His First Pay Check!

After year of investigation, Trump can rightly claim some vindication

After year of investigation, Trump can rightly claim some vindication

It was called " Crossfire Hurricane ," the FBI counterintelligence operation that targeted Trump figures as part of the investigation into possible campaign ties to Russia. It was a poignant choice of a Rolling Stones song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash, that describes a man "born in a crossfire hurricane" who "howled at the morning driving rain."

John Brennan’s ‘Exceptionally Sensitive’ Issue

John Brennan's 'Exceptionally Sensitive' Issue

Total: 3.9K Facebook Twitter Print EmailUnder John Brennan, the CIA operated as an opposition research outfit for the Hillary Clinton campaign. It appears from leaked news stories in the British press that Brennan's oafish spying on Trump began around April 2016, right after Trump's biggest primary victories.

The Trump Land Mine

The Trump Land Mine | National Review

Explosives require careful handling. Sometimes they blow up in your face. After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

DONALD TRUMP AND THE SWAMP BORG CREATURE

For those paying attention it is becoming painfully obvious that the DOJ / FBI are circling the wagons to protect their institutions not the "rule of law." That in effect is "The Deep State."

This is happening despite the fact that the leadership of both departments are appointees of an Administration that has a vested interested to reveal what is being hidden.

Both Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and Christopher Wray as FBI Director were appointed to their positions by Donald Trump.  You would think that they would be able to "shake the tree" to allow a faster more transparent release of information to bring "truth" to light in the Russia probe . Yet it appears that these institutions are deliberately dragging their feet to protect their reputations.

It is painfully obvious that the intent is to run out the clock until a possible take over of the House which will give them a willing partner to hide their misdeeds, the Democrats.

The Democrats are the party of big government, of career politicians. The party of bureaucracy, believing that government properly "managed" can do good things. They are wrong, in fact that thought process is contrary to our founding principles.

The Founders attempted to create a limited national government to protect citizens not only from monarchies and dictators but government bureaucracies which, at any level, as they grow become self serving rather than servants of the public.

Bureaucracy  exist to protect and enrich themselves.

They become "The Borg." 

The "mission" of the individual institution becomes more important than..well the constitution itself. In fact the institutions' mission and preservation are distorted by institutional bias and arrogance to the point where their well being is substituted for that of the constitution. Or the environment, or education or the poor or our food or whatever cause the government entity has been entrusted to protect.

It is not to say that we do not need government agencies to "protect and serve" us, we most certainly do. But we need the agencies to protect and serve us not themselves.

At every turn of the the "Russian probe" we have seen information, at best, hesitantly released. Usually in highly redacted format.

In phase one we find out is that there appears no reason to withhold the information in the first place.  But we are never quite sure if this is the case because redaction of the released information does not give us a complete picture.

Then phase two, we get an un-redacted  version of the document and are left with the simple question, why? Why was this redacted in the first place? The answer is always the same.

It was to protect some institution or individuals' reputation.

It has nothing to do with national security, nothing to do with criminal investigations. It is protecting the Borg from disease, the truth.

We watch this play out over and over again, whether it is the IRS as in Lois Lerner, the ATF and Bundy, the gun runners at DOJ, etc. etc. etc.......

Institutional self preservation is a higher calling in the morass of the swamp than the rule of law or public service.

Worse still, the rule of law as applied to federal bureaucrats like a swamp itself is very murky.  The goose and gander analogy need not apply for a license in DC.

The DC Borg like the fictional representation "assimilates" individuals and other institutions into itself. Reasonable causes, good people and worthwhile institutions become absorbed into the culture of the Borg without even realizing that they have been captured. 

Self preservation in a swamp is a matter of survival not ideals unless of course your ideals are a collective state in which case you have found a home.

In the Borg the good die young. Those who go to fight the "good fight" of individual liberty and limited government are either assimilated or leave before they can truly change much. Trey Gowdy being a recent but by no means the lone example.

