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Ex-Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Sussmann found not guilty of lying to FBI Sussmann faced a single charge of providing a false statement to the FBI in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential race.By Natalia Mittelstadt

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/jury-sussmann-trial-continues-deliberations

The jury in the trial of 2016 Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann on Tuesday found the defendant not guilty on a charge of providing a false statement to the FBI, after deliberating in the morning and on Friday.

Special Counsel John Durham last year charged Sussmann with lying to the FBI, while working as a private attorney, for allegedly telling then-bureau General Counsel James Baker that he was not working on behalf of any client while providing him with data he said substantiated an alleged secret communications channel between the Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

Durham argued Sussmann was working on behalf of two clients, the Clinton campaign and former tech firm executive Rodney Joffe, when he presented Baker with two computer thumb drives of data and white papers.

The connection was allegedly a back channel to the Kremlin.

The Sussmann-Baker meeting took place Sept. 19, 2016, just weeks before Election Day.

The trial is the first in Durham’s investigation into the origins of the now-debunked Russia collusion narrative.

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service,” Durham said after the verdict. “I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case.”

The next trial will be in October in Virginia for Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst accused of lying to the FBI in connection with the collusion plot.

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We Must Make Ourselves Equal Until we disdain false narratives about race, the disparities that have troubled our country will continue to persist. Glenn C. Loury

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/realities-about-race-and-equality-in-america

Editor’s note: The following is an edited version of a speech delivered at the 18th annual Bradley Prizes ceremony on May 17, 2022.

Pundits tell us that we’re living in a period of “racial reckoning” in America. Racial dispute suffuses our public life—from school board elections to presidential campaigns. This estrangement of intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and activists derives, in turn, from the fact of persisting black disadvantage across so many fronts in our country’s economic and social life. The reality here is too familiar to require elaborate recitation. Whether talking about health or wealth, education or income, imprisonment or criminal victimization, the relatively disadvantaged status of those Americans who descend from slaves, more than 150 years after emancipation, is palpable.

What are we to make of this? That question has bedeviled me for decades—indeed, ever since I began graduate studies in economics at MIT a half-century ago. I am a black American economist in this era of racial discontent in my country; an Ivy League professor and a descendant of slaves; a beneficiary of a civil rights revolution, now over two generations in the past, which has made possible for me a life that my ancestors could only have dreamed of. More than all of these things, I am a patriot who loves his country. I am a man of the West, an inheritor of its great traditions. As such, I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” But that reference is not unambiguous, invoking, as it does, both communal and civic antecedents.

Racial disparities are real, of course, but, at the end of the day, just how important is race, as such? Inequality in America is not mainly a racial issue. Many poor and marginalized white people deserve our concern, too. Is “race” an undeniable difference between people, or is it a social construct? Interracial marriage has grown dramatically, as has the number of people viewing themselves as “multiracial,” including the first black president and vice president of this country. We talk incessantly about racial identity. But what about culture and values—aspects of our humanity that transcend race? I have become convinced that the alienation that afflicts so many prosperous black Americans is the result of false narratives told by demagogues and ideologues about how “white supremacy” threatens them, or how we have, in effect, reverted to the era of Jim Crow.

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Top-Paid LA Lifeguards Earned Up To $510,283 In 2021 Baywatch needs to go on pay watch! Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/top-paid-la-lifeguards-earned-up?s=w

Who knew that LA lifeguards—who work in the sun, ocean surf, and golden sands of California— could reap such unbelievable financial reward?

It’s time we put Baywatch on pay watch. In 2019, we found top-paid lifeguards made up to $392,000.

Unfortunately, today, the pay and benefits are even more lucrative.

Daniel Douglas was the most highly paid and earned $510,283, an increase from $442,712 in 2020. As the “lifeguard captain,” he out-earned 1,000 of his peers: salary ($150,054), perks ($28,661), benefits ($85,508), and a whopping $246,060 in overtime pay.

The second highest paid, lifeguard chief Fernando Boiteux, pulled down $463,517 – up from $393,137 last year.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 98 LA lifeguards earned at least $200,000 including benefits last year, and 20 made between $300,000 and $510,283. Thirty-seven lifeguards made between $50,000 and $247,000 in overtime alone.

