Month: January 2018

“January Is Going To Be Contentious”: Congress Returns To Work As Another Shutdown Threat Looms

As Congress returns to work this week, the threat of another government shutdown on January 19th will be the primary focus of both Republicans and Democrats.  Extending the budget through October was tabled last year as Republicans focused on tax reform but the issue will take center stage in the January session.

Moreover, with just 17 days to strike a deal, the bid/ask spread seems fairly wide.  The White House has made clear that funding for a border wall, a key promise of the Trump campaign, is imperative while Democrats want DACA, a program which shields some 1 million “Dreamers” from deportation but was ended by Trump back in September, signed into law.

Of course, while a “deal” would seem feasible, the looming midterm elections in November, in which Democrats hope to take one or both chambers of Congress, complicate the issue as neither side of the aisle will jump at the opportunity to offer up a ‘win’ to the other.

As Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Bloomberg, “January is going to be contentious…people are not going to come back singing the Sound of Music together.”

If an urgent attempt to strike a deal on spending and immigration fails this week, the federal government may again be on the brink of a shutdown.

Congress last year repeatedly delayed passing legislation to fund the government through October. Some Democrats want to use the next deadline, Jan. 19, as leverage to force Trump to sign legislation to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers.” Trump said on Friday that he won’t agree unless Democrats consent to fund a border wall and to a broader and more controversial overhaul of the immigration system.

“The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc.,” Trump said in a tweet from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, referring to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Ryan McConnell

As always, the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House will also be a key obstacle for Paul Ryan and Republicans.

Meadows says his caucus is ready to stand its own ground on immigration issues, including seeking an end to family preferences and the diversity visa lottery, a program that provides visas to people in countries with low rates of migration to the U.S.

During an appearance Sunday on “Face the Nation,” he also indicated the conservatives he leads are skeptical of a spending deal. And earlier in the week he said the Freedom Caucus was prepared to fight over reauthorization of a controversial government surveillance program that they reluctantly agreed to extend only until Jan. 19.

“It looks like we’re going to spend more money on growing the government in January than perhaps the biggest amount of money that we spent since the Obama stimulus plan. And that’s a concern for conservatives,” he told CBS News.

Meanwhile, the ever controversial electronic surveillance program known as FISA section 702 – which allows spying on U.S. citizens without court warrants – will also be up for renewal after it was extended through January 19th under the last stopgap spending bill.  Some Republican libertarians and privacy advocates in the Democratic Party want the program reduced or eliminated, while security hawks want a long-term extension.

Of course, as we pointed out last summer (see: FISA Court Finds “Serious Fourth Amendment Issue” In Obama’s “Widespread” Illegal Searches Of American Citizens), a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) found that the National Security Agency, under former President Obama, routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.

“The October 26, 2016 Notice disclosed that an NSA Inspector General (IG) review…indicated that, with greater frequency than previously disclosed to the Court, 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.”

FISA

 

The court order goes on to reveal that NSA analysts had been conducting illegal queries targeting American citizens “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the Court”…an issue which the court described as a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

“Since 2011, NSA’s minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collection under Section 702.  The October 26, 2016 Notice informed the Court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the Court.”

 

“At the October 26, 2016 hearing, the Court ascribed the government’s failure to disclose those IG and OCO reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing to an institutional ‘lack of candor’ on NSA’s part and emphasized that ‘this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.'”

FISA

But it’s probably no big deal, the FBI is a fairly trustworthy group of folks…

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Welcome To 2018 – We Are All Connected

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

 

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To see a world in a grain of sand
And to see heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill’d with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro’ all its regions.
A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

– William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Over the course of 2017, I spent a lot of time detailing where we stand as a species and where I think we’re going. To summarize, I think the positive impact of the internet and social media on humanity is still very much in its infancy. The more connected we become to one another across the planet, the more we’ll realize we have far more in common with one another than we do with the sociopathic oligarchs and politicians in charge of our respective nation-states.

