Posts on Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna on Wednesday unveiled a resolution to remove California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from Congress.[Snip]"Knowingly using your position on House Intel to push a lie that ripped apart our country, cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and authorized spying on a US President and then proceeding to double down on the lie within days of the Durham report coming out makes you unfit for office. Ethics should investigate," she insisted.[Snip]House Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to allow Schiff to sit on the Intelligence Committee earlier this year, insisting that he "has lied too many times to the American public."
Paul Sperry at RealClearPolitics has an article today citing one part of the Durham report that deserves a little CTH attention.
I hope you will forgive my indulgent snickers, as the graphic you see below was created by me in early 2018, a full five years before the release of this Durham report. I even referred to the Steele Dossier as the Nellie Ohr Dossier. lol
As noted by Sperry, “According to the 306-page report, former Justice Department prosecutor Bruce Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr first plowed the ground for the dossier with a series of research reports she wrote for Fusion GPS,
The Texas legislature has sent a bill limiting gender-transition treatments for minors to the desk of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it.
The senate voted 19–12 to ban the treatments, including surgeries and medications. There is an exemption for minors who are already undergoing gender transition, but they must wean themselves of medications over an unspecified period of time.
Senate Bill 14 would prohibit a doctor from performing a mastectomy or a surgery that sterilize a child. It would also prevent doctors from prescribing medications that induce transient or permanent infertility,
The leftist campaign to force Justice Clarence Thomas from the US Supreme Court let its inner clown out when the executive director of the AstroTurf smear group Fix the Court inadvertently released the names of its donors to a Washington Examiner reporter.
Fix the Court has not only been a player in the current attacks on Justice Thomas, but they were also a major participant in the smear campaign directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
It all started innocently enough with Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky taking a deep dive into the finances
Chicago, RIP
replies
Electing Lori Lightfoot as Mayor of Chicago was the beginning of the end for that city. Replacing her with someone even more far left is accelerating Chicago’s terminal decline. Tom Bevan notes that the death throes are under way:
Progressive allies of Mayor Brandon Johnson have released a financial blueprint titled – and I'm not joking – "First We Get the Money" calling for $12 billion in new taxes, including:
"Head tax" of $33 per worker for companies with 50+ employees
Quadrupling the tax on jet fuel.… pic.twitter.com/lRoQOZP58a
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) May 17, 2023
The stupidity is hard to fathom.
Wednesday saw what appeared to be signs of a breakthrough in negotiations between President Biden and congressional Republicans on lifting the debt ceiling and preventing default on the national debt. While reporting on that news, ABC’s World News Tonight senior White House correspondent Mary Bruce sought to remind viewers at home that Republicans are “demanding steep spending cuts” in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. “In exchange for agreeing to raise the debt limit and pay off the nation’s bills, Republicans are demanding steep spending cuts,” Bruce insisted. To be clear, there are no “steep spending cuts”
Fox News released a statement on Wednesday blasting “left wing activists” who took to Twitter and reported that the network planned to fire prime time host Laura Ingraham after Matt Drudge’s eponymous news aggregation site reported on a prime time shake-up at the network. The Drudge Report dropped a siren-blaring headline on Wednesday morning, teasing major scheduling changes at the long-dominant cable news network. The site eventually reported that Sean Hannity would take over Tucker Carlson’s old 8 p.m. time slot and that hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld would also be moved to prime time. A Fox News spokesperson
A Washington Post reporter admitted Wednesday to passing along a misquote of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., from the lawmaker's office that drastically cleaned up his actual remarks. Economics reporter Jeff Stein took criticism for tweeting that Fetterman had asked Silicon Valley Bank ex-CEO Greg Becker, "Shouldn't you have a working requirement after we bail out your bank? Republicans seen to be more preoccupied with SNAP requirements for hungry people than protecting taxpayers that have to bail out these banks." However, Fetterman, still suffering speaking and cognitive issues from a stroke he had a year ago, was much less clear in
Democrats and commentators reacted dismissively to the conclusion this week of a long-awaited investigation into the origins of the Russian collusion inquiry, with some critics of special counsel John Durham citing a 2019 inquiry to claim the matter had already been settled.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, did indeed examine FBI conduct in the Russia investigation during the Trump administration. Horowitz’s findings were highly critical of the FBI and came with a list of recommendations for sweeping changes to the bureau, many of which its leaders adopted.
