Spygate Becoming a Big Problem for Democrats: The Democrats are losing it! The Democratic hacks on the left don’t know what to do. Their super star prosecutor Mueller spent millions to take down President Trump and failed. NO Collusion and NO Obstruction.
Now what can they spin. The economy is booming at record levels Obama pronounced would never be seen again. Manufacturing jobs… again, in direct contrast to Obama’s proclamation are coming back to America. Unemployment amongst blacks and hispanics are at an all time low.
And now it appears it was the Democrats who colluded with the Russians and the Ukrainians. It was the partisan Democrats who created this entire ugly spying episode America unnecessarily endured for the last two years.
Politicizing law enforcement and our intelligence service is wrong… under any and all circumstances. We need to make sure this NEVER happens again.
“Stalker†Congressman Adam Schiff: It’s NOT often that I agree with Bill Maher, but when he said Congressman Schiff looks like a “stalker†I couldn’t agree with him more.
No Collusion, No Obstruction… move on!
I love it when Democrats, in frustration, blurt out the truth and then have to spend hours, days and hopefully months backpedaling about the “stalkerâ€.
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!
Here is the summary:
Changing hearts and minds on nuclear power
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States today, but it holds the potential to create much more.
Warren Buffett’s diet still includes 5 cans of coke, McDonald’s and Dairy Queen
The 88 year old billionaire admitted in an hour-long interview with the Financial Times that he still gulps down five cans of Coca-Cola a day, eats McDonald’s chicken nuggets at least three times a week and loves Dairy Queen ice cream for dessert.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defies GOP orthodoxy with drug importation plan
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is challenging traditional Republican doctrine with a plan to import prescription drugs from Canada to lower costs for seniors, the first major legislative initiative of his young tenure.
Visit the newsreel!
–Saul Anuzis
Economy Added 263,000 Jobs in April, Unemployment falls to Lowest Level Since 1969
The economy added a healthy 263,000 jobs in April, firmly beating analyst expectations of 190,000, according to Friday’s monthly snapshot from the Department of Labor.
Wall Street reacted positively to the jobs report, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 160 points at market open on Friday.
The nation’s unemployment level fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since December 1969, and average hourly earnings grew by 0.2 percent, for an annual gain of 3.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While some of those job gains can be attributed to government hiring of the first wave of temporary workers to carry out the 2020 Census — a number that will eventually hit 500,000 by early next year — April’s figures are a firm indication that the economy remains on a robust growth track.
Barr confirms DOJ investigation into origins of Trump-Russia probe
Attorney General William Barr confirmed on Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the investigators associated with the Trump-Russia inquiry carried out by the department and the FBI in 2016.
Following questioning by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I have people in the Department of Justice helping me review the activities of the summer of 2016.â€
Barr told the committee the Justice Department is investigating the genesis of the investigation into the Trump campaign, the role of the infamous Trump dossier, actions carried out by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and more.
Grassley asked Barr if he had “tasked any staff to look into whether spying by the FBI and other agencies on the Trump campaign was properly predicated.” Barr confirmed that he had a team looking into the matter.
Grassley also asked about “text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that appear to show the FBI may have tried to use counter-intelligence briefings for the Trump transition team as intelligence gathering operations.†Barr assured Grassley that he was looking into this allegation and would brief the Senate on it when he had answers.
The Big Lie That Barr Lied
The attorney general’s testimony was clearly accurate.
I originally thought this was too stupid to write about. But stupid is like the plague inside the Beltway — one person catches it and next thing you know there’s an outbreak at MSNBC and the speaker of the House is showing symptoms while her delirious minions tote ceramic chickens around Capitol Hill.
We are all entitled to our own opinions. But are we entitled to our own facts? Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s bon mot says no, but Washington makes you wonder. Like when spleen-venting about the supposedly outrageous, unbelievable, disgraceful invocation of the word “spy†to describe episodes of government spying is instantly followed by a New York Times story about how the spying — er, I mean, court-authorized electronic surveillance — coupled with the tasking of spies — er, undercover agents — green-lighted by a foreign spy — er, intelligence service — was more widespread than previously known.
If I were a cynic, I’d think people were trying to get out in front of some embarrassing revelations on the horizon. I might even be tempted to speculate that progressives were trotting out their “Destroy Ken Starr†template for Barr deployment (which, I suppose, means that 20 years from now we’ll be reading about what a straight-arrow Barr was compared to whomever Democrats are savaging at that point).
FBI Official’s Testimony Raises New Questions about Surveillance of Trump Campaign
Deputy assistant director Jonathan Moffa’s testimony, which has been obtained exclusively by National Review, suggests there was more going on than has yet been admitted.
