This is a WASHINGTON POST article but is behind a pay wall. Here it is, though… a must read Thiessen article!
Biden Blocked A Black Woman Justice by, Marc Thiessen
President Joe Biden wants credit for nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
But here is the shameful irony: As a senator, Biden warned President George W. Bush that if he nominated the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, he would filibuster and kill her nomination.
The story begins in 2003, when Bush nominated Judge Janice Rogers Brown to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit is considered the country’s second-most important court, and has produced more Supreme Court justices than any other federal court.
Brown was immediately hailed as a potential Supreme Court nominee. She was highly qualified, having served for seven years as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court — the first Black woman to do so.
She was the daughter and granddaughter of sharecroppers, and grew up in rural Alabama during the dark days of segregation, when her family refused to enter restaurants or theaters with separate entrances for Black customers.
She rose from poverty and put herself through college and UCLA law school as a working single mother. She was a self-made African American legal star. But she was an outspoken conservative — so Biden set out to destroy her.
Biden and his fellow Democrats filibustered her nomination, along with several other Bush circuit court nominees, all of whom had majority support in the Senate. Columnist Robert Novak called it “the first full-scale effort in American history to prevent a president from picking the federal judges he wants.”
Democrats argued that she was out of the legal mainstream, but Republicans responded that she had written more majority opinions than any other justice on the California Supreme Court — and she was reelected with 76% of the vote, the highest percentage of all the justices on the ballot.
When Democrats derailed her nomination, Bush renominated her in 2005. Brown eventually was confirmed by a vote of 56 to 43 — after Democrats released her and several other Bush nominees in exchange for Republican agreement not to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations.
Biden voted a second time against her nomination. He never explained why, if Brown was so radical, Democrats let her through but killed 10 other Bush nominees.
The following month, when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, Brown was on Bush’s shortlist to replace her. She would have been the first Black woman ever nominated to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
But Biden appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to warn that if Bush nominated Brown, she would face a filibuster. “I can assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight and she probably would be filibustered,” Biden said.
Asked by moderator John Roberts “Wasn’t she just confirmed?,” Biden replied that the Supreme Court is a “totally different ballgame” because “a circuit court judge is bound by stare decisis. They don’t get to make new law.”
What Biden threatened was unprecedented. There has never been a successful filibuster of a nominee for associate justice in the history of the republic. Biden wanted to make a Black woman the first in history to have her nomination killed by filibuster.
Bush eventually nominated Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Today, Biden calls the filibuster a “relic of the Jim Crow era.” But he threatened to use that relic as a tool to keep a Black woman who actually lived under Jim Crow off the highest court in the land.
The irony is that now he wants to get rid of the filibuster, and claim credit for putting the first Black woman on the court.
There were many conservatives on Bush’s shortlist whose legal philosophy Biden opposed. But Biden only promised to filibuster the one Black woman. Why? Perhaps a clue lies in another confirmation fight that Biden helped wage.
In 2001, Democrats blocked the nomination of Miguel Estrada to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. According to internal strategy memos obtained by The Wall Street Journal, they targeted Estrada at the request of liberal interest groups who said Estrada was “especially dangerous” because “he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.”
They did not want Republicans to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. So, Biden and his fellow Democrats killed Estrada’s nomination — the first appeals court nominee in history to be filibustered successfully.
It paid off when President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice.
Democrats’ commitment to diversity is a ruse. Biden was willing to destroy the careers of an accomplished Latino lawyer and a respected Black female judge, and stop Republicans from putting either on the Supreme Court.
For Democrats, it’s all about identity politics. Indeed, Biden might not have become president had he not made the pledge to nominate a Black woman. That promise helped secure the endorsement of Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-South Carolina — which won Biden the South Carolina primary and rescued his faltering campaign.
So, when Biden tries to bask in the glory of his historic nomination, remember Janice Rogers Brown — the Black woman who does not sit on the Supreme Court today because of Biden’s disgraceful obstruction.
My audio follows…. but here is the SAGE’Sofficial video:
President Joe Biden recently held a two-hour press conference in which he was asked if he would question the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections if new voting laws were not passed. “I think it could easily be illegitimate,” he answered, surprising many pundits who previously criticized Donald Trump for questioning the results of the 2020 election. But is it really that unusual or unreasonable for a U.S. president or presidential candidate to question certain aspects of an election?
This is one of the best Commentaries by “Clear Eyed” Larry Elder… The SAGE hits it out of the park. (Yes it’s long, but worth your time.)
This is definitely a “clean up on aisle ‘State Department’.” I include video where Elder uses audio, I also add some more “swerve” as well. Enjoy.
Alan Dershowitz explains why Joe Biden excluding potential Supreme Court nominees on the basis of their race and gender is almost certainly unconstitutional.
Alan Dershowitz went on with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures today to talk about the upcoming retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer, and Joe Biden’s illiberal promise to exclude thousands of qualified potential replacements specifically and only on account of their race or gender or both.
It’s a litmus test that clearly isn’t keeping with the Constitution and is probably (definitely) legally unconstitutional. Disallowed. You know, un-American.
Look you can brag all the long day that you’re trying to be inclusive, but that won’t change the facts that you’re actually being exclusive, Joe. This is just one more time Biden’s letting the far-left wing control the Oval Office, which Bartiromo mentions in the clip…..
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, there is an opening on the Supreme Court and it’s been decided that a black woman must fill it. Which black woman? Well any will do, apparently. Once again we see the absurd racism of “racial equity” on full display. Also, there has been a huge surge in children experiencing speech delays because of masking. And Media Matters publishes a lengthy expose about a certain bigoted Dr. Phil clip that lots of people on Facebook have seen and shared. They’re very concerned about it. In our Daily Cancellation, we’ll deal finally with the NFT phenomenon. Is it a good investment opportunity or is it the dumbest thing in the history of the world and a sign of our civilization’s decadence and decay?
I combine two of Larry Elder’s hours from Tuesday’s show (1-18-2022). I also add video where I can to match or add to the audio Larry used for the show. This is an excellent update to the voter fraud issues I and others have mentioned since 2019.
Here are some of the resources used as well as additional links to support well-reasoned evidence.
Wisconsin Judge Rules Ballot Drop Boxes, Ballot Harvesting Violate State Law (TOWNHALL)
Video Shows Pennsylvania Official Admitting Election Laws Were Broken In 2020 (THE FEDERALIST)
MIKE B. posted a link to a NEW YORK TIMES story that in the first paragraph reminds me why I cannot stand almost the entirety of the Gray Lady. Here is the first paragraph:
When called upon to believe that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya, millions got in line. When encouraged to believe that the 2012 Sandy Hook murder of twenty children and six adults was a hoax, too many stepped up. When urged to believe that Hillary Clinton was trafficking children in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor with no basement, they bought it, and one of them showed up in the pizza place with a rifle to protect the kids. The fictions fed the frenzies, and the frenzies shaped the crises of 2020 and 2021. The delusions are legion: Secret Democratic cabals of child abusers, millions of undocumented voters, falsehoods about the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine.
