Notre Dame: A chronological breakdown on what happened. Some excellent information. Visit the link
Mueller Report: Here we are. NO Collusion. No Obstruction. The President could have defended himself/handled his frustration of the the witch hunt better… but the big news is that the Russians did try to meddle in our elections and the Obama Administration blew it off. And then the Democrats tried to make it a Trump problem.
Bottom Line – NO Collusion. NO Conspiracy of the Trump campaign working with the Russians. That was the “original intent†of the Mueller investigation. Trump was right!
Now the Democrats will go after the President for being frustrated and upset of wrongly being accused of collusion. But Trump was right! And now the rest of the story…
Twenty-five days of wild speculation by Democrats & their friends in the media, the full Special Counsel’s report has been released and the results are the same as they have always been: NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION.
A brief summary of how the smear against President Trump began:
Starting with the ridiculous DNC-funded dossier, the Obama admin obtained a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.
THERE WAS NO COLLUSION.
After Trump won the 2016 election, Democrats called for a ridiculous investigation that culminated with Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel.
THERE WAS STILL NO COLLUSION.
At the conclusion of the Special Counsel’s investigation which AG Barr summarized saying there was no collusion and no obstruction, Democrats led by Adam Schiff demanded a the full report be released.
STILL… THERE WAS NO COLLUSION.
Now that the entire Mueller report has been released, it’s clear how much President Obama and his administration completely dropped the ball on Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.
Well before the 2016 election, the Obama administration was aware of Russia’s intentions to interfere in 2016, and decided to do absolutely nothing about it.
Timeline of events:
The Obama administration knew in February 2014 that Russia sought to sow disinformation through social media to interfere in the election.
In July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan arranged an interagency sharing of information with top officials concerning the Russian election interference plans. By that time, officials in the Obama admin had “no question†that Russian state-sponsored hackings were behind the cyberattacks and release of stolen Democrat materials.
Obama chose not to “strike back†because he wanted Russia to cooperate with the Iranian Nuclear deal.
Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice even told two of her subordinates to “stand down†and “knock it off†in response to Russia meddling.
After the 2016 election, Obama approved sanctions “so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic†– a “modest package†of punishment for Russia’s interference.
It used to not be a partisan issue to criticize the Obama administration’s response. Rep. Adam Schiff said the “Obama administration should have done a lot more†about Russia’s actions. The Washington Post reported a senior Obama official described the Obama administration’s response to Russia as “the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend. I feel like we sort of choked.†And Obama’s ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said, “The punishment did not fit the crime.â€
Bottom line: Not only did Mueller confirm that there was no collusion, we also learned the full extent of how much the Obama administration failed to act while Russia messed with America’s electoral process.
60 Plus Weekly Newsreel: A great, short and easy to listen summary of the week’s news in a short video who just don’t want to read it all:) Please enjoy and share with friends.
This week’s program:
Headline 1: Medicare chief says ‘Medicare-for-all’ is ‘biggest threat to American health care system’
Summary: The nation’s top Medicare official said on ‘Fox & Friends’ this Wednesday that Democrats’ “Medicare-for-all†proposal amounts to “the biggest threat to the American healthcare system,†claiming the policy would lead to worse care and longer wait times.
Headline 2: “Medicare for All” giving health-care industry stocks the chills
Summary: Shares of UnitedHealth are slumping after CEO David Wichmann weighed in on the ambitious public health insurance plan backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and several other Democratic presidential hopefuls as a solution to soaring U.S. medical costs. The insurance executive’s take? Bad idea.
Headline 3: Scammers May Be Using DNA Testing to Defraud Medicare and Steal Identities
Summary: State authorities warn that DNA testers have targeted poor neighborhoods and senior communities. Authorities in several states are warning about an alleged scam in which people visit senior-living communities and low-income neighborhoods, offering to perform DNA tests and collecting information from people in government health programs.
Visit the newsreel!
-Saul Anuzis
Is ‘can’t prove untrue’ new standard in Trump probe?
When a political figure is accused of wrongdoing, a conversation begins among journalists, commentators, and public officials. Are the charges true? Can the accusers prove it?
That’s the way it normally works. But now, in the case of the Trump dossier – the allegations compiled by a former British spy hired by the Clinton campaign to gather dirt on presidential candidate Donald Trump – the generally accepted standard of justice has been turned on its head. Now, the question is: Can the accused prove the charges false? Increasingly, the president’s critics argue that the dossier is legitimate because it has not been proven untrue.
It’s an argument heard at the highest levels of government, academics, and media.
“Not a single revelation in the Steele dossier has been refuted,” noted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in February.
In late December, Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor, tweeted a message about the allegations against Trump to his followers: “Retweet if, like me, you’re aware of nothing in the [Trump] dossier that has been shown to be false.”
“The dossier has not been proven false,” said MSNBC anchor and former George W. Bush aide Nicolle Wallace in February.
More recently, Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked former CIA Director John Brennan, “So far with this dossier, nothing yet has been proven untrue. How significant is that?”
“As Jim Comey has said, I think very famously, these were salacious and unverified allegations,” Brennan responded. “Just because they were unverified does not mean they were not true.”
That’s where the Trump dossier story stands today. No one has proved that the most serious allegations are true. But since no one has proved them false, either, some in the political class act as if they were true.
The lesson of Mueller: An innocent man’s defense can look like a guilty man’s obstruction
Thousands of interviews and hundreds of subpoenas later, special counsel Robert Mueller broke his two-year Wizard of Oz-like silence on Thursday in the form of a 448-page report that formally dropped the curtain on the bad political musical we’ve come to know as the Russian collusion scandal.
