochul just getting heckled for 4 straight minutes as she accepted the Democrat nomination for NY Governor exposes just how uncomfortable dissent makes our ruling class
I don’t recall watching the McLaughlin show but remember the name (and know his face somehow, probably through promotions?)
I just don’t like any of the shows on now that typically allow folks talking (yelling) over each other, loud back-and-forths. At that point, they’ve all just lost me and I turn it off.
Guests on these shows need parameters or they’ll just predictably flip out. lol
Viewers trying to learn something and come to informed decisions lose when that happens.
This is why Hollywood, Cali., and the media all suck.
Poor girl broke her back trying to do her job, Matt Stafford walks away, she gets doxxed, and the press turns on her because she doesn’t work for any of the “right and acceptable” outlets and holds “unacceptable” views.
You suck, all of you.
I donated to a lady’s GoFundMe who broke her spine during the Super Bowl parade..I assumed she worked 4 somebody important 2 be credentialed
Since donating, A LOT of terrible things have come to light from her Twitter account that I obviously don’t support at all..
I know, comprehending how one could be vaccinated and still be against forced vaccination is hard.
Fun fact: Ted Cruz and his entire family are vaccinated.
100% of the teachers at his kids’ private school are vaccinated. And students are required to submit their vaccination status to the school. pic.twitter.com/E4XwbHkZXc
Canada condemns #Cuba’s harsh sentencing following the July 2021 protests. 🇨🇦 strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation. We stand with the people of 🇨🇺 in their aspiration for #democracy.
CANADA – As police move in to arrest peaceful protestors, wanting basic Human Rights returned, the Canadian Foreign Office official Twitter feed rebukes Cuba … for arresting peaceful protesters.
Both @CNN and @MSNBC primetime also completely ignored reports from the Durham probe alleging Clinton campaign spying on the Trump White House. https://t.co/mJRZOj2Anq
Pundits on MSNBC talked about the bombshell Durham probe revelations, but only to mock those actually doing their jobs by reporting on it. https://t.co/1UdEbZN8jj
NBC finally stepped in to cover the Durham bombshells, only to defend Hillary Clinton and her campaign lawyer from reports they spied on the Trump White House. https://t.co/2WFl0HsyXl
The CDC just quietly lowered the standards for speech in early childhood development.
Now children should know ~50 words at 30mo rather than 24mo.
Instead of highlighting the harmful effects 😷s & lockdowns have had on children, the CDC just lowered the bar for milestones. pic.twitter.com/11QraOgFbJ
The American Academy of Pediatrics said that 67.7% of the changes to early childhood milestones were moved to *older ages* in the recent study commissioned by the CDC.https://t.co/7MpDPAjeZg
Speech therapist here. We have always used Brown’s stages for language development and as you can see, 50-60 words is indeed expected by 24 months. What they’re doing is a travesty. pic.twitter.com/TAaDdSaQQh
Next year: kids’ slurred words, communication via porcine grunts, inability to recognize facial expressions and lack of human empathy is completely normal, per scientists at the Center for Perpetual Hindrance.
“Anyone attempting to get footage of what’s actually happening in Ottawa will be arrested. Our Minister of Propaganda will tell you everything you need to know about their horrific acts of terror afterward.” https://t.co/paDs9Bic4S
I’ve seen the comparison to the church burnings to the Ottawa protest in terms of expression of anger. The churches were burnt down as an expression of anger against the church’s complicity in the mass graves and cultural genocide of First Nations. The Ottawa occupation is motivated by people upset over masks and vaccine mandates….to compare the two is the ultimate expression of privilege and entitlement.
The Emergency Measures Act was originally passed in the 1980s by a conservative gov’t. Trudeau Sr. had passed the Charter of Rights and Freedom and the previous Emergency Measures Act was deemed unconstitutional and repealed. Gov’t lawyers deemed the new act in accordance with the Charter and the conservatives passed it. The govt is allowing the banks to freeze accounts but it appears they are after large donors especially those from the US and other foreign countries. Crowdfunding sites are seen as a way of circumventing our strict (by US standards) political donations rules. The reaction of the American right wing pundits demonstrate how little they understand of what is going on. The Act is time limited, subject to parliamentary oversight, and limited by the Charter and in the present minority gov’t it will be limited.
The tweet issued by the Ottawa police had nothing to do with Trudeau. The local police is controlled by the local municipality who in turn answer to the province, The police said they were going to end the occupation and they went to work. The warning issued by the police did not limit press and TV. I watched live feed of the police actions — CBC showed three screens at once — behind the police, behind the demonstrators, and between the two. There was full and open coverage. The warning was more for the so-called “independent journalists” who tend to insert themselves and try to advocate. The pros know how to stay out of the way of both police and demonstrators.