An administrative state, with administrative rules overseen by administrative courts. All managed by people whose best self interest is served by protecting all of it from "the people" is where we are today.

The "rules" have supplanted the "spirit" of liberty and freedom.

The solution? As much as it pains me to say it, Donald Trump. As I explained to a never Trumper recently, sometimes it takes a whore to clean up a whorehouse.

Trump is going directly after the administrative state. He is receding their rules and limiting their power. He is exposing their duplicity and even their justified attacks against him show their hypocrisy.

Trump is a blowhard buffoon in the midst of blowhard buffoons pretending not to be. The difference is that Trump for some unknown reason, probably self serving, has chosen to make a great many of America's founding principles the guidebook of his political agenda.

Trump's manners are course, his delivery disjointed, his past questionable at best, but his instincts are good for America.

I don't know if he can truly "drain the swamp" but its exposure to the public can do nothing but help.

More important than anything else, he can appoint judges who believe in the constitution NOT social justice.

That and the show are worth the price. 

Here Are Three Scary FBI Scandal Factors You Must Know

Here Are Three Scary FBI Scandal Factors You Must Know

There are three scary but crucially important factors underlying the rapidly growing FBI scandal that most people miss even though they are hidden in plain sight. Recognizing and understanding this trio goes a long way toward explaining what has happened in the scandal and where it is likely to go next.

Republicans, Democrats, Facebook want to team up to regulate away competition

Republicans, Democrats, Facebook want to team up to regulate away competition

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is more pro-business than most, asked Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, if he welcomes regulation of his business. "If it's the right regulation, yes," Zuckerberg said. "Would you submit to us some proposed regulations?" Graham asked him. This is how regulatory capture happens.

As Seen On Twitter

House Intel report indicates that James Clapper didn’t tell the truth about his leaks to CNN. https://t.co/hauv6xbiqi pic.twitter.com/ea7OpPpMuV

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 22, 2018

Fire FBI Director

Fire the FBI Chief | National Review

Did a preventable massacre go unprevented because of bureaucratic failure? American government is supposed to look and sound like George Washington. What it actually looks and sounds like is Henry Hill from Goodfellas: bad suit, hand out, intoning the eternal mantra: "F*** you, pay me."

Grassley-Graham Memo Affirms Nunes Memo — Media Yawns

Via-National Review

by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

February 10, 2018 4:00 AM
@ANDREWCMCCARTHY

We need a full-blown investigation of how the FISA court came to grant warrants to spy on Carter Page. In a word, the Grassley-Graham memo is shocking.

Yet, the press barely notices. Rest assured: If a Republican administration had used unverifiable hearsay from a patently suspect agent of the Republican presidential candidate to gull the FISA court into granting a warrant to spy on an associate of the Democratic nominee’s campaign, it would be covered as the greatest political scandal in a half-century.

Read more here

The Memo

As a former U.S. Attorney and federal terrorism prosecutor with considerable FISA experience, I am more than just troubled by the revelations outlined in this memo.

Read my full statement: https://t.co/zkt8QD4kyE pic.twitter.com/IWDmJFx7sh

— John Ratcliffe (@RepRatcliffe) February 2, 2018

"the most dangerous negro in America"

Via-CRTV

Did you know the FBI targeted and spied on #MLK after his famous "I Have a Dream" speech? And if they spied on MLK, they'll spy on you too.

Learn more from @mkibbe ==> https://t.co/H17p2yxwtb pic.twitter.com/giRAMO39SR

— CRTV (@CRTV) January 15, 2018

Cliven Bundy Wins: Judge Cites ‘Flagrant’ Federal Misconduct

Via- NRO

The case against the Nevada rancher, characterized by the government as ‘paranoid,’ is dismissed.


In April 2014, America was transfixed by an armed standoff in the Nevada desert. On one side was a collection of dangerous, out-of-control armed men who were deliberately provocative, prone to saying unhinged things in a single-minded quest to destroy their enemies, and who lied time and again to cover their misdeeds.

 On the other side was Cliven Bundy.

