Saturday, October 31, 2020

Before Bullshidt Ruled The World The Military Would Tell You What It Cost To Field An "Army Of One"....,

30 Years old, so you know that the current cost is some multiple of what it was back in the days of Desert Storm.  Total estimated annual cost for the current Soldier System is $138.3 K per year which includes individual soldier personnel cost - $39.5 K, soldier clothing and equipment - $1.6K, soldier supplies - $2.6K, division support - $40.8K, and Echelon Above Division support - $53.9K. Current Soldier System equipment represents about 1% oftotal system cost. 

What does this mean? From a system perspective, even significant increases in equipment costs translate into only minor system level cost increases. For example, a 500% increase in soldier clothing and equipment cost for a future Soldier System would translate into about a 6% increase in total Soldier System cost. In turn, for this increase to be cost effective, the future Soldier System need only generate a 6% increase in soldier effectiveness to be more effective than the current Soldier System.

CONCLUSION. The current expenses for soldiers' clothing and equipment represent about 1% of the total Soldier System cost. The investment in advanced equipment/material technologies for future Soldier Systems, even if significantly more expensive, need generate only minimal improvements in overall Soldier System effectiveness to be cost-effective. Analysis of Current Light Infantry Soldier System Costs 

- Now, on to the current bullshidt

NBCNews |  “The least important part really of the cost of a soldier, sailor, airman or woman is the equipment, helmets, boots, even airplanes and tanks and things like that,” says Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute. “The real costs are the personnel costs, we’re talking about training, we’re talking about housing, we’re talking about dependent care for families, daycare for children, we’re talking about health care, which is a huge issue.”

Let’s just look at recruiting alone. This year, recruiting one Marine cost $6,539, including advertising, college fund and enlistment bonuses. Train that marine and you add $1,614, including the uniform, gear, laundry and chow. Then give that recruit some real classroom learning and tack on an additional $301. Remember, you haven’t paid him yet. Pay, allowance, clothing and moving expenses will add $19,973. Give him some ammo at $787 and then provide him with a staff of drill sergeants, teachers and support staff for $15,674. Total value of a new Marine: $44,887.

But in the interest of accuracy, we’re still way off.

“We have an extraordinarily technical military,” says Goure. “The majority of people are not on the front line, coming off the beaches with rifles. They are behind the scenes, running equipment; they’re the people running unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator.”

HIGHER EDUCATION

Old-fashioned infantrymen are in fact one of the rarest commodities in today’s military, a force now filled with Ph.D.s and highly specialized officers. What about that kind of education? Last year, the cost of graduating one officer, likely specializing in science and engineering, from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was $340,000. But let’s say that officer likes to fly. Put him in a $19 million F-16 fighter.

So what’s the overall average cost of sending a soldier to defend our freedom? Well, that was my assignment, and after spending two weeks trying to pry that number out of the U.S. military, our crack team of investigative journalists in the Washington bureau came up with the following answer: it’s simply not a knowable number. Suffice it to say, the figure is priceless.

Who Are Homeless Veterans?

NCHV  |  The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) states that the nation’s homeless veterans are predominantly male, with roughly 9% being female. The majority are single; live in urban areas; and suffer from mental illness, alcohol and/or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders. About 11% of the adult homeless population are veterans.

Roughly 45% of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 10.4% and 3.4% of the U.S. veteran population, respectively.

Homeless veterans are younger on average than the total veteran population. Approximately 9% are between the ages of 18 and 30, and 41% are between the ages of 31 and 50. Conversely, only 5% of all veterans are between the ages of 18 and 30, and less than 23% are between 31 and 50.

America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), and the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Nearly half of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam era. Two-thirds served our country for at least three years, and one-third were stationed in a war zone.

About 1.4 million other veterans, meanwhile, are considered at risk of homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.

How many homeless veterans are there?

Although flawless counts are impossible to come by – the transient nature of homeless populations presents a major difficulty – the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 40,056 veterans are homeless on any given night.

Approximately 12,700 veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND) were homeless in 2010. The number of young homeless veterans is increasing, but only constitutes 8.8% of the overall homeless veteran population.

Why are veterans homeless?

In addition to the complex set of factors influencing all homelessness – extreme shortage of affordable housing, livable income and access to health care – a large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse, which are compounded by a lack of family and social support networks. Additionally, military occupations and training are not always transferable to the civilian workforce, placing some veterans at a disadvantage when competing for employment.

Why Did Trump Have To Protect The Military Healthcare Budget From The Pentagon?

commondreams  |  Shortly after both chambers of Congress approved a $740 billion Defense Department budget for fiscal year 2021, Pentagon officials are reportedly pushing for more than $2 billion in cuts to military healthcare over the next five years, potentially threatening the coverage of millions of personnel and their families amid a global pandemic.

Politico reported Sunday that the proposed $2.2 billion cut to the military healthcare system is part of a "sweeping effort" by Defense Secretary Mark Esper to "eliminate inefficiencies within the Pentagon's coffers."

"Ever notice that it's never a cut to things used to send kids to war?" asked Josh Moon of the Alabama Political Reporter. "It's always—always—a cut to the promises we make to get them to volunteer for us. What a disgrace."

According to Politico, "Esper and his deputies have argued that America's private health system can pick up the slack" for any servicemembers who lose coverage.

"Roughly 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and their dependents rely on the military health system, which is the military's sprawling government-run healthcare framework that operates hundreds of facilities around the world," Politico noted. "The military health system also provides care through TRICARE, which enables military personnel and their families to obtain civilian healthcare outside of military networks."

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the push for billions in healthcare cuts shows once again that the Pentagon "puts more effort in protecting defense contractor profits than the lives of our troops."

 

Our War-Fighters Suffer Privatized Base Housing And Payday Loan Parasitism?

americanbanker |   Regardless of the product, usage rates of short-term loans and other alternative financial products are incredibly high among active duty members of the military — despite a concerted effort by the U.S. armed forces to promote fiscal responsibility and deter their active duty members from obtaining short-term lending products. At Javelin Strategy & Research’s blog, we’ve found 44% of active duty military members received a payday loan last year, 68% obtained a tax refund loan, 53% used a non-bank check-cashing service and 57% used a pawn shop — those are all extraordinarily high use rates. For context, less than 10% of all consumers obtained each of those same alternative financial products and services last year. 

