It is now clear that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have received documents that are extremely disturbing.  While we do not have access to the documents we do know that several Republicans are describing this as much worse than Watergate.

Today Representative Matt Gaetz released a very strong statement:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/

“The House must immediately make public the memo prepared by the Intelligence Committee regarding the FBI and the Department of Justice. The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping and demand full transparency. There is no higher priority than the release of this information to preserve our democracy,”

The House Intelligence Committee voted today to allow all congressional members to view a summary report of classified documents behind the “Clinton Dossier.”  Let me correct that.  Every Republican on the committee voted for this.  Every Democrat on the committee voted against it.

This clearly is a bombshell document.  Look at the controls that are in place to allow House members access to this document.

“There will be no copies of the report handed out to House members.  Instead, a copy will be made available for them to read in a secure room in the Capital.  They won’t be able to take the report out of the room, but they will know the answers to the questions.”

Democrats on the House Intelligence committee are clearly desperate to prevent anyone, in either party, from seeing this. That is confirmation that both Republicans and Democrats view this document as a political bombshell.  It is extremely disappointing and unacceptable that Democrats are stonewalling this.  The House Intelligence committee is one of the most important institutions in congress.  Both parties are expected to only appoint members to this committee that are dedicated to putting the country first.  That is why this committee, and in many cases ONLY THIS COMMITTEE, is authorized access to highly classified documents.  Sadly, it is hard to argue that the Democrats on this committee come close to meeting this standard.

The delay tactics by those Democrats on the House Intelligence committee are doomed to failure.  It is no longer a question of whether or not this information goes public, but rather when it goes public.  There are 193 Democrats in the House of Representatives.  All it will take is for one of those 193 Democrats to have the same opinion of this as Republicans.  It is hard to imagine someone like Senator Joe Manchin ignoring this.  I think it is only a matter of time and when it blows it will blow sky high.

It is often said that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.  People may forgive someone for doing something wrong.  They are not nearly as forgiving when one is caught trying to hide the truth from the public.  A lot of Democrats may learn this the hard way.

TDM

The main stream media cannot come to grip with the reality of President Donald Trump. Perhaps Trey Gowdy said it best when he pointed out that the liberals in the main stream media don’t know anyone who voted for Donald Trump, so they can’t believe this really happened. The entire main stream media lives in a self-created, narcissistic alternative universe oblivious to the real world. Yesterday, we saw that on full display live on National Television. This reminds me of the James Jones cult where over 900 people committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide poison mixed with Kool-Aid. Everyone who drank that Kool-Aid died. When we talk about people drinking the Kool-Aid, we are talking about the Jonestown, Guyana mass suicide. The main stream media has clearly drunk deeply from the cup of poisoned liberal leftist Kool-Aid. They literally committed mass intellectual suicide in an unprecedented public display of mass hysteria. Ironically, they are probably too stupid to realize they just embarrassed themselves.

The main stream media has been determined to destroy Donald Trump since day one and they lurk from one ridiculous Don Quixote attack to the next. Each one more ridiculous, each one more desperate, each one completely divorced from reality. Finally, when nothing else worked, they decided that since they cannot understand Donald Trump, he must be suffering from dementia. They convinced themselves that he is too mentally unstable to be President of the United States. They laid awake nights dreaming of rational people recognizing the sad reality and joining together to remove this nightmare from office. Countless experts, particularly on CNN, have waxed ineloquent on this ad nauseum. The entire White House news corps had managed, without any evidence, to convince themselves of the ridiculous. They never even considered the possibility that they were wrong.

Donald Trump authorized the White House physician to give a press conference and to answer any questions about his physical and mental condition. The White House press corps went nuts. One of them even asked if Donald Trump had dentures, as if that somehow was relevant. They asked if he was addicted to drugs. They asked how he could possibly be in good health eating fast food, drinking diet coke and doing very little exercise. They asked numerous questions about his mental health and his cognitive functions. It soon became apparent that the White House Physician was the only adult in a room full of slobbering snowflakes unable to grasp the reality that Donald Trump is a real person, he is in good health, and by the way, he is very smart and fully rational. If one was looking for delusional emotionally immature hopelessly naïve Kool-Aid drinkers incapable of accepting reality, well they were the ones asking all the idiotic questions.

