Who said "At this point what difference could it possibly make?"

For those Americans who were working or studying too hard to watch, this is a takeoff on Hilliary's response when she appeared before the congressional committee investigating the killing of four Americans at a "consular annex" in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

One of the Americans killed was our  Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Hilliary was the American secretary of state at that time, appointed by Barack Obama.

Hilliary defenders claimed the attack was simply a "spontaneous demonstration" caused by outrage over an internet video virtually no one in Benghazi had seen--a line Hilliary and other members of the Obama adminisration pushed hard in the days after the attack.  Defenders claimed the fact that it occurred on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center by muslim hijackers was merely an odd coincidence, proving nothing.

As questioners started closing in on the cause, and the so-called "coincidence" as to the date, Hilliary grew visibly flustered, finally snarling out this line:

"At this point, what difference could it possibly make?"

But she would have made a great president, putting America first and steadfastly defending our nation with her steely determination to... Hahahahahaha!  Can't even imagine...

Iraqi protesters storm U.S. embassy? Maybe they're not really Iraqi civilians

Headlines in every Mainstream Media outlet: "IRAQI protesters storm U.S. embassy in Iraq!!"

So...authentic Iraqi civilians outraged that the U.S. struck IRANIAN forces in Iraq, eh Media?

"SEE, voters??!  Da eeebil OrangeManBad made this AWFUL decision to strike Iranian forces in Iraq, endangering Iraqi citizens!  Yep yep yep!!  Just one more impeachable offense!"

Except they're not.  According to this guy they're really Iranian-backed Shiite militia trying to make the world media think Iraqis are outraged about U.S. attacks on Iraq's traditional enemy, Iran.  Hmm...

The “Iraqi protesters” besieging the US Embassy in Baghdad are Iranian-backed Shiite militia belonging to Hezbollah and other paramilitary orgs that are trying to give the impression that they’re just civilian protesters.

They’re an astroturfed “Popular Mobilization Force.” pic.twitter.com/8r9zE8i4Xz

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 31, 2019

Below is the wall of our embassy.  Know anyone who can read Arabic/Persian or WTF this is?  Guy who posted this claims it says "Qassem Soleimani is our leader."  Soleimani is the leader of Iran’s Qods Force.  He built the Iraqi militias.

Wait...Iran and Iraq are historic enemies.  Why would the people storming the embassy--ostensibly jus' plain ol' Iraqi civilians--write something like that, eh?  Uhhh....




Here's a pic of the crowd outside our embassy.  Guy who posted the pic says the guy circled in red is Falih al-Fayyadh, head of al-Hashd al-Sha’bi (the Popular Mobiliazation units) the official umbrella organization of the pro-Iranian Shiite militias.   Beats me, but should be possible to confirm.  If true, it's Iran...again.

New laws to ban private citizens from owning guns will absolutely, positively end gun violence

Former Dem presidential darling says what we're doing about guns isn't working. So...

Earlier this year Democrat presidential candidate Robert Francis O'Rourke--a guy the media was delighted to call "Beto"--was THE darling of the Democrat establishment.  Many Americans have forgotten that the leftist mag "Vanity Fair" ran a carefully-staged pic of him in his rugged, authentic cowboy jeans, beside his authentic cowboy pickup truck with his authentic, faithful cowboy-companion dog on its cover, touting him as the new JFK.

Sadly, Beto flamed out on takeoff as Americans quickly learned that he was a pretentious, hypocritical nut.  But the media still loves him, and he's got a zillion followers on twatter, so...

Well, after the shotgun-wielding nut killed two people at the Fort Worth church, Beto tweeted the following brilliant idea:

So saddened to hear about another church shooting in Texas, this one in White Settlement near Fort Worth. Clearly what we are doing in Texas, what we are doing in this country, when it comes to guns is not working. https://t.co/krwcpL1lih

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) December 29, 2019

So Beto says "Clearly what we are doing when it comes to guns is not working."  Intrigued, we caught up with Beto and asked him to explain what he'd actually recommend to "work."

Q:  Congressman, what do you propose to solve gun violence in the United States?

A:  We need to repeal that dumb law that let people carry firearms into churches.

Q:  Um...do you really think people like the church shooter--people determined to kill others--will obey a door sticker saying "No guns allowed" when they're already determined to break the law against shooting someone who hasn't threatened them?

A:  Sure.

Q:  Um...wow.  That seems...illogical but we'll go with it for now.  Do you think private citizens should be allowed to own guns?

A:  No.  I think we should ban private ownership of guns.
Q:  Do you mean handguns, or all types of guns, including hunting rifles and shotguns?

A:  All firearms.  There's simply no rational reason for private citizens to own guns.

Q:  Would you do this by amending the Constitution to scrap the Second Amendment?

A:  I don't think that's necessary.  A good Democrat president could just issue an Executive Order saying that was no longer the law--like President Obama did when he nullified a cruel and racist law that would have deported innocent kids whose parents had brought them into the country.

Q:  Ah, you mean when he created "DACA"--"Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals"?

A:  Yes, exactly.  All good Americans supported that wonderful, compassionate re-writing of American immigration law.  See, if he'd waited for congress to change the law to do that, it would have caused cruel anxiety for those kids.  And of course now almost all of 'em are executives with Fortune 500 companies.  So the president's order was a great thing.

Q:  Okay, so back to guns:  How would banning guns keep determined killers from obtaining 'em?

A:  Well, because it would be the law.  And we expect every American to obey valid laws.

Q:  Really?  Is it really reasonable to expect crazy people, like the church shooters, to obey laws?

A:  Sure.

Q:  Um...okay.  But you think it should be against the law for members of congregations to carry firearms to be able to defend their fellow members against an armed crazy trying to kill as many as possible?

A:  I think you're exaggerating the risk there--making people fear something that almost never happens.  It's extremely rare for someone to go into a church to kill people.

Q:  Well it's happened about five times in the last five years, so...

A:  See, thanks for proving my point!  You gun nuts are all alike.
 

Someone guessed where the left's demand for "equality of outcomes" would have to lead...

The Left makes a great show of demanding not just equality of opportunity, but also of outcomes.

You think that's nonsense--tinfoil-hat stuff, but leftists have actually demanded that schools not discipline the members of any race more than those of any other race--regardless of the actual number of offenses committed by members of each group.

Other leftists complain that it's simply not FAIR that the percentage of prison inmates of various races doesn't match that race's percentage of the population.

In 1961 novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr. predicted where "equality of outcomes" would lead, and gave us the following very short story:

HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.

Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution--and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though.  April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his IQ was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their intelligence.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance.  It was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup, " said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good--no better than anybody else would have been, anyway.  They were burdened with sash-weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat dragged in.

George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, " said George .

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up."

"Urn, " said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel.  Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday.  Just chimes.  Kind of in honor of religion."

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better then I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "That sounded like a doozy!"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, holding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch."  She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for awhile."

