Black Staffers at the White House?

realclearpolitics |  CNN's Commentator and former Congressional Black Caucus Executive Director Angela Rye blasted Gina Loudon, a member of President Trump's 2020 Advisory Council, over her "nonsense" talking points about black staffers at the White House.

Transcript, via CNN:

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT now, Angela Rye, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Gina Loudon, a member of President Trump's 2020 reelection advisory council.

Gina, let me start with you. You know, in the context we're talking about, all this discussion about Omarosa, and whether there's an N- word tape, and Kellyanne Conway not able to say the last name of one African-American she could label who worked with her in the White House, it would seem a simple question, how many black staffers work in the White House? She couldn't even give a rough number. Does that disappoint you?

GINA LOUDON, MEMBER OF PRESIDENT TRUMP'S 2020 RE-ELECT ADVISORY COUNCIL: You know, what disappoints me is the division and the fact that we're having to count people based on their skin color, I don't like that. And I think that, you know, you look back at our history, we have a pretty amazing history of overcoming slavery, of expanding civil rights, of women's rights, and a lot of those things happened under American presidents who didn't have any minorities at all on their White Houses.

Thank God we do. I looked over the list of people I know there, about one-third are a minority or women. Those are great strides. Could they be better? Absolutely.

And I know -- I talked to some of my friends in the White House tonight, and they said, yes, they would love more diversity in the White House. The problem is when you have someone come out, and defend the president or even say they want to sit down and have a conversation with him, for example, Kanye West, they're completely annihilated in the press.

And so, there is a trepidation there. So, I think if we could focus on the fact that we would like to build on that and work on it together, I know the administration is open to that.

BURNETT: So, your number is roughly a third and that counts women, too. So, you're saying two-thirds are white men, and one-third are diverse in some way, but you're counting women in there? Just to make sure I understand.

LOUDON: Erin, if you look at the comms department, as far as my count, I did this cursory before the show, but Hogan Gidley is the only white guy I can even find in the comms department. So, I think it depends department to department. It's going to vary.

But I think the bottom line is the policy that comes out of this White House, 700,000 new jobs, record unemployment for all minorities and women. I mean, you know the list and it's a good list.

And there's more coming out. There's new -- on Dodd-Frank repeal. There's great news coming out about small business leaders, many of them are minorities. So, there's a lot of good news, Erin.

BURNETT: Angela?

ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think I got stuck at Gina saying that American presidents have done a great deal for people of color like ending slavery? Like I think I'm stuck in 1865 right now. Like I can't believe that's -- 

Is Omarosa Banned From CNN?

pagesix |  Is Omarosa Manigault Newman banned from CNN?

The controversial former White House staffer and ex-Donald Trump crony has been hawking her book, “Unhinged,” on rival MSNBC, but hasn’t been able to book an appearance on CNN.

“Don Lemon was offered one of the first cable interviews and passed,” an insider told Page Six.

We’re told Manigault Newman was also scheduled to appear on Jake Tapper’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, but CNN canceled the appearance.

Another source said CNN was initially only interested in booking commentators who would trash-talk the reality-show vixen. “They only wanted to book guests with nothing positive to say about her. They were specifically looking for people who would provide a more negative slant when discussing Omarosa,” the source said.

CNN |  Only a few paragraphs of Omarosa Manigault Newman's book are about Puerto Rico. But their claims are significant: that President Donald Trump lacked empathy in Hurricane Maria's aftermath and that the President and Chief of Staff John Kelly referred to Puerto Ricans in derogatory terms. 

The result, the new book titled "Unhinged" alleges, was a slow and cavalier response to the devastation wrought, especially when compared to Trump's swift and effective handling of the hurricanes in Texas and Florida weeks earlier.

 

Manigault Newman, a former senior White House adviser, wouldn't specify what offensive terms the Trump administration allegedly used when referring to Puerto Ricans, even when pressed to do so during one of her many interviews to promote her book.

 

CNN has not independently verified her claims, and the White House did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.

 

I was in Puerto Rico when the Category 4 storm tore through the island on September 20. I witnessed much of what the book describes about conditions and response on the ground unfold in real time. 

 

The White House has branded Manigault Newman a liar, and many have questioned her tactics, her motives and her accuracy. But based on what I witnessed in Puerto Rico and what I read in her book about the hurricane response, this might be one example where she got it right. 