I have never seen anything like this and hope to never see it again. Actually, I probably will watch it again, because it is so bad it is actually funny. If they weren’t serious in their mission to remove a U.S. President, this would be hysterical.

Every one of these so-called news reporters should be fired on the spot and replaced with real people who have at least some grasp of reality. But that would require logic and common sense from those who run the main stream media, so this is the least likely outcome. The main stream media has become an embarrassment to the country.

Then I had a glimpse of the future and found it hard to suppress a giggle. These are the same clowns predicting a blue wave that will restore Democrats to power in the House and the Senate, so THEY can impeach Trump and save the universe. In case some of you were worried about that prediction take a moment to reflect on everything they got right during the last 18 months. I rest my case.

Trump flew over the Cuckoo’s nest and the cuckoos went insane.
TDM

This is going to be FISA week in Washington, D.C. One of the reason Democrats ran wild accusations of racism against Donald Trump is that they are terrified of the story about to hit. The Trump scandals have been based on poorly sourced leaks that never seem to hold up to scrutiny. If there was anything resembling a smoking gun the media would have gone stark raving nuts. But the opposite is true with regard to alleged collusion between Russia and the Hillary Campaign, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the State Department and a cast of thousands. There are also ongoing investigations into the Clinton private e-mail server and Uranium One. While you’ve been sleeping the CIA, the FBI and the NSA have been investigating. Those investigations are now over and documents are being delivered to congress. As I write this, teams of highly skilled and focused investigators are digging through a mountain of evidence in a lucrative hunt for pure gold. They are bound to find pay dirt. There has already been an indictment with regard to Uranium One.

Liberals believed that Hillary Clinton was the most qualified candidate to ever run for President while Donald Trump represented the Sum of all Fears. They convinced themselves that Putin must have wanted Trump to win, because he hated Hillary. That is why they were so willing to accept the Obama administration absurd conclusion that Russia tried to interfere in our election to help Trump. Obama even ordered sanctions on Russia to make this look real. When you hear or read that 17 Intelligence Agencies all agreed with this assessment, keep in mind that this means John Clapper, DNI said this. We now know that Clapper may have been part of the problem. The Russia was trying to help Trump theory was and is nonsense.

All of this is based on the alleged hacking of the DNC e-mail server by Russia. The main stream media swallowed that myth hook, line and sinker, because they wanted to believe, but the evidence is beyond thin. DNC server security was pathetic. It could have been hacked by an eight year old. For example; John Podesta allegedly used “password” as his password. Seriously? WikiLeaks, which published the DNC e-mails, says they did not come from Russia. Russia says they did not come from Russia. Neither the FBI or the NSA was allowed to do a forensic investigation of the DNC server. Everyone is relying on reports from a company hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign. It’s not like they had an incentive to blame Russia, course not.

In addition, this all assumes that Russia wanted to help Trump beat Hillary. Granted Putin, like a lot of other people, probably hates Hillary. But he also knows that her Russia Reset thingee was a joke. If the rumors about Uranium One are accurate, he also knew that Hillary was for sale. We definitely know that a Russian company, with alleged ties to Putin, invested big time in a biofuel firm that was guaranteed to make a killing if Hillary was elected and she maintained President Obama’s insane global warming initiatives. One could argue that Putin “needed” Hillary to win. That is consistent with Russia intelligence helping Fusion GPS create that Russian Dossier that was clearly intended to help Hillary defeat Donald Trump. If Putin really wanted Trump to win he would never have allowed Russian intelligence to participate in that dossier.