So, let’s deal with some of this first paragraph.
BIRTHIRISM
This is included in the NYT’s list of right-wing conspiracies.
Which I find odd.
Because the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind was by Barack’s own publisher. Here is an highlighted portion of the above which was on Obama’s publishers brochure in 1991 (to the right), and found elsewhere online till 2007. And the publisher of “Dreams of my Father” So far from it having a “Genesis” in some right wing “conspiracy” — for over a decade it was viewable by Obama and fans of his book.
I say “the first time this idea was put into the public’s mind” because my belief is that he lied to unlock grants, gain access and recognition at Occidental College, his publisher, etc.… similar to Elizabeth Warren. (Or, Carrie Bourassa up in Canada, or Ward Churchill, or the MANY others. There is some gain to claiming “other”.)
At any rate, that was the first the world heard of the “born in Kenya” idea. It was in the public eye from 1991 until April 2007…
…and then….
Hillary ran for office.
And this story went from public to through the Hillary Clinton “propaganda machine.”
Since this had it’s origins as an idea via Democrats, it would be safe to assume many Democrats believed it.
Seems logical. While it was half [essentially] of Dems, it is still pretty high. I will combine polls from two conspiracies [Birthers and Truthers] to make a point.
Polls from RASMUSSEN(and others compiled at WIKI) that show an amazing thing. What is this “amazing thing,” you rightly ask?
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Not sure? Not sure? To be clear, Democrats by over a majority believed Bush either knew directly or they said they were [basically] “still on the fence.” Here is more:
I’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”
There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.
“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.
A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”
That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks….
What is the percentage of Republicans that believed (at it’s height of belief) Obama was not born in America?
31% of Republican think/thought that Obama was not born in the states…
How many Democrats?
15% of Democrats believe the same… [as well as 18% of Independents]
However, a third who believe him to be born out of the country approve of him (ABC-NEWS and my RPTpost).
So it is clear the “BIRTHIRISM” is not just a “right-wing” conspiracy.
Various Conspiracies and Ironies
However, I do not believe the New York Times has ever said 9/11 Trutherism is a “left-wing conspiracy.” From the beginning of the next paragraph from the NYT article:
While much has been said about the moral and political stance of people who support right-wing conspiracy theories, their gullibility is itself alarming.
This article is for the gullible, as you will see.
ALEX JONES
Some of these listed conspiracies in the paragraph quote from the NYT are via Alex Jones…. whom I have an entire section of my main conspiracy-debunking page (some isolated here)… so I do not know who my friend is thinking is a “big conspiracy/gullible” person, as, I refute many conspiracies on my site.
I think my mom is the only person I know who believes almost every conspiracy named. Flat-earth, energy beams from space starting fires, the pizza “trafficking kids” thing, and the like. But she is getting senile.
SEX TRAFFICKING
What is ironic is that Hillary wasn’t trafficking underage kids… they were being trafficked to Bill Clinton (“Slick Willy”).
Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls. (FOX | See also TOWNHALL)
NEW GEORGIA REVELATIONS
What prompted the NYT post was my posting a story about new video compiled by True the Vote after collecting and going over CCTV of the area around drop-boxes in Georgia. The collecting, viewing, and then isolating these many videos was a time consuming project. Here is a snippet from JUST THE NEWS:
….The group informed the secretary its evidence included video footage from surveillance cameras placed by counties outside the drop boxes as well as geolocation data for the cell phones of more than 200 activists seen on the tapes purportedly showing the dates and times of ballot drop-offs, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.
The group also said it interviewed a Georgia man who admitted he was paid thousands of dollars to harvest ballots in the Atlanta metropolitan area during the November election and the lead-up to Jan. 5, 2021 runoff for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, which were both captured by Democrats and ended GOP control of Congress. The group has yet to identify the cooperating witness to state authorities, referring to him in the complaint simply as John Doe.
Raffensperger confirmed in an interview aired Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast that his office has deemed the allegations credible enough to open an investigation and possibly seek subpoenas from the State Election Board to secure evidence.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Tuesday he initiated a probe into possible illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election.
While former President Trump lost the state of Georgia by a 12,000 vote margin, True the Vote submitted a complaint to Raffensperger’s office on November 30 that details digital data of 242 people making visits to drop boxes to dump mail-in-ballots, with about 40 percent of the trips occurring between midnight and 5:00 a.m., Just the News reported.
The True the Vote evidence reportedly includes phone data correlated with video that shows individuals dropping ballots at 5,662 ballot drops during the 2020 pandemic. Breitbart News reported on a True the Vote document in August:
In other words, what the document says is that True The Vote was able to take cell phone ping data on a mass wide scale and piece together that several people—suspected ballot harvesters—were making multiple trips to multiple drop boxes, raising potential legal questions in a number of these states.
We do have some information. And we are going to investigate that. We did deploy drop boxes that were under 24/7 surveillance, and because they were then that really, you know, can indicate who dropped that information off, and we’re really just going through that.
“If people give us, you know, credible allegations, we want to make sure that we do that,” Raffensperger continued. “And we have that right now as an ongoing investigation.” ….
CONVO
WhenMIKE B. saw a phone screen capture of a Gateway Pundit story on this from their site, he said:
Silly tweet
I asked Why – to which he said:
because it is not based on fact.
I said:
There is video (in fact MANY hours). And someone who was part of delivering these illegal ballots was being paid?
To which MIKE B. notes:
all bs. Investigated by republican investigators. Look no further then Arizona recount. 6 months of investigation. Nothing found. And by a biased investigator. Time to move on from 2020. Trump lost.
I refuted the Arizona Audit not finding anything a while back, which was part of my next comment:
Arizona? Lol. You need to leave the NYT cocoon. Here are two examples from my post:
Nearly half of the votes flagged as suspicious — 23,344 — fell into a category called “ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.” They included 15,035 who moved within the county before the registration deadline, 6,591 who moved to another state before the registration deadline and 1,718 who moved to a different county before the registration deadline.
Found 34,448 votes from those who voted more than once in Arizona in the 2020 election. 17,000 votes that NEVER should have been included in the audit!
That is what led him to simply post the URL to the NYT article.
To wit, let’s talk about the NYT a bit.
NEW YORK TIMES Lies About History
One big lie which required the paper supporting the rewriting of history was the 1619 Project. One left leaning professor of history at Northwestern University, Leslie M. Harris, wrote a piece for POLITICO stating essentially after the NYT’s approached her to fact check the article because she is an historian of African American life and slavery, she said she was ignored.