Much of the 20th century was defined by unimaginable human conflict and terror, unleashed upon the public by crazed elites and rulers who were able to successfully manipulate large populations. The key to preventing a repeat of this sort of thing in the 21st century is billions of human beings across the planet communicating and sharing friendship with one another to the point we can no longer be tricked in killing each other. We need to learn to see “the other” in ourselves and voluntarily collaborate with our fellow humans on the challenges that face us in order to bring our species to the next level. This isn’t just a pipe-dream or insane utopian ramblings, I think it’s entirely possible.

That said, the road could be long and some real disasters may lie ahead before we finally get our footing as a species. As far as I see it, there are several factors still preventing us from getting from point A to B. For one thing, leaders of nation-states throughout the world are almost always some of the worst individuals society has to offer. The types of people who aspire to, and generally attain political power, tend to be the most unconscious, power hungry, sociopathic characters around. That’s just how this stuff works.

It’s in the best interests of these leaders to convince their citizens that other human beings living in rival gangster nation-states are the enemy. Pretty much all nation-states are run as organized crime syndicates, the only question is a matter of degree. As such, the goal of political leaders is more often than not to propagandize “the people” into thinking that they are somehow special, the chosen ones, etc. When this sort of propaganda is successful, it provides the pretext for all kinds of barbaric horrors against other humans who are, naturally, less special or righteous than they are.

Humans will never break the destructive cycle of murder and authoritarianism until we recognize that we are all connected. The key to achieving this sort of understanding on a planet-wide level is for us to become resilient against government/corporate propaganda, which happens when we talk to one another. Working with one another is even better.

This is one of the primary reasons Bitcoin so captured my imagination beyond simply its promise of decentralized money and a displacement of the current financial system. What I’ve seen evolve in Bitcoin over the past several years is a truly global community of like-minded people. Individuals from all over the world who have crossed language and cultural barriers to voluntarily work and support a project they passionately believe in. It transcends nation-state boundaries, politicians and central banks. It shows what’s possible when people come together and voluntarily collaborate on something. It shows us that we can be so much more as a species than what we are today.

It’s not a coincidence that Bitcoin and crypto assets have taken the world by storm at this particular moment. When the financial system died in 2008/09 and corrupt politicians the world over decided to save the crooks and leave everyone else hanging, something clicked. A lightbulb went off and we recognized that the old way of doing things is corrupt, archaic and unacceptable. While the entrenched interests remain in power, the hearts and minds of the public were lost, never to be regained. It’s because of this incredibly shady and crooked era in government policy that we now have this incredible opportunity for paradigm level change at our fingertips. When given lemons…well you know.

The reason the next several years are going to be so fascinating and chaotic is precisely because nothing was solved by the response to the financial crisis. The only thing politicians achieved was keeping a terminal and corrupt financial system afloat while bailing out the oligarchs who wrecked the planet. This Potemkin Village financial system remains propped up, but it has zero chance of long-term survival. It will be entirely replaced by something else and we have the opportunity to determine what that will be. We need to do this now, and on own our terms, so that oligarchs and their political henchmen can’t dictate it to us later. That’s precisely what I see happening in the crypto asset space, and why I’m so optimistic about its impact on human affairs.

It’s not just the financial system though. Total and unequivocal government support of this crooked financial infrastructure led to a severe loss in government credibility as well. This opens up governments across the world to the same forces of decentralization that are currently working their magic upon money. Everyone knows that politicians everywhere are self-serving, corrupt and dangerous. Increasingly, we will ask why we need them at all. If we don’t need central banks, why do we need politicians? If we don’t need politicians, what do we need? How can we govern ourselves more ethically and transparently going forward? In the case of the U.S., why is decision making for over 300 million people centralized in a place called Washington D.C., which everyone admits is a sleazy swamp. Is this really the best we can do?

When I think about 2018 and beyond, I see a species in the early stages of a historic transformation. We are moving away from hierarchies and into networks. Away from centralization and into decentralization. From the unconscious to the conscious.