While the liberal left and the main stream media was running wild with what they considered to be an uninterrupted succession of victories, in reality they achieved nothing other than to destroy their own credibility. Trump is still standing tall and he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The main stream media, on the other hand, is reduced to weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth while lurking in his gigantic shadow. In the meantime, truly serious people continued their investigation:

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/01/09/operation-condor-how-nsa-director-mike-rogers-saved-the-u-s-from-a-massive-constitutional-crisis/

Admiral Mike Rogers, Director of the NSA ordered the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance. One issue was the use of “About Queries.” This allows queries or searches of the content of e-mails and phone conversations on any subject matter put into the search field. Rogers immediately ordered the “About Query” activity to stop, he reported the activity to the DOJ and then personal reported this to the fully FISC assembly. He informed the FISC about the 702(17) violations and permanently stopped “About Query.” Shortly after this the head of DOJ – National Security Division, John P. Carlin resigned. We know that both Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and DNI John Clapper asked President Obama to fire Mike Rogers.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-11-20/nsas-mike-rogers-on-his-recommended-firing-im-accountable-for-my-actions

Unless all the reports are wrong, those FISA documents are about to explode. Devin Nunes has announced publicly that he intends to brief all 435 congressional representatives on these documents. That includes every Democrat and every Republican. Unless he is irredeemable stupid, he believes these documents will shock people in both parties.

At some point, probably sooner than later, the main stream media has to cover this story. Once they start we are likely to see an unprecedented feeding frenzy. Just think about how quickly everyone joined in the hunt for men who sexually harrass women after they just ignored the problem for decades. A lot of people are going to be very embarrassed that they missed the story of their lifetime that was right under their noses all the time.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/there’s_none_so_blind_as_those_who_will_not_see

“There’s none so blind as those who will not see.”

TDM

The conventional wisdom is that Kim Jong Un is a dangerous psychopath on an insane mission to obtain nuclear weapons.  It is undeniable that he is very dangerous and he definitely is determined to get nuclear weapons.  A nuclear armed North Korea would constitute a risk that no President could ignore.  However, when evaluating him, it is important to realize that the history of the Korean War looks very different to us than it does to Kim Jong Un.  Our version of the Korean War is that North Korea attacked South Korea.  South Korea was quickly over-run.  Douglas McArthur saved our bacon and turned things completely around.  He routed the North Korean Army all the way to the border with China.  China invaded North Korea and pushed us back to the DMZ.  While there is a cease fire, technically the war never ended.

The part that most Americans do not realize is that during the war the United States soon established air supremacy by destruction of North Korean aircraft in the air and on the ground.  The U.S. Far East Air Forces (FEAF) used B29 bombers to conduct massive aerial assaults on transport centers, industrial hubs and to some extent cities.  In November 1950 FEAF began an intensive firebombing campaign that incinerated multiple North Korean cities:

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bombing_of_North_Korea_1950-1953

A report by an international fact finding mission from East Germany, West Germany, China and the Netherlands stated: “The members in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed and there were very few undamaged villages.”

The following article provides estimates of the Korean War Casualties.

https://www.shmoop.com/korean-war/statistics.html

These estimates are probably too low, particularly with regard to civilian casualties in North Korea.

The point is that the government and people of North Korea experienced first-hand the impact of a massive bombing campaign by the United States with little or no capacity for defense.  Prior to the war the population of North Korea was estimated to be 9 million.  The death toll in North Korea is estimated to be 1.5 million.  That is over three times the estimated number of deaths in South Korea.  I have seen other estimates suggesting two million civilian deaths in North Korea.  By any measure, a significant percentage of the North Korea population died during the war and many of those casualties were civilians killed by U.S. bombing raids.

We have a long history of fighting wars with massive bombing campaigns.  North Korea knows that if there is a war, the pattern will be repeated, only with even more destructive results.  North Korea reportedly has close to 1 million active troops with another 5.5 million in reserve.  They could do a lot of damage, but when Kim Jong Un says only a nuclear weapon will enable North Korea to defend itself against a super power like the United States, he actually has a point.

We also have a bad habit of changing our mind.  For example Qaddafy was told we would stop trying to remove him from power if he stopped his nuclear arms program and started helping us capture terrorists.  He kept his part of the bargain.  So did we, while Bush, was President.  Barack Obama changed his mind.  NATO bombed Libya into submission. Qaddafy was killed and Hillary Clinton gloated saying: “We came, we saw, he died.” Qaddafy is gone but Libya, by all accounts, is a total mess. Many people argue that removing Saddam Hussein was also a huge mistake, but at least Saddam Hussein was considered a threat to us.  No one even argues that Qaddafy was a threat to the U.S.  He just paid a terrible price for trusting us.