Let the record reflect that Mueller wasted little time debunking the feigned electoral love affair between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump that so many Democrats and their allies in the news media sang to life.
With little equivocation, the prosecutor declared that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, including by hacking presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee documents, but there was no evidence, none, that the president or his campaign — or any American, for that matter — engaged in the conspiracy…
…Most importantly, Trump did not ultimately take most of the formal actions he threatened — which he had the power to do under Article II of the Constitution — and thus did not actually thwart, end or impede the Mueller probe.
For the purpose of a court of law, Trump neither committed a Russia collusion crime that he needed to cover up nor took formal action that actually impeded the probe.
Mueller’s Report Speaks Volumes
By the fall of 2017, it was clear that special counsel Robert Mueller, as a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was too conflicted to take a detached look at a Russia-collusion story that had become more about FBI malfeasance than about Donald Trump. The evidence of that bias now stares at us through 448 pages of his report.
President Trump has every right to feel liberated. What the report shows is that he endured a special-counsel probe that was relentlessly, at times farcically, obsessed with taking him out. What stands out is just how diligently and creatively the special counsel’s legal minds worked to implicate someone in Trump World on something Russia- or obstruction-of-justice-related. And how—even with all its overweening power and aggressive tactics—it still struck out.
Mueller, Trump, and ‘two years of bullshit’
Late last month President Trump met with a group of Republican senators on Capitol Hill. He discussed a lot of topics, but his most memorable comment came when he called Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “two years of bullshit.”
Now, the public has Mueller’s 448-page report, and it tends to support the president’s assessment.
In this sense: At its heart, the Trump-Russia probe was about one question: Did the Trump campaign conspire, coordinate, or collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election? Mueller has concluded that did not happen.
Everything else in the Trump-Russia affair flowed from that one question. Paul Manafort’s shady finances would not have come under investigation were it not for that question. Carter Page would not have been wiretapped were it not for that question. Michael Flynn would not have been interviewed by the FBI were it not for that question. Zillions of hours on cable TV would not have been expended on Trump-Russia were it not for that question. And in the largest sense, there would have been no Mueller investigation were it not for that question.
And now Mueller has determined there was no collusion. Not that there was no criminal collusion. Or no prove-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt collusion. Just no collusion. Mueller’s report says it over and over and over again. Here are seven examples:
Mueller Report Undercuts Several Steele Dossier Claims, Though the Salacious Document is Barely Mentioned
• The Steele dossier was the FBI’s roadmap for the collusion investigation, but the document is barely mentioned in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
• But the few references to the dossier paint an unflattering picture of the document, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
• Mueller’s report addresses some of the dossier’s claims about Michael Cohen, as well as the salacious claims about the Kremlin having blackmail material on President Trump.
The infamous Steele dossier, which served as the FBI’s roadmap to its investigation into Trump campaign collusion, is barely mentioned in the special counsel’s report, released on Thursday.
The word “dossier†doesn’t appear at all in the partially redacted report. Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign, is also not discussed. And Christopher Steele, a former British spy who wrote the dossier, is mentioned by name only 14 times in the 448-page document.
Happy Tax Day! Here Are 6 Infuriating Ways the Government Spends Your Money
Happy April 15, everyone! The federal government collects about $3.5 trillion in tax revenue each year, according to the White House Office of Budget and Management. Here, in no particular order, are six of the more infuriating ways that money has gone to waste.
‘Fortune’ Lists Gov. Baker Among ‘World’s Greatest Leaders’
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has certainly proven to be a well-liked leader — he has consistently topped lists of most popular U.S. governors. But is he one of the best leaders in the world?
In Fortune Magazine’s sixth-annual “World’s Greatest Leaders” list, the iconic business publication had Baker ranked 20th.
“Baker’s approval ratings routinely land near 70{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9}, a remarkable feat for a Republican leading a famously liberal state,” Fortune wrote. “He’s earned that favor with a quiet bipartisanship that feels almost foreign these days.”
The magazine went on to call Baker a “data-driven fixer” and applauded his work fighting the opioid epidemic and social services issues, as well as signing a green energy bill into law.
Church membership in US plummets over past 20 years
The percentage of U.S. adults who belong to a church or other religious institution has plunged by 20 percentage points over the past two decades, hitting a low of 50{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} last year, according to a new Gallup poll. Among major demographic groups, the biggest drops were recorded among Democrats and Hispanics.
Gallup said church membership was 70{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} in 1999 — and close to or higher than that figure for most of the 20th century. Since 1999, the figure has fallen steadily, while the percentage of U.S. adults with no religious affiliation has jumped from 8{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} to 19{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9}.
Among Americans identifying with a particular religion, there was a sharp drop in church membership among Catholics — dropping from 76{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} to 63{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} over the past two decades as the church was buffeted by clergy sex-abuse scandals. Membership among Protestants dropped from 73{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} to 67{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} percent over the same period.
Why Republicans are Terrible at Outreach
In 2005, a Filipino pastor told my father that all the white missionaries he encountered were racist. When my father asked pastor George why he thought this, he told my father that when he tried to hold their hands, they snatched them away.
In that area of the Philippines, hand-holding was a sign of great friendship. By not understanding the culture, these missionaries unknowingly offended the very people they were trying to reach and hindered their ability to minister effectively. My father, on the other hand, did not make the same mistake. Experience taught him to not react when he encountered a custom that was contrary to his western culture normal. He also learned that it was important to listen to his guides and interpreters.
I have seen this same scenario play out across the United States among Republicans. Many state Republican parties say they want to have outreach programs, but most are not successful because they refuse to listen to their guides. As the former director of women and urban engagement for the RNC, I talked to many frustrated black Republicans, and they all say the same thing about the GOP: “They don’t listen.â€