The deputy assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jonathan Moffa, was involved with the Russia–Trump investigation from the start. He was asked, in a closed-door Capitol Hill interview on August 24, 2018, to describe his role: “I was the section chief over counterintelligence analysis during the period of the election,†Moffa told lawmakers and staff. “And as a result, I had analysts who reported to me who supported the full range of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations and counterespionage investigations during that period. So in a sense, if there’s a Russian-election-related investigation underway in the division at that point, personnel reporting to me are a part of it.â€
Moffa’s congressional interview was private, and no transcript has been released. But National Review has obtained a copy. The interview transcript reveals that the FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources and other counterintelligence assets was far more extensive than has previously been acknowledged.
Alan Dershowitz: Barr is right, Mueller is wrong
Despite efforts by Democratic senators and some in the media to cast the dispute between Attorney General William Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller as political, or even as a personal argument between close friends, it actually is much more about the substance of the law than it is about whether Barr accurately summarized the Mueller report.
Barr and Mueller fundamentally disagree about the law governing obstruction of justice by a president.
Even before Barr was nominated, he took the position, in a letter he wrote to the Justice Department, that for a president to obstruct justice he must go beyond committing a presidential act authorized under Article II of the Constitution.
Applied specifically to the case of President Trump, Barr has argued that President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey could never — regardless of the motive — constitute the act component of the crime of obstruction of justice, because a president has the constitutional authority to fire anyone in the executive branch.
The Real Reason Democrats Hate Bill Barr
The day of Attorney General Bill Barr’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, there was, as always, a selective leak dropped into the fray. With bated breath, we learned Special Counsel Robert Mueller had sent the attorney general a sternly worded letter grousing that Barr’s four-page March 24 explanation of the core conclusions of the Mueller report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance†of the Mueller’s “work and conclusions.â€
The customary histrionics followed. Posturing Democrats on the judicial committee gave long soliloquies on Barr’s treacherous behavior. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–HI) accused the attorney general of abusing his office and lying to Congress, and many others demanded his resignation. The usual suspects called for impeachment.
Barr had apparently masterminded the most inept cover-up in history, first by accurately laying out the outcome of the special counsel’s investigation. Then, after some light redactions (none instigated by the president), by releasing the report to the public so everyone in the entire world could read it for themselves.
Now, if a fresh observer to the Russia collusion circus only heard from Democrats, he might not know that the Mueller report had been public for weeks—sifted through and debated extensively. He certainly wouldn’t know that no criminality was uncovered. But most people heard something else. And Barr’s greatest sin had been preempting the collusion spin for the first time.
The Incredibly Dumb Bill Barr Scandal
Is it already August? That’s usually the Beltway silly season appropriate for such a ridiculous non-scandal as the Great Bill Barr Summary of Findings Outrage of 2019.
As everyone knows, Bill Barr released a brief letter summarizing the top-line conclusions of the Mueller report shortly after he received it. Justice Department lawyers then worked with Mueller staff to make the appropriate redactions, after which the entire 400-page report was publicly released. Strangely enough, this process has become an obsession for Democrats and the press and the focus of endless conspiracy theories.
Now it has emerged that Robert Mueller wrote a letter to Barr complaining about his summary letter and public perceptions in the wake of it, leading to Democratic calls for Barr to resign or even get impeached.
It’s hard to know where to begin. Barr’s position was eminently reasonable. He wanted to get the basic verdict of the Mueller report out as quickly as possible, given the inherent interest in the question of whether the president of the United States had conspired with the Russians. He opposed the subsequent release of the summaries of the report, as suggested in Mueller’s letter, because he thought it better that the public get the entire report at once. Which it did. Democrats and the media are acting as if Barr engaged in some sort of cover-up, when he went further than required under the regulations to release all of the report with minimal redactions.
Mueller’s Sudden Concern Over ‘Public Confusion’ Glaringly Absent For 22 Previous Months
Special counsel Robert Mueller said he is concerned about “public confusion†over his Russia report in a series of communications with Attorney General William Barr that came to light this week, solidifying the narrative that Barr mishandled the report and intentionally misled the public about his findings.
Meanwhile, Mueller stood by for years as the media and Democratic politicians made mistake after mistake about key collusion and obstruction accusations, choosing to intervene only once, when a false Buzzfeed report threatened to result in impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
The FBI suspected as early as summer 2017 that the Steele dossier was flawed, yet Mueller chose not to intervene as the media published story after story containing Trump-Russia collusion “bombshells†that turned out to be wrong. Aside from correcting a Buzzfeed report that he had grounds to indict Trump in January of this year, Mueller’s office was mum.