Weeks before, I had received an email from a New York Times research editor. Because I’m an historian of African American life and slavery, in New York, specifically, and the pre-Civil War era more generally, she wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth. At the time there were growing calls to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, which would have badly damaged the economies of colonies in both North and South.” I vigorously disputed the claim. Although slavery was certainly an issue in the American Revolution, the protection of slavery was not one of the main reasons the 13 Colonies went to war.
The editor followed up with several questions probing the nature of slavery in the Colonial era, such as whether enslaved people were allowed to read, could legally marry, could congregate in groups of more than four, and could own, will or inherit property—the answers to which vary widely depending on the era and the colony. I explained these histories as best I could—with references to specific examples—but never heard back from her about how the information would be used.
Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay. ….
Over time via pressure, the NY Times began correcting the record. NATIONAL REVIEW headlines some major faux pas: Leaving Out Unwelcome Facts about Slavery; Smearing the Revolution; Distorting the Constitution; Misrepresenting the Founding Era; Misrepresenting Lincoln.
April of last year was a big “correcting month” for the NYT, as the NEW YORK POST notes:
April was the month the narratives died.
On April 15, the Biden administration acknowledged there was no evidence that Russia ever offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, walking back a report that wounded former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Four days later, the Washington, DC, medical examiner revealed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered by rampaging Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, as reports had claimed, but had died of natural causes.
Both stories were based on anonymous, unidentifiable sources, but had become deeply enmeshed in the public consciousness. Both confirmed the assumptions of the nation’s left-leaning media and academic elite, while damaging their political enemies.
And both were driven by The New York Times, where malicious misreporting has been the practice for a century, argues journalist and media commentator Ashley Rindsberg.
“My research churned up not mere errors or inaccuracies but whole-cloth falsehoods,” Rindsberg writes in “The Gray Lady Winked” (Midnight Oil), out now, which examines how the nation’s premier media outlet manipulates what we think is the news.
The “fabrications and distortions” he found in the Times’ coverage of major stories from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia to Vietnam and the Iraq War “were never the product of simple error,” Rindsberg contends.
“Rather, they were the byproduct of a particular kind of system, a truth-producing machine” constructed to twist facts into a pattern of the Times’ own choosing, he says.
Rindsberg argues that Times reporters have followed the same playbook since the 1920s.
Star reporters cite fuzzily identified sources and make sweeping assertions to support a narrative aligned with the corporate whims, economic needs and political preferences of the patriarchal Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has helmed the operation since 1896, he writes. The chosen narrative, reinforced from multiple angles, is entrenched through a network of stories over time.
“We toss the term ‘fake news’ around as if it’s something whimsical,” Rindsberg told The Post.
“But creating what I call a false media narrative is really hard,” he said. “It takes coordination, deliberation, and a lot of resources. And there aren’t many news organizations that can do it.”
With close to $2 billion in annual revenue, the Times has the money, prestige, experience and stature to set the narratives that other news outlets almost invariably follow.
“When the Times breaks these stories, it’s wall to wall,” Rindsberg said. “MSNBC, CNN — everywhere you look, you’ll get that story.
“And with the Times, it’s never just one false claim,” he said. “They make a concerted effort over time that they dig into and won’t let go.”
The paper’s coverage of Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the decade before World War II is an early example of its narrative manipulation, Rindsberg writes.
So glowing was its picture of the regime that the Nazis regularly included New York Times reports in their own radio programs.
That’s because the Times bureau chief in Berlin, Guido Enderis, was a Nazi collaborator,” Rindsberg said. ………
I have listened to Dennis Prager for years, and this is only the second time I have heard him this mad:
It should also be noted that without the Press, Stalin and Communism would not have had a pristine veneer. The Pulitzer prize winning New York Times writer, Walter Duranty, is quoted in THE WEEKLY STANDARDas an example:
“There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be.” –New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1
“Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.” –New York Times, August 23, 1933
“Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.” –New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” –New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18
“There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” –New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13
The New York Times doesn’t change. The paper is atrociously biased today and it was 85 years ago when columnist Walter Duranty proved himself to be a useful idiot for Soviet propaganda. Talking about a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, he insisted: “There is no actual starvation… There is no famine.”
Another example from This Week in Media Bias History: CNN founder Ted Turner claimed global warming will kill “most of the people” with the survivors resorting to cannibalism.
Below are Rich Noyes’s collected tweets from the 14th week of This Day in Media Bias History. To get the latest daily examples, be sure and follow Noyes on Twitter. To see recaps of the first 13 weeks, go here.)
The blow article is about the real reporter who risked his life to tell the truth. The NYT’s should strip Duranty of the Pulitzer and ask for it to be transferred to Gareth Jones (click pic to enlarge):
So to post a link (URL) to an article that starts off badly and doesn’t touch on the papers conspiracy views of it’s own (another example):
…New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has for years now delved deep into partisan hackery. But now with the election of Donald Trump, he’s plunged headlong into crazy conspiracy theory. It’s amazing to watch.
Forget that Trump incest stuff. This is the real wacky theory, and there’s no chance the New York Times is going to fire him for it, either:
That’s right, he just suggested Donald Trump would intentionally allow a major terrorist attack to kill thousands of Americans, just to raise his approval rating.
This is a tiny step from the old “Bush Knew” 9/11 truther theories out there, and this is from a columnist from a major left-wing newspaper, too. This guy is respected as an expert. Yet he comes up with this stuff. He posts theories like this and nobody pulls him back from the brink…
(Jump To Conversation About Video)CNN’s Jeremy Diamond reported to Twitter on Friday that during a call between President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill and children who were calling into NORAD to track Santa, a dad spoke up at the end of the all and said “Let’s go Brandon,” to which the President said “Let’s go Brandon, I agree.” Video actually exists of this incredible moment when the President echoes the sentiment “Let’s go Brandon” and the First Lady laughs. (POST MILLENNIAL)
I just (12-25-2021) combined the two calls:
RUMBLE— Here is the Father’s call and the Presidential side combined for a real time experience. The original video of the father is HERE| And the video used of the President is HERE
JONATHAN TURLEY has written well on the phrase…. here is a partial excerpt:
Below is my column in The Hill on the growing “Let’s Go, Brandon” movement, which is a unique response to what many people view as a bias media. It is the modern equivalent of the adoption of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” by colonists in using what was a contemptuous expression as a rallying cry of defiance.
Here is the column:
Roughly 250 years ago, a political insult by British troops during the American Revolution was converted into a rallying cry by the colonials. “Yankee Doodle Dandy” was intended to mock the Continental Army as unsophisticated dandies, but the maligned militiamen turned it around to mock the British after defeats like Yorktown. The song is a lasting example of how symbols of contempt can become symbols of defiance.