 

One Mouthy Gekko Doing THEE MOST Can Eff Up The Whole Lucrative Swamp Ecosystem...,

thehill |  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday that he thinks former CIA Director John Brennan's rhetoric is becoming an issue "in and of itself."

"John and his rhetoric have become an issue in and of itself," Clapper said on CNN's "State of the Union." "John is subtle like a freight train and he’s gonna say what’s on his mind." 

Clapper's comments came in response to an op-ed penned by Brennan in The New York Times this week, in which he wrote that President Trump colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. 

Clapper said he empathized with Brennan, but voiced concerns for Brennan's fiery rhetoric toward Trump and his administration.

"I think that the common denominator among all of us [in the intelligence community] that have been speaking up … is genuine concern about the jeopardy and threats to our institutions," Clapper said.

Brennan's claims drew criticism from some in the intelligence community who said the timing was suspect. 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) on Thursday took aim at Brennan for "purport[ing] to know, as fact, that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power."

“If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the special counsel, not The New York Times,” Burr said.

Burr added that Trump has the “full authority” to rescind security clearance if the statements were “purely political and based on conjecture.”

Who Cares What These Overfed "Intelligence Community" Reptiles Think?

nakedcapitalism |  As those of us who still follow the news know, President Trump revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. (For those who came in late, Brennan organized torture and “extraordinary rendition”[1], and was a “vocal advocate” of giving the telcos immunity for Bush’s enormous program of warrrantless surveillance[2], under President George W Bush. Under President Barack Obama, Brennan organized the “kill list,” later rebranded as a “disposition matrix,” which Obama used in at least one case to kill a U.S. citizen with a drone strike, while avoiding any form of due process.) In response to Trump’s action, twelve “top” intelligence officials wrote and published a statement denouncing it (here). This is the key paragraph:

We know John to be an enormously talented, capable, and patriotic individual who devoted his adult life to the service of this nation. Insinuations and allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Brennan while in office are baseless.

(Scores of “ex-spies” later joined the original twelve.) In this post, I’m not going to discuss motive, whether Trump’s for revoking Brennan’s clearance, or the intelligence community’s outrage that he did so, or the media’s. Rather, I’m going to focus on the question of whether “the twelve” should have any standing to issue such a statement in the first place. After all, if torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, and whacking US citizens without due process are not “wrongdoing,” then what on earth can be?[3] To this end, I will first present a table sketching the careers and personal networks of “the twelve.” Next, I’ll look at those who did not sign the statement. After that, I’ll make a few brief comments about “the twelve” as a class. I’ll conclude by raising the issue of standing again. I hope this post will be especially useful to those who haven’t been following politics since 9/11, who may take our current institutional structures for granted (see especially footnotes [1] and [2]).

Treasonous SwampTard Tantrum

TBP |  As for Phil Mudd, he exploded in rage when the African-American gentleman pointed out that he himself had made a pile after his retirement from the government thanks to retaining his security clearances.  The gentleman should have added that Mudd’s wealth was really due not just to his clearances but to his membership in what has become known as the Deep State.  People like Mudd, who has held senior positions at the Agency and the FBI (he is a protégé of Robert Mueller, no less) are almost guaranteed huge salaries, bonuses and benefits at government contractors, think tanks, and consulting firms.  They have golden parachutes for life.  Mudd, with a look of injured outrage and indignation on his face, denied that he had ever made penny because of his clearances.  This may or may not be true in a technical sense, but, as Mudd knows very well, his claim is bullshit.  He is part of the club, he is protected from any chance of having to actually work for a living for the rest of his life.  Mudd’s performance was ridiculous for anybody who knows the score.

Of course, the real reason for his hissy fit is that he suspects (correctly, I think) that Trump is planning to cancel the security clearances of the swamp creatures like Mudd who have tried to undermine his presidency and the will of the American people.  The loss of the clearance may not have any direct effects on their earning power but it sends a powerful signal that they no longer are part of the inner circle.  That is a fate worse than death for the men who think they know what is good for the American people.

If I was Trump, any former senior official who said a peep against me would have his clearances pulled the next day.   These people are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, in or out of government.  Suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome is no excuse for the behavior of people like Brennan and Mudd.

#BlackVotesMatter #BlackJobsMatter

zerohedge |  Support for President Trump among black voters hit 36% according to a new Rasmussen poll released on Thursday - nearly doubling his approval rating among African-Americans from the same day last year, which stood at 19%. 

Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36%

This day last year: 19% https://t.co/mazBCWoIMy @POTUS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/uIqYxoBn6w

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 15, 2018

The boost corresponds with all-time low unemployment among blacks of 5.9% in May, which President Trump and others have been touting: 

What's more, the Rasmussen poll comes amid controversy over the reported existence of a tape which contains Trump saying the N-word. The curiously timed allegations were brought by former White House aide and apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault Newman - who was fired from the Clinton administration after being shuffled around four times. 

That said, the Washington Post refutes Rasmussen's results with a Friday article entitled "No, one-third of African Americans don’t support Trump. Not even close."

Polling firms that have interviewed far more African Americans, and that are much more transparent than Rasmussen, all show that Trump’s black approval rating is much lower than 36 percent.

For example, Gallup has interviewed thousands of African American respondents in 2018. Its polling suggests that Trump’s black approval rating has consistently been around 10 to 15 percent through 2018.

Perhaps it depends on who's doing the asking, and what part of the country the questions are being asked?

What Would These Degenerate Twerps Be Without A Young and Literally Captive Audience?

jezebel  |  By many accounts, the New York University professor Avital Ronell—a German and comparative literature scholar and a superstar in her corner of academia— is a brilliant woman and a sought-after advisor. Former students who have taken her classes describe her as “original” and “inspiring.” Ronell, who is in her 60s and has taught at NYU for more than two decades, inspires a kind of admiration that some have called “mystical.” She is the kind of professor whose classes students don’t want to end.

But, for the past year, Ronell has also been the subject of a sexual harassment investigation by NYU’s Title IX office, initiated after a former graduate student, Nimrod Reitman, alleged in a complaint filed last September that she had sexually harassed him over a period of several years. On August 13, the New York Times reported that after an 11-month investigation, the university has found Ronell responsible for sexually harassing Reitman while he was earning his Ph.D. The university has suspended her for a year without pay and has also mandated that any future meetings she has with students will be supervised upon her return. Reitman and his attorney are considering filing a lawsuit against NYU, as well as Ronell.

News of the sexual harassment complaint against Ronell surfaced earlier this summer, after a group of prominent academics—including the noted feminist scholar Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Gayatri Spivak—sent a letter of support to NYU officials, rallying to Ronell’s defense and decrying what they describe as a “legal nightmare.”

The letter, which was never meant to be public, was subsequently posted on the philosophy blog Leiter Reports, with the title, “Blaming the victim is apparently OK when the accused in a Title IX proceeding is a feminist literary theorist.” It is likely that without the publication of this letter, and without the signatures of so many influential and feminist scholars, many if not all of the details of Reitman’s complaint would have remained confidential—it is almost certain that much of this now very public and increasingly messy case would have been swept under the rug (a situation that I suspect NYU officials would have preferred).

In the letter, dated May 11, 2018 and addressed to NYU President Andrew Hamilton and Provost Katharine Fleming, the signers acknowledge they had “no access to the confidential dossier,” but believe that Reitman was waging a “malicious campaign” against Ronell and that “the allegations against her do not constitute actual evidence.”

Like Kryptonite To Identity Politics

theatlantic |  When the top man at The New York Times publishes a sober statement about a meeting he had with the president in which he describes instructing Trump about the problem of his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric,” and then three days later the paper announces that it has hired a writer who has tweeted about her hatred of white people, of Republicans, of cops, of the president, of the need to stop certain female writers and journalists from “existing,” and when this new hire will not be a beat reporter, but will sit on the paper’s editorial board—having a hand in shaping the opinions the paper presents to the world—then it is no mystery that a parallel culture of ideas has emerged to replace a corrupted system. When even Barack Obama, the poet laureate of identity politics, is moved to issue a message to the faithful, hinting that that they could be tipping their hand on all of this—saying during a speech he delivered in South Africa that a culture is at a dead end when it decides someone has no “standing to speak” if he is a white man—and when even this mayday is ignored, the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to the end.

In the midst of this death rattle has come a group of thinkers, Peterson foremost among them, offering an alternative means of understanding the world to a very large group of people who have been starved for one. His audience is huge and ever more diverse, but a significant number of his fans are white men. The automatic assumption of the left is that this is therefore a red-pilled army, but the opposite is true. The alt-right venerates identity politics just as fervently as the left, as the title of a recent essay reproduced on the alt-right website Counter-Currents reveals: “Jordan Peterson’s Rejection of Identity Politics Allows White Ethnocide.”