Finally, I’ve seen Cdn police act as goons; this was not one of them. Extremely patient and professional. And importantly they did not “kettle” allowing the protesters to leave at any time. Those who were arrested chose to remain despite numerous warnings and opportunities to leave. Given the goon squads I’ve seen in the past, the protesters have nothing to complain about.
Tucker Carlson has no shame — he condemns the media yet he is part of the media and suffers from the same “sins”. The speck in his eye is more like a tree trunk. I do remember his bowtie phase but his current behaviour is that of a man who’s discovered how to get high ratings and sell the product.
The constant refrain of not trusting the media or at least the main stream media and then turning to alternate sources which confirm your biases reveal a certain laziness of the viewer. When we view the news, the media, etc we need to be critical consumers of the product instead of finding a news outlet that confirms your bias. My father, a conservative, read the Toronto Star, the most liberal paper in North America but he knew it was and he read with a critical mindset. I preferred the Globe and Mail a conservative paper even though I am a leftist. The same with cable news and the internet — I know their main purpose is eyeballs to the screen and so I’m skeptical but I still watch and accept the basic information being given with a critical mindset.
And from what I know — the private schools Cruz’s children attend mandates vaccines for both students and teaching staff. I have no problem with freedom of medical choice but choices and decision have consequences. Vaccines, medical tests, etc are frequently job requirements — choose not to have a vaccine, you choose not to have a particular job.
So people in Canada are losing their jobs because they donated to a political cause retroactively declared illegal by the federal government, on the basis of being publicly identified by the media, using stolen data from a fundraising website. Totally normally, right? #cdnpoli
How about this, and what’s happening to journalists, even though your Supreme Court says that stuff is illegal and a violation of citizens rights?
The scene this morning as people in a blockade southeast of the Rideau Centre were removed from their vehicles, arrested and placed in prisoner transport trucks. At the beginning of the video you see where the people are being held, at the end is where the encampment is. pic.twitter.com/H4aa3KY1Hr
Interesting to watch the social posses swarm, give chase and exact revenge on the villain of the hour — yesterday it was on Stafford, today it’s the photographer who fell.
Social media is often a dark and merciless place. Both the left and right partake with avengance. It’s not every pretty or praise-worthy.
And interesting the point raised about sin. The news and social media (see above) are certainly full of it and none of us personally are immune to its effects in our lives.
Not sure what the last 40 second video was about….
Someone just sent me a photo claiming it was walker not a bicycle….. I’ll wait to pass judgement. However, why are they still there…the police have given them ample time to leave, they didn’t even kettle the protesters…..its not a peaceful protest, its an occupation where they have blasted horns 24/7 and harassed local residents,. Interestingly horses rarely trample humans unless forced or if people crowd and panic the horses. If you see police horses move out of the way…..I live near the local entertainment district and on Friday and Saturday nights in the summer police horses take up strategic locations at last call. The local drunks are smart enough to respect the horses.
As for goons, you should really check out some G20 Toronto footage, largest violation of human rights in Cdn police history.
“Vaccines, medical tests, etc are frequently job requirements — choose not to have a vaccine, you choose not to have a particular job.”
Very good. And if a company doesn’t pay a certain wage, provide eye care and abortion coverage, or offer maternity leave, you also can choose not work for that particular employer. The beauty of capitalism.
Wandering Views 
Another rat jumps from the Dems’ sinking ship. 🙂
They’ve seen the writing on the wall…
“NY Rep. Kathleen Rice is the 30th House Democrat to bow out of 2022 race”
https://nypost.com/2022/02/15/ny-rep-kathleen-rice-is-the-30th-house-democrat-to-bow-out-of-2022-race/
LikeLike
Nice try criminal, but no….
“Hillary Clinton campaign attorney moves to dismiss Durham investigation case”
https://nypost.com/2022/02/17/hillary-clinton-campaign-attorney-moves-to-dismiss-investigation-case/
“Attorneys for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign lawyer filed a motion Thursday to dismiss special counsel John Durham’s case against him, calling the matter “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach.”
The lawyer, Michael Sussmann, was charged last year in Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation after he was accused of lying to an FBI agent when he told the bureau he wasn’t advising Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In the motion to dismiss, Sussmann’s legal team said he did not make false statements to the FBI — and argued that prosecutors were pursuing him on a technicality.
His lawyers argued that Sussmann voluntarily met with FBI agents in September 2016 to “pass along information that raised national security concerns.”
Sussmann had raised concerns with the FBI about purported ties between the Trump Organization and Moscow’s Alfa-Bank. Further review suggested the supposed digital fingerprints were likely the result of junk email.”
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Junk, like the Clintons, who just refuse to ever take responsibility for their many crimes.
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The media sucks.
Let’s count the ways….