In a curious way, “Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a similarly unintended political battle cry. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’”
Stavast’s denial or misinterpretation of the obvious instantly became a symbol of what many Americans perceive as media bias in favor of the Biden administration. Indeed, some in the media immediately praised Stavast for her “smooth save” and being a “quick-thinking reporter.” But the episode was reminiscent of a reporter standing in front of burning buildings during last year’s riots and calling them peaceful protests. Indeed, even the original profane chant seemed directed as much at the media as Biden — creating an undeniable backdrop to news coverage.
The three-word slogan is now emblazoned across tee-shirts, coffee mugs and even billboards. An anti-Biden “Let’s go, Brandon!” hip-hop song hit the top of the charts on iTunes; soon, there were four such songs with the same refrain. The top song was banned on sites like YouTube and Instagram as spreading “harmful false information.” Yet the effort to bar people from listening to the song only fueled the interest and the movement.
The media’s reaction has fulfilled the underlying narrative, too, with commentators growing increasing shrill in denouncing its use. NPR denounced the chant as “vulgar,” while writers at the Washington Post and other newspapers condemned it as offensive; CNN’s John Avalon called it “not patriotic,” while CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart compared it to coded rhetoric from Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and ISIS.
The more the media has cried foul, however, the more people have picked up the chant………
So now that you know a bit of the years long MSM peddling, Let’s continue…. referencing his history I ask (I correct some of our misspelling):
RPT:JIM G.what is wrong is spreading lies about a duly elected President and a cockamamie Russian scheme that turned out to be a lie…. as you were told for years. Your continued spreading about, say, the Trump Tower meeting, and I even think you were on board about the Trump contacts with a Russian bank. Those are lies that were a large web of you maligning a sitting President even though many (myself) showing connections to Glenn Simpson and others. Just that example is a far greater faux pas that saying, “let’s go Brandon.” All sin is not equal JIM. And your sins according to Romans 13 are the egregious ones to note.
And for spreading what was known early on to be lies spread by the media, I noted a Scripture that should concern JIM G.
RPT: Proverbs 25:1: “Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an ax, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow.”
JIM G:there was a Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the election. What the motives an intent of those representing Trump were are not clear and remain disputed. As for Trump contacts with a Russian bank, I’m not sure what it is that I said that you perceive was a lie. I never once knowingly said something about Trump that I believed was untrue. If you think you know of a specific time in which I did, I would appreciate you pointing it out so that I can apologize. I mean that sincerely Sean G.
[More on Trump Tower below, but in many conversations on my wall and his I noted much of it over the years]
JIM G. responds:there was clear evidence that Trump welcomed Russia’s efforts to help him get elected and I saw loads of Russian propaganda on social media aimed at helping Trump. Those are not lies.
I respond, RPT: you said: ” there was clear evidence that Trump welcomed Russia’s efforts to help him get elected and I saw loads of Russian propaganda on social media aimed at helping Trump. Those are not lies.” _______________________ President Donald Trump rejects the narrative that Russia wanted him to win. USA Today examined each of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, the company that employed 12 of the 13 Russians indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for interfering with the 2016 election. It turns out only about 100 of its ads explicitly endorsed Trump or opposed Hillary Clinton. [About 50 endorsed Hillary and opposed Trump.] Most of the fake ads focused on racial division, with many of the ads attempting to exploit what Russia perceives, or wants America to perceive, as severe racial tension between blacks and whites. __________________________ This is not what the investigation (a) showed, that Trump was knowingly welcoming any illegal actions. (b) Nothing about what you just said matches any of your despicable rhetoric for years on Facebook. And (c) not a single vote was shown to have been changed. Even Obama’s own guy noted that, Jeh Johnson.
This is no small belief based on what was then known to be lies and now supported with arrests, FOIA requests, and the like. But to be clear,
Nothing comes close in size, scope or harm to the republic than the years-long effort to cripple Donald Trump’s presidency by claiming he conspired with an enemy state to steal the 2016 election and then do its bidding as commander-in-chief. (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)
A BREAK HERE FOR MY AUDIENCE.
Let us deal with the Trump Tower meeting. I had commented on JIM G’s Facebook wall some portions of the below as most of the information known about the meeting were public even then. JIM G. merely referenced WaPo and the NYT and CNN and other sources he posted were wrong). Here are some examples for the reader:
TRUMP TOWER
The infamous meeting at Trump Tower did not focus on Clinton dirt but on Magnitsky Act, newly released FBI memos show.
(April, 2020, JUST THE NEWS | PJ-MEDIA) …The most scintillating information Mueller’s team ascribed to [Russian translator Anatoli] Samochornov in the report was a tidbit suggesting a hint of impropriety: The translator admitted he was offered $90,000 by the Russians to pay his legal bills, if he supported the story of Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskya. He declined.
But recently released FBI memos show that Samochornov, a translator trusted by the State Department and other federal agencies, provided agents far more information than was quoted by Mueller, nearly all of it exculpatory to the president’s campaign and his eldest son.
Despite learning the translator’s information on July 12, 2017, just a few days after the media reported on the Trump Tower meeting, the FBI would eventually suggest Donald Trump Jr. was lying and that the event could be seminal to Russian election collusion.
Samochornov’s eyewitness account entirely debunks the media’s narrative, the FBI memos show.
“Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr., but stated Donald Trump Jr.’s account with Veselnitskya as portrayed in recent media report, was accurate,” according to the FBI 302 report on its interview of the translator. “Samachornov concurred with Donald Trump Jr.’s accounts of the meeting. He added ‘they’ were telling the truth.”
[….]
Solomon notes that “the belated release of the FBI interview report under a Freedom of Information Act request is likely to raise serious questions among congressional oversight committees about why the information was suppressed in the Mueller report, why the FBI kept it quiet for two years while Trump Jr. was being politically pilloried, and why the news media has failed to correct its own record of misleading reporting.”
Similar reporting at Real Clear Investigations notes well:
(March of 2020,REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS) …..Whatever the suspicions raised by the Trump son’s emailed response, “If it’s what you say I love it,” the meeting didn’t live up to the billing, judging from what the translator told the FBI. Bureau notes show he told agents, “There was no discussion of the 2016 United States presidential election or Collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.” The agent notes also state, “There was no smoking gun according to Samochornov. There was not a discussion about ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. Samochornov did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name.”
Samochornov told the FBI that the meeting was 20 minutes long and focused on the Magnitsky Act, which imposes financial sanctions on wealthy Russians, and related matters. He recounted that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was apparently so uninterested in the topic that he used his cellphone under the table throughout, and “five to seven minutes after it began” Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner left. FBI notes also record that “Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr., but stated that Donald Trump Jr.’s account of the meeting with Veselnitskaya, as portrayed in recent media reports, was accurate.”
Fourteen of the 448 pages of the Mueller Report are devoted to laying out in great detail the chronology and circumstances of the Trump Tower meeting. There are no mentions of Samochornov’s flat denial of collusion or his corroboration of Trump Jr.’s description of the meeting as benign, even though report footnotes list the translator’s FBI interview nine times with little elaboration.