Why is this happening? At least part of this phenomenon can be attributed to age as those in the military tend to be young and Gen Y consumers are generally higher adopters of these services because they are earlier in their financial lives — earning less income and in possession of less traditional forms of credit.

But those conditions don’t tell the whole story. With the explosion of digital financial services, a lack of accessibility doesn’t explain these differentials. Is there something more? Why are these products so attractive to a segment of the population with a very regular paycheck? It could be a function of unintended consequences.

 

 

Once Upon A Time Didn't The Military Take Good Care Of "Our War-Fighters"?

militaryfamily |  Families living in housing on military installations used to have one simple thing in common: their military service. Now, many families are speaking up about another thing they have in common: substandard living conditions.

Military families deserve better.

Military families have been living in privatized, on-base housing for the last 20 years at over 100 installations nationwide. The Department of Defense (DoD) said this was supposed to ensure better living conditions, but many families now report the opposite.

From lead and asbestos exposure to untreated pest infestations, military families have faced a slew of health risks because of lapses in oversight and a ‘code of silence’ that keeps them from reporting housing issues for fear of career-ending retaliation from military commands. Families are speaking out about the way they’re being treated by the private companies contracted by the individual service branches to oversee military housing communities. And now, thanks in large part to a stinging investigation by Reuters, Washington is paying attention.

Mice & Mold, and in Fear of Retribution

Sharon Limon’s home on Camp Pendleton was home to both mold and mice, neither of which were effectively treated.

“We ended up taking a loan out to move off base,” Sharon explained. She says Lincoln Military Housing—the private company that maintains Camp Pendleton housing—made “too many calls to count” to her husband’s command, which Sharon says caused his career to take “the biggest hit of all.” She says he was forced out in August 2018.

Living in Squalor and Paying the Price

Lisa Mayfield says her family experienced mold in multiple areas of their Fort Belvoir home. Their furniture was damaged because of mice and they were shocked with how they were treated upon moving out. “We were charged a ridiculous amount of money for ‘damaged carpet’ and HVAC cleaning, which I asked them to do while I lived there after the AC unit broke mid-summer and the house smelled awful,” she says.

The number of reports about unreasonable charges and significant health hazards continues to grow, mostly unanswered by the Services and the private companies who manage the properties.

Friday, October 30, 2020

The Purge Movies: Who Will Survive In America?

 NYTimes |  I loathe the idea of a topical movie. The process of filmmaking doesn’t even really allow for it. A tight turnaround from idea to distribution is two years. If you started writing a screenplay when the N.F.L. made the rule requiring players to stand for the national anthem, you would be wrapping up the edit right around the time Minneapolis began to burn. To be on time, you have to think years ahead, or else have an intuitive understanding of the history and form of a society.

“The Purge” is always on time. The franchise, created by James DeMonaco, operates around a simple but provocative premise: After years of rising crime and societal breakdown, a quasi-fascist government is swept into power promising to restore peace by instituting an annual bloodletting — one night when all crime is legal. Each entry finds a different group of Americans just before the purge is set to begin. It’s a tidy narrative conceit promising violence and a ticking clock. That it has been a wildly successful series even though it dumps its main characters — generally played by semi-recognizable TV actors — with each iteration is shocking enough. What’s more impressive is that it manages to do it in the tradition of the best B movies: They are cheap and willing to wallow in the muck, and consequently less likely to lie about the violence that underpins American law and order.

Although they’re rarely mentioned in the same breath, it’s notable that the franchise came from Blumhouse, the same company behind “Get Out.” It has put together a string of projects whose animating principle is asking “Who will survive in America?” These movies commit to portraying our society in a way that finely calibrated awards-season films rarely do. Oscar bait’s great sin is not artistic pretension; it’s a lack of curiosity. We have developed a tradition of quality for our big “message” films — well shot, well acted, well made, redemptive and toothless. The better fare is praised for humanizing its characters, as though the realization that the working class also falls in love, faces disappointment and makes meaning were some sort of mind-bending epiphany. In these movies, a few good men can always outrun a history of violence. Realism reigns over the art form, yet it keeps returning to the same story: “Things might be bad, but they’re getting better all the time.” In the real world you might ask: “For whom have things been getting better?”

What Is Going On With The Homeless In California?

latimes  |  A divided Los Angeles City Council backed off Wednesday from voting on a proposal that would have allowed the removal of homeless encampments anywhere in the city — if shelter is first offered to those living in them.

Facing intense opposition from the public and some of their colleagues, the seven council members who pressed for the amendments to the city’s anti-camping ordinance were unable to muster a majority to move it to a quick adoption.

After a four-hour hearing, when it was clear the council planned to refer the proposal to a committee, Council President Nury Martinez continued the vote to Nov. 24 before the whole council. She said the issue was too important to be shunted to a committee.

The proposed ordinance, prepared by City Attorney Mike Feuer in less than a week after several council members requested it, would also allow the city to remove homeless camps under freeway underpasses and near homeless shelters without the condition of offering shelter.

The proposal divided public speakers between those who opposed a ban, with more than one comparing it to Nazi Germany, and those who pleaded for relief from homeless camps near their homes.

Even though the meeting was held remotely, about 40 opponents gathered outside City Hall to protest.

“Where will we go?” asked Ayman Ahmed, who said he is homeless in Echo Park. “The math doesn’t even add up to go into shelters. There aren’t enough. This lacks common sense.”

Other opponents participated in the council meeting remotely.

 


Pay Bills Or Buy Food?

Guardian |  Americans struggling with broken state unemployment systems throughout the US are still fighting to obtain benefits, as utility shut-off moratoriums are expiring and evictions continue despite a federal suspension.

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the US jobs market. Some 787,000 people filed for benefits last week – roughly equal to the population of Seattle. The figure is sharply down from the peak in April, when 6.6 million people filed claims in just one week, but it remains four times as high as it was before the pandemic struck and many hit by the Covid recession are now finding that the benefits and protections they need are running out.

Ann Largent of Orlando, Florida, has been out of work as a patient care technician through the pandemic, but found a new job and was hired at the beginning of August at a nursing home. She has yet to receive a start date, but a hold was placed on her unemployment benefits on 5 September, and she hasn’t received any benefits since.