And it’s not only about the cash compensation. After 30 years of service, LA lifeguards can retire as young as 55 on 79-percent of their pay.

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The stench from the Sussmann verdict Charles Lipson

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/stench-from-the-sussmann-verdict/

Democracies cannot survive without public trust. Citizens must be confident that their elected officials represent their interests, at least in broad terms, and are not corrupt, self-dealing con men. They must believe the courts dispense justice fairly and equally, that there’s not one set of rules for insiders and another for everyone else. They understand that complex societies require bureaucracies and that bureaucracies are inherently non-democratic, but they want the bureaucracies’ rules and procedures to be subject to laws, passed by elected officials, overseen by them, and applied evenly. For transparency, they depend on newspapers and television and, in recent years, on websites and social media.

These essential elements of stable democracy are encompassed by two words: “trust” and “fairness.” For democracies to thrive, citizens must trust the four core elements of their government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the bureaucracies which pass and implement most of the day-to-day rules. A crucial element of that trust is the belief that each individual gets a fair shake. That means he won’t be arrested or fined because of the color of his skin or his religion. If he has to go to court, it means he’ll get a fair trial, with an even-handed judge and a jury of his peers. He won’t be pilloried by a biased judge who doesn’t like his politics. His case will be decided by a jury that weighs the evidence without prejudice. The public also has a right to see that trials are handled fairly, without bias.

Every one of those basic tenets was violated in Michael Sussmann’s trial for lying to the FBI. We know now that a Washington, DC jury has found him not guilty, though it is still unclear whether they believed he didn’t lie, or the government didn’t prove it, or it didn’t matter to a politically biased FBI, which was determined to investigate anything connected to Donald Trump. We also know something more: the whole case is drenched in the sulfurous smell of the Washington Swamp.

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A Palestinian celebration of ‘empress of terror’ Fusako Shigenobu By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-palestinian-celebration-of-empress-of-terror-fusako-shigenobu/

 When “empress of terror” Fusako Shigenobu was released from Tokyo’s Hachioji prison on Saturday, Palestinian groups hailed her as a heroine and bemoaned what they called her “unjust” incarceration.
The 76-year-old co-founder of the now-defunct Japanese Red Army (JRA) had completed a 20-year jail term for her masterminding of the 1974 hostage-taking of the French embassy in The Hague and the takeover of the U.S. consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1975.

But it was her organization’s part in the 1972 massacre at Israel’s Lod (today, Ben-Gurion) Airport for which she is most celebrated by Palestinian activists. That attack, in which 26 people were killed and dozens more wounded, was perpetrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and executed by three members of the JRA.
Among the dead were 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, one Canadian tourist and eight Israelis, including National Academy of Sciences director Aharon Katzir, brother of Ephraim, who became the country’s fourth president in 1973.

The trio of JRA operatives was perfect for the job. Landing in Israel on an Air France flight from Rome, the Far East Asian men posing as musicians didn’t look like terrorists—certainly not of the PFLP variety. Without arousing the suspicion of security agents, they entered the terminal with ease, removed assault rifles from their violin cases and opened fire in every direction. While they were at it, they threw live grenades into the hysterical throng.
After the massacre, Shigenobu went into hiding in Lebanon. It was there, after all, that she had established the JRA in 1971.

For the nearly three decades until her arrest in 2000 in Osaka, where she had returned to reboot her “anti-imperialist” activities and commitment to the “Palestinian struggle,” she was Interpol’s most wanted terrorist.
It took years before she voiced any remorse for the JRA’s deadly assaults, which she now chalks up to youthful idealism. Upon her exit from behind prison walls, the elderly Communist with a Palestinian keffiyeh draped over her shoulders offered a pitiful apology “for the inconvenience [her] arrest caused to so many people.”
She told reporters that “it [the JRA’s terrorism] was half a century ago … but we caused damage to innocent people who were strangers to us by prioritizing our battle, such as by hostage-taking.”

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Permanent Irrelevance Edward Ring

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://americanmind.org/salvo/permanent-irrelevance/

The California GOP remains committed to its decline.