New revelations have continued to emerge since Monday's release of Special Counsel John Durham's 300-page report following his four-year $6.5 million investigation that concluded the FBI 'failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law.'
Buried inside the dense document, which blasts the FBI for opening a full-blown investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign based on 'raw' intelligence tips, are insights into how the Russia probe got started, and links between people in Hillary Clinton's orbit and the stream of information on Trump's Russia contacts.
It also points out what Durham calls an unfair discrepancy: why the Trump camp didn't get a 'defensive briefing'
Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley called out the media on Wednesday for its part in promoting the Russiagate theory following the release of the Durham report, which determined that the Trump-Russia probe was illegitimately launched.In an unforgiving op-ed published Wednesday by the New York Post, Turley said the report implicated the Clinton campaign, the FBI and the media as key participants who propagated the Russia collusion narrative by amplifying "a plot to create a false claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government."
After breaking down the collective effort on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department in the collusion conspiracy, Turley turned his attention
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., left a Biden judicial nominee speechless during her confirmation hearing Wednesday after he quizzed her on basic constitutional law theory. Judge Ana de Alba, who currently serves on a California federal district court and is nominated to serve on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, struggled to define the Dormant Clause and Commerce Clause under Article 1 of the Constitution.
"This has been in the news a lot lately, and you'll probably see it if you're confirmed to the Court of Appeal. Tell me about the Dormant Commerce Clause," Kennedy said.
"I’m somewhat familiar with the Commerce Clause, which is found in Article 1 of the Constitution
What is a woman? And what does it matter? It is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about women’s rights, or even basic biological reality, in a common language. While most Americans understand that a "woman" is an adult human female, radical gender ideologues want to redefine womanhood as a subjective state unrelated to biological sex. This redefinition of once-assumed basic facts has serious consequences for equal opportunity, privacy, safety and freedom of expression.
Right now, females are losing athletic, employment and educational opportunities to biological males. Biological males are gaining access to sororities, domestic violence shelters, locker rooms, women’s prisons, and rape crisis centers.
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Illinois' ban on "assault weapons" to take effect temporarily on Wednesday.
The ruling allows the Illinois law to remain in effect while lower courts deliberate on its constitutional status. Wednesday's ruling comes after a gun shop owner in Illinois requested an injunction against the ban.
The Illinois law bans the sale and new possession of semi-automatic "assault weapons." Those who already legally own such weapons would not have to turn them in. The law also bans the sale of large capacity magazines.
“I’m not being arbitrary; I’m just not going to pretend. These people know exactly what is going on. Their action is not an outcome of some esoteric thought process. They are corrupt & acting to retain the corruption with specific intent & full understanding of the consequence.”(snip)
let us get down to the business of understanding; let us uncomplicate the complex; and, more importantly, let me propose the outline of a solution.
♦ SILO #1 – Inspector General Michael Horowitz was given instructions by outgoing President Barack Obama, to review the internal decision-making inside the FBI, Main Justice and DOJ-NSD as it pertained to the Hillary Clinton classified document scandal.
Voters in Portland soundly rejected a proposal on Tuesday that would have levied a new tax on county residents to pay for free lawyers for tenants evicted by their landlords.
The ballot measure, supported by dozens of tenants rights and housing groups, would have created a 0.75 percent capital gains tax to provide people facing eviction with lawyers.
About 82 percent of voters rejected the measure. Supporters of the tax said it would help to combat rampant homelessness in the far-left city, and it was intended to target the wealthy. But the proposed tax on the profit made from the sale of real estate, stocks and bonds, businesses, and art,
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were traveling along with Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, 66, in Manhattan after leaving the Ziegfeld Theater on Tuesday night when they were followed by around a dozen photographers[Snip]“I lived in Manhattan for 17 yrs & it is not possible to have a 2hr ‘car chase’ there,” Kelly tweeted in response to the Page Six story. “Too many street lights/stop signs, too much foot/car traffic & hundreds of places you could safely pull over to protect yourself.”[Snip]“Also if they really want to avoid the paparazzi perhaps the Duchess should stop using them so obviously when she wants to see herself in the paper.”
Joe Biden on Tuesday evening made an unannounced visit to the 2023 We Are EMILY National Gala to honor Nancy Pelosi.
“I heard my friend Nancy Pelosi is being honored and I knew I had to be here,” Biden said. (Tweet) Joe Biden on Tuesday evening made an unannounced visit to the 2023 We Are EMILY National Gala to honor Nancy Pelosi.