Largent, 39, lives in a mobile trailer park with her 12-year-old daughter, who requires frequent doctor appointments as her cancer is in remission. When she first lost her job in the beginning of the pandemic, Largent received $355 a month in Snap food assistance, but the benefits were reduced to $16 a month when her unemployment benefits began.

The Trump administration authorized a $600-a-week boost to unemployment benefits in March but that was cut to $300 and Congress has since been deadlocked on a replacement. Once the expanded unemployment benefits ended on 26 July, Largent was only receiving $247 a week, Florida’s maximum unemployment benefit payout after taxes are taken out.

Her rent is $244 weekly, which includes water and electricity, and she is currently at risk of eviction for running late on rent.

“I have fallen behind. I have to miss a rent payment to try to pay the other bills. I already had my car insurance canceled four times so far this year. My internet is usually a month behind, and I’m out of gas,” said Largent. “I cry a lot, so I try to hide my tears from my daughter. She doesn’t need to know my problems. This has been the worst year. I had put in 347 job applications and nothing. Finally got a job, and I haven’t started yet. Now I’m getting screwed over with a work hold.”

She is not alone. As of October 1.76m US households in 36 states were no longer protected by utility shut-off moratoriums, according to a report by the energy efficiency startup Carbon Switch. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an eviction moratorium through the end of 2020 for those meeting eligibility requirements, but the order hasn’t fully halted evictions during the pandemic and landlords are still able to start eviction processes.

 

Thursday, October 29, 2020

BLM Is The Greatest Possible Gift To The Trump Campaign...,

Dailymail  |  Amid the violence, the White House issued a statement just before 1 a.m. Wednesday asserting that the unrest was another consequence of 'Liberal Democrats' war against the police' and that the Trump administration 'stands proudly with law enforcement, and stands ready, upon request, to deploy any and all Federal resources to end these riots.'

'Law enforcement is an incredibly dangerous occupation, and thousands of officers have given their lives in the line of duty,' said the statement from press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. 

'All lethal force incidents must be fully investigated. The facts must be followed wherever they lead to ensure fair and just results. In America, we resolve conflicts through the courts and the justice system. We can never allow mob rule.'

Philadelphia officials had anticipated a second night of unrest Tuesday, and a Pennsylvania National Guard spokesperson had told The Inquirer that several hundred guardsmen were expected to arrive in the city within 24 to 48 hours.  

Wallace was shot before 4pm Monday in an episode filmed by a bystander and posted on social media. Witnesses complained that police fired excessive shots.

Negroes With Guns Out'Chere LARPing....,

blackenterprise  |   Previously, BLACK ENTERPRISE reported that an all-Black armed group was marching through Stone Mountain Park in Georiga in July for the removal of a Confederate monument honoring Jefferson Davis. Since then, a video of the large group marching with their guns in hand has gone viral on social media.

The group has become more active within the last couple of months leading up to the election, along with recent police shootings of unarmed Black civilians, and they are ready to let the country know who they are: Meet the NFAC.

The heavily-armed NFAC, or Not F*cking Around Coalition, is led by John Fitzgerald Johnson, also known as Grand Master Jay, who started the group in 2017 in Atlanta. Johnson has said that the group marches for racial equality and ending police brutality in response to white-armed militias that have come out in light of the heightened racial tension.

 “We’re not ‘effing’ around anymore with the continued abuses within our community and the lack of respect for our men, women, and children,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN. Johnson has posted more about the trauma Black people have endured and how important it is for those in the Black community to arm themselves.

“It ain’t never been grateful Black people in this country,” said Johnson at one of the group marches in a video he posted on his Twitter account. “You can’t fix 400 years of f*cking people over in 150 years!”

The group has also been able to avoid any conflicts with law enforcement usually coordinating with local officers on the scene to peacefully march. While many have compared the group to the Black Panther Party who formed a similar militia to protect Black neighborhoods, the group sets itself apart by avoiding violence and working with police officers. Johnson says it is important for the Black community to exercise their Second Amendment right, touching on the double standard between Black and white gun ownership within the United States.

Keiajah “Kj” Brooks Talking Loud/Saying Nothing To Kansas City's Empty Suit Political Establishment...,

jezebel  |  On Tuesday, a group of activists interrupted the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners meeting, calling for Police Chief Rick Smith’s resignation. One of those activists, Keiajah “Kj” Brooks, delivered a truly incredible speech where she called out the police department for using photo ops with Black children for good PR, and then proceeded to drag every single member of the Board of Police Commissioners individually.

Brooks started talking and got straight to the point.

“Fair warning, I’m not nice and I don’t seek to be respectable. I’m not asking y’all for anything because y’all can’t and won’t be both my savior and my oppressor. I don’t want reform. I want to turn this building into luxury low cost housing. These would make some really nice apartments.”

“So I’m not here begging anything of soulless white folks and self-preserving Black folks. You get one life, and you all in this room have chosen profits over people. And that’s pathetic.

So I’m going to spend the next two minutes reading y’all for filth, something I’m sure nobody has ever done.”

 And then she fucking DID.

I can’t decide if it was better when Brooks told one man that he had “nothing but pure apathy seeping through the bulging veins of your paper colored skin” or when she completely skipped over one board member, saying “had I not spent the entirety of the last six months dragging you I would have more to say, but I don’t.”

They ended their time with an almost poetically perfect Bible verse.

“Anyways, I’ll leave you soulless, profit-driven, avaricious, greedy, godforsaken humans, including ANYONE who works in this building, with one Bible verse. From the Bible. Detailing the life of Jesus. Jesus Christ, who was another unarmed Black man murdered by authorities in the book you Hellbound people claim to love so much. ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit its soul?’”

Watch the whole video on Brooks’ Instagram here.

 

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

All That's Left Of American Political Philosophy Is An Elaborate Justification For Theft And Fraud

Straightlinelogic |  What’s called the silent majority is really the ignored majority, who for the most part are happy being ignored. Their lives revolve their families, jobs, friends, and community, not the media, publicity, polls, or politics. They’re sick of elections well before they’ve seen their hundredth campaign ad, received their hundredth mailer, or ignored their hundredth telephone call. They know that politicians are phony and corrupt and make jokes about them, but hope that their rulers don’t screw things up too badly, cross their fingers, and vote for the perceived lesser of two evils.