That said, the old system isn’t gone just yet. It remains a dangerous zombie, and its benefactors will fight to keep their schemes alive. The years ahead will be characterized by increased tension between the old and the new. What comes next is up to us.

Never forget that we are all connected. That you have tremendous power to impact the world based on your everyday thoughts and actions. Understand that we don’t have to live this way. Fill your heart with love, not hate. Stay true to your higher nature. If enough of us do this, the future is unimaginably bright.

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WikiLeaks Denies Russia As Source In Response To Head Of John Podesta Think Tank

Wikileaks has once again denied that Russia was their source of leaked emails published during the 2016 election. In a Monday reply to Neera Tanden, former Hillary Clinton advisor and President of the Center for American Progress – a liberal think tank founded by John Podesta, the WikiLeaks Task Force tweeted “2. Russia was not @wikileaks source. Deal with it.”

While Julian Assange has previously denied Russia as their source, this is the first explicit admission by the organization in print regarding Kremlin involvement in leaked emails published during the 2016 US presidential election. 

HANNITY: Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent that you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?

JULIAN ASSANGE: Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.

The WikiLeaks Task Force twitter account is described as an “Official @WikiLeaks support account,” which exists to “Correct misinformation about #WikiLeaks, amplify our publications.”

asd

While the US intelligence community is apparently sticking to the Russia narrative, President Trump definitively hedged his opinion on WikiLeaks’ source. At a July 2017 press conference before a scheduled meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Trump fielded questions about whether he accepts the U.S. intelligence community’s verdict that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a bid to help him defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. 

Trump responded that others might have been culpable, in addition from Russia.  “I think it was Russia and I think it could have been other people and other countries,”  Mr. Trump said. “A lot of people interfered. I think it’s been happening for a long time.”

Trump also said the U.S. intelligence community has made mistakes in the past and its judgment is open to question. As he has done in the past when discussing Russian hacking, he mentioned the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Intelligence assessments claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction turned out to be inaccurate.

“I remember listening about Iraq,” Trump said. He added: “Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”

The WikiLeaks Task Force tweet comes on the heels of a cryptic 3AM (London time) tweet by Julian Assange containing a 60-character code and an embedded link to the MIA music video “Paper Planes.” 

 

Several people speculated that the tweet signaled an imminent new WikiLeaks document release, while others suggested Assange was highlighting Maya Arulpragasam, MIA, for a reason.  As The Guardian pointed out last fall, Arulpragasam has her own “Visa” issues with the United States after her renewal application got mysteriously delayed back in 2014 and has been stuck in limbo ever since…a fact which she attributed to having “supported Wikileaks and stuff.”

There is a song on the new album called “Visa” that takes aim at American immigration policy, something Arulpragasam unwillingly knows a lot about. Her application to renew an expired visa has been stuck in mysterious bureaucratic limbo since 2014. In an age when British popstars with any sort of US fanbase are routinely granted permission to work in America, her two-year hobbling seems unconventional. “Obviously what’s happening to me is very deliberate,” she says. “I don’t know who’s doing it, it’s like fucking playing Cluedo.”

In general, though, she does not pitch her suspicions small. “On paper I’ve supported WikiLeaks and stuff. And now Hillary Clinton is running for president. And until that’s solved I might have a problem, because anyone who ever associated with that website is going to get fucked up. Even if you delivered [WikiLeaks] their takeaway, you are going to be on a list. Do you know what I mean?”

I ask her if she ever worries she’s paranoid and she replies, smartly, that in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA it’s wrong “to even use the word ‘paranoia’ as if it’s a weird condition. Because it’s common as a fucking cold now. Everyone has to have an element of paranoia”

The Russia denial also follows several weeks of unsettling activity involving WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. In mid-December, Three hooded figures dressed in black broke into the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon in a dawn raid. The intruders covered security cameras with tape, and there were no signs that anything was taken – however police are analyzing Garzon’s computer equipment to determine whether or not any files were taken or copied. “They have not taken what they have been looking for,” Garzon told El Periodico, and told Ser magazine that his clients’ security “has not been affected,” and that the people “acted very quickly.”

Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweeted a Jimmy Dore video which contains a clip of Assange strongly hinting that murdered DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was their source. 

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Seth Rich

The next week, Julian Assange’s twitter account was mysteriously deactivated for several hours.

And as we reported yesterday, a document found on convicted pedophile Anthony Weiner’s laptop confirms the the Obama administration was implicated in a plot to silence Julian Assange before the 2010 Swedish election – as an arrest warrant was issued for the WikiLeaks founder two weeks after the US Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden sent a cable detailing their concerns. 

Meanwhile, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London in August with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered “firsthand” information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.

After President Trump denied knowledge of the potential deal, Rohrabacher raged at Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, for constructing a “wall” around President Trump by “people who do not want to expose this fraud.” 

Perhaps Trump will take a blowtorch to the hornet’s nest and pardon Assange in exchange for proof Russia wasn’t WikiLeaks’ source, per the deal Rep. Rohrabacher brought back from the Ecuadorian Embassy’s longest-term resident.

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Ron Paul Rejects “The Twin Tyrannies Of Socialism & Cultural Marxism”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Happy New Year! We always approach a new year with anticipation, hope, and also some worries. Last year was one of the strangest political years I have seen in some time. A new Republican president spent his first year pursuing more or less the same foreign policy as his Democratic predecessor and the Democratic Party spent the year looking under every rock in the US for a “Russian connection” or any other reason to see him impeached over it.

 

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The neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment on both the Left and Right were so furious that candidate Trump dared suggest we could get along with our “enemies” overseas that they jumped on the impeachment bandwagon — even though once he became president Donald Trump filled his Administration with neocons and began dropping bombs.

Like “peace candidate” Obama, Donald Trump quickly dropped his “get along with others” rhetoric to become just another aggressive, interventionist US president. He slammed missiles into Syria over unproven claims of a chemical attack, he built US military bases on Syrian soil, he dropped the “mother of all bombs” on Afghanistan, he continued helping Saudi Arabia destroy Yemen, he expanded the US military occupation of Africa, he put NATO troops on the border of Russia, did his best to tear up the Iran nuclear agreement and in fact may have just launched a “color revolution” on Iran, and continued rattling sabers over China’s presence in the South China Sea.

That tells us quite a bit about what’s wrong with American political life these days. The “opposition party” doesn’t really oppose the other party’s policies. They are just angry that other the party is in power. With no real philosophical or policy differences, politics is essentially pointless. It is a game of spoils for the well-connected and little more than a sporting event for the rest of the country. Everyone wants to see his team come out on top.

Still, I have much hope for 2018.

I know we are continuing to make steady progress waking up the American people to the idea that ideas do matter! Our interventionist foreign policy, responsible for so much misery around the world, is not inevitable. Our destructive economic and monetary policies, which enrich the well-connected while impoverishing the rest of us, are not inevitable. The further destruction of our right to privacy, to live our lives as we see fit, to pursue our own happiness without the government looking over our shoulder, is not inevitable. We can turn this around!

In 2018 I strongly believe more Americans will wake up to the seriousness of the total debt the US is facing and will begin blaming Washington for pumping up the warfare-welfare state. I believe more Americans will understand the role of the Federal Reserve in facilitating this ocean of debt. We will continue to make progress toward ending the Fed!

While the media loves to tell us all about how the millennials are attracted to discredited ideas like Bernie Sanders’ socialism and the dead-end of cultural Marxism, I believe 2018 will demonstrate that young people are actually attracted to the ideas of liberty more than ever.

Liberty is a new idea and a winning idea, while the twin tyrannies of socialism and cultural Marxism should remain in same dustbin of history they were tossed into more than 25 years ago.