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't even notice it any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately--kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel.  "I mean, you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd do it, and pretty soon we'd be right back to the Dark Ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?"

If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd all fall apart," said Hazel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?

"Who knows?" said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say "Ladies and gentlemen."

He finally gave up and handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous.  And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred
pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive .

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen--first upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up.  The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps.  He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses.  The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him.  Usually there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds .

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy, " said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photo of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have--for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God," said George, "that must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone and a living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio, the knob of the uprooted studio door still in his hand.  Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become! "

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper--straps guaranteed to support a thousand pounds.

Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery.  He smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealing a man who would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now," said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls."

The music began.  It was normal at first--off-key, silly, false--but Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and this time was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while--listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weight to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.

And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again, aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.

"Yup, " she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced as the radio in his ear blasted the sound of a rivetting gun.

"Gee, I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee," said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."

===
Written by the amazingly prescient Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in 1961.

Another murder by illegals in DC suburbs; killer had been released a month earlier--cops ignored ICE detainer

In what has become an all-too-familiar scene in the D.C. suburban area, a month ago cops in Montgomery County, Maryland found the body of a 19-year-old girl in a wooded area.  She'd been shot to death.

Local liberals and Democrats immediately got ready to scream about gun violence--until they learned that the killers were members of a known gang composed mainly of illegal aliens who were lovingly allowed to enter the U.S. as "unaccompanied alien children."  And two were illegal aliens who had entered as adults.

"Ooooh, don't call attention to THIS gun murder, allies!  Instead, ignore it.  If our media allies ignore it, almost no one will notice."

Police have arrested Jonathan Rivera-Escobar, 19; Geovany Dominguez, 24; Jordan Moreno, 21; and Rigoberto Machado, 16 – all part of an 18th Street gang clique in D.C. – for the murder.

Adding to the outrage, a month before the murder Dominguez had been arrested by DC Metro Police.  ICE had requested that DC cops notify them before releasing him so they could pick him up for illegal immigration.

DC Metro cops--following the orders of their Democrat masters who have ruled DC forever--ignored the detainer request and released him.  A month later he helped murder the girl.

Ask yourself:  Do you really want law enforcement to keep ignoring ICE detainers, America?  To let illegal alien criminals go free to murder?

Then you realize that it doesn't make a damn bit of difference what the rest of us want, cuz the charmless morons of DC and Maryland and northern Virginia will do what their Democrat politicians tell 'em to, regardless of the cost in human lives.

They consider murders by illegals "collateral damage" and eagerly support open borders.  Cuz, fairness, citizen.

Mainstream Media react to the Fort Worth church shooting

This morning the major national media outlets announced their dismay after an armed citizen fatally shot a shotgun-wielding attacker in a Fort Worth church.

A CNN reporter on the scene said "It's sad that the actions of a vigilante ruined what would have been a story that we could have exploited for weeks." 

The New York Times editorial board wrote "We are absolutely heartbroken and in shock." "What could have given us weeks of solid editorials pushing gun control will now have to wait."

News outlets also reminded the nation that they reserve the right to immediately bury mass shooting stories that don't help push their agenda.

Joe Biden: We should put fossil fuel execs in jail for "pollution," then *flies* off to the next event

Biden is not only senile but also a damn hypocrite:  Watch the clip below as he claims executives of "fossil fuel" companies should be jailed, for "causing pollution."

Really Joe?  Ya know, ya dumb sonofabitch, I see you've been FLYING all over the country in your bid to be emperor.  Tell us: did someone FORCE you to use those planes?  Force you to use cars to get from the airports to your events?  Did someone hold a gun to your moronic, corrupt head, cupcake?

Yeah, I thought not.  So the person who was actually responsible for putting all that supposedly-deadly carbon dioxide into the air was...YOU, ya hypocrite.  Not the folks who put the fuel in you grubby reach.

And we're just getting started, azzhole.  Do you heat your mansion in Delaware?  Use lights in it?  Then once again you're a hypocrite:  You want to jail the people you can get others to hate, when the real culprit is you and the rest of your "I just hate carbon fuels!" supporters.

.@JoeBiden on fossil fuel execs: “We should put them in jail” for pollution pic.twitter.com/OLqZMwi4E5

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 29, 2019

Oh, and Sleepy Joe goes on to echo that moron AOC, saying that if we don't stop using fossil fuels, "we're all dead."  Yeah.  But once again, you're not giving up your use.  When you stop flying and driving and using hot water and heating and cooling your mansion, and using lights, I might pay a tiny bit of attention to your bleats.  Til then, kiss my ass.

Also Biden: If we don’t stop using fossil fuels “we’re all dead” pic.twitter.com/SG4gHJtCTM

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 30, 2019

Man hits woman with a tire iron in kidnap attempt, after kidnapping and assault in California

The charmless goblin below was captured in Alabama after he kidnapped a woman and threw her into the back of a van with bars and blankets over the windows.  Since the goblin's only six feet tall he needed more of an overpowering advantage to kidnap the woman, so he hit her in the head with a tire iron before speeding away.

Yeah, can't just rely on muscle when you're a six-foot black guy trying to kidnap a five-foot woman, eh?  Those small gals can have moves, right?

By the grace of God a witness saw him grab her, called the cops and followed the guy, giving the cops his location during the chase.  Cops blocked the guy in but he rammed their cars and got away.

The second time he wasn't so lucky.

Turns out this particular goblin is Sean Sanders--who police said is a violent criminal from Los Angeles with prior arrests for kidnapping and assault.



Now, this type of thing happens every week somewhere in the U.S., so why should this be worth noting?  Because you need to focus on the ludicrously-misnamed "justice system" in California.  As in other Democrat-ruled states, the ruling politicians have ordered prosecutors to plead down cases, even for kidnapping.  I'd be surprised if the government of Cali didn't give this goblin a bus ticket to Alabama and say "Don't come back."

As a result of not being in prison for 30 years for his earlier crimes, this guy damn near killed his victim in Alabama.

Wonder if politicians in Alabama will tell their prosecutors to be as lenient as California was?

Former deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein wrapped himself in pious declarations as he violated the Constitution

"To get a FISA search warrant you need an affidavit signed by a career federal law enforcement officer who swears [here he raised his right hand for effect] that the information in the affidavit is true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief. And if it’s wrong . . . that person is going to face consequences . . . you can face discipline or even prosecution.”
  --Then-deputy Attorney-General of the United States Rod Rosenstein, speaking to supporters at the now-defunct "Newseum," May 1, 2018

On the FBI's FISA application to wiretap Trump advisor Carter Page, Rosenstein certified as true a number of statements that were blatantly false.  In other words, he lied.  So far he hasn't been charged with any crime, nor has he been disciplined in any way.

"There have been people who have been making threats...against me for quite some time now.  And they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.  We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law.  And any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job . . . You raise your right hand and you swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution . . . you promise to bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . . and everybody in the department takes that oath and if they violate it, they know they’re going to be held accountable.”
   -- Then-deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein

Rosenstein piously invoked the Constitution, and the oath he supposedly swore to "support and defend" that document.  He violated that oath, but has not been held accountable in any way.