If you think that a backlash to the kind of philosophy that resulted in The Nation’s poetry implosion; the Times’ hire; and Obama’s distress call isn’t at least partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, you’re dreaming. And if you think the only kind of people who would reject such madness are Republicans, you are similarly deluded. All across the country, there are people as repelled by the current White House as they are by the countless and increasingly baroque expressions of identity politics that dominate so much of the culture. These are people who aren’t looking for an ideology; they are looking for ideas. And many of them are getting much better at discerning the good from the bad. The Democratic Party reviles them at its peril; the Republican Party takes them for granted in folly.

Perhaps, then, the most dangerous piece of “common sense” in Peterson’s new book comes at the very beginning, when he imparts the essential piece of wisdom for anyone interested in fighting a powerful, existing order. “Stand up straight,” begins Rule No. 1, “with your shoulders back.”

Bruce Ohr Was NOT a Lone Wolf...,

WSJ  | What Was Bruce Ohr Doing?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.

Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general.

He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016 - after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the bureau’s rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and employed Mr. Steele. Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain in classified 302 forms.

All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was with the Clinton crew - with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his interactions and what he collected.

Mr. Ohr’s conduct is itself deeply troubling. He was acting as a witness (via FBI interviews) in a case being overseen by a Justice Department in which he held a very senior position. He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he’d been unaware of Mr. Ohr’s intermediary status.

Lawyers meanwhile note that it is a crime for a federal official to participate in any government matter in which he has a financial interest. Fusion’s bank records presumably show Nellie Ohr, and by extension her husband, benefiting from the Trump opposition research that Mr. Ohr continued to pass to the FBI. The Justice Department declined to comment.

But for all Mr. Ohr’s misdeeds, the worse misconduct is by the FBI and Justice Department.

It’s bad enough that the bureau relied on a dossier crafted by a man in the employ of the rival presidential campaign. Bad enough that it never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of that dossier’s provenance. And bad enough that the FBI didn’t fire Mr. Steele as a confidential human source in September 2016 when it should have been obvious he was leaking FBI details to the press to harm Donald Trump’s electoral chances. It terminated him only when it was absolutely forced to, after Mr. Steele gave an on-the-record interview on Oct. 31, 2016.

But now we discover the FBI continued to go to this discredited informant in its investigation after the firing—by funneling his information via a Justice Department cutout. The FBI has an entire manual governing the use of confidential sources, with elaborate rules on validations, standards and documentation. Mr. Steele failed these standards. The FBI then evaded its own program to get at his info anyway.

The Fix Brennan Finds Himself In

consortiumnews |  After eight years of enjoying President Barack Obama’s solid support and defense to do pretty much anything he chose—including hacking into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee—Brennan now lacks what, here in Washington, we refer to as a “Rabbi” with strong incentive to advance and protect you.  He expected Hillary Clinton to play that role (were it ever to be needed), and that seemed to be solidly in the cards. But, oops, she lost.

What needs to be borne in mind in all this is, as former FBI Director James Comey himself has admitted: “I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president.” Comey, Brennan, and co-conspirators, who decided—in that “environment”—to play fast and loose with the Constitution and the law, were supremely confident they would not only keep their jobs, but also receive plaudits, not indictments.

Unless one understands and remembers this, it is understandably difficult to believe that the very top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials did what documentary evidence has now demonstrated they did.

So, unlike his predecessors, most of whom also left under a dark cloud, Brennan is bereft of anyone to protect him. He lacks even a PR person to help him avoid holding himself up to ridicule—and now retaliation—for unprecedentedly hostile tweets and other gaffes. Brennan’s mentor, ex-CIA Director George Tenet, for example, had powerful Rabbis in President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as a bizarrely empathetic establishment media, when Tenet quit in disgrace 2004.

The main question now is whether the chairs of the House oversight committees will chose to face down the Deep State. They almost never do, and the smart money says that, if they do, they will lose—largely because of the virtually total support of the establishment media for the Deep State. This often takes bizarre forms. The title of a recent column by Washington Post “liberal” commentator Eugene Robinson speaks volumes: “God Bless the Deep State.”

None Dare Call It An Organized Criminal Conspiracy...,

bbc  |  The 18-month investigation graphically detailed numerous instances of Catholic clergy members raping and molesting children in several Pennsylvania dioceses, which in total represent about 1.7 million Catholics.