California Assemblymember Megan Dahle’s election committee transferred $40,500 to the state Republican party on April 22; two days later, the California State Republican Party endorsed her husband, State Senator Brian Dahle, as its candidate for governor. The timing of this transfer gave rise to suspicions that Megan Dahle purchased the party’s endorsement for her husband, but this is just one of many controversies in a state party that has never been more divided or more impotent.

The electorate’s share of Republican voters in California, at 23.9 percent of registered voters, has never been lower. This decline has been unrelenting; from 34.9 percent in 2002 to 34.6 percent in 2006, to 30.1 percent in 2010, to 28.6 percent in 2014, to 25.3 percent in 2018.

The weakness of California’s Republican party is reflected in every metric that matters. Its representation in California’s congressional delegation is 10 out of 53, which at 19 percent does not even reflect voter registration totals. Similar underachievement plagues their showing in the state legislature: Republicans number 19 out of 80 seats in the assembly, and 9 out of 40 seats in the state senate. Of the eight higher state offices—governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, superintendent of public instruction, and insurance commissioner—not one is held by a Republican. Every one of these office holders are Democrats. For those Californians who recall that the state was cherry red through the election of George Bush in 1988, this leftward turn is cause for endless regret.

The endorsement of Brian Dahle by the California Republican party might therefore be considered irrelevant. His chances of winning are zero. The decision to endorse Dahle does have consequences, however. The party passed up an unconventional but potentially transformative opportunity to expand its reach by endorsing independent candidate Michael Shellenberger, one of the most interesting political aspirants to emerge in California in many years. A former progressive environmentalist who supports nuclear power and argues that the threat of climate change catastrophe is overstated, Shellenberger has staked out contrarian positions that could have broad appeal to Californians tired of crime, high energy prices, and absurd regulations that inhibit development.

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Nuclear Iran NOT an “Acceptable Risk” by Peter Vincent Pry

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18568/nuclear-iran-risk

One might well wonder if the CNAS study is a “trial balloon” from the Biden Administration to begin preparing the nation and world psychologically for the advent of Iran’s “Islamic bomb.”

One might also wonder if the CNAS study is an attempt to justify consequent U.S. retreat from the Middle East, not as another humiliating defeat, but as a prudent and wise reprioritization of resources to meet the threat from China.

President Biden is defunding nuclear weapons critical to U.S. national security, such as the SLCM-N and B-83. He is also still seriously considering abolition of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and is doing nothing to accelerate desperately needed modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent — despite increasing nuclear threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

If America, the most benign and humane civilization that has ever existed in history, is capable of using nuclear weapons, what can be expected from the evil empires that are Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran?

At minimum, a nuclear Iran will be even more aggressive supporting terrorism against moderate Arab states, Israel, and the U.S.. Iran might well also arm its proxies — many of which are officially designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations — with weapons of mass destruction, while relying on anonymity and its nuclear deterrent to escape retaliation.

Unlike North Korea, whose overt pursuit of nuclear weapons is used for atomic diplomacy and blackmail, Iran’s nuclear weapons program is clandestine and may remain covertly secret — because Iran plans actually to use its “Islamic bomb.”

Expect the Center for a New American Security to weave more fig leaves rationalizing Biden Administration blunders and irresponsible policy as a species of wisdom. Coming soon, U.S. nuclear inferiority to Russia and China will be called an “acceptable risk.”

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), comprising largely former, mostly Democrat administration foreign policy and defense officials, in a new study — “Risk and Responsibility: Managing Future Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction Threats” — tries to sell the notion that Iran armed with nuclear, biological and chemical offensive weapons will be an acceptable risk. CNAS is a source of staff and “expertise” to the Biden Administration. Unfortunately, their idea is preposterous.

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Woke ‘experts’ warn the word ‘obesity’ is RACIST and suggest ‘people with larger bodies’ instead University of Illinois Chicago wants to ban the word ‘obesity’ because focusing on body size is ‘rooted in racism’By Gina Martinez

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10829285/Woke-experts-warn-word-obesity-RACIST-suggest-people-larger-bodies-instead.html

Multiple woke academics now claim the word ‘obesity’ is racist and should be dropped in favor of ‘people with larger bodies.’  

The University of Illinois Chicago’s school of public health published a health brief titled: ‘Addressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health’ that explored ‘the association between racism, weight, and health.’

