Ocasio-Cortez Issues Open-Border Battle Cry; “We Have To Occupy All Of It”

New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for progressive protesters to expand their nation-wide physical blockade of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) buildings. 

The Democratic Socialist now wants the “resistance” to occupy border crossings and airports as part of their ongoing protests over the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy of enforcing existing immigration laws, which most notably resulted in the separation of nearly 3,000 migrant children from their families. While this also happened under former Presidents Obama and Bush, Trump’s tough stance on border security has led to more of such cases. 

Watch (comments begin just after the 52-minute mark):

“We have to occupy all of it,” said Ocasio-Cortez during a Monday interview with Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman.We need to occupy every airport. We need to occupy every border. We need to occupy every ICE office until those kids are back with their parents, period.”

“There is no convenient time” to “stand up against human rights violations,” said the Democratic Socialist. 

“I may have had a primary three days after I went down there, but we’re not going to win if we don’t stand for everything,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We have to show people that we’re willing to walk the walk and put our money where our mouth is,” she said. 

“Our nation is in a moral crisis,” she added. “Every day that we allow the continued violation of those children’s rights is the day that I believe the moral character of the United States is at stake.” 

Ocasio-Cortez then suggested that those who are opposed to the “Abolish ICE” campaign don’t understand ICE’s role within the US Immigration system. 

First of all, ICE is not [U.S. Customs and Border Protection,]” she said. “When we talk about abolishing ICE, we’re talking about ending family detention. We’re talking about ending an agency and ending a practice and a structure that is not accountable to the U.S. Department of Justice, that often takes on things that look a lot like enforcement activities,” she said. 

“So to have an enforcement agency that operates outside of the accountability of the Department of Justice, it’s no surprise to see the violations of civil and human rights that we’re seeing right now.” 

The Democratic Socialist said that the movement to abolish ICE is “an implicit rejection of the current administration’s policies.” 

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez’s passionate plea was silence by House GOP leaders, after they quashed a contentious floor vote on a Democratic measure to abolish ICE. Instead – they are voting Wednesday to support the agency.

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Luongo: “US Politics Is Reaching A Breaking Point”

Authored by Tom Luongo,

It’s become clear to me U.S. politics is reaching a breaking point.  The level of hysteria over Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin is wholly disproportionate to what actually occurred.

Putin declared the Cold War over.  Pat Buchanan agrees and so do I.  For as much grief as I give Donald Trump for his many missteps in foreign policy, his going to first Singapore and then Helsinki in the service of peace and better relations is more than commendable.

It was necessary.

Donald Trump may not be the President many of us wanted.

But, like it or not, he is both the president we have and the one we deserve.  Our politics have been on a collision course with the bottom of the cesspit since 9/11.

We have bathed in the waters of “the archipelago of War Party think tanks beavering away inside the Beltway,” as Buchanan put it in his recent article, and come out stinking like either liberal interventionists or neoconservatives.

Or do I repeat myself.

Both are in service of a greatly-expanded Deep State and corrupted political and financial class that is the height of what Sam Francis termed “Anarcho-Tyranny.”  Lawlessness for those with power and both ends of the truncheon for those without.

The net result is a corporate media that is the very definition of fascism. I’m talkin Mussolini here, not the meaningless pablum of the frothing Twitterati of Soros’ and Brock’s “Resistance.”

Just take the phrase “All within the State, nothing outside the State” and replace ” the State” with “our State of Insanity,” and you’ve got it nailed.

As I wrote recently for Strategic Culture Foundation:

“Trump’s opponents both from members of the Deep State and media as well as those citizens supporting ‘The Resistance’ are so unhinged they have become indistinguishable from Colonel Jack T. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.

I swear I saw a tweet from Obama Administration CIA Director John Brennan discussing bodily fluids, but I may have misread it.

They have nurtured their own angst and denial at having lost an election and erected a bogeyman in Vladimir Putin as the only way in which the disgusting Trump could possibly have won.”

Given the best these people can do is hang Trump with the term ‘traitor’ so casually is prima facia evidence of 1) their desperation and 2) their insanity.  Trump cannot be a traitor for going out and executing one of the main functions of the President, meeting with foreign leaders.

The insanity stoked by real traitors like James Comey, John Brennan, Bill Browder, and John McCain who did conspire with foreign governments (the U.K., Ukraine and yes, Russia) to bring down a sitting President has people still believing that they can overturn the election and award the Presidency to Hillary Clinton ex post facto.

As lawless as the United States has become, even that is a little beyond the pale… but only just a little.

From Russia With Love

Vladimir Putin took a cue from Trump’s masterful handling of the media to inject a few tons of reality into the minds of people all around the world.  Remember, most people in the U.S. have never heard Putin speak.

Most only see him the way the media and want you to see him, since most Americans are quite busy people living their over-stuffed and over-stressed lives. But, many understand the importance of Trump and Putin sitting down to air grievances and exchange offers.

Because they are still rational enough to fear two nuclear powers not on speaking terms.

Putin declared the Cold War over, even though it wasn’t of his design.  Trump, for his part, said U.S./Russian relations have never been worse but that changed a few hours previous.

A collective sigh of relief went up from billions around the world as the Two Most Hated Men in the Western World mutually declared that peace between us was far more important than politics.

And the only thing the political class could do was wail.

Putin took every opportunity to speak directly to Trump’s base, knowing that if he mentioned something they would look into it.

This is why he specifically brought up Misters Browder and George Soros.   He wants the coverage of Russia and himself to change.  And those two men, along with David Brock, spend a lot of time maintaining the Putin-as-Cthulhu meme.

If anything this was the most influential thing a Russian has done to affect a U.S. election since the fall of the Soviet Union, given the size of the audience.