There’s a shortage of blue-ribbon pedigrees, Ivy League degrees, and gold-plated resumés among the ignored majority, but a surfeit of hard-knocks wisdom and common sense. Benjamin Franklin said, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” Everybody does foolish things, but by and large, the ignored majority learns from the dear school and puts its lessons to good use.

The gilded class denigrates those outside it: Hillary Clinton deploring the “deplorables,” Barack Obama saying working-class voters, “cling to guns or religion,” and Obama telling entrepreneurs, “you didn’t build that.” Yet, it consistently, almost invariably, demonstrates a complete lack of the common-sense street smarts found in abundance among those it disparages.

The quotes’ condescending arrogance rankles, but at a deeper level illustrate the real division in American politics—between the productive class and those it supports. At the intellectual level it’s the irreconcilable difference between those who believe that value can and should be conferred by the government, and those who know it must be created and produced. It’s believing or not believing that something can be had for nothing.

Freeloaders’ delusion stems from psychology, not ignorance. Every human faces a choice. They can produce value or they can beg, borrow, defraud, or steal it from someone else. For every advance humanity has made, there’s always been someone claiming their unfair share. Most of what we call history is merely an account of who’s stealing or defrauding from whom.

Because production is necessary for human survival, not producing anything of value creates a gaping psychological fissure, one not generally recognized or acknowledged. What’s generally accepted is that humans grasp at rationales and justifications for their actions, not just for the audience to which they’re playing, but for themselves. Most political philosophy is just an elaborate justification for theft and fraud. Political systems don’t spring from philosophies, the philosophies spring from the systems’ actual or potential beneficiaries.

 

Are Political Questions ONLY About How Government Secures Persons And Property?

WSWS  |  The most obvious error made by the 1619 Project—that the American Revolution was waged to stop British abolition of slavery—became indefensible after the Times’ own fact checker, Leslie Harris of Northwestern University, felt compelled to admit that she had “vigorously” opposed it. Silverstein tried to manage this exposure of the Times’ dishonest suppression of the fact-checker’s objection with a clever “cut and paste” modification of Hannah-Jones’ false claim. The original categorical denunciation of pre-1619 Project historiography had read:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. [Emphasis added]

Silverstein added two words so that the amended version now reads:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. [Emphasis added]

In the original version, the defense of slavery is presented as “one of the primary reasons” the colonists decided for separation from Britain. In the 1619 Project version 2.0, the concern over the fate of slavery motivates only “some of”—How many? Who? Where?—the colonists. Presto! Problem solved. Or so Silverstein thought. But the modified statement is still false. Far from being “conflicted” over slavery, until 1833 the British Empire maintained its own lucrative slave plantations in the Caribbean, where Loyalist slaveowners fled, human property in tow of His Majesty’s Navy.

As for the Project’s quietly-deleted “true founding” thesis—which was emblazoned on the Times website and repeated again and again by Hannah-Jones on social media, in interviews, and her national lecture tour—Silverstein now claims that this was the product of nothing more than a minor technical error, the sort of snafu that is an inevitable outcome of difficulties for modern-day editors, such as himself, in managing a “multiplatform” publication and “figuring out how to present the same journalism in all those different media.” With all of these formats to tend to, the beleaguered editors of the Times just couldn’t get the story straight! Silverstein does not seem to grasp that the criteria of objective truth do not change as one moves from printed newspaper to website, or from Facebook to Twitter. What is a lie in one format remains a lie in another.

In addition to chalking up the mistaken “true founding” claim to his far-flung editorial responsibilities, Silverstein attempts to defend Hannah-Jones by implying that readers failed to appreciate “the sense that this was a metaphor.” He should have been more attentive, he says, to “online language [that] risked being read literally.” This is among the most inspired of Silverstein’s excuses. From here on in, whenever Times correspondents like Judith Miller are caught lying, its editors may claim that the journalists are writing in metaphors that are not to be read literally.

Silverstein cites the original, “metaphorical,” version of the 1619 Project. This is the version that was sent out to school children. It read, with emphasis added:

1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unanimously celebrated every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that our defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619?

He then quotes the revised passage, that has been made to the online publication only:

1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that the moment that the country’s defining contradictions first came into the world was in late August of 1619?

Perhaps Silverstein hopes his readers will carelessly jump over this scissors-and-glue work. He writes that the difference in the two passages is “to the wording and the length, not the facts.” But actually, there to be read literally in black and white, the first passage refers specifically to an allegedly false “fact.” If a metaphor is being employed in the original version, it is very well concealed.

Silverstein repeats Hannah-Jones’ conceit that historians have ignored the African American experience. Such a claim exposes both Silverstein’s and Hannah-Jones’ ignorance of historical literature. The 1619 Project is as much a falsification of historiography as it is of history.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Tucker Carlson's Entire Show Tonight Is Tony Bobulinski Who's Bringing Receipts!!!

 thefederalist  |  Fox News’ Tucker Carlson will be dedicating his entire prime time program Tuesday night to a one-hour interview with Biden family whistleblower Tony Bobulinski.

Carlson announced the programming Monday afternoon.

The Federalist confirmed with sources familiar with the plans that Bobulinski, a retired Navy lieutenant and Biden associate, will be airing tapes of Biden operatives begging Bobulinski to remain quiet as former Vice President Joe Biden nears the finish line to the White House next week.

Bobulinski first came forward last week with a public statement emailed to The Federalist and other outlets going on-the-record to corroborate incriminating claims to surface from the New York Post the week prior and the long-anticipated Senate report published in September on the Biden family’s potentially criminal business activity.

“Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing,” wrote Bobulinski, confirming that the identity of “the Big Guy’ in a May 17, 2017 email published in the New York Post is indeed a reference to Joe Biden. The same email showed Hunter Biden was being offered a $3 million a year contract from a Chinese businessman with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for “introductions alone,” and 10 percent was flagged to be set aside for “the Big Guy.”

On Friday, The Federalist published explosive text messages from a Biden business associate instructing Bobulinski to conceal Joe Biden’s involvement with deals related to the CCP-linked firm.

“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when you are face to face,” wrote James Gilliar.