According to Amanda Montgomery RD, public health’s focus on preventing obesity has brought in an increase of negative attitudes towards ‘people with larger bodies’ – her preferred alternative term – and is currently one of the only socially acceptable forms of discrimination. 

The brief claims that public health approaches related to obesity can be harmful because of the focus on one outcome – weight loss- and because it tends to ignore the root cause of the issue. 

Academics say many of the causes are rooted in discrimination borne of settlers driving Native Americans off their land, then forcing black and Hispanic workers to farm that land for low pay.  

Amanda Montgomery RD wrote that public health’s focus on preventing obesity has brought an increase of negative attitudes at people with larger bodies
At the lecture University of California, Irvine associate professor Sabrina Strings spoke about the racist roots of fatphobia, which she claims goes all the way back to slavery

‘The public health field has not taken a critical look at this research, focusing on the narrative that weight is controllable and a personal responsibility,’ the brief says. ‘If the goal is to find the most ethical and effective strategies to achieve optimal public health, there needs to be an alternative to ‘obesity’ and weight-focused approaches and a shift in understanding of weight stigma as a social justice issue.’

America is the fattest country in the western world with an estimated 40 percent of people — or 138 million — being obese. It is followed by New Zealand (30 percent), Canada (29.4 percent) and Australia (29 percent).

President Joe Biden will reveal his plans for tackling obesity this September, and has already set targets of improving physical activity and reducing diet-related diseases — like type 2 diabetes — nationally.

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The Divided Brain and the Divided Culture Peter Murphy

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/05/the-divided-brain-and-the-divided-culture/

“The general culture is suffering from highly-focused, over-specialised idiocy — and along with this is the cringe-worthy loss of its sense of humour, in particular a sense of the ridiculous. This is understandable, as its luminaries regularly retail the most ludicrous propositions with a straight face and the admonishment of a wagging finger.”

Everything has a backstory. When I was gearing up to write this essay, the spat between the comedian and podcast interviewer Joe Rogan and the septuagenarian rock star Neil Young broke out. Young demanded that Spotify de-platform the immensely popular Rogan for having the gall to interview a couple of critics of Covid vaccinations. If Spotify did not comply then in protest “he”—meaning his record company—would withdraw his work from the streaming platform.

Rogan is an affable, untutored seeker after knowledge; a rough diamond who is occasionally tasteless and profane and has a very large audience—all things that contemporary elites despise. I watch the occasional Rogan clip on YouTube. I’m not a Spotify subscriber. While I am a big consumer of classic rock music including Mr Young’s music, I still buy CDs. As for controversies, I spend the absolute minimum time on them—enough time to work out what the kerfuffle is about so I can hopefully then ignore it. I had watched the YouTube clips of Rogan’s December interviews with mRNA technology pioneer Robert Malone and research cardiologist Peter McCullough.1 I didn’t spend much time on them. I was familiar with their arguments from various forums.

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No, Senate Republicans, the FBI Does Not Deserve a Raise Rewarding the FBI with a half-billion in tax dollars would not just be a slap in the face to Republican voters but also to every victim of the FBI’s shoddy, unaccountable practices. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 31st, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/30/no-senate-republicans-the-fbi-does-not-deserve

The day before FBI Director Christopher Wray explained to a Senate appropriations subcommittee why his department deserves a $527.8 million raise in 2023, his agents were credited with foiling an ISIS-linked plot to assassinate George W. Bush. An Iraqi national was arrested on May 25 and charged with attempting to smuggle four other Iraqis into the United States then “murder” the former president in retaliation for the war in Iraq. (I will address the sketchiness of this story in a separate column.)

The timing for Wray was suspiciously fortuitous; appointed by Donald Trump in 2018 to lead the scandal-ridden agency, Wray continues to promote the unsubstantiated notion that domestic terrorists, i.e., Trump voters, pose a lethal threat to national security. For nearly a year and a half, armed FBI agents across the country have raided, interrogated, and arrested more than 800 Americans on mostly nonviolent offenses related to January 6, 2021, a four-hour protest that Wray considers an “act of domestic terror.”

Then right before Wray went hat-in-hand to Congress to ask for a budget boost, headlines blared the news that his department thwarted a plan tied to a legitimate terrorist organization overseas?

Color me skeptical.