Displaying posts categorized under

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

One Step Closer to Despotism Lee Smith

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/08/one-step-closer-to-despotism/

Donald Trump’s order on Twitter Tuesday night to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign suggests that he’s lost faith in Attorney General William Barr and John Durham, the prosecutor tapped to investigate the origins of Crossfire Hurricane. 

Previously, the rationale for Barr’s failure to declassify Crossfire Hurricane documents en masse was that Durham needed to keep a close hold on them to build his case. But with less than a month to go before the 2020 election, the U.S. Attorney’s 18 month-long investigation has only secured one plea deal from an FBI lawyer. In the meantime, corrupt U.S. officials who spied on the Trump campaign and framed him as a Russian agent are basking in the sun. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former CIA Director John Brennan are on book tours; Showtime made a mini-series about former FBI Director James Comey; and the Democratic candidate for president is Joe Biden, an avatar for a potential third Barack Obama term. 

A subsequent presidential retweet featuring a photo-shopped image of the late comedian Chris Farley shouting at a complacent-seeming Barr confirms that the commander-in-chief has lost his patience—“For the love of God,” the caption reads, “ΑRREST SOMEBODY.”

Trump knows that at least one of his senior officials is fighting him. CIA Director Gina Haspel reportedly is refusing to turn over documents that may further illuminate the Agency’s role in the anti-Trump plot. Haspel was London station chief in 2016 as Crossfire Hurricane agents and their confidential sources moved in and out of the British capital to target Trump campaign officials visiting the United Kingdom.

Falling pennies and pandemic declarations By Michael Bedar

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/falling_pennies_and_pandemic_declarations.html

Something is fishy about the COVID numbers…on a foundational level.

Regarding deaths of American citizens in 2020, the departure from the truth about them is fundamentally in the concealing, counting, and recording of numbers.  What we’ve seen in the numbers reporting this year is subject to a timeless trick of deceptive reasoning with statistics and control.

The trick, performed by, let’s say, Tricky Tester, first names as “novel” something that almost no one has heard of.  Its actual oldness or novelness does not matter.  Only the position of being able to control the testing and reporting matters.

Tricky Tester, being in control of the means of testing, conveniently allows no anonymous testing to be added to the reporting.  It would be logistically almost impossible to count anonymous tests, anyway.  Therefore, only those who wish to be known by and associated with the institutions doing the testing will then self-select for being tested for it.  Without anonymous self-tests, there are no results from people who don’t want to be associated with the testing facilities or suffer the possible consequences of doing so (like the well advertised threat of involuntary medical quarantine and isolation, notwithstanding whether the result is accurate or false).  The plausible ubiquity of the molecular strand being tested for, then, can never be known.

So beyond scientifically controversial, if not meaningless, testing such as PCR, beyond the debate over comorbidities, and beyond other scientific chips in the narrative’s armor — meaning no disrespect to hardworking professional microbiologists here — what invalidates the claim of a new virus being causal to 210,000 deaths is the framing of the untenable argument itself.  For unspoken in the argument’s premise is the fact that one doing testing wilI find microorganisms, strands of DNA, and what people call viruses in dying and dead people, and in all people.  It is a given. 

The sly Tricky Tester can pick one molecular strand as “the cause.”  Once selected as “the one,” it will be found in cases of morbidity because it exists in people.  The presence in human beings of such molecular strands, which will inevitably be detected, is called the human microbiome, and the human virome in particular, which are well-documented.

An Alternative to Lockdowns: Declaration Offers Trump a Chance to Lead on ‘Science’ By Douglas Axe , William M. Briggs & Jay W. Richards

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/an-alternative-to-lockdowns-declaration-offers-trump-a-chance-to-lead-on-science/

It’s baseless to assume that the benefit of lockdowns outweighs their harm.

O n October 4, Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya gathered at Great Barrington, Mass., to pen a declaration that, in just five days, has gained some 15,000 signatures from doctors and health scientists. The declaration calls for a smart alternative to the lockdowns and social-distancing rules that Joe Biden insists are based on “the science.”

Other experts have been quick to offer criticisms, of course. But that’s how science works. It rarely speaks with one voice. And this is why the declaration matters: It snatches the science card from Biden and everyone else who claims the science should dissuade us from returning to normal life.

Trump now has the chance to take the science card himself — legitimately. He doesn’t need to pretend all scientists agree, or appeal to his own impressive recovery from COVID-19. Instead, he should remind everyone of the true cost of shutting down schools and businesses and churches.