 

Sum'n Not Right - With Biden In His Crosshairs - Why Won't Trump TAKE THE SHOT?!?!?!

americanthinker  |  When the Daily Beast wrote its October 16 article, it labeled the Guo outlet’s claims as “absurd on their face” and added that they showed “endless conspiracy theorizing….”  Since then, revelations from the New York Post, Rudy Giuliani, Tony Bobulinski, and other anonymous sources have confirmed that Hunter’s hard drive had compromising financial information. Now, thanks to GTV’s videos and photos, it looks like Guo was also telling the truth about a sex scandal.

In other words, the allegations in the tweet about disks of evidence and financial and sex scandals appear true. That makes it possible, indeed probable, that the other allegation in the tweet is true: namely, that not only has the FBI had Hunter’s computers since December 2019, but also that both Nancy Pelosi and the DOJ have been sitting on the same information since September 28, 2020.

As if that’s not shocking enough, Guo’s outlets have made a few other staggering allegations. These allegations are scattered throughout the videos and summarized in this essay at GNews (emphasis mine):

This video shows only the tip of the iceberg of what is important in the Chinese Communist Party’s Blue-Gold-Yellow (BGY) program. They take advantage of all those Western politicians, celebrities, and their families who are greedy for Chinese wealth, and threaten them by getting hold of and recording their sex and drug videos, forcing them to sell out their countries and people, and even their own national security in order to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party’s world domination.

U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden is 100% controlled by the Chinese Communist Party as one of the most successful political instances of the BGY program. He is also a target of the CCP’s 3F plan, which aims to “fall, fail, and fell,” to weaken, destroy and kill America!

The Chinese Communist Party’s use of this tactic to threaten Biden and his sons and to bribe them with large amounts of wealth is one of the major causes of the disputes over the South China Sea, US-China trade, intellectual property rights, and energy prices, etc., as well as Biden’s provision of large numbers of CIA intelligence agents in China to the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese Communist Party has such a BGY program in the United States and in several Western countries in Europe. We will have millions of videos and photos of government officials, corrupt people, traitors, and criminals colluding with the Communist Party to dominate the world.

Again, merely because Guo’s outlets have been accurate about some things does not mean that the above allegations are true. However, the following three allegations, if true, are earth-shaking:

First: China has long owned Biden thanks to its having compromising information about his family (and possibly about him too).

Second: Biden identified CIA assets in China. The back story is that, between 2010 and 2012, China executed or imprisoned 18 to 20 assets who had bravely worked with the CIA, destroying a critical intelligence network.

Third: Guo’s outlets have “millions of videos and photos” of people who have worked with the Chinese against their own countries. If true, this implies that Guo managed to get into China’s “blackmail” database and can release that information.

If you thought Epstein’s secrets were big, these new claims, if true, could blow everything out of the water. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this information – again if it’s true – could realign politics in America and elsewhere.

On MSDNC Jon Meacham Say Trump Supporters Am "Lizard Brains"

 jonathanturley  |  We recently discussed how Vanderbilt professor and historian Jon Meacham gave a quiz in his course on the 2020 Election in which students were asked “Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institution of slavery?” You had to answer “yes” or get points deducted.

It appears that the final exam in the class could prove even more demanding for any intellectually honest student if Meacham asks about the voters themselves. The NBC analyst this week declared that President Trump and his supporters are examples of being controlled by what is called “the lizard brain.”

It only got worse from there.

Meacham addressed a simple question of whether Trump helped himself with his base in the second presidential debate Thursday night. It is impossible on NBC, however, to refer to Trump voters without some derisive or insulting precursor. Meacham did not disappoint his audience.

“I think Trump did himself good with his base tonight,” Meacham said. “The question for America is how big that base is. There is a lizard brain in this country. Donald Trump is a product of the White man’s, the anguished, nervous White guy’s lizard brain.”

Meacham was referring to a primitive part of the brain in psychological literature: “Many people call it the ‘Lizard Brain,’ because the limbic system is about all a lizard has for brain function. It is in charge of fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and fornication.”

Of course, even with the lead held by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in the polls, roughly half of this country still supports Trump (or at least rejects Biden, who Meacham has endorsed). That is a lot of lizard people.

What is striking is that Meacham is supposed to give what NBC, MSNBC and PBS present as neutral, scholarly analysis. But his comment about Trump supporters having lizard brains captures why conservative or independent voters view the networks as biased and gratuitously insulting.

Indeed, these comments show that networks like NBC are now focusing entirely on Democratic and liberal viewers — writing off half of the American people as gag lines.

I have written repeatedly about how the media have helped Trump by fulfilling his narrative of open bias. Meacham shows that they are now enjoying this too much.

Monday, October 26, 2020

Bought And Paid For - Biden Is Communist China's Bish

epochtimes |  In May 2019 Joe Biden distinguished himself from all of the other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination by ridiculing the idea that China is a strategic threat to the United States. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he told a campaign crowd in Iowa City. Biden had for years adopted a soft approach to China. When President Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was taking a tougher position towards China’s adventurism in Asia, Vice President Biden was urging caution. Biden had formed a warm personal relationship with Xi Jinping when Xi was vice president and president-in-waiting.

In his second term, Obama replaced Clinton as secretary of state with the more accommodating John Kerry. The dynamics help to explain why Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia” was a damp squib. The United States stood back while China annexed islands and features in the South China Sea and built military bases on them, something Xi had promised Obama he would not do. Breaking the promise has given China an enormous strategic advantage.

Joe Biden cleaves to the belief, now abandoned by many China scholars and most Washington politicians, that engagement with China will entice it into being a responsible stakeholder. The University of Pennsylvania’s D.C. think tank—named, for him, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement—aims to address threats to the liberal international order, yet China is absent from the threats identified on its website: Russia, climate change and terrorism. Biden has spoken about China’s violation of human rights but still clings to the idea of China’s “peaceful rise.”

So does it matter if Joe Biden has a different view of China? It does, because there is evidence that the CCP has been currying his favor by awarding business deals that have enriched his son, Hunter Biden. One account of this is given by Peter Schweizer in his 2019 book “Secret Empires.” Some of his key claims were subsequently challenged and Schweizer refined them in an op-ed in the New York Times (famous for fact-checking). In short, when Vice President Biden travelled to China in December 2013 on an official trip, his son flew with him on Airforce Two. While Biden senior was engaging in soft diplomacy with China’s leaders, Hunter was having other kinds of meetings. Then, “less than two weeks after the trip, Hunter’s firm … which he founded with two other businessmen [including John Kerry’s stepson] in June 2013, finalized a deal to open a fund, BHR Partners, whose largest shareholder is the government-run Bank of China, even though he had scant background in private equity.”