The contents of Samochornov’s “302” – the form used by the FBI to report and summarize agent interviews – were first flagged this month by “Undercover Huber,” a pseudonymous Twitter account dedicated to following Trump-Russia news (not to be confused with Justice Department official John Huber, who was tasked with investigating potential FBI misconduct during the 2016 election). The document, with agents’ names redacted, was posted by the FBI under a federal judge’s order to release on a monthly basis 302s underpinning the Mueller Report, following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by CNN and BuzzFeed.
Samochornov told the FBI that Veselnitskaya had dangled one piece of potentially partisan political information before the Trump officials – the claim that business associates of William Browder, the American businessman behind the passage of the Magnitsky Act, had made illicit donations to Democratic campaigns. Interview notes state that “Samochornov did not know if the donation(s) were made directly to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, or a political action committee.”
This allegation, which was trumpeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, was false. In November of 2017, Reuters reported that Fusion GPS – the Washington, D.C., opposition research firm paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the debunked Steele “dossier” used by the FBI to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign – had provided Veselnitskaya with the bogus Browder-connected dirt before the Trump Tower meeting
Speculation about Russia collusion involving the Trump Tower meeting abounded in media accounts throughout the 2018 midterm elections, raising questions about whether the Mueller team should have disclosed the translator’s information. Mueller did speak out to correct faulty reporting on another matter that appeared damaging to the president, shutting down a BuzzFeed report alleging Trump had directed his lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the assertions in Samochornov’s 302.
The Mueller Report contains information that supports Samochornov’s credibility. It reports that the translator was involved in civil litigation with Veselnitskaya on an unrelated matter. At one point, Samochornov said, the organization that hired him to work with Veselnitskaya on repealing the Magnitsky Act offered to pay $90,000 worth of his related legal fees – if he would corroborate certain statements made by Veselnitskaya.
“Samochornov declined,” the Mueller Report states, “telling the Office that he did not want to perjure himself.”
The FBI’s 302 also records that he explicitly informed the FBI of his legal entanglement during his interview, and Samochornov has a long track record of working as a translator for the State Department and other government agencies on a contract basis. He has been married to Tatiana Rodzianko, a State Department employee, since 2006.
“Samochornov told the interviewing agents that he would have contacted the FBI if he thought the meeting was nefarious,” according to the 302.
REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS laid out the connections between Glenn Simpson (GPS Fusion) and the people involved in the Trump Tower meeting.
(August 2018,POLITICAL INSIDER) ….In an explosive piece at Real Clear Politics, writer Lee Smith breaks down how the meeting was a setup from the get-go – from the very campaign Veselnitskaya pretended she wanted to help take down. As Lee Writes, ” the first line of evidence includes emails, texts, and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. They show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm reportedly paid $1 million by Clinton operatives to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign.”
While Fusion GPS was employing Christopher Steele to compile his anti-Trump dossier, they were also working with Veselnitskaya. In fact, Veselnitskaya met with Fusion GPS’ co-founder Glenn Simpson the day of her meeting with Trump Jr., and the night of the day before. What could they have possibly talked about, if not the meeting?
Lee notes that while Simpson has denied under Senate testimony that he and Veselnitskaya spoke about the Trump Tower meeting, “she has publicly stated that she used talking points [in the Trump Tower meeting] developed by Simpson for the Russian government in that discussion. Kremlin officials also posted the allegations on the Prosecutor General’s website, and shared them with visiting U.S. congressional delegations.” Veselnitskaya mainly talked to Trump Jr. about removing sanctions on Russia during that Trump Tower meeting, hence the talking points mentioned.
So, Fusion was working with Veselnitskaya to help her advance Russian interests – while employing Christopher Steele to claim that it was Trump conspiring with the Russians. “Simpson approached the Clinton campaign through its law firm and said he could dig up dirt on Trump and Russia,” said one congressional investigator. “The difference between the Trump and Clinton campaigns’ willingness to take dirt on its opponent is that the Clintons went through with it and paid for it. While their source, Glenn Simpson, was working for a Russian oligarch.” The oligarch referenced is Denis Katsyv, who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya.
FORBEShas a good article on this as well. Again, old news refreshed:
FUSION AND VESELNITSKAYA
Veselnitskaya, a former prosecutor with ties to the Kremlin, hired BakerHostetler to help Cyprus-based, Russian-steered Prevezon Holdings in court, and the law firm hired Fusion in 2014. Businessman Bill Browder had alleged Fusion acted as an agent for Russian interests when it helped go after him as Putin tried to combat the Magnitsky Act.
Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, championed the Magnitsky Act, named for his tax lawyer and corruption whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after his investigation allegedly uncovered hundreds of millions of dollars of tax fraud implicating Russian officials.
The Justice Department alleged Prevezon laundered fraudulent money, and the company later settled for $5.9 million in what the department called “a $230 million Russian tax refund fraud scheme involving corrupt Russian officials.” Prevezon was owned by Denis Katsyv, whose father, Pyotr Katsyv, is a Putin ally.
The Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Veselnitskaya, now out of reach in Russia, alleging she’d obstructed justice over her “secret cooperation with a senior Russian prosecutor.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee report said the information Veselnitskaya offered during the Trump Tower meeting “was focused on U.S. sanctions against Russia under the Magnitsky Act” and “was part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part, with elements of the Russian government.”
The Senate report assessed Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, who accompanied her, both “have significant connections to the Russian government, including the Russian intelligence services,” and Veselnitskaya’s connections “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known.”
The report noted they “found no evidence that Veselnitskaya used her ties with Fusion GPS to influence the contents of the dossier,” but the senators nevertheless “sought to understand the significance of Veselnitskaya’s relationship” with Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson “because of the timing of their interactions.”
Simpson denied any foreknowledge of the Trump Tower meeting despite seeing Veselnitskaya the day before, the day of, and the day after.
KEY POINT:I do not know of a “Russian” that was touted by the MSM at Trump Tower that wasn’t connected to Fusion GPS or the Clinton’s.
And I have pointed this out since 2017.
TO RECAP THE TOWER
The meeting was arranged by a publicist (Goldstone with past ties to the Trumps) who puffed up claims of Clinton wrongdoing with the Russians in order to help the wealthy father of a Russian pop singer.. Goldstone was 100% non-political.
Goldstone made up an email that stated: “The Russian attorney, he wrote, had offered to provide the Trump campaign with “official documents and information” that would incriminate Clinton [in her dealings with Russia from p. 113 of Mueller report which has full email]. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information,” he added, and was “part of Russia and its Government’s support for Mr. Trump.” So point of meeting was not to concoct a plan to collude with Russia but to find out past Russian dirty dealings with Clinton. [if they existed]
The real reason the wealthy Russian lawyer wanted a meeting was to find a way to repeal the Magnitsty Act which sought to punish Russian human rights offenders. The Russian lawyer who showed up knew zero about any Hillary corrupt activities with Russia and the meeting was simply a ruse to raise Magnitsky act claims.