While we would be insane to trust Kim Jong Un, one could argue that he would be equally insane to trust us.  Perhaps we can put him in a position where we can make him an offer he can’t afford to turn down.  So far that hasn’t come close to working.  Every day there is a delay we are one day closer to the point of no return.  If we wait until he is capable of hitting us with a nuclear weapon, we will have waited too long.

A lot of people are forgetting something very important.  Donald Trump is President of the United States and he has a duty to defend us.  When you undermine his credibility, particularly to our enemies, you put us all at risk.  They used to say that politics stopped at our borders.  Unfortunately, that is far from true today.  I don’t know if Donald Trump or anyone else can fix this.  I do know that if the main stream media continues their daily attempts to discredit him it will be increasingly difficult to even imagine a good outcome. If Kim Jong Un believes the main stream media reports that Trump is a liar who cannot be trusted, then the situation moves from hopeless to beyond hopeless.  If that happens the only predictable outcome is that the main stream media will blame everything on Donald Trump.

TDM

The following article by the Conservative Tree House is mind-numbing. It is hard to imagine it really being this bad. The problem is that several things on this timeline are already documented by facts and I am unaware of any documentation disputing a single item on this timeline:

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/7q05a9/fusioncollusion_timeline_and_summary_how_the_fbi/

Before reading this, pay close attention to the following report about what Devin Nunes is telling his Republican colleagues in congress:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/12/nunes-charges-abuse-government-surveillance-by-fbi-and-justice-officials.html

Nunes says he intends to read all 435 members of Congress into major abuses with other areas of FISA. That means he intends to give his information to Democrats and Republicans. Everyone assumes that Nunes is focused on the Russian Dossier. But that is not actually what Nunes said. He said he has clear evidence that shows abuse of government surveillance programs by FBI and Justice Department officials. He did not limit this to actions taken against the Trump campaign or the Trump transition team. He may be showing this to Democrats because they may have been targets too.

On May 25, 2017 Andrew McCarthy wrote an article alleging that the illegal surveillance of Americans goes back long before the Presidential election. It was only disclosed in October of 2016.

www.nationalreview.com/article/447973/nsa-illegal-surveillance-americans-obama-administration-abuse-fisa-court-response

The FISA Court made a finding on May 24, 2017 that the NSA under President Obama ROUTINELY violated American privacy protections.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-24/fisa-court-finds-very-serious-fourth-amendment-issue-obamas-widespread-illegal-searc

Note the following quote from the FISA court. It seems clear:

“NSA analysts had used U.S.-person identifiers to query the result of Internet “upstream” collection even though NSA’s section 702 minimization procedures prohibited such queries…this disclosure gave the Court substantial concern.”

The report also showed that the frequency was higher than previously disclosed to the court. In other words, they were lying about it. The court referred to this as an institutional lack of candor on the part of the NSA. The report indicated that investigations by the NSA had yielded preliminary results that the problem was widespread during all periods under review.

In April of 2016, techdirt reported that FISA court had uncovered more abuse by the NSA and FBI. Note: this article was from APRIL 2016. It makes references to findings from November 2015. This goes back a lot farther than the presidential election.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160420/06055234219/fisa-court-still-uncovering-surveillance-abuses-nsa-fbi.shtml

The FBI claimed it had put in procedures (April 2016) to prevent further abuse. Based on what we know now, about the Russia Dossier and Fusion GPS, that clearly did not happen.

Mike Rogers was appointed Director of the NSA in April 2014. At some point Rogers became aware of this an ordered an investigation. We don’t know the timeline, but we do know that by October of 2016, he had notified the FISA court of a pattern of violation. Almost immediately James Clapper, DNI and Ashton Carter recommended that Rogers be fired from the NSA. On November 17, 2016 Rogers briefs Donald Trump regarding surveillance. Trump immediately moves his transition team out of Trump Tower. James Clapper and Ashton Carter again recommend that President Obama fire Rogers.