 

 

JoltinJoe Biden Has Been Given A Pass To Pretend That Trump Is Gunning For Hunter

thehill |  The former vice president was asked in an interview on the progressive political podcast "Pod Save America" released Saturday why he hasn't highlighted concerns that the Trump family is profiting off the presidency, a charge Trump has made against Biden's son.

"It's a specific decision, and I just think it's crass," Biden said.

"I'm running against Donald Trump, not his children, and the American people want to hear about their families, not about Trump's family or my family, although I'm very proud of my family," he said. "It's just not how I was raised. It's that basic. It's Donald Trump."

Critics have long raised concerns about Trump's family profiting off his presidency, with Democrats maintaining that his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner holding positions as senior White House advisers presents conflicts of interest with their businesses.

Ivanka Trump has brushed off such criticisms, saying last year that her father ran for office after making his money in real estate.

“His wealth, and our wealth, collectively and independently, was created prior to government service and prior to anyone in our lives having run for elected office,” she told The Associated Press then.

“Most people do create their wealth post service. We created ours prior,” she added.

 

Huntergate Has Always Only Ever Been About Joe Biden's Political Corruption

NYPost |  What might the Bidens’ foreign benefactors have expected in return for all this largesse? We can’t say. But some may see a correlation between that foreign money and Joe Biden’s policy posture toward the sources of that money.

Consider the case of the Penn Biden Center, a D.C. think tank named after Joe Biden. According to the Center, its mission is to “Address Threats to the Liberal International Order.” The Center analyzes the threats of “Russia” and “climate change” in detail. But China — the largest violator of basic human rights on the planet — does not make the list. Why?

Perhaps we now know why.

The New York Post broke news last week that Joe Biden himself may have benefited from his son’s dealings. The Post quoted a cryptic message from one of Hunter’s partners, saying that “10 [percent] held by H for the big guy?” The recipient of that message, Tony Bobulinski, says “there is no question” that “H” stands for Hunter and the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

We gain further insight into the operations of Biden Inc. in emails provided to us by Bevan Cooney, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. Cooney, who is currently in prison for his role in the Indian Bond Scheme that is sending Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer also to jail, shared 26,000 emails that show what Hunter’s role was in their business ventures. The Biden name was considered “currency” for their foreign business ventures, and was a “direct…pipeline” to the Obama-Biden Administration. Deals involving Hunter benefited from the “Biden lift,” the help that the name would provide in overseas dealings.

After first dismissing the gathering scandal as a “conspiracy theory,” the Biden team shifted to the position that Joe had never talked with his family about their business dealings, then shifted again to the position that he’d never met with his family’s business partners. Now, with the latest document revelations, Joe Biden unveiled his latest defense in the recent debate: “I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.”

Team Biden points to Joe and Jill Biden’s tax returns as evidence that Joe did nothing improper. It is worth noting that the family members upon whom foreign entities showered money are not required to disclose their finances.

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Uniform Mainstream Complicity With The Biden Crime Syndicate

theatlantic  |  For those trying to follow along at home, the emails produced by Tyrmand are not the same emails that originally appeared on a laptop that Hunter Biden supposedly left at a Delaware computer-repair shop, the laptop that then became a story in the New York Post (and whose contents, according to a report in Time, were circulating previously in Ukraine). This is a different cache, one that is even more tangential to the U.S. presidential campaign and even harder to understand. In order to even make sense of the messages’ content, the reader must learn the backstories of a whole new cast of characters, not just Cooney but two other convicted fraudsters named Devon Archer and Jason Galanis; the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Yelena Baturina; and Chris Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, who broke away from the group; as well as their relationships, their jokes (they refer to Baturina as the “USSR woman’s shot put champion”), and the rules of the ugly world they inhabit. In order to link them to Joe Biden, you have to turn somersaults, do triple flips, and squint very hard.

Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff. Judging by what has been published, the very worst thing that Tyrmand’s email cache could reveal (if it is authentic) is that some unattractive people sought to use Hunter Biden’s surname and connections to get business deals or score a visit to the White House for their clients. But we already know about Hunter Biden’s involvement with unattractive people, and his struggles with addiction; we also know that, under normal circumstances, dozens of people visit the8 White House every day. On the grand scale of misdeeds committed by politicians and their relatives, this kind of thing barely registers. Compare that with, say, the Trump family’s well-documented hotel deal with an Azerbaijani business family linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Or the Trump family’s blatant use of its status to funnel money to its own companies. Or the Trumps’ illegal abuse of their charitable foundation. Or the president’s secret Chinese business bank account. The Trump family is a living, breathing, walking conflict of interest—so much so that much of Donald Trump’s foreign policy is most easily explained through the lens of his personal greed and his hotel investments, not as the emanation of any kind of American national interest.

But this, of course, is not the point. In releasing the 26,000 emails, Tyrmand and his collaborator, the Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer, are not bringing forth any evidence of actual lawbreaking, or an actual security threat, by either Hunter or Joe Biden. They are instead creating a miasma, an atmosphere, a foggy world in which misdeeds might have taken place, and in which corruption might have happened. They are also providing the raw material from which more elaborate stories can be constructed. The otherwise incomprehensible reference in last night’s debate to “the mayor of Moscow’s wife,” from whom Joe Biden somehow got rich, was an excellent example of how this works. A name surfaces in a large collection of data; it is detached from its context; it is then used to make an insinuation or accusation that cannot be proved; it is then forgotten, unless it gains some traction, in which case it is repeated again.

Great Reset's Intersectional Hijacking Of Non-Whydte Wymyn Victim Vectors

strategic-culture |  People living in the western world are in the greatest fight for the future of pluralist and republican forms of governance since the rise and fall of fascism 75 years ago. As then, society had to be built up from a war. Today’s war has been an economic war of the oligarchs against the republic, and it increasingly appears that the coronavirus pandemic is being used, on the political end, as a massive coup against pluralist society. We are being confronted with this ‘great reset’, alluding to post-war construction. But for a whole generation people have already been living under an ever-increasing austerity regimen. This is a regimen that can only be explained as some toxic combination of the systemic inevitabilities of a consumer-driven society on the foundation of planned obsolescence, and the never-ending greed and lust for power which defines whole sections of the sociopathic oligarchy.