"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all," the 1,300-page report found.

The horrific allegations include:

• One priest forced a nine-year-old boy to rinse out his mouth with holy water after abusing him.
• A boy was made to confess his sins to the priest who had abused him.
• A priest who was accused of abuse by three boys was later hired by Disney World after receiving a positive job reference from the church.
• A priest raped a seven-year-girl when he visited her in hospital after she had her tonsils out.
• One child was made to pose naked, like Christ on the crucifix, as priests photographed him. Priests gave that boy a gold chain with a cross so that other predator priests would know he had been abused.
• Repeated abuse by a priest left one boy with lasting back injuries. He became addicted to painkillers and died of an overdose.

Intelligence Community and Its Captive Media Oligopoly ARE the Enemy of the People

Globe |  A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words. 

There was once broad, bipartisan, intergenerational agreement in the United States that the press played this important role. Yet that view is no longer shared by many Americans. “The news media is the enemy of the American people,” is a sentiment endorsed by 48 percent of Republicans surveyed this month by Ipsos polling firm. That poll is not an outlier. One published this week found 51 percent of Republicans considered the press “the enemy of the people rather than an important part of democracy.”  

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors,” Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1971. Would that it were still the case. Lies are antithetical to an informed citizenry, responsible for self-governance. The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful. To label the press “the enemy of the people” is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.

Firing This Lousy POS Requires No Further Explanation - Many More To Go!

newyorker |  On Monday, in an account of the F.B.I.’s firing of Peter Strzok—the senior agent who led the Bureau’s 2016 investigations of Hillary Clinton e-mails and Trump-Russia connections—the Times reported that the move “was not unexpected.” Given the inflamed political climate in Washington, that is an accurate statement.

The special counsel, Robert Mueller, removed Strzok from the Russia investigation last year, after it was discovered that he had sharply criticized Donald Trump, who was then running for President, in private text messages with Lisa Page, another F.B.I. employee, with whom Strzok was having an affair. Earlier this summer, a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, said that Strzok’s text messages to Page “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations.” Since then, President Trump has been attacking Strzok regularly on Twitter. Last month, Strzok testified at a public hearing on Capitol Hill, where congressional Republicans tore into him. At one point, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, called for Strzok to be jailed.

But, despite all the noise and fury, there is now a basic question that needs an answer: Why was Strzok fired? Before the Clinton and Trump investigations, Strzok had racked up twenty years of distinguished service in the Bureau, rising to the position of deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division.

Since his communications with Page have become public, Strzok has insisted that his personal views about Trump didn’t affect his actions while overseeing the Clinton and Russia investigations. During his testimony on Capitol Hill, he insisted that when, in the course of discussing Trump’s Presidential bid with Page, he wrote to her that “we will stop it” he was referring to the American public at large.

Omarosa's Toast, and Gets No Ghetto Pass....,

AP |  For years, Omarosa Manigault Newman stood at Donald Trump’s side, making her deeply unpopular with African-Americans who see her as a sellout for aligning herself with a president who has hurled one insult after another at black people.

Her falling out with Trump and her decision to call him a racist as she sells her new book — and in turn, his calling her a “dog” — have not been enough for many African-Americans to invite her back to the family picnic.

Too little, too late, many said.

“Her tell-all mea culpa won’t win her any brownie points with most blacks,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of the book “Why Black Lives Do Matter.” ″Their loathing of Omarosa is virtually frozen in stone. She’s still roundly lambasted as a two-bit opportunist, a racial sellout and an ego driven hustler.”

Few in the black community immediately rushed to defend Manigault Newman after she wrote a book titled “Unhinged” about her time in the White House. It paints a damning picture of Trump, claiming without evidence that tapes exist of him using the N-word as he filmed “The Apprentice” reality series, on which she co-starred.

She has since stepped up her attacks on Trump as she promotes her book, telling The Associated Press on Tuesday that the president is “a racist, a misogynist, a bigot.”

“I want to see this nation united as opposed to divided,” she said. “I don’t want to see a race war, as Donald Trump does.”

The deep hostility that African-Americans harbor for Manigault Newman stems largely from her defense of the president or her public silence as he repeatedly attacked the American citizenship of former President Barack Obama; insulted various minority groups and described some African nations as “shithole” countries. He has also insulted prominent blacks like U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and NBA superstar LeBron James, said that “many sides” are to blame for the violence at last year’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and ripped African-American athletes for protesting racial injustice.