“Tucker Carlson: The News Media Today Is Much More Dishonest Than You Even Imagine”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/02/16/tucker_carlson_the_news_media_today_is_much_more_dishonest_than_you_even_imagine.html
“TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It’s fair to say that Quintez Brown is not your average white supremacist. For one thing, he is black. He’s also a BLM activist who was singled out for praise by no less than Barack Obama’s personal foundation. Until recently, Quintez Brown was a progressive columnist for the very progressive newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky.
As such, he argued very passionately for gun control: “Every time voters vote against gun safety and thus the lives of our most vulnerable, they show their hearts can be as cold as the steel of the guns they praise.”
Now, we can’t assess the temperature of Quintez Brown’s hearth but we can say he wasn’t very good at gun safety. On Monday, Quintez Brown walked into the campaign office of a man running for mayor of Louisville, pulled out a 9-millimeter pistol, and started firing wildly. A bullet grazed the candidate’s sweater. Thankfully, he was not hurt. So that’s the story. What is the headline here?
‘Gun safety educator fails test?’
‘Gun grabber grabs gun and shoots?’
‘Common sense gun reform for thee, but for me?’
Editors at the Las Vegas Sun newspaper got the picture, it’s hard not to get the picture, but they decided to lie about it. In the most grotesque way. Las Vegas is almost 2,000 miles away from Louisville. They probably figured their readers would not know the difference, they can say anything.
So here is the first line of the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial on the Quintez Brown shooting. “A terrifying incident in Louisville, Kentuck, this week revealed the dangers of the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.” Okay, so when Barack Obama’s favorited BLM-affiliated gun activists tries to assassinate someone, you are looking to prov that conservatives are dangerous. “While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations,” the paper conceded generously since Brown had already been identified as a progressive activist when this editorial ran in the paper.
“The shooting comes amid a rise at threats to politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.” So it was extremist Republicans, not that Quintez Brown technically is an extremist Republican, but extremist Republicans exist, the paper wants you to know. So as long as there is a shooting while there are extremist Republicans afoot it’s the fault of extremist Republicans.”
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They. Are. Biased. Activists.
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We were warned.
“How Eisenhower Predicted Fauci”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-eisenhower-predicted-fauci-opinion/ar-AATJhbG
“If it wasn’t obvious before, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that science has become thoroughly politicized. Though normally focused on observable and verifiable causes and effects in the natural world, many scientists, especially government employed ones, have taken on a political role and have shaped scientific findings in the service of those political ends. The truth eventually came out, but at a massive cost to people’s mental health, finances and trust. President Dwight Eisenhower foresaw this abuse by government scientists, and he shows us the way out.
Public health officials initially insisted on the wet-market origin story for the novel coronavirus, but the lab-leak theory has become just as plausible. Cloth masks once deemed essential are now labeled “facial decorations.” Schools have opened without becoming super spreaders. A John Hopkins University study recently concluded that lockdowns had a minuscule impact on virus morbidity.
With all of these issues, some of the federal government’s top scientists made a concerted effort to stifle debate. Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, requested a “devastating takedown” of those who disagreed with his insistence on lockdowns, referring to dissenting scholars from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford as “fringe.” He and other public health officials selectively ignored real data. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and chief medical adviser to the president, declared that “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”
Collins’ approach and Fauci’s sentiment are exactly what President Eisenhower warned the American public about in his Farewell Address. He advised vigilance against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” These “task forces of scientists,” Eisenhower cautioned, would lead to the “domination of the nation’s scholars.”
One reason that so few infectious disease scientists disagreed with Fauci is quite simple: the power of money. America offers around $5 billion per year to support infectious disease research, and almost all of it runs through the agency led by Collins and Fauci. Any infectious disease researcher would therefore be disinclined to run afoul of Dr. Fauci, as future grant funding or professional advancement may depend on the director’s approval. Grants like those from NIAID give the project a stamp of legitimacy and open the door to other supporters. This system offers Fauci monopoly-like power over infectious disease research.
Research scientists then toe the line, or at least remain silent. This creates the appearance of unanimous agreement as, in Eisenhower’s words, “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
It is hard to prove intentional silence. But there are signs. When mask mandates were first introduced, for example, numerous virologists should have pointed to published RCT studies that cast doubt on masks’ effectiveness in preventing transmission of airborne viruses. One May 2020 CDC paper “did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”
Likewise, the World Health Organization’s 2019 program for an influenza pandemic does not recommend facemask use for the non-symptomatic or uninfected, and only recommends business and school closures in the most severe circumstances, even while acknowledging that these measures lack good evidence of effectiveness. This too was missing from COVID policy discussions.
Ike correctly assessed that “the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop” is no longer the driving force behind scientific and technological progress. Research has become more “formalized, complex and costly.” A 21st-century Benjamin Franklin can no longer purchase the expensive equipment or devote the time needed to make world-changing inventions or discoveries. Therefore, an “increasing share [of research] is conducted for, by or at the direction of the federal government.”