In 2018 my Institute for Peace and Prosperity will be reaching more people than ever with plenty of new projects, events, and of course our daily Liberty Report! Yes, we will turn this around. Liberty will prevail!

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MoneyGram Plunges After US Govt Blocks Merger With Alibaba-Backed Bank

Shares of Moneygram are tumbling after hours following the decision by the US government not to approve its merger with Ant Financial – a banking affiliate of China’s Alibaba.

 

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As Reuters reports, the companies were unable to get an approval for the deal from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), according to a joint statement.

CFIUS is a secretive government panel which reviews acquisitions by foreign entities for potential national security risks.

“Despite our best efforts to work cooperatively with the U.S. government, it has now become clear that CFIUS will not approve this merger”, MoneyGram Chief Executive Alex Holmes said.

 

Ant Financial will pay a $30 million termination fee for the break-up of the deal, in which Ant Financial agreed to buy MoneyGram for $18 a share.

The US government’s decisions smashed the price down to its lowest since Dec 2016…

 

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“#FrozenAmerica”: Locals Panic As 92% Of US Below Freezing

New Year’s Revelers gathered in New York City’s Times Square two days ago had to contend with the coldest weather in at least 55 years, with the temperature falling to just eight degrees, and -4 with the wind chill. Even so, temperatures were higher than expected. As President Donald Trump had reminded us, New Years was expected to be the coldest on record.

But the cold snap that ushered in the new year has only worsened, with temperatures dropping 15 to 25 degrees below average in vast areas of the US, breaking century-old records. The cold front has sent temperatures below freezing in more than 92% of the Continental US, according to RT.

Because of this, citizens and authorities are taking unusual measures to stay warm and to keep facilities running.

For example, the water tower in an Evansdale suburb in Iowa froze when temperatures fell to minus 20 degrees. Mayor Doug Faas is considering sending in thermal suited divers to help break up the ice. The tower stores water for the town’s needs.

Faas told the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier that an ice cap which has formed inside the tower is making it impossible for the water to circulate in or out, and the city is exploring all options to find a solution.

The National Weather Service has issued wind chill advisories and freeze warnings as temperatures plunged to a record low of 15 to 25 degrees for a vast area from South Texas to Canada, and from Montana through New England because of a high cold pressure front.

The cold weather has been blamed for nine deaths in the past week.

With temperatures dipping as low as 23 degrees Farenheight, residents in upstate New York are gathering heating supplies in preparation for sub-zero temperatures anticipated for the rest of the week.

Some areas are even starting to run out of oil stocks. A man in Woodstock, New York said they tried at least 12 companies, and “everybody is tapped out.”

“One of the small companies we called said the bigger oil companies have been calling them to see if they have backlogs of oil. It is starting to appear as if there is a shortage,” he said. “I don’t know if this cold spell was anticipated.”

Authorities opened warming shelters in the South as temperatures dipped close to zero in Alabama and Georgia. In Aberdeen, South Dakota, the mercury dropped to a record-breaking minus 32.

Georgia

 

Virginia

South Dakota

New Jersey

Because of the Polar blast, the US burned the most natural gas ever on Monday, breaking a record set during the so-called polar vortex that blanketed the nation’s eastern half with arctic air in 2014. America consumed 143 billion cubic feet of gas as temperatures dipped to the lowest level in decades on New Year’s Day, topping the previous high of 142 billion from four years ago, data from PointLogic Energy show, via Bloomberg

Natgas

“Now that we have some really cold weather, I think it will be the litmus for the bulls and the bears,” said Tom Saal, senior vice president of energy trading at FCStone Latin America. “We should see some pretty significant withdrawals” from storage.

In Alpine, Wisconsin, a dozen elk had to be rescued after they fell through the ice.

“About a dozen elk were roped, lassoed and dragged to safety Fri morning after they fell through the ice into Palisades Reservoir in Alpine, WY,” tweeted Mike Seidel from Wisconsin.

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