“I heard my friend Nancy Pelosi is being honored and I knew I had to be here,” Biden said.
New York is sinking fast and new research reveals that real estate developers' 'bigger is better' ethos is the cause.
A team from the US Geological Survey and the University of Rhode Island found that the weight of the city's giant skyscrapers is causing the five boroughs to sink one-to-two millimeters yearly.
The team analyzed the weight of 1,084,954 buildings constructed across a 302-square-mile city, including over 6,000 skyrises - 247 of which are skyscrapers over 150 feet tall.
Left-wing lawmakers press for federal
reparations for Black Americans: 'We're
here to demand it' replies
reparations for Black Americans: 'We're
here to demand it' replies
A group of House progressives led by Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., have revived discussions at the federal level about giving reparations to Black Americans who descended from slaves and Americans of African descent.
Bush held a press conference on Wednesday unveiling her Reparations Now resolution, which declares "that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its massive harm on the lives of millions."
She spoke alongside fellow Squad members Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as well as Senate candidate Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and freshman Rep. Summer Lee., D-Pa., and a host of activists from around the country.
The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins tried to “sabotage” another political candidate’s campaign, according to an Office of Special Counsel (OSC) report published on Wednesday.
The report found that Rollins violated the Hatch Act twice in 2022, abusing her power as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, according to the report. (snip) Rollins is expected to turn in her official resignation to President Joe Biden before the end of the day on Friday.
The head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court was detained by anti-corruption authorities due to alleged involvement in a bribery scheme, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Vsevolod Kniaziev, President of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, is suspected of taking a $2.7 million bribe, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said in a statement. Anti-corruption prosecutor Oleksandr Omelchenko did not name Kniaziev specifically, but referenced the head of the Supreme Court when laying out the investigation.
Bud Light now appears to be giving its beer away for free, following its disastrous partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The beer company is being mocked online for offering a $20 rebate on unsold cases worth just $19.98.
America's flagship beer brand and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has been in damage control since Mulvaney shared a series of partnered posts with her 11 million social media followers on April 1.
Twenty years removed from being tapped as communications director for a Republican president, Nicolle Wallace is now one of MSNBC's most rabid left-wing hosts and fervent Russiagate boosters. Unsurprisingly, she has been quite speedy to dismiss any revelations undercutting the collusion narrative she enthusiastically pushed for years. Following the release of the Durham Report which concluded that the Trump-Russia investigation dubbed "Crossfire Hurricane" was based on "raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence," Wallace accused the probe launched by Special Counsel John Durham of being predicated on a "rabbit hole conspiracy." In fact, she made the assessment within minutes of the 320-page report's release.
Elon Musk tweeted a milquetoast five-word criticism of George Soros, sending the corporate media into a full-on moral panic about “anti-Semitism.” [Tweet] Via The Atlantic:
Last night, Elon Musk made two rookie social-media mistakes: He tweeted after 10 p.m., and he echoed paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. “George Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he declared, likening the financier to the Marvel supervillain, both of them Jewish Holocaust survivors. In case the meaning was unclear, Musk quickly clarified to another user, “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
George Soros is the exact opposite of a Holocaust survivor; he was a Holocaust perpetrator back in his native Hungary
When the Durham Report dropped, one of the most concerning things in it that we’ve reported on before was the question of the role Hillary Clinton and Trump’s political opponents played in all of this. As we noted, Durham said that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation was “triggered and sustained” and significantly reliant on such politically related “leads.”Among the things the report delved into was the intelligence that Hillary Clinton may have hatched the plan to smear Donald Trump by tying him to Russia and distracting everyone from her email scandal.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are “extremely upset and shaken” after being involved in a “near-catastrophic” two-hour paparazzi chase in New York City on Tuesday night.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who were traveling with Markle’s mom, Doria Ragland, were pursued by photographers after leaving the Ziegfeld Theater — where the former actress was honored by Gloria Steinem at the Women of Vision Awards — in Manhattan.
The trio left the event in an SUV around 10 p.m., and were immediately followed by around 12 paparazzi, we’re told.
They eventually decided to ditch their original vehicle and jump into a yellow cab in hopes of evading photogs, a source claims.
Sixty thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate, used as a fertilizer but also in explosives, are missing from a rail shipment that was due to arrive in California from Wyoming.A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.
The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC.