But it is still possible to steer clear of the dangers of politicized bias in science by maintaining the core of scientific inquiry: “intellectual curiosity.” Intellectual curiosity is what enables us to figure out the truth of the reality that confronts us.
A pivot towards government research grants need not remove “the solitary inventor” from the picture. Those inventors may not be able to conduct the research on their own, but they can surely analyze the data. Government funded scientific data should always be open for scrutiny, because transparency enables the curious to understand the truth for themselves. Time and again, public officials attempted to force consensus over COVID. Government funded research that encourages competition and debate, rather than uniformity of thought, can help us figure out the truth.
But Ike proposed a second, more important principle. To avoid the “domination of the nation’s scholars” he declared that “it is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” Scientists can tell us their best understanding of reality and its consequences, like the dangers of a new virus. But multifaceted decisions that affect people in different ways, such as closing schools or businesses, are not questions of science but judgements about the best way to navigate reality. That is the role of politicians elected by the people.”
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The NBA continues to enable communists and turn a blind eye to their atrocities.
Speak out, get blackballed.
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More on the BLM terrorist Tucker mentioned above. He’s the attempted murderer who got bail even though Jan 6th paraders are locked up without bail that I mentioned yesterday.
Connect the dots and follow the money.
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Odd that he can put this together, but our garbage media can’t, or won’t for political reasons.
Garbage.
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Now’s the time to take a stand spineless Republicans……
Show up unmasked and make them enforce it.
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So what changed, other than Joe’s senile mind?
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Authoritarian scum.
This is not how a free country acts.
Gave money to the Freedom Convoy? Get treated like a terrorist.
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Bingo.
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And to think some morons support this govt overreach.
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The govt fascists need willing rubes to help spread their disease.
And right on cue the garbage media shows up.
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Bingo.
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David Frum is still a 🤡
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Oh wait, no, you never did…. because you’re a 🤡
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“The Clinton campaign’s plot to politically assassinate Trump
There were crimes on a Watergate scale — but they were not committed by the former president”
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/clinton-plot-politically-assassinate-trump-durham-joffe-neustar/
“There is a word for secretly collecting information about enemies or competitors to use against them.
According to the latest court filing by Special Counsel John Durham, the Hillary Clinton campaign surreptitiously and likely illegally reached into protected White House and Trump communications data to try and show some link between Trump and Russia. The Clinton campaign during the election hid from FBI, CIA and the media that it was the source of the information gathered. Durham doesn’t use the word “spy,” but that in no way changes what happened.
The recent filing relates to Durham’s September indictment of Michael Sussmann, an attorney who represented the Clinton campaign while at the Perkins Coie law firm. Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI at a September 2016 meeting when he presented documents claiming to show internet communications between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank. The indictment says Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was presenting this information as a good citizen, purposely hiding his ties to Clinton. The allegations about the bank were false.
The new filing is at its heart legal housekeeping, asking that a waiver be considered to allow Sussmann to retain his current law firm. A potential conflict of interest exists because Sussmann’s representative works for a law firm which also represents others Durham may be going after, and may have been involved in the larger events under investigation, perhaps as witnesses. While that is interesting in itself, what is newsworthy are broader details of what really happened around Russiagate that potentially point to crimes on a Watergate scale.
The filing says tech company Neustar executive Rodney Joffe (who was also a law client of Michael Sussmann) worked with the indicted Clinton campaign lawyer to access “dedicated servers for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP).” Joffe then “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”
Joffe also “enlisted the assistance of researchers at a US-based university” (likely Georgia Tech) who had access to “large amounts of internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract.” This would have been how Joffe got access to data from Trump’s private computers. “[Joffe] tasked these researchers to mine internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” he added. “In doing so, [Joffe] indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton campaign.”
Some nerd stuff. Remember metadata, the info about a communication Edward Snowden showed us the NSA gathers? This is like that. Metadata shows, among other things, when and where a communication started, and where it ended up. DNS data, a kind of metadata, comes from a Dynamic Name Server. When you use a smartphone or type http://www.spectatorworld.com into your browser, it contacts a DNS server, which translates those English words into the numbers the internet actually runs on.
DNS is like a phone lookup; you want to speak with Mom, who the phone knows only as 212-555-1212. Same thing for email, TikTok, anything online. If you have access to DNS data, such as Joffe did, you know who the White House and Trump were communicating with. DNS data is a road map and if you have enough of it, patterns, such as perhaps regular communication with Russia, emerge. That’s why the NSA does the same thing against its enemies or competitors.
The Clinton people got access to all this information via a private contractor, Joffe’s Neustar, which provided the actual DNS servers to the White House. Durham wrote, starting in July 2016, that Joffe’s company “exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.” In quid pro quo, and despite a fraud-laden past, Joffe was offered a top cybersecurity job in the future Clinton administration.