Long Overdue, .45 Finally Puts His Foot In Brennan's Flabby, Pasty Ass...,

realclearpolitics |  I do believe that, uh, Mr. Trump decided to take this action, as he has done with others. He has tried to intimidate and suppress any criticism of him or his administration and revoking my security clearances is his way of trying to get back at me, but I think I have tried to voice the concerns of millions of Americans about Mr. Trump's failures in terms of fulfilling the responsibilities of that sacred and solemn office of the presidency. And this is not going to deter me at all, I'm going to continue to speak out.

But I am very worried about the message that it appears Mr. Trump is trying to send to others, including those who apparently hold security clearances within the government. I think he included Bruce Ohr, a current DOJ official among those whose clearances he is reviewing. Is this an effort to try to cow individuals both inside and outside of the government to make sure they don't say anything that is critical of Mr. Trump or with which he disagrees? And I've seen this type of behavior and actions on the part of foreign tyrants and despots and autocrats for many, many years, during my CIA and national security career.

I never, ever thought that I would see it here in the United States. I do believe that all Americans really need to take stock of what is happening right now in our government, and how abnormal and how irresponsible and how dangerous these actions are.

In League with a Hostile Foreign Power and Using Federal Agencies to Spy on a Political Opponent

investors |  Russia Investigation: It's beginning to look as if claims of monstrous collusion between Russian officials and U.S. political operatives were true. But it wasn't Donald Trump who was guilty of Russian collusion. It was Hillary Clinton and U.S. intelligence officials who worked with Russians and others to entrap Trump.

That's the stunning conclusion of a RealClear Investigations report by Lee Smith, who looked in-depth at the controversial June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between officials of then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign staff and a Russian lawyer known to have ties with high-level officials in Vladimir Putin's government.

The media have spun a tale of Trump selling his soul to the Russians for campaign dirt to use against Hillary, beginning with the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting.

But "a growing body of evidence ... indicates that the meeting may have been a setup — part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials," wrote Smith.

Smith painstakingly weaves together the evidence that's already out there but has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, which have become so seized with Trump-hatred that their reporting even on routine matters can no longer be trusted.

But he adds in more evidence that the Justice Department only recently handed over to Congress. And It's damning.

Memos, emails and texts now in Congress' possession show that the Justice Department and the FBI worked together both before and after the election with Fusion GPS and their main link to the scandal, former British spy and longtime FBI informant Chris Steele.

As a former British spook in Moscow, Steele had extensive ties to Russia. That's why he was picked as the primary researcher to compile the "unverified and salacious" Trump dossier, as former FBI Director James Comey once described it.

Clinton-Obama Weaponized the FBI for Political Ends

thefederalist  |  In three articles for The Hill last week, investigative journalist John Solomon revealed previously undisclosed text and email discussions between former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and former MI6 agent and Spygate dossier author Christopher Steele. Solomon’s reporting also uncovered notes Ohr took summarizing discussions he had with Steele’s boss at Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, about the Russia “collusion” investigation.

In isolation, the details revealed in Solomon’s must-read exposés are troubling. But when considered in conjunction with information related to the Russia investigation the government previously released, this new information is potentially devastating, because it indicates that, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched operation Crossfire Hurricane based on Steele’s Clinton-funded opposition research.

This conclusion flows from an email exchange revealed in Solomon’s first article, which established that Ohr met with Steele on July 30, 2016, in Washington DC. Ohr brought his wife Nellie to the breakfast gathering. Nellie, as has long been reported, worked at Fusion GPS, also on the Trump opposition-research project.

That end-of-July meeting followed emails exchanged earlier in the month, in which Steele told Ohr: “There is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon!”

What Does It Mean When the Powerful Go After Free Speech?

libertyblitzkrieg |  These tech companies have been compliant, out of control government snitches for a long time. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we’re aware of the deep and longstanding cooperation between these lackeys and U.S. intelligence agencies in the realm of mass surveillance. As such, the most recent transformation of these companies into full fledged information gatekeepers should be seen in its proper context; merely as a dangerous continuation and expansion of an already entrenched reality.

But it’s all out in the open now. Facebook isn’t even hiding the fact that it’s outsourcing much of its “fake news” analysis to the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by NATO, Gulf States and defense contractors. As reported by Reuters:

Facebook began looking for outside help amid criticism for failing to rein in Russian propaganda ahead of the 2016 presidential elections…
With scores of its own cybersecurity professionals and $40 billion in annual revenue in 2017, Facebook might not seem in need of outside help.