We don’t know why Obama didn’t fire Rogers, but we suspect part of the reason is that he was terrified of what Rogers might say. To put it bluntly, Rogers knew where the bodies were buried.

Democrats ignored all this because they were too concerned about a silly meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a female Russian attorney with dubious connections to anyone. This is clear evidence of how Democrats always zoom in on issues material to our national security, but only if they suspect Republicans.

I don’t know if this timetable is accurate. I suspect some of it is true, and some of it is speculation. It does appear to be well-sourced. If it is true it appears likely that Nunes is going to have an earth shattering meeting with Democratic members of congress. He just may be getting ready to confront them with irrefutable evidence that President Barack Obama had weaponized the intelligence agencies against his perceived enemies and at least some of them were Democrats. In other words, Obama was spying on everyone about everything.

It is hard to imagine the main stream media being oblivious to this. But they were either too stupid to notice, too biased to care or part of the cover-up. Which explanation do you prefer? These are not minor allegations. They strike at the core of our democracy.

If Hillary Clinton had been elected, as expected, we would probably wouldn’t know any of this. Odds seem high that Hillary Clinton, with what appears to be a lifetime record of corruption and abuse of power, would have taken this to a new level. We may have really dodged a bullet here.

TDM

In 2013 Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown signed AB 340 and AB 197 enacting the California Public Employee’s Pension Reform Act of 2013. Few people noticed that the intent of this law was to allow California to cut pension benefits, for existing retirees. Currently there are three lawsuits regarding this law headed toward the Supreme Court. Governor Brown personally intervened to encourage the Supreme Court to rule in favor of those this law.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-10/california-s-brown-raises-prospect-of-pension-cuts-in-downturn

Here is what Brown just said:

“There is more flexibility than there is currently assumed by those who discuss the California rule,” Brown said during a briefing on the budget in Sacramento. He said that in the next recession, the governor “will have the option of considering pension cutbacks for the first time.”

What Brown knows, and dare not tell you, is that it won’t take a recession to have the problem. The problem is already here and the economy can’t possible grow fast enough make a difference.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (“CALPERS”) doesn’t have nearly enough assets to cover its liability. CALPERS reports about $344 billion in assets. If we assume that represents 68% of what is required, as reported by CALPERS, it is underfunded by $161 billion.

Unfortunately that estimate is almost certainly too low. Sanford did a study published in December of 2016 and it showed that the market value of California’s pension debt was $1 trillion dollars. That amounts to a cost of $93,000 for every California household. If that is true, then CALPER was underfunded by $656 billion in 2016. It is almost certainly worse today.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-02/stanford-study-reveals-california-pensions-underfunded-1-trillion-or-93k-household

Let’s put that in perspective. According to the Los Angeles Times, the total budget for California during the 2017-18 fiscal year is $190.3 billion. Of that amount, the General Fund budget is estimated at $131, billion. If CALPERS cannot pay the pensions due, you and I have to pay them. There have been attempts to require public sector union employees to contribute a little more, like everyone else. The unions fought them tooth and nail. Courts have consistently ruled that these benefits are guaranteed.

When Jerry Brown talks about flexibility, he means the ability to make any cuts at all. Right now, retired Public Sector employees are guaranteed the first bite of the California apple.

If CALPERS is underfunded by a mere $161 billion, that is 122% of the entire general fund budget. If the Stanford estimate of $656 billion is accurate, that is 5 times the general fund budget. This is why Governor Brown is beyond desperate to change the law. But even if he succeeds, that won’t solve the deficit problem. It will just include cutting existing pension benefits as one of the many painful things that will be required for the state to stay solvent.

Imagine paying; say $10,000 more per year in Tax. Imagine K-12 Education spending, Health and Human Services, Higher Education, Corrections and Rehabilitation and everything else, including any spending on infrastructure cut to the bone. You are paying much higher taxes and getting next to nothing in return except a degrading educational system, poor health care and lousy roads. Everyone, except your former neighbor who used to work for the state, is feeling the pain.