The data gathering on the Trump campaign began while Obama was still in office (and the EOP portion could have been to establish a baseline of “normal” White House-Russia communications) and continued into February 2017, after Trump took office and all attention turned to impeachment. Having failed to stop his campaign, the data was lined up to aid in driving him out of the White House.
But no one stole or hacked the data, right? Not so fast. Contractors working on sensitive data systems do not own the data they see. Their scope of usage is very specific to the job they were hired to do. It does not include exploiting high-security government contracts for political purposes and personal gain. Sort of like your doctor, who knows your medical information but cannot just share it with his brother who sells life insurance.
Indictments by Durham against Joffe are sure to be coming. It is also curious that FBI and CIA did not question where Sussmann got his data, given that it could have only come from White House servers. In addition, if researchers at Georgia Tech who were being paid by the US government via a DARPA grant were freelancing the data they collected to help the Clinton campaign smear Trump, that would be another area Durham will be looking into.”
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“So call it what you will — spying, hacking, infiltrating, a rebut to “but her emails” — but here is what it is: Durham asserts Neustar, on behalf of the Clinton campaign, gathered data likely illegally and certainly surreptitiously from White House and Trump computers, seeking a connection to Russia. Lawyer Michael Sussmann, hiding his connection to Clinton and Joffe, brought false conclusions drawn from this data to FBI and CIA (and perhaps the DOJ inspector general) in hopes they would turn their enormous resources toward investigating Trump. The con worked with the FBI.
This would mean Hillary and her lawyers masterminded a coordinated electronic conspiracy against Trump when he was a candidate and later president, while simultaneously perpetuating the dossier hoax. As with the dossier, everything Clinton peddled was fake. There was no pee tape, no payoffs from Putin, no connection to Alfa Bank and no Russian-made smartphones.
But this is not a fake scandal. Durham has potentially uncovered the most destructive political assassination attempt since Kennedy.”
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“Who Are Those ‘Techies’ Who Spied on Trump?
‘Benevolent posse’ or partisans for Hillary Clinton? John Durham has the answer.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-are-those-techies-who-spied-on-trump-clinton-2016-election-durham-data-fusion-gps-joffe-11645139606?mod=djemalertNEWS
“Special counsel John Durham destroyed the last shreds of Mr. Steele’s credibility last year, proving that the paid-for-hire spook had relied on fabrications for the infamous dossier the Federal Bureau of Investigation used in its Trump probe. The special counsel is now dismantling that other big claim of Trump-Russia “collusion”—the Alfa Bank narrative. The wonder is that the press and others are stepping up for another humiliation—when the disturbing actions of the creators of the Alfa narrative are already so easy to document, and in their own words.
The Alfa story came to life in October 2016, when Franklin Foer of Slate was gulled into writing that a largely anonymous “benevolent posse” of “computer scientists,” “spurred by a sense of shared idealism,” had discovered data showing secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank. Cybersecurity professionals instantly ridiculed the data as nonsense, and the FBI dismissed it, but the liberal media kept it alive. In October 2018, the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins devoted a 7,600-word panegyric to the “self-appointed guardians of the Internet” who continued to flog the claims.
In recent court filings, Mr. Durham explains that these tech experts—including Rodney Joffe, formerly of Neustar, Inc.—were in cahoots with the same crew as Mr. Steele, using the same playbook. They worked with Democratic lawyers at Perkins Coie and opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, with the goal of dredging up “derogatory” information on Mr. Trump that would please “VIPs” in the Clinton campaign. The techies did so, the Durham indictment says, in part by mining protected internet data that had been supplied to a government contractor—allowing them to snoop on the White House as well as Trump Tower and Mr. Trump’s Manhattan apartment.
Mr. Joffe’s legal team continues to insist he is “apolitical” and wasn’t aware his lawyer, Michael Sussmann, was billing Team Clinton. (A grand jury impaneled by Mr. Durham indicted Mr. Sussmann in September on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI. Mr. Sussmann pleaded not guilty.) The press initially tried to ignore the story, then resorted to parsing the definition of “spying,” justifying the accused, and trashing Mr. Durham.
The problem for the last-gaspers is that the techies they seek to defend have already put too much on the record that suggests their real concern was a President Trump, not national security. Start with the company that the “apolitical” Mr. Joffe kept. One of his colleagues involved in the project and referenced in the Sussmann indictment is Paul Vixie, whose Twitter feed sports a long record of liberal, anti-Trump sentiments. Another member of the circle—who took on the job of publishing the Joffe data—is L. Jean Camp, an Indiana University computer-science professor and Clinton supporter who called on Americans to join the “resistance” against Mr. Trump. So much for the media’s description of a gang of politically innocent nerds.