Imagine how fast the Democrats would have jailed this azzhole for exactly the same behavior if he'd been a Republican targetting a Democrat president.

H/T American Greatness

Here's what the Democrat-loving media claim is good leadership from a Democrat mayor

Suppose you're the Democrat mayor of a Dem-ruled sh*t-hole city that's being overwhelmed by murders.  Your citizens are being terrorized.  What do you do to improve that situation?  Do you

• blame prosecutors for not asking for longer sentences for convicted murderers?
• fire any prosecutor who refuses to promise to do that?
• urge city cops to be more aggressive in apprehending killers?
• fire the police chief if he refuses to do that?

Well if you're the mayor of Baltimore you tweet "

"I'm not committing the murders. The police commissioner has not committed it. The council's not committing it. So how can you fault leadership?"

The comments to his absurd tweet are a hoot.

Mayor Jack Young on Baltimore homicides: "I'm not committing the murders. The police commissioner has not committed it. The council's not committing it. So how can you fault leadership?" https://t.co/Yg9MMRnUTE pic.twitter.com/5XExpSMGA2

— FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) November 13, 2019

Here's the text of just ONE of Virginia Democrats' gun-confiscation laws

If you know anything about how bills--the things that eventually become laws--are written, you know that the provisions the politicians know most voters will hate are always buried way down in the text.

That's because they know 99% of the voters never read that far down, so never see how they're about to get shafted.

Consider this bill from Virginia--"SB-16."  The Democrats who now control the entire state government--both chambers and the governorship--have bleated that this is a "gun-safety bill," but its actual effect would be to criminalize the private ownership of 95% of the guns owned today.

The full text is here--and because you can't believe the Dems could possibly be this brazen in their gun-confiscation efforts, I encourage you to click the link and see for yourself that I'm telling you the truth.  The language that will make owning most guns a "class-6 felony" is at the very end of the bill:

§18.2-308.8. Importation, sale, possession, etc., of assault firearms prohibited; penalty.

A. For the purposes of this section "Assault firearm" means:

1. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds;

2. A semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock; (ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle; (iii) a thumbhole stock; (iv) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (v) a bayonet mount; (vi) a grenade launcher; (vii) a flare launcher; (viii) a silencer; (ix) a flash suppressor; (x) a muzzle brake; (xi) a muzzle compensator; (xii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a muzzle brake, or (d) a muzzle compensator; or (xiii) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (xii);

3. A semi-automatic center-fire pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds;

4. A semi-automatic center-fire pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding or telescoping stock; (ii) a thumbhole stock; (iii) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (iv) the capacity to accept a magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip; (v) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the pistol with the non-trigger hand without being burned; (vi) a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded; (vii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a silencer, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a barrel extender, or (d) a forward handgrip; or (viii) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (vii);

Did you catch the "gotcha" clause--the one that makes the most popular rifles illegal to own?  If you didn't, don't feel bad--they wrote this so almost no one would recognize it.  It's cleverly hidden well below the phrases that are intended to make most readers think their definition of an "assault firearm" can't possibly apply to their guns--provisions like paragraph 2: 'It's an assault firearm if it has a bayonet mount or a grenade launcher or a flare launcher or a silencer or a muzzle brake or a muzzle compensator or a threaded barrel capable of accepting those.'

So look again.  Did you spot it this time?

It's in paragraph 4, clause (iv): "the capacity to accept a magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip."

If you're not familiar with firearms I won't bore you with details, but this clause would make it illegal to own the most popular "semi-automatic" rifles.

Now, you don't live in Virginia so why should you care about what laws their cunning Democrat politicians pass, eh?

Because this is a "trial balloon."  If the Democrats get away with passing this, every other Dem-ruled state will rush to pass exactly the same law. 

"But I don't own an 'assault firearm,' so this doesn't affect me at all!"

Oh, well, in that case just disregard all of the above.  Hopefully someone else will defend you rights, since you clearly won't.

Media double-standards, example 945,603: Suppose one of Trump's sons had done this...

Suppose one of Donald Trump's sons turned in a rental car, and the rental agency found a crack pipe, a bag with "white powder" and four ID cards with the son's name on 'em in the front seat.  How do you think the Mainstream Media would have reacted?  Would they have
   a) Ignored the entire story; or
   b) made the story headline news, front page, above the fold and leading every network newscast for two solid weeks, then resurrected the scandal all through the year leading to the 2020 election?

Oh, I see most of you are saying "This didn't happen, so why ask this stupid hypothetical question?

Good point.  Something exactly like this actually did happen--but the story was buried...totally ignored by every mainstream media outlet.  And the reason?

The car had been rented by...Hunter Biden, son of Dem presidential candidate Joe.  The car agency also found Hunter's credit cards, a driver's license, cellphone and a Secret Service business card in the car, according to the police report. 

They also found a badge for the attorney-general of Delaware.  This is significant because Hunter Biden's deceased brother held that post until his death in 2015.

In addition to the crack pipe, officers also found “a small ziplock bag with a white powdery substance in it on the passenger seat.”  Hunter Biden has used crack for years.

Cops didn't bother to send a sample of the bag's contents for testing because, reasons.

Now, do you think the Lying Mainstream Media would have buried this story if the perp was one of Trump's sons?  And yet the buried the same story when the perp was Joe Biden's son.

Still think you can trust the Mainstream Media to be honest and unbiased?

Man walks into strangers' house, starts stabbing occupants with a machete

What kind of person walks into a stranger's home with a machete and starts cutting the residents?

In a town outside NYC the guy below did just that.

Maybe it's just me but it seems as though we're seeing a LOT more attacks like this.  Is there more insanity now?  More race hate?  (that one seems likely.)  Maybe something bizarre like demonic possession?  MS-13?  Beats me.

Cali violates federal law by giving "free" non-emergency medical care to illegals under age 26

Politicians' staffers have a largely unrecognized but hugely valuable talent:  Being able to write laws that utterly bury the most outrageous provisions of those laws.

They do this to keep their bosses--the politicians--from looking like the corrupt, greedy scum they really are.  Cuz if the average voter knew how badly he or she was being hosed by the government, they'd revolt.

Example: California SB-104, which became state law last July.  It blathers endlessly about the need for "unified" health care.  The phrase "single-payer" is used often.  But eventually we get to the point:

Existing law [before this bill] requires that individuals under 19 years of age enrolled in restricted-scope Medi-Cal at the time the Director of Health Care Services makes a determination that systems have been programmed for implementation of these provisions be enrolled in the full scope of Medi-Cal benefits, if otherwise eligible. Existing law requires the department to maximize federal financial participation in implementing the provisions.

This bill would extend eligibility for full-scope Medi-Cal benefits to individuals 19 to 25 years of age, inclusive, and who are otherwise eligible for those benefits...