Read here 

The End of Grandpa Cliven Bundy's 700 days in jail

A federal judge ruled Dec. 20 that she was throwing out the Bureau of Land Management’s case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy because the prosecution withheld key facts.

On Monday, the same judge ruled that the case could not be tried again due to the actions of the prosecution, which she said had been “outrageous” and “violated due process rights,” according to azcentral.com.

Just a Thought

One of the worst problems with the IRS targeting political opponents as it is obvious they are doing is that it creates a culture of doing so. Even if and when they are not being directed to do so, which it is fairly obvious they are, they will continue to do so. Forget about enemies of a president or any particular political party what about perceived enemies of the IRS?

A giant institution develops self preservation attitudes and practices, this is what is happening throughout our bloated Federal government, the Department of Education's needs a SWAT Team, really?

What the left either fails to recognize, ignores or hopes it controls is that it is not just a matter of whether government can do "good" things, or even if it can do them efficiently both of which are highly debatable, it is a matter that big government can do ANYTHING. Unlike other institutions in society, there is nobody that can stop them, government especially the national government is God on Earth, the final authority. If We The People lose control of it, it controls us and eventually it does not matter which party you belong to because you belong to them. If you don't believe me just ask the NSA, they'll hear you.

Suicide by Government

Via-NRO

Detroit is responsible for its own demise.

By Rich Lowry

The case of the city of Detroit isn’t much of a murder mystery. Various suspects have been fingered in its demise: The global economy. The fall of the auto industry. The decline of manufacturing generally. But it’s simpler than that. Detroit died of its own hand.

The city undertook a controlled experiment in what happens if you are governed by a toxic combination of Great Society big spenders, race hustlers, crooks, public-sector unions, and ineffectual reformers. It spent and misgoverned itself into the ground. It tried to defy the axiom of the late economist Herb Stein that “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Detroit’s bout of self-destruction lasted for a few decades, and now may finally stop only when there is little left to destroy.

The city was at the pioneering edge of urban liberalism and discovered that all the social spending in the world doesn’t deliver order, family stability, education, economic dynamism, or effective governance. In the hands of Detroit’s rotten political class, it proved inimical to all of those things.

The city’s downfall started long before anyone imagined that the Big Three would ever be anything but overwhelmingly dominant. Hardly anyone had heard of Toyota in 1967, when riots ripped the city and a long crime wave began that made it unlivable. According to Henry Payne of the Detroit News, the murder rate climbed from 13 per 100,000 residents in 1966 to 51 per 100,000 by 1976.

Lies,damned lies and government officials -The Nature of the Beast

The Nature of the Beast

In part one we pointed out that government officials lie. they lie for various reasons but like all human beings they are suseptable to corruption. Here let's go a bit further an see how lies and deception by Government officials even with the best of intentions create slippery slopes to tyranny.

On several occasions before the recent revelations of NSA vacuuming up of the nation's phone records General Kenneth Alexander, head of the NSA and a DC establishment hero if there ever was one, has denied that the NSA is doing what we now know they are doing.

[I]n testimony Tuesday [March 12.2012] in front of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Alexander responded to questions about the program, saying the NSA did not have the capability to monitor, inside the United States, Americans’ text messages, phone calls and e-mails. He added that if the NSA were to target an American, the FBI would take the lead and fill out the paperwork.

What exactly did he say in response to a question on e-mail monitoring?

“We don’t have the technical insights in the United States. In other words, you have to have [...] some way of doing that either by going to a service provider with a warrant or you have to be collecting in that area. We’re not authorized to do that, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to collect that kind of information.”

In July of last year he specifically said “We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens." But of course they do, and now they admit it

NSA Deputy Director John Inglis said that 22 NSA officials are authorized to approve requests to query an agency database that contains the cellphone metadata of American citizens. (Metadata includes the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls, the date and time the calls took place, and their duration.) Deputy AG Cole also said that all queries of this database must be documented and can be subject to audits. Cole also said that the the NSA does not have to get separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approval for each query; instead, the agency merely has to file a monthly report with the court on how many times the database was queried, and how many of those searches targeted the phone records of Americans.