It doesn’t need outside help, it needs political cover, which is the real driver behind this.

But the lab and Atlantic Council bring geopolitical expertise and allow Facebook to distance itself from sensitive pronouncements. On last week’s call with reporters, Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, said the company should not be expected to identify or blame specific governments for all the campaigns it detects.

“Companies like ours don’t have the necessary information to evaluate the relationship between political motivations that we infer about an adversary and the political goals of a nation-state,” said Stamos, who is leaving the company this month for a post at Stanford University. Instead, he said Facebook would stick to amassing digital evidence and turning it over to authorities and researchers.

It would also be awkward for Facebook to accuse a government of wrongdoing when the company is trying to enter or expand in a market under that government’s control.
Facebook donated an undisclosed amount to the lab in May that was enough, said Graham Brookie, who runs the lab, to vault the company to the top of the Atlantic Council’s donor list, alongside the British government.

Facebook employees said privately over the past several months that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to outsource many of the most sensitive political decisions, leaving fact-checking to media groups and geopolitics to think tanks. The more he succeeds, the fewer complications for Facebook’s expansion, the smaller its payroll, and the more plausible its positioning as a neutral platform. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

With that in mind go ahead and check out the Atlantic Council’s donor list and all the shady characters on its board.

Capitalism Race Antisemitism...,

independent |  A key feature of modern antisemitism has been the racialised projection of “the Jew”, an archetype which stands above and in conflict with the working class. Throughout the history of the left, certain anti-capitalist visions generated by socialists have overlapped and combined with this strain of antisemitism. What makes antisemitism particularly attractive and dangerous for the left is that it can appear oppositional. It provides an easy personification of oppression in the face of less tangible, global forms of domination. 

Scandals provoked by accusations of antisemitism have become a recurrent feature of British politics. As the latest tumult subsides we have an opportunity to reflect on the issues that underlie these controversies and prepare the way for Labour and the left to do better in future. 

theoccidentalobserver |  In the months immediately before his coronation in 1189, Richard the Lionheart became aware of rising anti-Jewish sentiment among the people of England. This ill-feeling was the result of decades of rampant usury, property seizures, social disparities, and what historian Robert Chazan described as the “effective royal protection” of Henry II.[2] Eager to ally himself with the mood of the nation, particularly in the tenuous early days of his reign, Richard appealed to the sentiments of the masses by banning Jews from attending the coronation ceremony at Westminster Abbey. News of the ban was welcomed by the people, but the move was deeply unsettling to England’s Jews. The prohibition was nervously perceived by the nation’s Hebrews as a weakening of the vital Jewish relationship with the elite. This relationship, particularly the protection it provided to Jewish loan merchants, had been absolutely essential to the untroubled continuation of the Jews’ highly antagonistic financial practices among the lower orders. Without this protection, the position of the Jews in England would no longer be viable. Therefore, in a desperate attempt to resist a decline in Jewish influence, on the day of the coronation a party of senior Jews arrived at the doors of Westminster Abbey bearing lavish gifts and sycophantic tongues. The effort was in vain.

The Jewish party were refused entry by nobles and officials, and the group was then stripped and flogged for their flagrant defiance of royal orders. Since this punishment was a public display, a story soon circulated among the peasantry that the new king consented to general action against the Jews, and that the royal elite was now siding with the people. In the ensuing days, luxurious Jewish homes were burned, and castles containing Jewish debt rolls were stormed and their contents destroyed. These actions, however, were built on an assumption of elite backing that was in reality non-existent. The expectations of the masses were soon rudely crushed. The Lionheart’s banning of the Jews had been a mere measure of propaganda intended to endear him to his subjects, and the flogging of the intruding party was carried out without his consent. In truth, the King remained as beholden to the sway of mammon as his predecessors. When push came to shove, the peasantry, unlike ‘his’ Jews, were expendable. Richard wasted little time in rounding up and executing the ringleaders of the anti-Jewish action, even including those who had damaged Jewish property by accident. He then issued orders to “the sheriffs of England to prevent all such incidents in the future.”[3] In the aftermath of this crushing of the people, the Jews of England would once again remain under high levels of royal protection until ‘the Lionheart’ left the country for the Third Crusade — a venture, ironically, to relieve people in foreign nations of the tyranny of ‘infidels.’ The entire affair remains a perfect illustration of the centuries-old symbiotic relationship between Jews and our native elites, and the thread of parasitic capitalism that binds them.