Here comes the bomb:

"...but for their immigration status."

With those five words, tacked onto the end of a bunch of word salad, Democrat pols who run California's government just expanded Califonia's equivalent of Medicaid to give "free" medical care to all illegal aliens under the age of 26.

Rational Americans would see this as such a huge change from the prior policy that they'd expect any law ordering such a change would state its intent and purpose right up front.  But of course the staff knows the game: bury the significant changes so fewer voters will be able to spot them.  And the media won't criticize, since the media is entirely pro-Democrat, which means they support illegal aliens and open borders.  Neat.

But wait...doesn't federal law specifically provide that federal payments to states can't be used to cover illegals?  Why yes, yes it does, as SB-104 even admits:

The federal Medicaid program prohibits payment to a state for medical assistance furnished to an alien who is not lawfully admitted for permanent residence or otherwise permanently residing in the United States...

But not to worry, taxpayers, because "Existing law requires the department to maximize federal financial participation in implementing the provisions."  "And the new law doesn't change that.  So we're confident we can find enough loopholes in the federal law to make taxpayers in the other 49 states [or other 56, if you're Barack Obama, who once said he'd been to "all but two of the 57 states"] pay for our wunnerful gift of  "FREE" medical care to illegals.  We are SO wonderful!"

The rest of the plot goes like this:  After the costs of this wonderful "gift" outstrip the maximum amount of federal (taxpayer) dollars by a few billion, Cali pols will have two options:  If a Democrat is president, they'll get all the money they want.  If a conservative Republican is president the state's Dems will wail to the media that "innocent children are dying because the heartless Republican president is refusing to fund our program that was keeping them alive!!!"

Question: What do you call an earthquake that swallows the entire Cali capitol building, including all the legislators and staff?

A good start.

Oh, and in case you think California's Democrat rulers are different from national Dems:  All major Democrat presidential candidates have said they'll give "free" health care to illegal aliens.

Gotta seal up the socialist and illegal vote, eh?  And do Leftists really believe it's "free"? 

Media: "Foreign interference in our elections is an outrage!" But it's okay for illegals to vote.

The Lying Mainstream Media have spent the last 3 years screaming that the Russians helped Trump win steal the 2016 election from the rightful queen.  Turned out to be BS, but regardless, they were resolutely opposed to "foreign interference in our elections."

But somehow, allowing unlimited numbers of illegal aliens to enter the U.S. and be registered to vote (automatically done in many states that give illegals driver's licenses unless affirmatively declined by the illegal alien) is not a problem AT ALL.   



Of course the Mainstream Media knows most Americans will never realize their total double-standard on this.

Seattle retail chain bans Salvation Army bells outside its stores, because LGBTQs said...

How far over the cliff of insanity have the Left and its allies dragged this nation?  Consider this story, from a leftist paper in Seattle:

The Salvation Army is one of the largest providers of homeless shelters, food banks and other social services in the world.  Each Christmas for decades, bell-ringing volunteers solicit donations for the group's work outside major department stores. 

For over 20 years the Nordstrom chain has participated.  But this year the owners told the Salvation Army they would no longer allow the charity's bell ringers to solicit in front of its stores.

Nordstrom spokeswoman Jennifer Walker refused to explain the reasons for banning the charity, but a man who's been a bell-ringer outside Nordstrom's for 18 years said owner Jamie Nordstrom told him "LGBTQ employees said the Salvation Army’s presence outside their stores made them uncomfortable."

Let that sink in for a minute:  The gay mafia hates Christianity and most Christian organizations with a passion, so they've gotten Nordstroms to ban the Salvation Army (a Christian organization) from their stores.  Nordstroms knows that if they didn't roll over for the gay mafia they'd be facing furious protesters in no time.  By contrast, the owner know the Salvation Army will just bow and obey.

Homosexual activists claim the Salvation Army "espouses a theology that sees marriage as between a man and a woman."   In response, the SA has tried to sooth the gay mafia, in part by setting up a Las Vegas shelter for trannies.   Of course nothing but total surrender will placate the gay mafia, and some gays have urged people to stop donating to the Salvation Army.

After all, the mafia succeeded in forcing Chick-fil-A to stop donating to the Salvation Army. 

But wait...it gets better: 

The acting director of Seattle’s Human Services Department claims that "the community" has "expressed concerns" that shelters owned and run by the Salvation Army "are not safe for LBGTQ persons."  So the city will do an “equity audit” to decide whether to end contracts with the Salvation Army to operate homeless shelters.

Here's my suggestion:  The Salvation Army should simply end all activity in Seattle and King County.  All of it.  Stop operating in any city or state whose moronic officials and pols demand that you not hold beliefs they don't like.  The moronic officials and pols in Seattle don't want you there, so leave.  They'll be fine, and the homeless won't suffer a bit--or at least no one with the city will ever admit it, cuz that would mean..."Oooh, maybe we shouldn't have demanded that every charity agency drop beliefs we proggies don't like."

And they'll never say that.  So...win-win.

Trust these folks, cuz...um...they've always been right before?

Worried about global warming "climate change"?  You can always count on this faaabulous organization to tell you the truth, eh?



Oh wait, too late--again!  In 1989 U.N. experts said if we didn't reverse global warming (back then they were still calling it warming instead of "climate change") by 2000, it would be too late.

Virginia governor adds $250,000 to DOC budget to enforce new Dem gun-grabbing bills

Conservative bloggers are reporting that the gun-grabbing Democrat governor of Virginia has prompted his fellow party members who control the legislature to add a special appropriation for 2020:  he's put an explicit paragraph into the regular appropriation bill to give an extra quarter of a million bucks to the state's Department of Corrections, specifically for costs of jailing state citizens who refuse to comply with a new slew of gun-grabbing laws just introduced.by the Dems.

The laws have the effect of confiscating firearms from unfavored residents.

Of course I can't blame y'all for being extremely skeptical about this claim.  Sounds like tinfoi-hat stuff, eh?  Well click here to see the actual bill. 

Interestingly, the Dems followed the ironclad practice of dictatorial politicians everywhere, putting the alarming appropriation item at the very end of the bill. 

Biden doubles down on refusal to testify if subpoenaed by senate. But senate is signalling "no witness" trial

Last week Joe Biden said that if he's subpoenaed by the senate as a witness in the impeachment trial, he would refuse to appear.

Wait, haven't the Democrats called refusing to testify after being subpoenaed "Obstruction of congress"?   Why yes, yes they have.

Sensing he may have blundered, today Biden "clarified" his previous statement:

"I want to clarify something I said yesterday," Biden tweeted on Saturday. "In my 40 years in public life, I have always complied with a lawful order.  And in my eight years as VP, my office — unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence — cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests."

"But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial," he continued. "That is the point I was making yesterday."

I'm sorry, what part of that was a "clarification"?