There was no evidence that Trump knew of the meeting or was informed of it before hand. Also, of course, there was ZERO EVIDENCE of Trump and Russian govt working together. Trump sons were told of potential wrongdoing by Clinton and wanted to know what it was. Entirely legitimate whether obtained from Russian citizens or other sources.
How high does the Russia-collusion hoax rate on the scale of U.S. political scandals? Veteran journalist and author, Lee Smith, would say it tops them all. With the Watergate scandal, the American press uncovered corruption and crimes at the highest levels of government, leading to President Richard M Nixon’s resignation. Fifty years on, we find the press fulfilling a much-altered purpose. Lee, author of ‘The Permanent Coup’ and ‘The Plot Against the President,’ joins me to explain why this event represents the darkest chapter in American politics, and the media’s complicity in this.
Armstrong and Getty react to and read from a few articles making the point that out of almost all nations of comparable size, we are #1 in infrastructure soundness. Here are some of the articles read from (note, stories go in order of: Left Leaning; Libertarian; Conservative)
No, America’s Infrastructure Is Not ‘Crumbling’ (WASHINGTON POST at FREE MEDIA: reproduced below)
Our Infrastructure Is Not ‘Crumbling.’ Repeat: Our Infrastructure Is Not ‘Crumbling’ (REASON)
End of the Runway: Rethinking the Airport Improvement Program and the Federal Role in Airport Funding (HERITAGE FOUNDATION)
One of my beefs, as an example, is this:
A few days after the Chicago City Council approved a $1.3 million legal defense fund to help illegal immigrants facing deportation, officials in Los Angeles unveiled their version with more than seven times the money. It appears to be a growing trend of using public funds to protect those who have violated federal law. The offenders are municipalities that have long offered illegal aliens sanctuary and an array of taxpayer-funded benefits.
[….]
Shortly after the city announced its fund, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors offered to kick in another $3 million to provide lawyers for illegal aliens that may face removal under the new administration. The board voted 4-1 in favor of contributing to the L.A. Justice Fund. The supervisor who voted against it, Kathryn Barger, said it’s irresponsible for the board to allocate funding for such a program.
That is a lot of funds that could have been used for city and county infrastructure projects instead of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Why do I say TDS? Because Obama deported more people than Trump… and not a single public money program was spent on legal defense of ILLEGALaliens.
We already spend almost 500-Billion on infrastructure, and Biden’s “Build Back Better”/Partly The Green New Deal, spends “Only $110 billion of the so-called $1 trillion-plus bipartisan infrastructure package goes toward road, bridges, and other major projects that the American people generally consider ‘infrastructure,’” (BREITBART)…. over ten years.
The WASHINGTON POST story that the ARMSTRONG and GETTY SHOW read from, but it is behind a paywall. So the following is an unlocked version of it.
No, America’s Infrastructure Is Not ‘Crumbling’ (FREE MEDIA)
By Charles Lane,
The United States covers 3.8 million square miles, with 95,471 miles of shoreline and about 12,000 miles of commercially navigable inland waterways; it soars from 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley to 20,310 feet above sea level at Mount Denali.
Knitting this vast and varied territory together are 2.7 million miles of paved roads, more than 500 commercial airports, more than 615,000 bridges, approximately 140,000 miles of freight railroad and more than 300 ports on the coasts, Great Lakes and inland waterways.
Miraculous as these engineering marvels are, it would be even more amazing if some U.S. infrastructure — e.g., the Boston-to-Washington passenger rail corridor, the up to 10 million homes that still get their water through lead pipes, or Texas’s electrical grid — did not need expensive modernization or replacement.
Yet the task before us is not to rescue a neglected, “crumbling” system, as President Biden put it while announcing his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan — in rare agreement with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who pitched his own infrastructure bill (without success) by talking about tiles falling from the ceiling inside New York City’s tunnels.
The real challenge is to take what is by any reasonable measure the best, or nearly the best, infrastructure in the world, and to sustain improvements that have already been occurring in recent years.
Biden warned that U.S. infrastructure is “ranked 13th in the world,” as if it were shameful to outscore about 90 percent of the 141 economies analyzed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum.
In fact, 13th place represents an upward shift of about 10 spots since the 2011-2012 WEF survey — and still underrates the United States.
Of the 12 economies the WEF ranked ahead of the United States in 2019, three — Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates — are tiny coastal city-states. It’s patently spurious to compare their infrastructure challenges with those of the United States.
Among the 10 geographically largest countries, including Canada, Australia, China and Russia, the United States places first, based on WEF criteria. The United States is also top among the 10 most populous countries.
Relative to other wealthy countries, the United States does still trail the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, Spain, Germany, France, Austria and the United Kingdom. However, it’s more realistic to treat the six continental European countries in this group as a unit, since goods and people move through them freely, via the borderless Schengen area. (The European Union members partly share infrastructure costs.) Coupled with deletion of the aforementioned micro-states, this adjustment puts the United States in the top five.
WEF ratings rest largely on a subjective survey in which business executives rate their countries’ roads, ports, and air and rail services on a scale of 1 to 7. This tilts against the United States because the rail-quality question does not distinguish between passenger (poor in the United States but excellent in Europe) and freight (a U.S. strength).
The American Society of Civil Engineers, a pro-construction lobby, issues quadrennial, and unflattering, “report cards” on U.S. infrastructure, frequently cited in support of the “crumbling” talking point. The ASCE’s 2021 report card gave the United States a C-.
But that was the best grade in 20 years. “Five category grades — aviation, drinking water, energy, inland waterways, and ports — went up, while just one category — bridges — went down,” relative to ASCE’s 2017 report card, the organization acknowledged.
That lone downgrade (from C+ to C) occurred despite a decline in the share of highway bridges the U.S. government rates as “poor,” to just 7.5 percent, concentrated in lightly traveled rural areas. The ASCE complained, nevertheless, that “the rate of improvements has slowed,” while a small percentage of the nation’s bridges slipped from “good” to “fair.” (Both “good” and “fair” denote safe, usable structures.)
Talk about accentuating the negative! The impartial Congressional Research Service saw the cup half full in a May 2020 report, noting that “the number and share of bridges in poor condition have dropped significantly over the past 20 years,” and that “a relatively modest increase in spending” between now and 2040 could solve the problem.
As for interstate highways, a 2019 study by economists from the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University confirmed that “over the past generation, the condition of the interstate highway network improved consistently,” according to government data, even as “its extent increased modestly, and traffic about doubled.”