The researchers claim that by July 2016 they were alarmed by the security implications of their data, mined from government information. Yet they didn’t go to the government. Mr. Joffe instead went to Democrats—namely Mr. Sussmann, the Perkins Coie lawyer who in the summer of 2016 was regularly identified in the press as an attorney for the Democratic National Committee. The Sussmann indictment notes a meeting Mr. Joffe had with Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie attorney for the Clinton campaign. And a deposition by a Fusion GPS staffer as part of continuing Alfa Bank litigation says Mr. Joffe attended a meeting with Peter Fritsch, a co-founder of Fusion GPS. Was he still confused about the partisan nature of this project?
He certainly couldn’t have been two years later. By that point, the roles Perkins Coie and Fusion played in funneling information to the FBI for Clinton were well known, while Fusion had gone on to team up with former Democratic staffer Dan Jones to keep advancing the claims. Mr. Joffe sat for that October 2018 New Yorker piece that pushed the Alfa claims, anonymously calling himself “Max” and admitting in the piece that he’d continued to help that effort long after the election, providing Mr. Jones’s team with 37 million internet records to examine. (A deposition in the Alfa litigation identified Mr. Joffe as Max.)
Here’s the most revealing bit: “Max” also explained to the New Yorker how vitally important it was in 2016 to make sure the threat his team discovered was “known before the election.” Which was why he and his lawyer first went with their information to the press. The Sussmann indictment says Mr. Sussmann tried peddling the data to the New York Times in late August 2016. He didn’t approach the FBI until the middle of September. Mr. Joffe’s spokesperson declined to comment.”
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More on that story above from Tucker about how dishonest our garbage media is.The gaslighting is strong in this one….
“Las Vegas Sun Blames ‘the Right’ for BLM Activist’s Alleged Assassination Attempt of Mayoral Candidate
“While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.””
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/las-vegas-sun-blames-the-right-for-blm-activists-alleged-assassination-attempt-of-mayoral-candidate/
“I’ve seen some crazy newspaper editorials in my time, but one that went up Wednesday by the Las Vegas Sun may just take the case for the craziest and most predictable ever.
The piece was written in response to the attempted assassination of Louisville, Ky. mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg, a Jewish Democrat who was reportedly in his office with members of his campaign team Monday morning when 21-year-old Black Lives Matter activist and gun control advocate Quintez Brown allegedly opened fire.
According to Greenberg, one of the bullets allegedly fired by Brown grazed the sweater he wore. Fortunately, no one was hurt thanks to a quick-thinking campaign staffer.
Before Monday, Brown was running as an independent candidate for the Louisville Metro Council. I think it’s safe to say that his campaign has been put on hold for the foreseeable future.
As for the Las Vegas Sun editorial board, they managed to devote about 90% of their lengthy diatribe to blaming … “violent rhetoric from extremist Republicans” for Brown’s alleged murder attempt on Greenberg. In the original piece they published, the Sun merely noted that Brown – who was named, arrested, and in police custody by the time the editorial went live – was a “political activist,” leaving out his extensive ties to the BLM movement.
Here’s how it started out:
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A terrifying incident in Louisville, Ky., this week revealed the dangers of the talk coming from the right about civil war and political violence.
When they got to talking about Brown, the Sun also managed to leave out his name in addition to not noting that he was a well-known BLM activist in the Louisville area as well as a columnist for the Courier-Journal. Again, from the editorial:
The alleged shooter, a 21-year-old political activist, was arrested near the scene and later charged with attempted murder along with four counts of wanton endangerment.
While there’s been no indication yet that the activist had ties to any right-wing organizations, the shooting comes amid a rise in threats against politicians fueled by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.”
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Enjoy the suck!
“California gas prices just hit a record high. $5 gas could come soon”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/16/economy/california-record-gas-prices/index.html
“Gas in California hit a record high of $4.72 a gallon on average on Wednesday — and experts say a whopping $5 a gallon will likely be the norm there in a matter of months, if not sooner.
This isn’t just an issue for West Coasters: Some of the factors behind the record prices, particularly those related to the switch to renewable fuels, could affect US gas costs nationally in the next few years.
The US national average is currently $3.51 a gallon. Prices in California have long been among the highest, but they’ve soared in recent years in part because of changes at some West Coast refineries. Facilities have closed in some cases, while others are being modified to refine renewable fuels like diesel made from vegetable oil.
“California is the proxy for what will happen with the energy transition,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, the firm that tracks gas data for AAA. “A number of refineries have closed permanently….Getting people away from fossil fuels might be the right thing to do, but it is not without pain.”
So that’s one factor: With less refining capacity, the West Coast’s previous 2.5 million barrels of daily production heading into the pandemic has plummeted by nearly a quarter.
Kloza thinks $5 a gallon could come to California some point in the second quarter, and perhaps sooner if the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major oil producer, comes to pass. Other western states are also feeling the pain, like Hawaii — the only state with an average over $4, at $4.49 a gallon — as well as Washington, Oregon and Nevada, where prices are in the $3.90s.