If the main matter at issue in the impeachment charge against Trump is that he lacked the authority to ask a foreign government to investigate corrupt dealings by a U.S. vice-president, learning if Biden in fact wangled a million-dollar-a-year job for his coke-addicted son, I'd say it's reasonable to find out if Biden did in fact do that, or something similar.

So the absolute best move for Trump would be to "reluctantly" agree to witnesses, and then submit a list of 100 or so, including Biden and his son.

But astonishingly, the lastest news is that Trump and McConnell are about to agree to a trial with no witnesses.

That would be a very stupid move.  Very bad.  First, getting Biden to refuse to honor a senate subpoena would be a huge PR advantage for Trump.

But even more significant is this:  If the senate refuses to hear a single witness, they'll be handing the Democrats a huge weapon that may well cost the GOP their senate majority, because the Lying Mainstream Media will scream bloody murder that the senate is refusing to do their Constitutional duty of being impartial jurors hearing a trial. 

Voters will hate this, and may well hand the Dems a senate majority.  Which would be a disaster for the GOP.

Source here.

Look at that correlation between CO2 and temperature! Which shows that...um...wait...

The pushers of "global warming" have been telling us that CO2 is causing our planet to warm so much that in just ten years we'll all be killed by it.  Or maybe just that in ten years it'll be too late to SAVE everyone from being killed.  One of the two, surely.

And sure enough!  Look at the graphs below.  As everyone can plainly see, there's a near-perfect correlation between CO2 and temperature!

And when you realize that "year zero" on the graph is the mid-18th century, and you see how much higher CO2 is today than the historic levels that produced those scary, spikey temperatures...well it's obvious that we're all gonna die, eh?


But if you look closely you see something....interesting:  It looks as if some of those temperature spikes (blue) are just a bit left of the supposedly-matching spikes in CO2, eh?

Wait, I'm confused:  If CO2 causes global warming, how could temperature increases happen BEFORE CO2 increased?  Wouldn't that totally wreck the theory that CO2 causes global warming?

Bingo.

As it turns out, temperature change leads CO2 by about 800 years.

AOC:  "But...but...but the correlation is so good!  It HAS to prove that CO2 causes warming!  The graph above must be wrong!  That study must have been funded by Big Oil!  Yeah, that's gotta be it!"
===

The above graph is from the Vostok ice cores.  Now, what's funny is that if you go to a dozen or so university websites about the Vostok cores you find some VERY interesting things:  First, every one of the university sites takes great care to calculate the "correlation coefficient" between temperature and CO2.  And wow, it's a great correlation.  But they ignore the time problem--i.e. no matter how well two values may be correlated, if event A happens AFTER event B, no known theory supports the conclusion that A could possibly have caused B.

Second: on the few university web pages that admit that CO2 levels do indeed lag temperature (by about 800 years), every site takes pains to note--as an unsupported assertion--that "This does not in ANY WAY contradict the fact that rising CO2 levels cause global warming."

Finally, while every university site shows the beautifully-correlated graphs, it's almost impossible to find the numeric values of the Vostok cores that would enable people to confirm that temperature changes lead CO2 levels instead of CO2 driving temperature.

Here are the conclusions of a French study of the cores:

...at the beginning of the deglaciations the CO₂ increase either was in phase or lagged by less than ~1000 years with respect to the Antarctic temperature, whereas it clearly lagged behind temperature at the onset of the glaciations.

Hmm....so CO2 either "lagged" or "clearly lagged behind" temperature, eh?

Nah, that has to be a mistake, citizen.



So with all these "dueling experts," let's go to the "gold standard" of super-smaht scientific thought in the world: Scientific American! Here's an article from 2013:

Scientists can study Earth’s climate as far back as 800,000 years by drilling core samples from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Detailed information on air temperature and CO2 levels is trapped in these cores.  And these records show an intimate connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature in the natural world.  In essence, when one goes up, the other one follows.

"Intimate connection."  "When one goes up, the other follows."  But of course, correlation ain't worth jack in showing causation.  And the author carefully avoids the real issue: which comes first?

There is, however, still a degree of uncertainty about which came first—a spike in temperature or CO2.  Until now the most comprehensive records to date on a major change in Earth’s climate came from the EPICA Dome C ice core on the Antarctic Plateau. The data, covering the end of the last ice age, between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, show that CO2 levels could have lagged behind rising global temperatures by as much as 1,400 years.

"Could have lagged"?  No, the data showed unequivocally that CO2 DID lag temperature.  But admitting that would cut against the Narrative that the folks at "Scientific" American are pushing.

“The idea that there was a lag of CO2 behind temperature is something climate change skeptics pick on,” says Edward Brook of Oregon State University. “They say, ‘How could CO2 levels affect global temperature when you are telling me the temperature changed first?’”

How indeed?

Frédéric Parrenin...and a team of researchers may have found an answer to the question. His team compiled an extensive record of Antarctic temperatures and CO2 data from existing data and five ice cores drilled in the Antarctic.  Their results show CO2 lagged temperature by less than 200 years, drastically decreasing the amount of uncertainty in previous estimates.

So has the authoritative Scientific American resolved the question in favor of global warming being cause by CO2?  No.  They conceded that the new research showed CO2 levels still lagged temperature--but by just 200 years instead of 800.

So...still believe the bullshit claim that "the science is settled"?

Say, how are the predictions of those "global warming" models working out?

The brilliant physicist Richard Feynman noted, “It doesn't matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”

Supposedly--according to socialist goofballs who refuse to debate--the planet is being warmed dangerously by carbon dioxide, emitted by burning carbon fuels. That's their hypothesis. Let's see how their predictions are doing:

It would appear that the answer is "Not even close."

Why have no *FBI* whistleblowers come forward to reveal the plot?

Over at Conservative Treehouse, a fellow who goes by "Sundance" has posted a long article analyzing the FBI's corrupt efforts to both prevent Trump's election, or failing that, to sabotage his presidency.  An edited version is below, but I encourage everyone to read the whole thing.

 

To understand why no FBI agent has come forward to reveal the depth of the corruption you need to realize how thoroughly the top echelons were and are corrupt.  And that the first rule of the FBI is to protect itself--which means never admitting wrongdoing.

Next:  As you read what follows, keep in mind that Rule One for corrupt officials is: they never appoint as a deputy--or promote within their agency--someone who isn't also corrupt.  The reason is obvious:  A corrupt official would never want to put an honest person in a position to possibly stumble onto evidence of the corruption.

Keep Rule One in mind as you read the long history below.

Rod Rosenstein was a Deputy Attorney-General at the laughably-misnamed "Department of Justice." In May of 2017 Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to the post of Special Counsel, ostensibly looking for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

Recall Rule One?

Rosenstein also facilitated the McCabe operation against Trump during the May 16th, 2017, White House FBI sting against Trump. 

Rosenstein also wrote and signed three "scope memos" that allowed the corrupt investigation of President Trump to be expanded.  AG Bill Barr hasn't allowed these "authorizing memos" to be seen by the public.