This one paragraph on the testimony of National Security big wigs raises a host of other questions.  Who are these 22 NSA officials? They are not judges, they are not elected representatives of the people they are NSA officials. Leading up to this new transparency the American public was led to believe that additional scrutiny of our phone records or e-mails or whatever required an additional warrant, But that is not true at all. It does not require the FBI or whoever to go before a judge only that theyget permission from one of twenty two NSA officials. I am sure they are all dedicated conscientious civil servants like well like Lois Lerner.

But even before you get to these 22 NSA officials, who exactly is able to make a request for a query?  Primarily the FBI  makes most requests especially on American citizens and remember this is a request to 1 of 22 unknown officials at the NSA, not a Federal Judge. The Federal Judge has already given that authorization through a warrant like the one revealed in the Verizon case.

So let's say the FBI's boss, The Attorney General makes a request of the NSA official to query Sharyl Attkisson's of CBS News phone or E-mail records because she has foreign sources in Libya.  Will these NSA government officials over rule the Attorney General of the United States?

Remeember this: the NSA does not have to get separate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approval for each query; instead, the agency merely has to file a monthly report with the court on how many times the database was queried, and how many of those searches targeted the phone records of Americans. Does that mean that the FISC court does not even know the specifics of the query? Only the quantity?

We are told all of this is subject to audit. "Deputy AG Cole also said that all queries of this database must be documented and can be subject to audits."  Who audits all of this? A judge? Congress? No it is the Department of Justice of course.

 So would the unknown DOJ official(s) responsible for "auditing" an Attorney Generals request to query Sharyl Atkisson's phone and e-mail records blow the whistle on him? And exactly how would they go about doing that anyway? Report him to the FBI? What happens when an audit reveals misuse of the system? Who is informed and how do they resolve this?

But without even getting into conspiracy theories about the Attorney General, what we have here is the FBI, a division of the Department of Justice, making request of NSA officials to query Americans records without showing probable cause to a judge. Then to insure that the system is not abused the same Department of Justice audits those requests and queries. Does anyone see a potential problem here? There is no real checks and balances here at all, everything is basically done in house and the fox is guarding that hen house.

But there are even more interesting questions to be asked like why if this is how the system works even have the NSA keep this information in the first place? After all if they are just some sort of giant depository of our records to be accessed once the FBI or whoever has suspicions, why can't they just go to the providers for the information?

 The answer is quite simple actually, in order to track down foreign threats, they have to have all communications from everyone.  As has been pointed out, in order to find a needle in a haystack you first must have a haystack. So rater than have hundereds of haystack to sift through they have decided to make one giant one.

 All of our personal records are that haystack and the farmer is the NSA. A giant haystack that does not require governemnt officials to go to a court on each individual case to show probable cause, but one giant haystack that has its own rules outside the tradional American judicial system.  What a wonderful police tool they have created and are expanding upon and now are atempting to sell to the American people under the guise of Naional Security.

But in order to protect our nation is it really neccessary to sell the soul of our nation? Is not indvidual freedom and limitations on the intrusion of government on our lives the very soul of America? I fear this is precisely what is ocurring and at an accelerated pace. Americans are being sold on the idea that in order to be safe we must consent to government intrusion into all aspects of our lives. The dots they are connecting today in order to protect us will inevitably be used by government to enslave us.

It is the nature of the beast.

Lies damned lies and government officials (part one)

Everyone has heard the term "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" which is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. And virtually every politician's words are taken with a a great deal of skepticism. After all, "how do you know a politician is lying to you ? His lips are moving." Badaboom.

As if it was not enough that we  have to worry about our elected officials misleading us for political gain,  now we have to worry about government "officials" deceiving us in order to protect their agendas or their fiefdoms of bureaucracy.