That former neighbor is now living the high life with his generous California pension, including free lifetime health care. He sold his home and moved to Nevada, where he purchased a better home for a lot less money. He loves Nevada, because now he doesn’t have to pay California Income Tax, which he considers to be too high. Any attempt to reduce his pension, even by a small amount, will be met with outrage.

Even if Governor Brown gets his way and is able to cut pensions, by a little, at some distant point in the future, you will still be paying much higher taxes and all or most of that increase in taxes will be going to people like your former neighbor. This is what happens when you keep electing Democrats, totally under the control of public sector unions, who make promises with your money they can’t possibly keep.

The only question is when this will happen? The California workforce, like the rest of the country, is aging rapidly. Public sector workers can retire at a much younger age than the rest of us, and that makes the problem even worse. Perhaps, just perhaps, politicians in California will be able to kick this can down the road, a little farther, but we are rapidly running out of road.

There was an article in the Sacbee published in March 2015 that explains what is happening:

www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article20702106.html

I love the following quotes from Joe Beck, who now lives in Las Vegas: “You could see it coming in California, the big tax increases, the poorer quality of life. You know what the difference is between the people on the Titanic and people in California who voted for Brown? The people on the Titanic didn’t have a choice.”

Beck left out the part that he is very happy collecting his California pension and his primary complaint about Brown is that he is trying to cut his pension even a little.
Sadly, as bad as this is, Jerry Brown was probably a better choice for Governor than any other Democrat.

TDM

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978.  This act was in response to President Richard Nixon’s alleged use of federal resources to spy on political and activist groups.  Nixon wasn’t spying on political opponents as much as he was spying on people openly opposed to the Vietnam War.  He certainly wasn’t spying on a presidential campaign.  In some cases that surveillance was obviously justified, such as when under cover FBI agents attended a Vietnam Veterans Against the War meeting, also attended by John Kerry, that openly discussed assassinating U.S. Senators who supported the war.

The 1978 law authorized the President to conduct electronic surveillance, for up to one year, but only to acquire foreign intelligence information.  This also required that there was no substantial likelihood that this surveillance would acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States Person is a party.  In the event the surveillance included a U.S. person, minimization procedures would limit the collection of information and disclosure of the name of the U.S. Person.  This also set up a FISA court which is specifically designed to authorize surveillance, if the court finds that the proposed surveillance meets certain minimization requirements regarding information pertaining to U.S. citizens.  When you read about “unmasking” it is referring to this provision of the FISA legislation.

After the 9-11 attack, George W. Bush authorized the surveillance of U.S. persons, if they were in communication with overseas terrorists. In 2006 this was codified by the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006.  In 2007 President Bush pressed for the Protect America Act of 2007, authorizing more surveillance of activity with suspected terrorists overseas.

At the time, I was very concerned.  It was obvious that George W. Bush was using this in good faith and these activities were strictly limited to hunting down terrorists.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever hinted that Bush used this for political purposes.  My concern was that Bush could be replaced by someone who showed no such restraint.  Sadly, that appears to be exactly what happened.  In the spring, summer and fall of 2016 the intelligence agencies appear to have been targeting the Trump campaign and later the Trump transition team.  This is exactly the kind of abuse Ted Kennedy was worried about when he lobbied for the original FISA act in 1978.

Unlike their Democratic opponents, Republicans must not try this in the court of public opinion.  The important thing is to determine the truth and present the facts to the American people.

When Devin Nunes held his press conference last March, he warned us all about this.  Democrats responded by filing an ethics charge against Nunes falsely claiming that he had disclosed classified information.  He has been completely exonerated. One could make the case that it is the Democratic Party guilty of obstructing justice.  If this is true, then smart (honorable) Democrats better get on board right now, or one will have to seriously question whether the Democratic Party can ever be trusted with national security again.