Another indicator of Rosenstein's corrupt intent is that despite knowing the Trump investigation held a false predicate, Rosenstein signed the 3rd renewal of a fraudulent FISA application.  

Rosenstein was also the person who recommended that president Trump appoint Christopher Wray as director of the FBI after the president fired the corrupt James Comey. 

Rule One again.

Trump then allowed Wray to select his own top deputy.  Wray chose David Bowditch.  Rule One again.

FBI Director Wray selected the former head of DOJ-NSD to become the lead lawyer for the FBI, chief legal counsel Dana Boente.  Rule One...yet again.

So from Rosenstein we got: Chris Wray, David Bowditch, Dana Boente and another dubious DOJ recommendation, DC U.S. Attorney Jessie K Liu (ref. Awan Bros and James Wolfe).  Keep this in mind moving forward.

Michael Atkinson is another career corruptocrat to come out of the DOJ-NSD who was also involved in the fraudulent legal filings.  Atkinson was the lead lawyer for the division, so should have had the intelligence to spot the illegalities in the FISA apps.

Atkinson would later become the "Inspector-General for the Intelligence Community.  Convenient, eh?  I haven't been able to find who appointed him.

From this powerful position Atkinson was able to change the rules regarding "whistleblowers" to allow "hearsay."  Before that the rules required whistleblowers to have actual first-hand knowledge of corrupt actions.  This was a problem for the anti-Trump plotters because their only source for tales of improper acts in Ukraine--CIA whistleblower Eric Ciaramella--didn't have first-hand knowledge, just hearsay. 

Solution?  Change the rules.

What we ended up with was a large network of corrupt officials; each determined to coverup illegal acts by their agencies.

If you're skeptical about all of the above, I don't blame you:  After all, no one in the intel community has been charged with illegal acts, very few have been fired, none of the lawbreakers has lost their fat gruberment pension or gone to jail.  But there are some matters of undisputed public record that show how far-reaching the corruption is:  Consider a thing called the "Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" (SSCI).

The SSCI is arguably the most powerful government body "overseeing" the intel community.  It has "oversight" (i.e. power) over every agency in the U.S. intel community--including the FBI, CIA, DOJ and ODNI.  It's chaired by Richard Burr, with Democrat Mark Warner as vice-chair.

In 2017 the New York Times published secret information that seemed as if it could only have come from a member or staffer with the SSCI.  This was considered very damn serious, and investigators eventually found the leaker:  The committee's head of security for 30 years, who was married but trading top secrets for sex with a 25-year-old reporter--who published them and later was hired by the NY Times.

The critical secret leaked by Security Director Wolfe was that investigators had applied for a "FISA warrant" to allow them to wiretap Trump advisors.  Presumably revealing that information would show Americans that Trump's advisors were guilty of...something, probably colluding with Russia, which was the idea being pushed by Democrat leadership, Mueller's team and the Mainstream Media.

James Wolfe: security director for senate intel comittee

Skeptics suggested that because it was easy to find the leaker, it was highly unlikely that Wolfe would have leaked the FISA information to Watkins unless he was acting on instructions from one of the senators on the SSCI.

Interestingly--significantly--the DOJ and FBI didn’t charge Wolfe with the serious crime of leaking highly-classified information.  Instead he was only charged with one count of lying to the FBI, to which he admitted guilt.

Court documents show that Wolfe was prepared to call the senators on the committee in his defense.  IF Wolfe leaked the information to the reporter on instructions, the senators would not have allowed him to be charged with a serious crime lest it expose corruption within the SSCI. 

==
The following story--from CBS on December 18th, 2018--shows how the corrupt network gives a tongue-bath to those it wants to protect, while someone not an ally of the network charged with the exact same crime--lying to the FBI--gets a sentence of a dozen years or more:

James Wolfe, the former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), was sentenced Thursday to two months in prison for lying to the FBI about his dealings with a reporter. Wolfe pleaded guilty in October to one federal count of making false statements.

In addition to prison time, Wolfe must complete four months of supervised release, pay a $7,500 fine and perform 20 hours of community service a month during his release period.  He will be allowed to "self-surrender" and has request[ed] a minimum security facility in Cumberland, Maryland.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji B. Jackson said in court she understood the human nature aspect of why Wolfe lied: "I can certainly imagine how scary it must've been," Judge Jackson said. "In that moment you had been caught. The jig was up."

In December 2017 Wolfe misled FBI agents who were investigating leaks to the media about the SSCI.  Despite being warned by agents that lying to federal agents was a crime, Wolfe denied having contact with various reporters, including one later identified by The New York Times as reporter Ali Watkins. Watkins dated Wolfe before joining the paper to cover the intelligence community.

judge Ketanji B. Jackson--an Obama appointee--sentenced Wolfe to TWO MONTHS

Journalists call this "burying the lede:"  Wolfe had been trading the intel community's top secrets to reporter Ali Watkins for sex.

Jackson said she took Wolfe's high position as a government official into account when determining his sentence...

Oh, you bet.  Bullshit.  Clearly the system wanted a light sentence for Wolfe as an incentive to prevent him from revealing something it didn't want revealed.  But what?  Oh, maybe this is a clue:

Wolfe was the SSCI's top security official for three decades. ... in this position he was entrusted with "receiving, maintaining, and managing all classified national security information...[that every security agency in the nation sent to the SSCI]

Bipartisan members of the SSCI had written to the judge requesting leniency for Wolfe, saying "we do not believe there is any public utility in depriving him of his freedom."

Wolfe  and his lawyers asked the judge for leniency and to a sentence of probation and community service so he could give back to his country.

Before imposing the two-month sentence judge Jackson told those in court that the case is "not really about leaking — it's about lying," and that that "maintaining relationships with reporters is not a crime."

Ah...so according to this "judge" the case isn't REALLY about leaking, because...the Obama-appointed system defender Jackson says so.  And then absurdly summarizes the case as "maintaining relationships with reporters is not a crime."

This is absurd and brazen.  Contrast this absurd leniency with the sentences imposed on Trump advisors and campaign workers for exactly the same crime of lying to the FBI.

How does this level of institutional corruption discourage FBI agents from becoming whistle-blowers?  Well, consider that all presidential nominations to executive positions in ANY intel agency  must be approved by the SSCI.  And if the SSCI wants to keep an honest person from getting an executive position, they simply, they don’t take it up. (See Trump’s attempt to appoint Representative John Ratcliffe as ODNI as an example.)

By contrast, the SSCI quickly approved former DOJ-NSD legal counsel Michael Atkinson to become Intelligence Community Inspector General.  An honest intelligence whistle-blower would presumably have to go through Atkinson to have whistleblower protection.  Going to reporters wouldn't win that.