Trump weaponizes FBI-Russia report he
demanded to keep fighting the election
that never ends replies
demanded to keep fighting the election
that never ends replies
A long-awaited report by Republican-appointed special counsel John Durham failed to find the “crime of the century” that ex-President Donald Trump said targeted him at the center of the Russia investigation. But it delivered him a potential political payoff nonetheless.
The 300-page conclusion to a three-year probe also dealt another blow to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over its handling of the reputation-shredding 2016 election. Durham said that the bureau’s full-scale probe into multiple links between the Trump campaign and Russians should never have been launched, arguing that investigators “discounted or willfully ignored” information that did not support preliminary theories that there was collusion between Trump and Russia.
Target (TGT) has become a target for major thefts, and it's taking a huge chunk out of profits. The retailer estimated in its earnings release Wednesday that inventory shrinkage — mostly the theft of merchandise — would clip profits by a whopping $500 million this year. Factoring in an about $700 million profit hit from inventory shrinkage in 2022, Target is on pace to see $1.2 billion in profits go up in smoke, due primarily to organized retail crime. Target Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell says the problem is getting worse, is nationwide, and across various merchandise departments. "The unfortunate
President Trump endorsed Daniel Cameron in the Republican primary for the Kentucky governor’s race. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo and Vivek Ramaswamy endorsed candidate Kelly Craft. Cameron won, Craft came in third. Kelly Craft is a big donor to the establishment Republican Party, hence all of the major donor-fueled Republican candidates supported her.
Mrs. Craft outspent her opponents more than 10:1 spending more than $8.1 million, while the MAGA candidate Daniel Cameron spent just over $771 thousand and had the full support of President Donald Trump.
Does this sound like a familiar pattern?
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, compiled over the past several years and just released on Tuesday a several hundred page report detailing his investigative findings on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The report, which is available on Rubio’s Senate website, is more than 240 pages long, with another more than 80 pages containing the hundreds of citations made throughout it. The effort is the product of years of research by Rubio, his staff, and outside experts who helped compile the comprehensive investigation into the matter.
The recently released Durham Report found, “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” Nonetheless, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the former Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, still insists Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.
“If you read Mr. Durham’s report, what he said is that there wasn’t evidence of collusion before they began the investigation. That’s obviously a very important distinction,” Schiff told The Epoch Times when he was asked about the report.
Schiff, who is running for the U.S. Senate
While appearing at the 34th annual GLAAD Media Awards over the weekend, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that trans kids are "our kids" and "belong to all of us" in response to what she called "anti-LGBTQ+ legislation." Speaking with the website Jezebel at the event on Saturday, Jean-Pierre, who identifies as "queer," talked about the importance of representation and visibility for young people. She also insisted that there needed to be more moments to "call out" Republican legislation for the sake of trans children. "There are more than 600 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation out there. A few hundred
According to this Bloomberg article, Michelle Obama is “a co-founder and strategic partner at Plezi Nutrition, a maker of sweetened beverages for kids ages 6 and up,” which I take to mean that she is profiting directly from the sale of these beverages. Her rationale:
Obama says she’s offering a lower-sugar alternative to steer them away from sugary drinks. (snip) Plezi’s first product is a flavored juice drink blend that, under the very standards Obama championed, could not be served in US schools. (snip) On Target.com, on a per-ounce basis, Plezi is 2-3 times more expensive than other non-soda drinks targeted at children,
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — San Francisco resident Pia Harris hopes for reparations in her lifetime. But the nonprofit program director is not confident that California lawmakers will turn the recommendations of a first-in-the-nation task force into concrete legislation given pushback from opponents who say slavery was a thing of the past. It frustrates Harris, 45, that reparations opponents won’t acknowledge that life for Black people did not improve with the abolition of chattel slavery in 1865. Black families have been unable to accumulate wealth through property ownership and higher education. Black boys and teenagers are still told to watch out for
Elon Musk may not be a conservative. He has his issues, like all of us. But he’s a considered thinker, who seems to be learning fast about the dangers of the left. He’s spoken about the threat to civilization in the past posed by the “woke mind virus.”
Musk showed again that he does have some understanding of the left during an interview he gave to CNBC on Tuesday.
He had some people squawking on Tuesday because he dared to criticize billionaire George Soros who he compared to the villain Magneto. That prompted many on the left to attack him as somehow “anti-Semitic” when there wasn’t anything anti-Semitic about what he said.
The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team is facing accusations of anti-Catholic bigotry after the team announced it would honor a gay and transgender group that uses Catholic imagery in sexualized contexts.