Recently we saw UK PM Boris Johnson stand in front of a ‘Build Back Better’ sign, speaking to the need for a ‘great reset’. ‘Build Back Better’ happens to be Joe Biden’s campaign slogan, which raises many other questions for another time. But, to what extent are the handlers who manage ‘Joe Biden’, and those managing ‘Boris Johnson’ working the same script?

The more pertinent question is to ask: in whose interest is this ‘great reset’ being carried out? Certainly it cannot be left to those who have built their careers upon the theory and practice of austerity. Certainly it cannot be left to those who have built their careers as puppets of a morally decaying oligarchy.

What Johnson calls the ‘Great Reset’, Biden calls the ‘Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution & Environmental Justice’. Certainly the coming economy cannot be left to Boris Johnson or Joe Biden.

How is it that now Boris Johnson speaks publicly of a ‘great reset’, whereas just months ago when those outside the ruling media paradigm used this phrase, it was censured by corporate Atlanticist media as being conspiratorial in nature? This is an excellent question posed by Neil Clark.

And so we have by now all read numerous articles in the official press talking about how economic life after coronavirus will never be the same as it was before. Atlanticist press has even run numerous opinion articles talking about how this may cut against globalization – a fair point, and one which many thinking people by and large agree with.

Yet they have set aside any substantive discussion about what exists in lieu of globalization, and what the economy looks like in various parts of the world if it is not globalized. We have consistently spoken of multipolarity, a term that in decades past was utilized frequently in western vectors, in the sphere of geopolitics and international relations. Now there is some strange ban on the term, and so we are now bereft of a language with which to have an honest discussion about the post-globalization paradigm.

Saturday, October 24, 2020

JoltinJoe Has Compassion For Hunter But Put Black Crackheads Up Under The Jailhouse

pjmedia  |  Moreover, what other presidential candidate has refused to provide his position on key issues, including whether he would pack the Supreme Court? When has any other candidate haughtily waved off questions of debate moderators and reporters with the sophomoric dodge that, “Trump just wants you to focus on this issue (instead of what an SOB he is)”?

Adding insult to injury, when has the media ever let any candidate off the hook like this, which is a scandal of unprecedented proportions? Obviously, the media disrespects the electorate as much as the Biden campaign does.

If anything is indisputably the media’s job, it is to bring out the candidates’ positions on important issues, and packing the Supreme Court and the Biden scandals are exceedingly important — and relevant — issues. What would the media’s reaction be if Trump refused to answer such questions?

The media dutifully promoted the canard that the Russians — yes, the Russians again — were behind the emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. But how will these crooked conspirators explain away the bombshell revelation of Hunter’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, that the “big guy” referred to in Hunter’s email is Joe Biden himself? How will they handle Bobulinski’s assertion that Joe Biden was offered 10% interest in a Chinese business deal?

But for my money, even these cover-ups don’t hold a candle to the media’s scandalous concealment of Joe Biden’s declining mental acuity. In his current state, Biden clearly is not fit for office, yet the media ignores it while raising bogus questions about the uncannily vibrant Trump’s capacity. Reality has finally trumped George Orwell’s imagination.

Where is the perennial finger-wagger Bob Woodward when you need him?

The American public knows everything there is to know about Trump, as they’ve scrutinized every molecule of his being and business dealings and dug up every conceivably negative morsel about him during the last four years.

 

A WHOLE CLOSET Of Bright Red Chinese Jimmy Choos Fell On Joe Biden's Head This Week

baldingsworld |   Lost among the salacious revelations about laptop provenance is the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures. A report by an Asian research firm raises worrying questions about the financial links between China and Hunter Biden.

Beginning just before Joe Bidens ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors.  Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance.

It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter’s firm.

In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.

The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People’s Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to “…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government.”

Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter’s investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping’s right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo.

Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family.  Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion.  While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all.  A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter’s stake being worth in excess of $50 million.

According to Hunter’s attorney, he did not invest his $400,000 in the company until 2017. Even assuming the veracity of this statement, this raises a major problem. Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.

The difficulty in eluding these concerns is their documentability by anyone who cares to look.  There is no potential for hacking because it is all public record in China. Any journalist who wishes to look can go review IPO prospectuses, news reports, or corporate records. There is no secret method for discovering this data other than actually looking. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that Hunter Biden was granted a 10% stake worth far in excess of what he paid for a firm that is literally operated and owned by the Chinese state.

I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and have significant concerns about his policies in areas like immigration. Having lived in China for nine years throughout the Xi regimes construction of concentration camps and having witnessed first hand their use of influence and intelligence operations, the Biden links worry me profoundly.

Whether Joe Biden personally knew the details, a very untenable position, it is simply political malpractice to not be aware of the details of these financial arrangements. These documentable financial links simply cannot be wished away.

 

Here is the report if you missed the previous links

Friday, October 23, 2020

Knowing What We Now Know - Do You Find It Hard To Imagine What It Was Like To Be Trump This Year?

That Big Bobulinski China Shoe Dropped On The Bidens Yesterday

NYPost  |  Wait until Scranton hears about this.

One of Joe Biden’s ways of contrasting himself with President Trump has been to declare the election a battle of Park Avenue values vs. Scranton, Pa., values.

Now we learn that Biden has secretly been playing footsie with China.

The statement Wednesday night asserting that the former vice president was a willing and eager participant in a family scheme to make millions of dollars by partnering with a shady Chinese Communist firm is a singular event in a presidential race already overflowing with drama and intrigue.

The dynamite assertion, believable because it aligns with earlier information we know to be true, came in a statement by Tony Bobulinski, who describes himself as a former partner of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Joe’s brother Jim in the China scheme. Bobulinski unloads his bill of accusations in blunt but precise language and detail.

He confirms that he was one of the recipients of the May 13, 2017, email published by The Post eight days ago. That email, from another partner in the group, laid out cash and equity positions and mysteriously included a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy.”

Sources have said the “big guy” was Joe Biden.

In a matter-of-fact manner, Bobulinski states that the “email is genuine” and that the former vice president and the man leading in the 2020 race is indeed “the big guy.” 

My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine.

This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.