The Daily Caller News Foundation put together a list of some of these reports. For example, Mueller’s findings contained no evidence to back up a widely-read report in The Guardian that claimed Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange around the time he joined Trump’s campaign. And his findings contradicted an explosive CNN report about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which claimed Trump gave it the green light, knowing it was with a Russian promising dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Most notably, The New York Times reported that the FBI knew there were problems with key claims in the Steele dossier by the summer of 2017. Mueller was appointed special counsel that May. The dossier, which he knew had a serious credibility problem, formed the foundation of the media’s Russia collusion narrative and was used repeatedly to secure surveillance warrants on Trump campaign associates. For 22 months, while frequent innuendo and implications flew around the media, Mueller made no discernible attempt to correct the “public confusion.â€
Bill Maher Tells Adam Schiff He ‘Looks Like A Stalker.’ Here’s Why.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Friday appeared on Bill Maher’s show, where the two discussed the Russia probe.
Interestingly enough, Maher told Schiff he looked like a stalker.
“But this [the Russia probe] was our big gun,” Maher explained. “Now it just looks like you’re stalking him [President Donald Trump].”
Schiff looked shocked to Maher’s words.
75{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} of Americans disagree with Bernie Sanders’ plan to let every US prisoner vote
• Roughly 75{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} of people do not agree with Sen. Bernie Sanders that all prisoners should have voting rights, according to a new INSIDER poll.
• Overall, 35{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} said current inmates should be allowed to vote, but most of those people said this should only apply to non-violent offenders.
• The poll found 24{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} of people believe those convicted of violent offenses should be permanently disenfranchised, even after release from prison.
The vast majority of Americans — roughly 75{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} — do not support Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to enfranchise all prisoners, but many are open to giving voting rights to non-violent inmates, according to a new INSIDER poll.
Only 15{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} of respondents said all prisoners — regardless of their crimes — should keep their voting rights while behind bars. Meanwhile, 20{ef3b36ba7c11cac64d81b79cc51b0b7cc80daf5ccfa9ea032b2ab3ebe6b0c4c9} said only voters convicted of non-violent offenses should be allowed to vote.
William Barr confirms expanded Justice Department probe of Russia-Clinton links
Attorney General William P. Barr revealed Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that Russian operatives fed disinformation to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election season.
Mr. Barr told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the expanded scope of a review into “the activities over the summer of 2016,†which included vehemently anti-Trump FBI senior officials making key decisions on the investigations of Mrs. Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump.
One key question is how much the FBI relied on the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, using information gleaned from Russian sources, which helped spur the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. The dossier was funded by payments from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee that were hidden in campaign finance reports behind payments to a law firm.
Changing hearts and minds on nuclear power
Until we’re able to fuel America and the rest of the world with cleaner forms of renewable energy, we need the ability to generate the electricity necessary to sustain civilization while curbing carbon emissions. For now, the clamor for less carbon, more renewable fuels, and cleaner energy often ignores one of the cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant supplies of energy on Earth.
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States today, but it holds the potential to create much more. Affordable electricity is also a key issue for millions of American seniors who live on fixed incomes and can ill afford higher utility bills. The 98 nuclear plants currently online in the U.S. contributed more than 73,000 thousand megawatt-hours to the nation’s grid in January, making it the third most productive energy source behind coal and natural gas. But nuclear power generation has remained virtually flat over the past 18 years. The question is “why?”
Obama Admin Spent $36M on Lawsuits to keep info Secret
The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.
For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files that were requested.
And it set records for outright denial of access to files, refusing to quickly consider requests described as especially newsworthy, and forcing people to pay for records who had asked the government to waive search and copy fees.
The government acknowledged when challenged that it had been wrong to initially refuse to turn over all or parts of records in more than one-third of such cases, the highest rate in at least six years.
The Forest Brothers: From Individual Struggle to Organized Anti-Soviet Resistance
Altogether, more than 20,000 Latvian residents chose to partake in the national resistance against the Soviet occupation. They were supported by thousands of people who weren’t up to taking to arms themselves. One of the chief reasons for a resistance of this scale was the brutal and ill-considered occupation policy on the part of the USSR. Anti-Soviet sentiment merged with belief in patriotic ideals, thereby creating the national resistance movement.
Conscripted by a foreign power:
Only a week had passed after the first Red Army soldiers crossed the Latvian border. The Soviets controlled the northern and eastern parts of the Latgale cultural region, whereas the major cities of RÄ“zekne and Daugavpils were still under Nazi control. The situation was far from being stable, and as of yet there was practically no Soviet bureaucratic power in occupied Latvia to speak of. But the higher-ups of the Red Army did not want to listen to any objections from the bureaucrats of the Latvian SSR. The Red Army needed every soldier it could have, and on July 26, 1944 the War Commissariat of the Latvian SSR was ordered to immediately start the conscription of every man born between 1895 and 1926.