The Dodgers and LA Pride announced earlier this month that the team would be marking "Pride Night" on June 16, 2023, and that the celebrations would include the presentation of the Community Hero Award to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a self-described "leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.
Former President Donald Trump has been much in the media in recent weeks, but not all or even most of the coverage has been favorable. Even so, he has stretched his lead against a field of potential Republican challengers significantly over the past month. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s lead against the Democratic field remains essentially the same, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.
In the online poll, taken from May 3-5, we asked 703 Democrats and those leaning Democrat, and 469 Republicans and those leaning Republican who their preferred candidate would be. The margin of error for the Democratic sample was +/- 4.0
One of the important things to remember about Biblical archeology is that our modern understanding keeps changing as the earth keeps disgorging materials hidden for millennia, and new technologies allow us better to understand those discoveries. That’s the case with a Bronze Age tablet that reveals something consistent with one of the Bible’s oldest and most consequential narratives. (snip) Unfortunately for the leftists, archeology has just scored another one for the Bible’s historic accuracy.
Deuteronomy repeats the instructions that Moses, who was barred from entering the Promised Land, gave to Joshua, his successor.
In Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” detective Hercule Poirot observes, “The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”
That may be the best summary of the findings of special prosecutor John Durham in his 305-page report issued yesterday.
Not only did the impossible happen, but they all did it: the Clinton campaign, the FBI, and the media.
In hindsight, it would appear impossible.
A political campaign hatches a plot to create a false claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
You don’t have to read all of special counsel John Durham’s report to get to the heart of the matter: On the third page of the executive summary, he writes: “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”
There you have it, the final verdict on the 2016 presidential election: A corrupt FBI tried to rig the outcome by favoring one candidate over the other.
Bill Barr: Durham Report ‘Vindicated’
Trump, But He’s Still Not The Right
Person To Lead GOP Forward replies
Trump, But He’s Still Not The Right
Person To Lead GOP Forward replies
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said during an interview this week that special counsel John Durham’s report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation into former President Donald Trump “vindicated” the former president and that Trump was right from the beginning about what the Left was trying to do to him.
Durham’s report found that the FBI had no evidence to support launching the investigation and found “sobering” differences in how the FBI approached the Trump probe compared to other politically sensitive investigations.Barr told Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Tuesday evening that Durham’s report was a “success” because it got to the bottom of what happened
Struggling CNN spent all of primetime ignoring John Durham's investigation that tore apart the FBI for launching a baseless probe into claims of Donald Trump's collusion with Russia.
The network's two highest profile nightly shows - Primetime and Anderson Cooper 360 - each failed to mention the probe by the special counsel in two hours of programming.
CNN was among liberal media outlets obsessed with Trump-Russia collusion claims when they first emerged, with since-fired former anchor Don Lemon claiming the infamous Steele Dossier had been partly corroborated.
The White House Press Secretary was blasted for abruptly ending a briefing and 'fleeing her podium' without comment when she was grilled about a recent report on how the FBI handled the Trump-Russia probe.
When asked Tuesday about the White House's reaction to the special counsel report, Karine Jean-Pierre said it was a matter for the Department of Justice to speak on.
Jean-Pierre closed her briefing book and left the podium without further comment, which sparked outrage online as social media users accused her of ignoring her own history of pushing the Russia collusion allegation.
Oklahoma legislators introduced a resolution to “reject the recent alleged attempts by Dominion Voting Machines to silence Tucker Carlson” after reports surfaced that Fox News fired Carlson as part of the network’s settlement with Dominion.
Carlson was fired from Fox News six days after the cable news company reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion.
Last week, Carlson’s attorneys reportedly sent a letter to Fox News accusing them of breach of contract and fraud. The letter also alleged the conservative cable news outlet fired Carlson as part of its $787.5 million settlement with Dominion.
As Breitbart News detailed:
The letter reportedly alleges that Fox News made promises to Carlson
A New York Supreme Court judge has blocked New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) from busing any more border crossers and illegal aliens to Orange County, New York, a decision that comes after a judge blocked the city from sending new arrivals to Rockland County, New York.
On Tuesday, a New York judge granted Orange County officials’ request for a temporary restraining order blocking a plan by Adams to bus hundreds, potentially thousands, of border crossers and illegal aliens to the county and put them up in hotels, paid for by New Yorkers. This is the second temporary restraining order that judges have hit Adams