A recent example is that at the highest echelons of the IRS in collusion with the White House  they conspired how to reveal the conservative and Tea Party "targeting" scandal in order to get ahead of an Inspector Generals report.

Weeks before the world – and apparently President Barack Obama himself – heard about the details of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, top people in his administration started planning how to stage-manage the release of the information.

Actually nobody really blames them for trying to get ahead of the story, that is smart public relations, but they not only planted a fake question at a Bar Association conference of all places, they lied about what happened and failed to reveal the White house involvement  until well after the fact.  In other words they created a scandal by revealing a scandal, not too bright really.

To summarize, a career civil "servant" intentionally and with premeditation planed with her superiors  to mislead the public they ostensibly serve about what had occurred at a public agency. They did so either to protect their own culpability or to shield that agency from harm or both.  Out here in the real world we call that a cover up or just plain lying.

But not all lies are to protect from scandals, though government officials lying to the public is a scandal in of itself, sometimes they lie to cover for their agendas.

Consider Peter V. Lee the Executive Director of “Covered California,” the Golden State’s system of Obamacare insurance exchanges. Peter Ferarra at The American Spectator does an excellent job of explaining Mr. Lee's slight of hand.

The Covered California press release stated: “The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market ranged from 2 percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”

If you don’t read that sentence carefully, you may miss the trick that is being played on you. Instead of comparing the 2014 premiums under Obamacare for health insurance sold in the individual market in California to the 2013 premiums for health insurance sold in the individual market in California, which would be comparing apples to apples, the statement does something else. It compares the 2014 premiums under Obamacare for health insurance sold in the individual market in California to the 2013 premiums for “small employer plans” sold to employers in California.

That is like comparing the prices for laundry detergent sold to consumers for use in their homes to prices for industrial strength detergent sold to businesses for cleaning responsibilities in operating their businesses. Or it is like a Chevy dealer in a year when the prices for Chevys have soared issuing a press release that says, “The prices for 2014 Chevy cars and trucks ranged from 2 percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average prices for Lincoln Town cars sold to limousine services and dump trucks sold to construction companies.” What consumers want to know is how the prices for 2014 Chevys compare to the prices for 2013 Chevys. That would be comparing apples to apples.

As the story points out Obama used  these false statement to show how well his signature program is doing, not.

So just because a government official makes a declarative reassuring statement it does not mean you should be reassured. It is one thing to have to monitor our elected politicians words for deception, after all we can hold them accountable through elections. It is quite another task to be leery  and skeptical of every statement of fact coming out of government officials mouths.

After all just the description or title as "government officials lends a certain authority to any pronouncement they may make on a subject of public policy, right? After all wouldn't it be automatically assumed that a government official making public statements are giving us the official version of whatever they are communicating about?  After all, unless they preface their statement by saying, "in my opinion" one must assume that what they are saying is truthful to the best of their knowledge and the "official" position of whatever agency or institution they represent.

Or based on recent performance we might just want to call them government unofficials.

This brings us to the recent revelations about the NSA and domestic surveillance. Asked directly whether the NSA was doing what we all now know is exactly what they are doing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had the following exchange with Senator Wyden at a Senate hearing.

Wyden: And this is for you, Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer the NSA director was at a conference and he was asked a question about the NSA surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, '...the story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely false.' The reason I'm asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don't really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" 

Clapper: "No, sir." 

Wyden: "It does not." 

Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Obviously that is a lie.  He knew it was a lie when he said it, but as he later explained when the truth came out “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner, by saying no.” The least untruthful? Is there a government agency that determines degrees of truthfulness now? How ridiculous

But he is not alone as we will see in part two of Lies, damned lies and government officials.

As bad as it is, it is probably worse.

 Most people on the right side of the political spectrum view the recent revelations of the IRS targeting Tea Party and other conservative organizations for "special" treatment as proof that Barack Obama is everything that we have been saying about him for the past six years. The truth is probably far worse.