Sundance claims the following people are "dirty" (which I translate as corrupt):

• Senator Mark Warner
• Senator Richard Burr
• ICIG Atkinson
• FBI Director Chris Wray 
• FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch
• FBI Legal Counsel Dana Boente
• Former FBI director Robert Mueller
• Rod Rosenstein  
• All of the members of Mueller's staff including Andrew Weissmann and Brandon Van Grack
• FBI Agent David Archey (Mueller's lead FBI agent), who was later promoted to head the Virginia field office

FBI official David Archey, like ICIG Michael Atkinson, conveniently put into a place where he can run cover to deflect any investigation that might expose dirty FBI activities in DC and Virgina.

• FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok  
• FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith  
• FBI lawyer Lisa Page  
• Former FBI director James Comey 
• Andrew McCabe
• James Baker
• Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Pientka--clearly outlined as dirty by IG Horowitz report on FISA abuse, and yet he's still employed; still providing cover.

Everything above is why we have not seen any honest FBI whistle-blowers come forward.  There’s no one in the FBI or DOJ that they could blow the whistle to without committing career suicide.

If we had an honest media none of these corrupt officials could survive media scrutiny.  Unfortunately the corrupt administrative state absorbs the press…it makes the press part of the corrupt process.  The press can't expose the corrupt administrative state without exposing their own culpability, participation and lack of credibility…which they'll never do.
==

“All of that is why we haven't seen any honest FBI whistle-blowers come forward:  There’s no one for them to blow the whistle to…”

The author means no honest FBI agent, knowing how corrupt the Director and henchment were and are, would 'blow the whistle' to any exec in the FBI or DOJ.

But why has no honest FBI agent 'blown the whistle' to Nunes, Durham, Sharyl Attkisson, Mollie Hemmingway, Sara Carter, Gregg Jarrett, John Solomon or others outside the FBI?

One of two reasons seems plausible:  Either every FBI agent knows the rewards for protecting the corruption are too juicy to give up; or...that they all know what happens to agents who rat out the top brass.  And going to reporters wouldn't give them statutory whistleblower protections.

As the Inspector-General's report admitted, various FBI employees committed at least 17 egregious violations of law or FBI or FISA procedures--all with the goal of sabotaging Trump.  It should be obvious to rank-and-file agents that if no one in the agency testifies to the plot, the FBI will no longer have any credibility.

They swore an oath to defend the Constitution.  They betrayed that oath.  And it looks as though not one of them cares.

San Francisco today

San Francisco is Nancy Pelosi's district.  And today--right now--in San Francisco, here's what's up:

• The new District Attorney has said his office will NOT prosecute homeless people who urinate or defecate on the street...but
• he'll prosecute a restaurant for giving a customer a plastic straw;
• The city's airport has banned the sale of filled plastic water bottles...but
• last year the city gave almost a million single-use plastic syringes, with needles, to intravenous drug users...and...
• There has never been an effort in San Fran to stop giving out "free" syringes...and...
• After junkies shoot up, they invariably drop the free syringe on the sidewalk or in the street, where they pose a danger to people in sandals, so...
• ...last year the city spent a million dollars to pay workers to pick up these syringes; and...
• the DA is not prosecuting people for injecting heroin in public--cuz, fairness, citizen;
• Every month thousands of piles of human excrement are identified by city workers, then vacuumed up by a special piece of sanitary equipment that disinfects the waste and turns it into fertilizer, which is trucked to vinyards in the Napa Valley, where...
• Hahahahaha!  You're kidding--city workers hose the crap into the storm sewers, which lead directly to the Pacific Ocean--because nothing says "I'm a really really great supporter of environmentalism" like dumping raw sewage into the ocean, eh?

San Francisco has been run by Democrats since the great earthquake.  Liberal Democrat policies embraced by that city's government have produced a disaster, yet they want to force those policies on the whole country.

So vote Democrat in 2020, citizen.  Cuz imagine how great it will be when the whole country is run like Nancy Pelosi's city.

When Trump was elected NYT economist predicted markets would NEVER recover! Really?

Barely an hour after the Lying Mainstream Media was sadly, reluctantly forced to admit that Donald Trump had somehow been elected president (stealing it from the overwhelming favorite, Hilliary, undoubtedly due to help from Russia), economist Paul Krugman penned a dire warning for the NY Times:  Markets, he said, were plunging--and he believed they would “never” recover.

The full quote is "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.



In case you've been off-planet for the past 35 months, the Dow Jones industrials have gained ten-thousand points since Trump took office.

In fact, all three major exchanges are at all-time-record highs. Oh, and employment--for EVERY ethnic group--is at all-time-record lows.

Gosh, Paul, I thought you were supposed to be a crack economist. Tell us, does it hurt to be so abysmally wrong?  But don't feel bad:  Every single member of the elite mainstream media agreed with your prediction.  So at least there's that.

22-year FBI agent with extensive FISA experience says the agency broke the law, repeatedly

Frank Watt served for over 22 years as an FBI special agent.  So he knows the agency's procedures thoroughly.

Watt has written a devastating critique of the Inspector-General's report on the illegal use of FISA wiretaps on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.  I've edited his article below--but I encourage you to read his original:

As a 22 year FBI agent I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts. From this perspective it's clear that the actions of the FBI and DOJ are outrageously illegal.


As most Americans know, the FBI asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court for permission to wiretap a U.S. citizen, Carter Page.  The law provides that for the FISA court to allow this, the FBI must present facts showing that Page was doing something reasonably considered to be a threat to national security--that he was, in effect, working for a foreign power.  

Wiretapping an American citizen is so serious that permission is only supposed to be given after intense judicial scrutiny.  But according to the I.G. report, the FBI's request to wiretap Page was based on unverified, second hand information in the "Steele dossier."
In the course of my FBI career I have written multiple affidavits to support a wiretap.  In every case, as I stood before the judge to obtain the authorization to conduct the wire tap, my supporting affidavit had been checked, rechecked, and approved by (at a minimum) the principal legal advisor at my field office, the line prosecutors at the US Attorneys Office for the appropriate jurisdiction,  DOJ attorneys at the Office of Enforcement Operations at Main Justice, and program managers, legal counsel, and Division heads at FBI Headquarters. 

My point in describing this is to show the exhaustive and thorough review these ordinary investigations must pass.  And even though all my cases were high-profile, they all pale in comparison to the unprecedented sensitivity of the FBI's wiretap on Page.

The implications of intercepting the communications of a U.S. citizen who is associated with the political campaign of a candidate seeking the Presidency rings nearly every bell in the FBIs and Attorney General's Guidelines for sensitive investigations. As discussed in the IG report, by regulation, these cases cannot be initiated without the written approval of the Director and the Attorney General. 

In addition to requiring approval by the Director and AG, the IGs report identified many other high level officials who reviewed and approved the Page FISA request:  "NSD's Acting Assistant Attorney General, NSD's Deputy Assistant Attorney General with oversight over 01, 01's Operations Section Chief and Deputy Section Chief, the DAG, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, and the Associate Deputy Attorney General responsible for ODAG's national security portfolio." 