Obviously, all such assessments incorporate subjective judgments and debatable definitions. The big picture, though, is that the gigantic U.S. infrastructure is fundamentally sound — impressively, but not surprisingly, given that governments at all levels spent $370.5 billion on it in 2018, up from $284 billion in 2008, according to official data. Recent projects include the $8 billion modernization of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, a $4.4 billion bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, and a more than $2.4 billion overhaul of Central Florida’s I-4 highway.
To repeat: There’s no reason for complacency about U.S. infrastructure. Yet alarmist generalizations don’t help us identify the most pressing needs with the greatest potential economic benefits. They might pave the way to wasted resources and public disenchantment.
ARMSTRONG and GETTY SHOW read from the following article as well “Highways and Bridges Are Not Crumbling (REASON)“
One of the great myths of American politics, no matter who is president and no matter who runs Congress, is that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” Former President Barack Obama repeatedly warned us about our “crumbling infrastructure.” President Donald Trump now tells us that our infrastructure is “crumbling.” The next president is going to hatch a giant plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure as well, because most voters want to believe infrastructure is crumbling.
The infrastructure is not crumbling. Ask someone about infrastructure and his thoughts will probably wander to the worst pothole-infested road he traverses rather than the hundreds of roads he drives on that are perfectly safe and smooth. That’s human nature.
So “crumbling infrastructure” peddlers play on this concern by habitually agonizing over things like the impending outbreak of tragic bridge collapses that will kill thousands. They bring up tragedies like the 2007 disaster with the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis even though, according to federal investigators, the collapse was due to a design flaw rather than decaying infrastructure. Many outlets and politicians simply ignore the inconvenient fact that the rare fatality involving infrastructure typically has nothing to do with “crumbling” and everything to do with natural elements or human error.
In reality, the number of structurally deficient bridges, never high to begin with, has been dropping over the past 30 years despite all the hand-wringing. The overall number has fallen from over 22 percent in 1992 to under 10 percent in 2016. According to a Reuters analysis of those bridges, only 4 percent of those that carry significant traffic need repairs. Of the nation’s 1,200 busiest bridges, the number of those structurally deficient falls to under 2 percent—or fewer than 20 bridges in the entire country. And none of those bridges need repair to save them from collapse.
That has never stopped politicians from fearmongering, however. “Our roads and bridges are falling apart; our airports are in Third World condition,” Trump claimed during his 2016 campaign. Yet as the Heritage Foundation’s Michael Sargent points out, the percentage of airport runways deemed as poor has fallen from 4 percent in 2004 to 2 percent in 2016. And for the past 30 years, the number of “acceptable” or above roads has remained relatively consistent at approximately 85 percent.
Perhaps because they’re constantly being told that America’s roads are on the verge of disintegrating into dust, some voters aren’t aware that federal, state and local governments spent $416 billion on transportation and water infrastructure in 2014—around the same 2.4 percent of gross domestic product they’ve been spending for decades. About $165 billion of that $416 billion, incidentally, was spent on highways. (This doesn’t count the bipartisan Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015, which added another $305 billion over five years.)………..
A recent report from the RAND Corporation looks at America’s infrastructure and concludes that “not everything is broken.” In face, what is broken, more than the infrastructure itself, is “our approach to funding and financing public works.” This is largely because governments by-pass market signals and rely on “often complicated and multilayered governance arrangements and competing public goals and preferences” to make decisions about where to spend money.
For example, the report shows that government spending on infrastructure as a percentage of gross domestic product declined from a peak of 3 percent of GDP in 1960 to about 2.5 percent in 1980, and has hovered between 2.5 and 2.7 percent since then. But governments also made a clear trade-off in infrastructure spending: spending on roads declined from 1.6 percent of GPD in 1960 to around 1 percent in and since 1980, while government spending on mass transit grew from 0.1 percent in 1970 to 0.4 percent in and since 1980.
This would be fine if spending on mass transit had been as productive as spending on highways had been. But it wasn’t. Until the 2008 financial crisis, per capita driving continued to grow despite the lack of much capital spending on new roads, while per capita transit ridership was stagnant or declining. The report doesn’t have data after 2014, when per capita driving began to increase again while transit ridership began to collapse.
Biden in 2007: You Leave Weapons Behind in Middle East, They’ll Be Used Against Your Grandchild (Editor’s Note: Month Withdrawal and left billions in weapons)
In 2007 Biden said “no great country can say it is secure without being able to control its borders” and called for ramping up the number of border patrol agents. Now he refuses to do any of that as we face a historic border crisis. (Editor’s Note:Biden is doing the opposite. The border is abandoned for all intent-and-purpose)
RUMBLE— This is arguably one of my most important uploads. While I edit and add to Ben Ferguson’s original podcast to embolden his points, this is a subject that while long (40-minutes +) should be listened to or watched in it’s entirety.
Below are resources used or for video or snapshots of headlines:
VIDEO:
Rep. Veronica Spartz (R-IN) chastised the FBI during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday. (YOUTUBE)
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” — JAILED for “parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building” on January 6. Donna Bissey didn’t set fire to any property. She didn’t hurt anyone. She paraded. What you are seeing is unequal enforcement of laws in this country. (FACEBOOK)
White House lays out plan for COVID-19 vaccine rollout for children 5-11 (YOUTUBE)
Your Memo Was The Last Straw’: Jordan Rips Into Garland After School Board Directive (YOUTUBE)
ARTICLE HEADLINES (couple extras)
Capitol Injustice: January 6 Rioters Held in Solitary Confinement (AMERICAN SPECTATOR)
The National School Board Association Apologizes for Its Part in the Merrick Garland ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Letter (100% FED-UP)
FBI Knew The Steele Dossier Was Highly Dubious As Early As January 2017, But Still Relied On It For FISA Renewals (W3P DISQUS PAGE)
A Comparison Of The 2017 Inauguration Riot, 2020 George Floyd Riots, And 2021 Capitol Riot (THE FEDERALIST)
Jan. 6 Protestors Held in Solitary Confinement, Inhumane “Third-World” Conditions (PRO DEO ET LIBERTATE)
Solitary confinement for Jan. 6 riot participants draws criticism from Democratic senators and ACLU (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
Graphic letter from Jan. 6 detainee being held in solitary details ‘nightmare’ of his life behind bars (BPR)
Sens. Warren and Durbin: End Solitary Confinement of US Capitol ‘Insurrection’ Defendants (RON PAUL)
What Constitution? People held after Jan. 6 Capitol incident, some not charged with a crime, still being held in solitary confinement (LAW ENFORCEMENT TODAY)
I AM COMBINING A COUPLE OF POSTS TO MAKE THE POINT — IN OONE PLACE — THAT THE BIDEN ADMIN COULD HAVE WITHDRAWN FROM AFGHANISTAN DIFFERENTLY.