Oh it is more than probable that the Obama Administration knew of the shenanigans going on at the IRS for some time, perhaps even from the beginning, but the real problem, the reality that should send shivers up every American's spine is that probably nobody in the Obama Administration directed the IRS to do it.

If someone in the Administration and it would have to be a powerful member to do so, did pull the strings to get the IRS to harass conservative groups, well then we just have corrupt politician doing what corrupt politicians do. But the far more likely scenario is that the IRS took the opportunity of a sympathetic administration being in power to go after its, the IRS's, enemies. In other words the IRS, as an institution, sees the Tea Party and other like minded conservative organizations as a threat to their power

Since its formation the Tea Party has been portrayed as a bunch of greedy white people hell bent on protecting themselves from higher taxes. But the Tea Party movement has always made it clear that taxes are just a symptom of a far deeper threat. The primary motivation of the Tea party movement is the belief that the federal government is far too big and is trampling on American's individual and constitutional protected freedoms.

The Tea Party has always understood one important historical truth, government = control.

This is why the Tea Party so identifies with our Founders, they too understood this simple truth and devised a system of government that, if maintained, would limit the power of government thus insuring a greater degree of individual freedom than had ever existed before the founding of our nation,  Of course that system of government has not been maintained and thus we have deteriorated to the point where the IRS is harassing citizens whose only crime is that they want to become more involved in the political process of their nation.

Nothing has validated the Tea Party's  concerns of an out of control federal government as has the IRS targeting of those who most openly challenge big government. The IRS, like a cornered animal lashed out at its protagonist because its very existence, its institutional survival were threatened. The institutional  instincts of one of the United States most powerful and feared agencies in order to protect itself  has shown it not only can but will destroy American's constitutional liberties in order to maintain its power, the power which legally belongs to the very citizens it attacks. .

It is one thing for a partisan politician and his administration to use the power of governing to punish their political enemies, happens all the time. It is quite another thing for the Leviathan of a massive Federal bureaucracy to target ordinary citizens. We know this to be true regardless of the circumstances of who specifically directed these actions. With such widespread abuse of power, nobody stepped forward to blow the whistle. No IRS employee less alone manager stepped forward and declared "this is wrong". Neither publicly or with the protection of whistle blower status, did any bureaucrat think it important to protect fellow citizens from the abuse of power by a tyrannical government agency. The IRS as an agency was more important to these people than the constitutional protections of average Americans.

I sincerely wish that Obama and his petty tyrants had forced the IRS to "punish" his enemies, the solution to that is relatively simple. But the IRS and other such federal agencies are not on the ballot every four years and you do not impeach the Federal bureaucracy.

Our federal government is a amalgamation self sustaining and self defending organisms not really subject to political control, by either party. Constitutional restraints even in their current state of political demise are absolutely meaningless to soulless institutions whose only purpose are its own  perpetuation. The federal government is now so big that all of its institutions are entities unto themselves divorced from and little concerned with the citizens of the rest of the nation they ostensibly exist to serve.. They exist in order to exist, there truly is no higher goal.

If Obama ordered the IRS to attack the Tea Party that would, in one sense, be good news. It would show that the IRS was subject to "civilian" control, even if misguided, corrupt and un-American  control. But I fear it is far worse than that, I fear the IRS just does what it wants in order to maintain control, its control of us, to protect itself.

We're All CVS Employees Now

Via-American Thinker

By Tara Servatius

CVS employees, and the rest of America, had better get used to turning over personal health information like their glucose levels and body mass index to their insurers - and to the federal government.


Starting in 2014, per the dictates of the federal government, your doctor must record your body mass index (BMI), which measures whether you are overweight, each time he or she treats you and turn it over to the government via your electronic health record, which every patient is required to have. Your BMI will then be tracked by the Health and Human Services Department, the agency rolling out ObamaCare, and a bevy of other state and federal agencies.


Shock and anger ensued this week as CVS employees learned that if they didn't turn over that information to their insurers, they'd be fined. But CVS is merely rolling out what may become one of the most controversial aspects of ObamaCare a little ahead of schedule.