The switch to renewables affects prices in another way: higher taxes.
California state gas taxes and fees are about 68 cents a gallon, compared to a national average of 39 cents, according to the American Petroleum Institute. California also levies taxes and carbon fees of roughly $1.35 a gallon on wholesale gasoline, a cost that gets passed on to consumers, Kloza said.
“Most states don’t have those [wholesale] fees. But it is a coming attraction to a number of blue states,” Kloza said. “If you want to move people away from fossil fuels, you have to start charging for carbon.””
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I did watch the report on Q. Brown on ABC and was thoroughly disgusted. Then they wonder why people do not trust them. Sad to see. We sure need to pray for reporters. It must be very difficult to do the right thing in that atmosphere.
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Ah, the media. 🙂
Reliable, dispassionate and fair news sources are out there, but news consumers need to be more savvy these days. There are fewer of them now. And don’t accept social media (of all things) as a news source, it’s mostly opinion and should be taken as such — with skepticism, always, and then checked out with another source. Or two.
In a free country, the media is not regulated — and I don’t think we’d want that to change, amen? But the market-driven 24-hour news cycle and “social” media has done us no favors. It’s like watching heads blowing up, constantly. This is not good for democracy or a stable society, let alone one’s mental or spiritual health.
Some outlets are better than others, but it takes some homework.
As for thoughtful conservative opinion, I’ve been enjoying The Dispatch (free version). For national news, the Wall Street Journal is fairly reliable; the paper also features some excellent opinion page writers. I pay for an online subscription to that and have not been sorry (though it is a bit pricey).
I also pay for a subscription to the LA Times which has some good LA pieces and which I mainly need to see due to my job.
I’ve given up on Fox and CNN for now, just can’t tolerate the outrage and both outlets’ move away from real news toward nearly constant “opinion” now. I will still watch news segments on both those stations, but I can rarely find them on those cable outlets anymore. And I find that to be not helpful to the culture at large.
Local TV news is not great when it comes to any substance (they basically take our stories and report just the headline), but I’m finding it better than the partisan cable alternatives for my own peace of mind right now. I like to watch a bit of “tv” news after my work day ends and local stations seem the best option out there right now.
While Twitter has some good sources who use it for valid news and good links, it also tends to RAISE THE VOLUME on the bias scale and play loose with the facts when it comes to providing a fair report in some quarters (I try to just stay clear of those, I don’t think I follow anything like that anyway which is just as well).
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I liked Tucker Carlson years ago when he was just getting started as a thoughtful conservative guest on many of the news programs. Those were his “bow-tie” days. I always wondered why he didn’t have a show of his own.
But now? He seems much different — I’m afraid he’s discovered a “schtick” that has boosted his ratings and paychecks so I am cautious about his frankly partisan reporting, to be honest. I wouldn’t take it at face value without checking into it further.
Not saying he’s always wrong, but now that he’s got a big and very conservative audience, I’ve definitely noticed a change in his demeanor and approach to stories. But these days I simply don’t watch him much.
The political drama wears me out. lol
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And, of course, there are many liberal counterparts one could point too as well, spinning the news into something unrecognizable but with a political motive and narrative to push. It’s the other side of the very same coin, in my view.
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The accelerated move away from all fossil fuels will be very costly and impact car-buying for years.
Golf carts?
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(and thanks for the suggestion to pray for reporters, Kathaleena 🙂 )
I would recommend a couple of the panel discussion programs usually airing on Fox on weekends, one of which is made up of Wall Street Journal writers and editors as panel guests. These are often thoughtful programs and yield understanding of news events, with typically different viewpoints are expressed.
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We used to watch the McLaughlin group every Saturday evening and enjoyed the rousing discussion amongst conservatives and liberals alike. I’m thinking a forum such as that needs a comeback…
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Nice. 🙂
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I don’t recall watching the McLaughlin show but remember the name (and know his face somehow, probably through promotions?)
I just don’t like any of the shows on now that typically allow folks talking (yelling) over each other, loud back-and-forths. At that point, they’ve all just lost me and I turn it off.
Guests on these shows need parameters or they’ll just predictably flip out. lol
Viewers trying to learn something and come to informed decisions lose when that happens.
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This is why Hollywood, Cali., and the media all suck.
Poor girl broke her back trying to do her job, Matt Stafford walks away, she gets doxxed, and the press turns on her because she doesn’t work for any of the “right and acceptable” outlets and holds “unacceptable” views.
You suck, all of you.
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That’s the only tweet I could share, because the left outrage machine have no decency.
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Hack, it’s even in his name.
I know, comprehending how one could be vaccinated and still be against forced vaccination is hard.
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This tweet aged badly, eh?
Oh wait, that was yesterday?
Bwahahaha!!!!! 😂🤣😂🤣😂
Laugh at the 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 folks….