The suggestion that somehow, seventeen significant errors, omissions of fact, falsehoods, or deliberate misrepresentations made their way into a FISA affidavit/s--supposedly by accident by an anonymous case agent-- and then were not immediately noted and corrected throughout the course of this exceptional review process is simply not believable. 

Moreover, for the court to renew the wiretap permission after the initial authorization period, the FBI Director and the Acting/Attorney General themselves are required to review the results of the wiretap.  Renewal permission is only granted if those officials affirm that the results are "investigatively significant."  

The FBI went back to the FISA court THREE times to renew the wiretap request, but claims that no one involved in the process any of the three times noticed that there was no incriminating evidence being generated by the intercepts. Keep in mind, Page's communications were continuously monitored for approximately eleven months. 

It's literally unbelievable.

The fact that they allowed an unnamed FBI Agent to swear to the renewal affidavits doesn't relieve them of their responsibility for the outcome nor does it allow for the "I can't be aware of every aspect of the case" excuse. 

Americans are being asked to believe that the hand selected team of investigators, attorneys, and Senior Executive Service officials with decades of law enforcement, administrative, and judicial experience were abject failures at a task that they were hired to perform.  To believe that people with unlimited time and resources, working on the most sensitive investigation in history, somehow manaaged to "overlook" seventeen major omissions, misstatements, and/or outright falsehoods, is simply not believable. 
 
The far more plausible explanation is that nearly everyone who significantly participated in obtaining FISA coverage on Page knowingly and deliberately broke the law to one degree or another.  The reasons behind the decision to do so are irrelevant. The particulars regarding the seventeen I.G. findings are startling, taken individually. It's difficult to see how any of the individual omissions or misstatements could have happened accidentally. Viewed collectively, the apparent intentionality is nearly impossible to reconcile as anything but corruption. 

Devastating.  But I'll be stunned if anyone higher than a clerk is penalized for this, even in the smallest way.

Two sets of laws, baby.

Dems worried that a subversive group will collude to interfere in the 2020 election!

Short version of capitalism versus socialism

Short version:

Capitalism: Make more pies so that everyone can get at least some of the pie.

Socialism: Execute all bakers. Now there's no pie so everyone is equal.  Win!

This was one of hundreds of comments on the twatter account of a dumb-ass who claims to be running for congress in Illinois.  He claims billionaires cause poverty.  If you wanna see how dumb this guy is, you really should click the link below. 

The good news is that 90 percent of the comments instantly realized how goofy this guy is, and said so.

https://twitter.com/anthonyvclark20/status/1209624252862943232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1209624252862943232&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F
https://twitter.com/anthonyvclark20/status/1209624252862943232https://twitter.com/anthonyvclark20/status/1209624252862943232
https://twitter.com/anthonyvclark20/status/1209624252862943232

Leftist writer for leftist cesspool claims "Merry Christmas" is a conservative code for "F-you." Seriously

Leftists are so insane as to be beyond parody.  Example is a creature named Amanda Marcotte, who writes for the leftist cesspool Salon. 

As you could easily have guessed, Amanda not only hates Christmas, she also claims to believe that anyone who says "Merry Christmas" to her is not only doing it out of pure cruelty, but that the phrase is actually barely-dsiguised code for "F you."  Seriously.  Here's what she wrote:

I saw yet another example of this when I wrote an article last month expressing sadness about feeling alienated from the Christmas spirit [she's being sarcastic],at a time when many members of my own family support a president who has repeatedly suggested that people like me should be imprisoned or even murdered.

The reaction I got from conservatives was not a message of Christian charity or compassion for my suffering.... Instead, the reaction was a concentrated effort to increase my pain as much as possible, and ideally to inflict emotional harm on a scale that might cause serious damage to my mental health. 

And how does she claimed the eeebil Christians tried to increase her pain and damage her mental health?  [Way too late with that one.]  It's almost too awful to write about:  They wished her "Merry Christmas"!  Really.  Read on:

The principal harassment strategy was to track me down on social media, even on my Instagram feed, and flood it with "Merry Christmas" messages — from white male strangers — to taunt me for my personal grief.

It's particularly interesting that this was the weapon of choice. These people are taking what they supposedly believe is the birth celebration of their lord and savior and using it as a hurtful weapon. Is that the behavior of people who have genuine faith in Jesus' message of mercy and kindness, or the behavior of people who use "Christianity" as an instrument of domination over others they see as inferior?

Oh you bet--Christians use their faith as an instrument of domination.  Uh-huh.  Really.

My experience is hardly unique.  Stirred by years of Fox News lying to viewers and telling them that liberals are somehow trying to take Christmas away, conservatives have increasingly embraced the phrase "Merry Christmas" to mean, basically, "F**k you" to anyone that they've deemed less than legitimate Americans.

Oh, certainly, cupcake.  Nothing says "Us progressives are NOT hostile to Christmas" more than screaming that someone saying "Merry Christmas" to ya is actually meaning "F**k you."  Perfectly reasonable.

If Marcotte were less insane I'd suggest trying psychotherapy.  But I have no doubt that Marcotte would regard any helpful suggestion as simply...how did she phrase it?  Oh yes:  "a concentrated effort to increase my pain as much as possible." 

Hang in there, Amanda.  Don't let those hurtful wishes of "Merry Christmas" get ya down.

Say, I wonder if this snowflake would react better to "Bless your heart"?

Oddly, Americans weren't eager to visit a D.C. museum dedicated to praising "journalism"

Tragically, we end 2019 with a sad story:

In Washington DC there's a museum dedicated to journalists.  It's called the Newseum and opened on prime Washington real estate in 2008.

Because Americans recognize "journalists" as truth-tellers who will report the truth to us without bias, the place was wildly popular, drawing huge crowds eager to see the history of American journalism.  And what better location that D.C., eh?

Tragically, eleven years after it opened its doors, this noble effort to show the noble, truthful, unbiased nature of mainstream "journalism" is coming to an end:  the Newseum will close its doors Tuesday, having sold its building to a university for $372 million.

The journalists at CNN quickly explained that this wonderful effort to educate Americans about the importance of the Mainstream Media folded due to the awful economy under the eeevil Trump administration.

The journalists at the New York Times quickly explained that the Newseum was forced to close because of threats from "domestic terrorists" to fly a private jet into the building.

The journalists at the Washington Post--being local and thus better informed--explained that the closing was actually due to a plot by a shadowy right-wing supremacist group that pressured the university to offer to buy the building for such a huge price that the group running the Newseum simply couldn't refuse.  The Post described this as "an example of economic bullying."

The journalists at the Associated Press said the Newseum was closing because conservative groups called for their cult-like followers to stay away from the Newseum.

Acclaimed journalist Rachel Maddow reported that the closing was due to Russian collusion, and that Adam Schiff had found an anonymous whistleblower who was eager to confirm this if the Republican-controlled senate would let him testify at Trump's senate trial.

Surely one of these reasons must be right.  Wait...they may all have some part in the closing, but just not in the way any of the "journalists" had in mind.

(Source here.)