100% FED-UP notes the following: “VIDEO Emerges of Biden Saying Timeline And Manner Of Afghanistan Withdrawal Was His Decision“
….Social media and leftist mainstream media are frantically trying to spin the military failure in Afghanistan on anyone but Biden, but he said it was “his decision.” Biden ignored Trump’s phased plan to leave just as he ignored President Trump’s border policy. Both are now epic failures……
JUST THE NEWS had a decent little blurb worth sharing — because I care:
Trump bombed Taliban to negotiating table; some fear Biden let them waltz to Kandahar
…..“We’re going to come back and hit you harder than any country has ever been hit,” Trump said he told Akhundzada, recounting the threatened consequences if the Taliban failed to make peace. “And your village, where I know you are and where you have everybody, that’s going to be the point at which the first bomb is dropped.”
A few hours after that March 2020 call, Trump put an insurance payment down on the threat. When the Taliban attacked an Afghan checkpoint shortly after Trump hung up, U.S. fighter jets rained down fury on the attackers. A stung Taliban immediately called for de-escalation, saying it was committed to the “plans to implement all parts of the agreement one after another to prevent conflict escalation.”
[….]
Trump and his advisers relentlessly used air power to keep the Taliban in check, making the appearance of a deadly Predator drone or warplane a constant threat. In 2019, the year before the Taliban agreed to peace talks, U.S. aircraft flew 2,434 strike sorties, releasing 7,423 weapons, the highest total ever recorded by the Air Force’s Central Command.
But since the Biden transition, the Taliban have refused the negotiation table and instead marched with surprising speed, capturing control of two-third of Afghanistan after the fall of its second biggest city Kandahar on Thursday.
The U.S. Air Force recently acknowledged a steep decline in air sorties on Biden’s watch…..
The Trafalgar Group surveyed over 1,000 potential 2022 American voters and found that 69.3% of the overall participants disapproved of Biden’s handling in Afghanistan, according to the Convention of States Action’s Monday press release. The majority in the bracket, 59.5%, said they “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance, while the other 10% said they “disapprove.” (DAILY CALLER)
FLASHBACK:
In March 2009 Barack Obama reached out to the Taliban terrorist organization for peace talks.
Joe Biden at the time told reporters “only 5% of the Taliban is incorrigible.”
In August 2010 Barack Obama removed the Taliban from the national terror list.
In May 2012 Barack Obama rewarded the Taliban terrorists with their own office in Qatar for peace talks.
Also in May 2012 the Taliban bombed Kabul two hours after Obama announced peace talks with the terrorist group.
In 2012 the Obama administration even paid for the Taliban peace office in Qatar.
In 2013 Barack Obama secretly released five deadly Taliban prisoners from Gitmo in exchange for peace talks.
In 2014 the Taliban officially released a statement on victory in Afghanistan 6 years into the Obama presidency.
So, in a previous post it is shown the Biden Admin nixed many key components to the withdrawal part of getting out Afghanistan. Now, we know that the treaty the media, Democrats, and Biden keeps referring to….
But here’s the deal: You know — I wish you’d one day say these things — you know as well as I do that the former President made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. — JOE BIDEN
….was in fact conditional.
DEFINITION
conditional: subject to one or more conditions or requirements being met; made or granted on certain terms. “the consortium has made a conditional offer”
synonyms: subject to ✦ dependent on ✦ depending on ✦ contingent on ✦ hingeing on ✦ resting on ✦ hanging on ✦ based on ✦ determined by ✦ controlled by ✦ tied to ✦ bound up with ✦ contingent ✦ dependent ✦ qualified ✦ with conditions (attached) ✦ with reservations ✦ limited ✦ restrictive ✦ provisional ✦ stipulatory ✦ provisory
… Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. IT HAD AN ESCAPE CLAUSE: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.
Chris Miller, acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration, chafed at the idea that Biden was handcuffed by the agreement.
“If he thought the deal was bad, he could have renegotiated. He had plenty of opportunity to do that if he so desired,” Miller, a top Pentagon counterterrorism official at the time the Doha deal was signed, said in an interview.
The piece goes on to acknowledge that that course of action may have led to difficulties of its own, but Biden should have been able to rely on the decades of foreign-policy experience he has boasted as having to craft a better deal…..
…IT HAD AN ESCAPE CLAUSE: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did…
So according to the “deal itself” and the Biden Admin ignoring that and getting rid of the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) — as the original post details below — Afghanistan is 100% Biden’s issue. Period!
The UPDATED VIDEO can be found at the bottom of the post. (Originally posted Aug 18th)
Here is an excerpt, you should read the whole article!
Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
[….]
The document is dated June 11, 2021, though The National Pulse understands the decision to pause the program may have come as early as February, both undermining the original Trump-era date for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and certainly giving the Taliban time to threaten American assets and lives on the run up to Joe Biden’s September 11th date of withdrawal.
The subject line reads: “(SBU) Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau,” and the body of the document recommends:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), and direct a further review of certain associated Department requirements and capabilities.”
It goes on:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, CCR, consistent with the applicable legal requirements, necessary stakeholder engagement, and any applicable changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual and other requirements.”
The document reveals the recommendations were approved on June 11th 2021.
Speaking exclusively to The National Pulse, former President Donald J. Trump blasted Biden’s irresponsible move:
“My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”
In a lengthy article in Vanity Fair from May 2021, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) – also referred to in overlap with a predecessor/partner bureau called “OpMed” is described as a “little-known team of medics and miracle workers—hidden deep within the U.S. Department of State.”
“Even before COVID reared its head, OpMed was finding ways to do all sorts of things, serving as the hidden hand behind daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad,” the article states, before going on to quote Secretary of State Tony Blinken on the importance of the program’s goals.
“The Bureau of Medical Services’ Directorate of Operation—or ‘OpMed,’ as we call it—is a lifeline for the Department of State and the American people… Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis. During the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, OpMed was integral to our evacuation and repatriation of 100,000 Americans to the United States as countries began locking down their borders.”
But The National Pulse understands that career officials inside the State Department objected to the Trump-era aim of creating a Contingency and Crisis Response bureau with the express purpose of avoiding a future Benghazi-style situation for Americans overseas.
Instead, Biden’s team revoked the funding and the approval for the plan, even as the COVID-19 crisis reasserted itself, and and Afghanistan withdrawal loomed………
NEWSBUSTERS has this updated CNN clip where Darrell Issa schools Jim Acosta
There’s a reason why you don’t see conservatives on CNN very often.
Hack journalist Jim Acosta couldn’t keep up as his Republican guest, Rep. Darrell Issa [R-CA], schooled him on his own show, Sunday, over President Biden’s Afghanistan debacle. Acosta repeatedly tried to blame President Trump for the Taliban takeover, but Issa exposed the journalist’s pathetic hypocrisy…..