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🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
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So what she’s saying is that Fox is the only one covering her crimes.
How dare they. 🙄
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Trash.
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She’s a Dem, so the media will stare at it’s feet, as usual.
CONTENT WARNING!!!!!!!
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I checked again, same as this morning….
Frum is still a 🤡
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Evil.
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And nary a whimper from the water carrying lapdogs….
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I’ve seen the comparison to the church burnings to the Ottawa protest in terms of expression of anger. The churches were burnt down as an expression of anger against the church’s complicity in the mass graves and cultural genocide of First Nations. The Ottawa occupation is motivated by people upset over masks and vaccine mandates….to compare the two is the ultimate expression of privilege and entitlement.
The Emergency Measures Act was originally passed in the 1980s by a conservative gov’t. Trudeau Sr. had passed the Charter of Rights and Freedom and the previous Emergency Measures Act was deemed unconstitutional and repealed. Gov’t lawyers deemed the new act in accordance with the Charter and the conservatives passed it. The govt is allowing the banks to freeze accounts but it appears they are after large donors especially those from the US and other foreign countries. Crowdfunding sites are seen as a way of circumventing our strict (by US standards) political donations rules. The reaction of the American right wing pundits demonstrate how little they understand of what is going on. The Act is time limited, subject to parliamentary oversight, and limited by the Charter and in the present minority gov’t it will be limited.
The tweet issued by the Ottawa police had nothing to do with Trudeau. The local police is controlled by the local municipality who in turn answer to the province, The police said they were going to end the occupation and they went to work. The warning issued by the police did not limit press and TV. I watched live feed of the police actions — CBC showed three screens at once — behind the police, behind the demonstrators, and between the two. There was full and open coverage. The warning was more for the so-called “independent journalists” who tend to insert themselves and try to advocate. The pros know how to stay out of the way of both police and demonstrators.
Finally, I’ve seen Cdn police act as goons; this was not one of them. Extremely patient and professional. And importantly they did not “kettle” allowing the protesters to leave at any time. Those who were arrested chose to remain despite numerous warnings and opportunities to leave. Given the goon squads I’ve seen in the past, the protesters have nothing to complain about.
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Tucker Carlson has no shame — he condemns the media yet he is part of the media and suffers from the same “sins”. The speck in his eye is more like a tree trunk. I do remember his bowtie phase but his current behaviour is that of a man who’s discovered how to get high ratings and sell the product.
The constant refrain of not trusting the media or at least the main stream media and then turning to alternate sources which confirm your biases reveal a certain laziness of the viewer. When we view the news, the media, etc we need to be critical consumers of the product instead of finding a news outlet that confirms your bias. My father, a conservative, read the Toronto Star, the most liberal paper in North America but he knew it was and he read with a critical mindset. I preferred the Globe and Mail a conservative paper even though I am a leftist. The same with cable news and the internet — I know their main purpose is eyeballs to the screen and so I’m skeptical but I still watch and accept the basic information being given with a critical mindset.
And from what I know — the private schools Cruz’s children attend mandates vaccines for both students and teaching staff. I have no problem with freedom of medical choice but choices and decision have consequences. Vaccines, medical tests, etc are frequently job requirements — choose not to have a vaccine, you choose not to have a particular job.
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I got your goon squad right here HRW.
Courtesy of Justin the Cowardly.
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You support this on non-violent protesters HRW?
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How about this, and what’s happening to journalists, even though your Supreme Court says that stuff is illegal and a violation of citizens rights?
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Interesting to watch the social posses swarm, give chase and exact revenge on the villain of the hour — yesterday it was on Stafford, today it’s the photographer who fell.
Social media is often a dark and merciless place. Both the left and right partake with avengance. It’s not every pretty or praise-worthy.
And interesting the point raised about sin. The news and social media (see above) are certainly full of it and none of us personally are immune to its effects in our lives.
I suspect maybe God wants that to humble us.
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Not sure what the last 40 second video was about….
Someone just sent me a photo claiming it was walker not a bicycle….. I’ll wait to pass judgement. However, why are they still there…the police have given them ample time to leave, they didn’t even kettle the protesters…..its not a peaceful protest, its an occupation where they have blasted horns 24/7 and harassed local residents,. Interestingly horses rarely trample humans unless forced or if people crowd and panic the horses. If you see police horses move out of the way…..I live near the local entertainment district and on Friday and Saturday nights in the summer police horses take up strategic locations at last call. The local drunks are smart enough to respect the horses.
As for goons, you should really check out some G20 Toronto footage, largest violation of human rights in Cdn police history.
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“Vaccines, medical tests, etc are frequently job requirements — choose not to have a vaccine, you choose not to have a particular job.”
Very good. And if a company doesn’t pay a certain wage, provide eye care and abortion coverage, or offer maternity leave, you also can choose not work for that particular employer. The beauty of capitalism.
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