Barrington reminds us that the burden of proof was always on those who called for Draconian lockdowns. That’s because of the severe costs of these measures. As their declaration notes, the “current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.” These include cancers that go undetected because of reduced screening, worse outcomes from cardiovascular disease, deteriorating mental health, and increased harm to at-risk children. All of these risks are especially acute for the young and the less affluent.

No Durham Report or Indictments before Election Day By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/no-durham-report-or-indictments-before-election-day/

The Justice Department’s decision does not mean there will be no more “Russiagate” disclosures.

A xios is reporting that Attorney General Bill Barr has informed the White House and top Republicans that there will be no report or indictments filed by Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham prior to the November 3 election. Durham, of course, is the prosecutor Barr assigned to investigate the genesis of the Trump–Russia probe launched during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration.

The lack of imminent charges or a pre-election narrative report is not surprising to anyone who has watched this saga. The attorney general’s reported decision to alert government officials about it is not surprising in light of President Trump’s recent Twitter barrage, railing about the lack of arrests and prosecutions despite what he describes as “THIS TREASONOUS PLOT.” Indeed, as Axios elaborates, the president, in a Fox Business interview yesterday, complained that he believes Barr has “got all the information he needs” to file charges, yet insists on getting “more, more, more.” The president added that he doesn’t believe more is needed. “To be honest,” Trump huffed, “Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country, or he’s going to go down as, you now, a very sad situation.”

 

For what it’s worth, at the risk of belaboring an argument I’ve long made (most recently in a column at The Hill yesterday), many things that are in the nature of abuse-of-power simply are not violations of the criminal code. That worked to the president’s advantage during the Ukraine kerfuffle, as Democrats struggled in vain to turn his pressure on an ally for domestic political advantage into a crime. But it also applies to abuse of the executive branch’s investigative discretion. Trump’s own invocation of “treason,” which quite obviously does not apply, illustrates the difficulty of finding a penal code provision that fits the abuses of power at issue. Executive officials have vast discretion in opening investigations, especially when a foreign power is involved. It is very easy to spot overreach; it’s very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the overreach was criminal corruption.

Allysia Finley: The Captain of Operation Warp Speed Moncef Slaoui explains how a public-private partnership is overcoming technical and bureaucratic obstacles to find a way of inoculating against Covid.

“Past vaccines have taken a decade or longer to develop, and more than half over the past 20 years have failed during clinical trials. But four vaccine candidates have entered the last phase of clinical trials before approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Technological breakthroughs that were already in progress got a boost from a bureaucratic one in May, when the Trump administration launched “Operation Warp Speed.” The initiative organized government agencies and private companies around the goal of developing, manufacturing and distributing hundreds of millions of vaccine doses with initial doses available by early 2021.

Leading the operation is Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born Belgian-American scientist who shepherded vaccine development at the U.K. drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline from 1988 to 2017. His interest in immunology and vaccine development is personal: When he was growing up in Casablanca, his younger sister died of whooping cough. He earned a doctorate in molecular biology and immunology at the Free University of Brussels, then immigrated to the U.S. for postdoctoral work at Harvard and Tufts medical schools.

In 1988 he landed a job in GSK’s vaccine division. There he helped develop one of the world’s thickest vaccine portfolios, including inoculations for meningitis, human papillomavirus and rotavirus. The company developed 14 successful vaccines during Mr. Slaoui’s tenure. When the Trump administration tapped him to run Operation Warp Speed, liberals predictably criticized him because he came out of private industry.

(SATIRE)California Mandates All Food Must Be Consumed Through IV To Ensure Masks Are Never Removed

https://babylonbee.com/news/california-mandates-all-food-must-be-consumed-through-iv-to-ensure-masks-are-never-removed/?utm_

SACRAMENTO, CA—In order to save lives and also because of science, Governor Gavin Newsom of California announced today that all restaurant food consumed in the state must come from an IV bag or feeding tube to ensure diners never have to remove their masks while dining.

“Unlike some people who hate science and want people to die, we here in California love science and don’t want people to die,” said Newsom during the announcement. “The most effective way in the world to prevent death is to wear a cloth on your face and never take it off, even when eating. This highly scientific new mandate will help Californians enjoy their food without ever removing their masks!” 

Those who are looking for just a light snack will be able to insert a catheter directly into their veins and get a continuous drip of nutritional fluid. For those looking for a heartier meal like steak and potatoes, restaurants will now be required to put the entire meal in a blender and push it through a surgically installed feeding tube directly into the diner’s stomach. 