I am the grandson of a 37 year Army Intelligence officer, the son of a 20+ year career Naval Officer and the brother of a 28 year career Naval Flight Officer. I myself served our country for 4 years and left the Navy as LT Bobulinski. I held a high level security clearance and was an instructor and then CTO for Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. I take great pride in the time my family and I served this country. I am also not a political person. What few campaign contributions I have made in my life were to Democrats.

If the media and Big Tech companies had done their jobs over the past several weeks I would be irrelevant in this story. Given my long standing service and devotion to this great country, I could no longer allow my family’s name to be associated or tied to Russian disinformation or implied lies and false narratives dominating the media right now.

After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries. I believe, hands down, we live in the greatest country in the world.

What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad “the Big Guy” or “my Chairman,” and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me — it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn’t and wouldn’t do that to their partners.

I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts so I can go back to being irrelevant — and so I am not put in a position to have to answer those questions for them.

I don’t have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Coincidence Theory: Does Ghislaine Maxwell's Deposition Distract From The Sordid Drip Of Huntergate?

 slate |  On Thursday morning, a federal court released a 2016 deposition given by Ghislaine Maxwell, the 58-year-old British woman charged by the federal government with enticing underage girls to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein. That deposition, which Maxwell has fought to withhold, was given as part of a defamation suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges that she was lured to become Epstein’s sex slave. That defamation suit was settled in 2017. Epstein died by suicide in 2019.

In the deposition, Maxwell was pressed to answer questions about the many famous men in Epstein’s orbit, among them Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. In the document that was released on Thursday, those names and others appear under black bars. According to the Miami Herald, which sued for this and other documents to be released, the deposition was released only after “days of wrangling over redactions.”

It turns out, though, that those redactions are possible to crack. That’s because the deposition—which you can read in full here—includes a complete alphabetized index of the redacted and unredacted words that appear in the document. For example, after cracking the redactions, we know that Maxwell was asked about an email that Dershowitz allegedly sent to Epstein. In that email, Dershowitz reportedly wrote that he was “working on several possible articles about unfairness in the legal process that allows false charges to be inserted into legal documents.”

Here’s how to deduce the redacted words, using former President Bill Clinton as an example.

 

What Domination Of The Genetic Lottery Looks And Sounds Like...,

It's Not What's Been Said, Rather, It's What's Been Left Unsaid...,

When asked local Wisconsin TV station WISN if there was any legitimacy to comments by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that Hunter "together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name," the former Vice President replied "None whatsoever," adding (without finishing the sentence) "This is the same garbage Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman..."

"It's the last ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family."

Except, Hunter admitted he profited off his family name!

"If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" asked ABC News' Amy Robach in an October 15, 2019 interview.

"I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect," said Hunter. "I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden," he added, "because my dad was Vice President of the United States."

"There’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full-grown adult that — my father in some way hasn’t had influence over."

j|onathanturley  |  The convergence of law and politics is a common occurrence in Washington. While law is used to ascertain truth, politics is often used to obscure it.

That is why the truth is rarely evident in looking at a scandal straight on. Rather it requires peripheral vision or analysis – often what is not evident is what is most enlightening.

This most famous example of such reasoning was found in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” on Sherlock Holmes’s investigation of the disappearance of a racehorse.

The local inspector asked if there was “any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

When the inspector objects, “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” Holmes replies, “That was the curious incident.”

There is always something a tad curious of Washington legal scandals in what has not occurred. That is why the latest Hunter Biden scandal is so curious.

When the story broke in the New York Post, the Biden campaign was faced with thousands of emails that purportedly showed clear support for allegations that Hunter Biden was given millions as part of an influence-peddling scheme related to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.

There was ample reason to be skeptical about the sketchy account of a computer being left by Hunter Biden at a computer store with a man who cannot see beyond a couple of feet.  And then there is the timing of disclosure just weeks before an election.

The problem was the absence of “barks” from the Biden camp. The computer files revealed a host of embarrassing pictures of Hunter Biden using drugs or exposed in other embarrassing ways. The emails contain dates and addresses that match up with confirmed records.

If they are fabricated, there were three barks that we would have expected within hours of the release.

Bark 1: This was not Hunter Biden’s computer

The most obvious response would be that this is not the computer of Hunter Biden.  After all, the computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac who is legally blind said that he could not recognize the person who dropped off the laptop.

However, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has now stated, as a fact, that “the laptop was left by Hunter Biden, in an inebriated, heavily inebriated state with the merchant.”  That does not purport with what Isaac said.

However, there remains the question of a laptop with a “Beau Biden Foundation” sticker on it with highly incriminating files.

Someone in the campaign must have called Hunter Biden and he had to have told them whether or not it was his laptop.

The response on ownership has been crickets for days.

Bark 2: These were not Hunter Biden’s photos or emails

Even if the campaign cannot deny that the computer was Hunter Biden’s, it could deny that these incriminating pictures and emails were his.

Again, crickets.

Note that if these are fabricated emails or pictures, this would be a serious federal crime and the basis for legal action.

The Biden camp has no shortage of lawyers. Indeed, they have been signing up lawyers in droves in preparation for election challenges.

Yet, there is not a single allegation of fraud or fabrication after days of a brewing scandal.

Bark 3: This is defamation

Perhaps this bark is the most telling. If these emails or pictures are fabricated, it is a clear case of defamation and other tort actions.

It would seem that one of the hundreds of lawyers currently lined up by the Biden campaign would fire off an “intent to sue” letter.

Truth is a defense to defamation, so the letter might start with the earlier bark and deny that this was Hunter Biden’s computer and these were Hunter Biden’s file.

One big difference between the legal and political worlds is that in the latter there is no protection for the right to remain silent. In politics, scandals can be managed but not silently.

Instead of these obvious barks, the public heard something closer to a whimper: that the campaign could not find any notation on Vice President Biden’s official schedule that he met with a Ukrainian figure connected to the payments to his son Hunter Biden.It would be a curious sight in itself for Biden’s official schedule to include “meeting with Ukrainian connected to Hunter.” Many meetings are not part of an official schedule that staffers know is subject to official records laws for preservation and review.

That is what is so curious about the Hunter Biden story and, to move from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Lewis Carroll, it is becoming “curiouser and curiouser.”

 

What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |    Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around ...