Republicans have asked Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to declassify all the documents regarding this subject.  Lawyers are taught to pound the facts, if you have the facts.  Pound the opposition if you don’t have the facts.  And if you don’t have the facts and you can’t pound the opposition, just pound.  This looks very similar to how the liberal left is responding to all of this.  Republicans, on the other hand, are definitely pounding the facts.

It is said that the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.  That has never been truer than today.

TDM

Have you noticed something lately? Adam Schiff has gone silent. The House Select Committee on Intelligence has gotten all those documents from the FBI. Silence. Diane Feinstein released the transcript of the Fusion GPS interview. Silence. For the past year Schiff has been leader of the Russia Collusion fan club. He is widely suspected of leaking information to the press that often resulted in false hope that maybe Trump did something, sort of, kinda, maybe.

Jake Tapper got his lunch handed to him by Stephen Miller. Perhaps some of the criticism stung Tapper enough to do some critically needed self-reflection. Following the Miller interview, Tapper interviewed Adam Schiff.

Tapper Confronts Adam Schiff: ‘Aren’t You Contributing to the Lack of Faith’ in DOJ and FBI?

Schiff was trying to pedal the nonsense that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation was a politically motivated witch hunt. Trapper, who is finally figuring out that the ultimate politically motivated witch hunt was the search, lead by Schiff, for the mythical Russian unicorn of collusion.

Tapper wasn’t buying it anymore.

“Well, with all due respect, Congressman, aren’t you contributing to the lack of faith in these institutions?” Tapper shot back. “All we know is that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation has started anew. There might be new evidence. There might be a legitimate reason.”

Then he ended the interview with a real zinger:

“Well, I don’t want to spend the whole time on this, but I will say you’re asserting your suspicions as fact,” Tapper stated. “And if you get facts to back up your suspicions, I would love to hear them.”

If any of those documents provided to the House Intelligence Committee even hinted at evidence of the Trump Campaign colluding with Russia, Schiff would have crowed like a rooster on Viagra. If there was any new information that provided any element of support for the Russia Dossier and the way it was handled by the FBI and the Hillary Clinton campaign, Schiff would have been all over it. He didn’t mention either subject. Instead he tried to dismiss the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, where there are actually some facts, as politically motivated.

He also expressed grave concern about President Donald Trump’s mental state, just before Trump televised the bi-partisan meeting regarding DACA and Immigration.  Even CNN realized that, whether you like him or hate him, Donald Trump looked very capable while conducting that meeting..

From here it looks like a sinking Schiff.

TDM

It is always a good idea to review original source documents when trying to evaluate events. There are two letters from Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. While the media has reported on both letters and has published excerpts, the actual letters contain significant facts that are not being reported.

Following is a link the first letter dated December 28, 2017. Both letters are addressed to Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General:

The letter states that the DOJ informed the Committee that FBI Form FD-302 interview summaries did not exist. However, in early December, the DOJ subsequently located and produced the “missing” FD-302 records. These documents involved senior DOJ and FBI officials who were swiftly reassigned.

It sure looks like there was a cover-up within the FBI and the DOJ and it is quite possible that critical documents were withheld from FBI Director Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. It is obvious that a subsequent search for records was conducted that yielded documents previously reported as missing. That would explain the rapid personnel actions.

Nunes also asked the FBI to schedule interviews with Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Lisa Page, Sally Moyer and Greg Brower.

The second letter, dated January 4, 2018 provides more clarity:

Designated Committee investigators and staff will be given access to all remaining investigative documents in unredacted form. There is one document that will be shown directly to Devin Nunes and his senior investigators by FBI Director Christopher Wray next week.

The DOJ agreed to furnish the witness interviews and there are now additional names, Bill Priestap and James Rybicki. It appears Nunes received additional information between the December 28, 2017 letter and the January 4, 2018 letter. It seems likely this was the result of information provided to Nunes on January 3, 2018.

Then there is a very interesting statement. “It was further agreed that all documents made available to the Committee will also be available for review by the minority Ranking Member and designated staff.” That implies that the meeting yesterday, January 5, 2018, did not include Adam Schiff and while documents will be made available to him there does not seem to be a specific date scheduled.