Here we are in 2016, and so little has changed. More than that, we find that another Lionheart is making the news in Britain in relation to protected Jews and a suffering peasantry. In one of the more perverse insults to follow notorious financial parasite Philip Green’s frenzied feeding on the British Home Stores (BHS) pension fund, it has emerged that the Jewish billionaire recently purchased his third luxury yacht, aptly named Lionheart. While Green and the $120 million Lionheart float serenely on the Mediterranean, more than 20,000 former BHS workers struggle through the day, wondering if they will ever receive the pensions they spent their working lives contributing to. Elite responses to this tragic and incendiary grand larceny have been anodyne and, much like Richard the Lionheart’s early gesture, limited to tokens of mere propaganda. Green’s activities have recently been described by a British Parliamentary committee as the “systematic plunder” of a formerly thriving business, with the committee’s host of banalities concluding that the Green saga was the epitome of “the unacceptable face of capitalism.” In one of the blandest possible statements on the egregious crimes of this apex predator, the politicians chirped that there was “little to support the reputation for retail business acumen for which he received his knighthood.” These insipid chastisements have been followed by Prime Minister Theresa May’s clownish and empty proclamation that she wants to “reform capitalism.”

Notably absent among these and similar complaints about ‘corporate largesse’ and ‘the failings of capitalism’ has been any real interest in the Green case from the Far Left. There are distractions of course, and these arise chiefly from the current predominance of cultural Marxism in the Leftist mind rather than its economic counterpart. Western socialists are now incessantly, and from an economic standpoint counter-productively, engaged in assisting government efforts to flood our nations with cheap exotic labor. The modern Left thus plays a crucial role in depressing the salaries, living conditions, and public services of the working class they claim to speak for. Other recent moral-ideological Leftist crusades have included agitation for same-sex marriage, the opening of various ‘anti-racism’ ventures, and the creation and expansion of Black Lives Matter militancy — none of which benefit native workers in any form.

The Judgement of Jeremy Corbyn

strategic-culture |  For a man who is assailed and accused of lacking judgment even more than US President Donald Trump, it's amazing how often British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has already been proven courageously and presciently right.

In 1990, Corbyn opposed the most powerful and successful peace time prime minster of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher when she tried to impose a so-called poll tax on the population of the UK. His judgment was vindicated: Thatcher’s own party rose up and threw her out of office.

At the beginning of the 21^st century Corbyn was pilloried throughout the UK media for his outspoken opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support for the US invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Blair was prime minister for a full decade and won three landslide general elections, yet today he is discredited and politically virtually a recluse. Corbyn‘s opposition to both wars looks wise, as well as principled and courageous.

Corbyn’s support for the revolutionary Irish Republican movement was so strong that the UK security service MI5 monitored him for two decades listing him as a potential “subversive” who might undermine parliamentary democracy. On the contrary, in the late 1990s, Prime Minister Blair engaged the Irish Republican Army and its political wing Sinn Fein in a peace process that has led to a lasting peace in Ireland. Corbyn, who supported strongly the 1998 Good Friday Agreement proved once again to be ahead of his time.

Corbyn has never been afraid of taking ferociously unpopular positions. In 2015, after shocking Islamic State terror attacks in Paris he advocated the urgent need for a political settlement to end the Syrian Civil War. His advice was ignored by every major Western government. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more turned into destitute refugees flooding into the European Union since then.

Corbyn was also ahead of his time in seeking to engage Iran constructively. He hosted a call-in show on an Iranian TV channel for three years from 2009 to 2012 even though he knew that at the time such activities would seem to rule him out from ever being a serious contender to lead the Labour Party. But in 2015, the Conservative government of the UK, along with those of the United States, France and Germany joined in signing a far reaching nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Corbyn’s economic positions have long been despised by the Western liberal intellectual elites who have been spared the price of having their livelihoods destroyed by such policies. He strongly advocates using the power of government to encourage the rebuilding of major national industries and manufacturing power. These views are hardly radical, Robert Skidelsky, one of the most influential UK economists of the past generation has given significant support to Corbyn’s proposal of a National Investment Bank. These policies are neither Marxist nor revolutionary. But they can certainly be described as Social Democratic and humane.