Turning the Tables on Democrats’ Russia Hoax Director of National Intelligence declassifies startling info about Obama, Hillary and Brennan. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/turns-tables-democrats-russia-hoax-lloyd-billingsley/

Gina Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and rose through the ranks to deputy director. In 2018, President Trump picked Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo as CIA director. In a hearing, Sen. Angus King asked Haspel if she agreed with a 2016 intelligence report finding that the Russians interfered in the presidential campaign. 

“Senator, I do,” Haspel said. The CIA veteran did not elaborate, but a month before the 2020 election the manner of the interference has at last been revealed in declassifications from director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe.

In July of 2016, U.S. intelligence had learned, a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton proposed that she smear candidate Donald Trump by claiming interference by Russian security services. The notes of CIA boss John Brennan show that he briefed President Obama on the information.

The declassifications also show that in September of 2016, U.S. intelligence learned that Hillary Clinton approve “a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.” Intelligence officials referred that information to FBI director James Comey and FBI deputy assistant director of counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

The FBI pair ignored Hillary Clinton’s violations of intelligence laws and instead launched operation Midyear Exam against candidate Trump and Crossfire Hurricane against President Trump. During both operations, the Democrat-media axis demanded that legislators listen to the intelligence community. In 2020, that has all changed. 

California’s Illogical Reparations Bill By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/californias-illogical-reparations-bill/

Newsom and lawmakers virtue-signal while failing utterly to address the state’s current crises.

California’s state legislature just passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African-American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.

Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed-rail project?

When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures, and scorched 4 million acres of forest, the governor reacted by thundering about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green policies that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.

When gasoline, sales, and income taxes rose, and yet state schools became even worse, infrastructure remained decrepit, and deficits grew, California demanded that federal COVID-19 money bail out its own financial mismanagement.

Trump Declassifies Information on Russia Investigations, but It May Be Too Late By Fred Fleitz

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/trump-declassifies-information-on-russia-investigations-but-it-may-be-too-late/

The American people needed to know the truth about efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration to sabotage the president’s campaign sooner.

President Trump made a stunning announcement this week when he ordered the declassification of all documents related to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump’s decision was heavily influenced by a recent letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing that Russian intelligence believed in July 2016 that Clinton had personally authorized a scheme to smear the Republican nominee for colluding with Russia to distract from the scandal that had arisen over her private email server. Ratcliffe reported that this knowledge came from then-CIA director John Brennan’s notes, and that although it may have been Russian disinformation, it was taken seriously enough at the time that President Obama was briefed on it and it was referred to the FBI for an investigation.

In light of the Ratcliffe letter, Trump said “Enough!” He is fed up with years of delays and in getting the truth out on the Russia collusion hoax. The letter, which included crucial details on the hoax that have been kept from the American people since 2017, was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Specifically, the president’s decision is a rebuke of former DNI Dan Coats and current CIA director Gina Haspel. Coats turned a blind eye toward the hoax and at times even seemed to promote it. He also, like Haspel, repeatedly blocked the release of information to Congress related to it. A House Intelligence Committee source has told me that Haspel is currently blocking the release and declassification of a House Intelligence Committee report that found Brennan personally blocked the inclusion of intelligence from a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment which stated that Russia wanted Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election.

Not treason, not a crime — but definitely a gross abuse of power By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/520153-not-treason-not-a-crime-but-definit

President Trump did himself no favors with Wednesday’s ALL-CAPS tweet about how the latest disclosures from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe implicate President Obama, Vice President Biden and Hillary Clinton in a “TREASONOUS PLOT.” 

Ratcliffe has declassified and released handwritten notes by former CIA director John Brennan (undated, but probably from late July 2016) and a memo from the CIA to the FBI (dated Sept. 7, 2016). These documents corroborate Ratcliffe’s revelation, in a Sept. 29 letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, to wit: In late July 2016, Russian intelligence assessed that Mrs. Clinton approved her campaign advisers’ proposal to blame Moscow’s hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails on a conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Put aside Ratcliffe’s acknowledgement that, although U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian intelligence assessment is authentic, they cannot say with confidence that it is true. There is, after all, abundant evidence that the Clinton campaign blamed Trump for the Russian hacking of DNC emails that were published on the eve of the 2016 Democratic national convention. The Clinton campaign would not have done that unless the candidate authorized it.

That said, what is the crime?

Don’t get me wrong. I have argued for years that the real “collusion” in the 2016 presidential campaign was not between Trump and Russia — it was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration, which put its intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus in the service, first, of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and, ultimately, of the Democratic Party’s resistance to Trump’s presidency. This arrangement centered on a false political narrative that Trump and his campaign were complicit in Russia’s suspected hacking of Democrats’ emails.