There are numerous reports of leaks from the House Intelligence Committee. A lot of people suspect Adam Schiff. By allowing access to these documents to Republicans and Democrats at different times it will be much more difficult to leak this information to the press without being caught.

Nunes makes a summary statement: “the Committee’s investigation of potential abuses into intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ handling of the Christopher Steel dossier. The Committee is extremely concerned by indications that top U. S. Government officials who were investigating a presidential campaign relied on unverified information that was funded by the opposing political campaign and was based on Russian sources.”

For months Democrats have been screaming about alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet, as of this date, we know of no evidence supporting this allegation and no one has even identified any act done by Russia that had any effect on the election. There was an allegation that Russia hacked the DNC servers, but the DNC server was never given a forensic evaluation by the FBI or the NSA, so this opinion has suspect credibility.

Nunes, on the other hand, is making allegations of collusion by the Hillary Clinton campaign and he is being very specific. When you combine this with allegations that this was enabled by senior DOJ and FBI officials it has the potential to be the worst political scandal in American history. That would explain why Nunes, Session, Wray and Rosenstein are playing this so close to the vest. As Nunes said, they are all trying to be as transparent as possible because of the major impact this could have on this country.

I do not know all the facts and neither does anyone else. But it is obvious who thinks they have the facts and who clearly doesn’t have the facts.  I also recognize the pattern used by prosecutors when they are getting ready to issue indictments.

TDM

Let’s be blunt here. Democrats have been stealing elections since day one. Anyone who doubts this need only research the history of Tammany Hall in New York. The only Republican political machine I could find was in Philadelphia and that turned Democratic when Joe Clark was elected in 1952. Historically it has been nearly impossible for anyone other than a machine candidate to win a local election in a major metropolitican area. Jane Byrne, also a Democrat, beat Chicago Mayor Michael A. Bilandic in 1979, primarily because he couldn’t get the snow plowed after a major storm. She lasted one term before she was beat by Harold Washington. She was actually part of the Democratic machine herself, having served as co-chairperson of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee under Richard J. Daley. She was only removed when Daley died in 1976. His son, Richard M. Daley was mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011.

Democrats were shocked when a Republican replaced Anthony Weiner because they knew the name, address and voting history of every voter in the district. Robert Turner won, primarily because Democrats ran a terrible candidate. He only served one term and was replaced by, gasp, another Democrat. I read a contemporary report saying that every registered voter in the district received a personal visit by someone with the machine who helped them understand how to vote. In some cases, very nice people even help individuals fill out their ballot and then offer to deliver it for them. If an election is close, the machine can always find enough extra votes to push their candidate over the edge. Al Frankin won the Minnesota Senate race when miraculously a couple of hundred votes surfaced at the last minute. Conveniently the margin of victory was pretty close to the number of convicted felons conveniently allowed to vote.

This is why Donald Trump set up the independent voting commission. It is also why he just dissolved it. The problem with the commission is that it was intended to be a bi-partisan effort to identify and correct voter fraud. It soon became obvious that Democrats have zero intention of cooperating. Instead they did everything possible to obstruct things. One of the Democrats on the commission sued the commission.  Trump disolved the commission and turned it over to Homeland Security.

Democrats missed something really big. The U.S. Department of Homeland Secruity (“DHS”) includes: The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, The U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement, The U.S. Secrety Servie, the Transportation Security Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Citzenship and Immigration Services.

The reason the voting commission failed was that it was blocked from obtaining the documentation it required. Well, guess what folks, DHS not only has the authority to demand the data, it already has much of the data. Democrats are too busy rejoicing to realize that instead of ending the hunt, Donald Trump just turned it over to a real professional who already has access to all the guns and ammunition needed. By the way, states have been sending voting records to Homeland Security for years.

This time there will be no public hearings. Most of the investigation will be done in secrecy. In many cases no one will even realize what data is being accessed. Kris Kobach, who was a central figure in the Commission on Election Integrity did not criticize the decision by Trump, he praised it. He said this was not a change in mission, it was a change in tactics. It appears as though Democrats only succeeded in talking themselves out of a seat at the table.

TDM