Nothing some Russian internet trolls or even members of his Intelligence Services could come close.  That we have become so brittle, so thin-skinned and frankly so childish as to believe that some guys poking around in John Podesta’s e-mail box is the height of national security says more about us than about them.

Trump is Truly Pro-Life

At the end of the day Trump made the salient point about the investigation into Russia’s interference into the election by bringing up the servers that the FBI still has not examined.

Trump said simply, “Prove the allegation.  Prove that there was malfeasance and I’ll take that to Mr. Putin.”  But, they can’t prove it.

And in all of the foaming condemnation of Trump for refusing to accept the word of the intelligence agencies on this issue one very important point seems to be forgotten.

If Trump is so illegitimate because of Russian interference in our election, which is now a given according to Paul Ryan and if the proof exists and the Intelligence agencies who are without reproach have this proof then can someone on the Gods Green Earth Tell Me…

…WHY IS THIS MAN STILL PRESIDENT?

If our hard-working, salt-of-the-earth members of Federal Law Enforcement and Intelligence Community are so competent that it is “treasonous” to suggest otherwise by their boss, then why have they allowed this ‘traitorous scumbag’ to continue discharge his duties of the Office of the President of the United States?

If they know this and can prove it why haven’t they done this yet?  To not do so, knowing a traitor sits in the White House acting on behalf of a foreign government is itself treason.

Those of you reading this who just know in your heart of hearts that Trump is a Russian spook, secretly in the employ of Putin, I ask you why is it so hard for you to confront this basic question?

You base this ‘knowledge’ on the fact that 17 U.S. Intelligence Agencies said they are confident Russia interfered with the election.  And yet, these same people cannot and will not indict Trump or coerce him into resigning.

Nixon resigned when he was caught.  It was obvious to everyone.

The problem is that now, after all this time, there is no credible argument against Trump.  And every day those crying ‘treason’ are doing so to a smaller and smaller echo chamber.

Just like Misters Soros and Browder are speaking to a smaller and smaller group of people who believe Vladimir Putin is the devil himself.  Soros came out and admitted recently that he’s losing on all fronts.

“I’m standing for principles whether I win or lose,” Soros told me this spring. But, he went on, “unfortunately, I’m losing too much in too many places right now.”

The net is closing on Browder as the sun is setting on his influence in Congress.  John McCain is dying, there will be a complete overhaul of The House and Senate this fall which will eventually lead to the repeal of the odious Magnitsky Act.

Browder is scared that Trump makes good on Putin’s offer to Mr. Mueller so he’s on every dead-legacy news outlet with fewer viewers than QVC at 3am pleading his case.

Millions just went to Putin’s awful Russia and had the time of their lives.

The real traitors are squawking today because they know who they are.  Trump and Putin spoke to a world tired of their games and tired of the lies.

While things still suck, thanks to both of them for now at least, we can be reasonably sure the bombs will stay in their silos.

And this is something the New Dr. Strangelove’s of the Left are lamenting.

*  *  *

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Michael Cohen’s “Taxi King” Partner Sued for Not Making His Ferrari Payments

Evgeny “Gene” Friedman has been dubbed in the past as New York City’s “taxi king”. This was because he owned and operated over 800 cabs for numerous NYC Medallion holders. Over the course of time, business fared him well enough that he was able to finance not one – but two Ferraris – both of which are now part of a lawsuit being lodged against Friedman by Ferrari Financial Services.


(Photo source: Bloomberg)

Friedman has recently pled guilty to state tax charges, which initially set off speculation that he may be working with prosecutors. According to Bloomberg, he was also recently ordered by a Brooklyn judge to pay $1.3 million “to a former accounts-payable manager who claimed she was sexually harassed and wrongfully fired. Freidman was accused of making unwanted sexual comments, bullying and making explicit comments about the employee’s body.”

Today, Bloomberg reported  that Friedman is also being sued for not making the required monthly payments on his Ferraris, both of which total nearly $750,000.

Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, who had operated more than 800 cabs in New York, was sued by Ferrari Financial Services for failing to keep up payments on his $384,000 458 Speciale and his $362,000 Ferrari FF. The lender claims he stopped making monthly payments on the cars in March and April, just weeks before he pleaded guilty to state tax charges.

Ferrari 458 Speciale

This wouldn’t be all that interesting, save for the fact that one of the Medallion holders that Friedman operates cabs for happens to be President Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. This has caused speculation that Friedman may actually be working with authorities who may or may not be working with Michael Cohen.

We previously reported on former Trump lawyer Cohen “declaring his independence” from Trump. Michael Cohen’s new attorney said that Cohen, previously known as Donald Trump’s “fixer,” declared “independence” during a July 2 interview with George Stephanopoulos when he said he would not be a “punching bag” for Trump’s defense strategy.

“I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy,” Cohen told Stephanopoulos. “I am not a villain in any story and won’t allow others to try and depict me in that way.”

Lanny Davis – Cohen’s attorney and longtime friend of the Clintons, made the comment during an interview with The Hill’s Rising which aired Wednesday. 

“There’s a reason that he said at the very end of the interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos that he took these contrary positions to Mr. Trump, who he previously said he would take a bullet for, a comment that I believe he would not say today,” Davis said, adding “The reason he said is, ‘I will not be a punching bag as part of somebody else’s defense strategy.’ This was a declaration of independence two days before July 4.”

Stephanopoulos asked Cohen if Trump had directed him to make that $130K hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Cohen previously claimed he paid the cash out of own pocket without direction from Trump or any promise of reimbursement. This time Cohen answered, “I want to answer. One day I will answer. But for now I can’t comment further on advice of my counsel.”

“A very, very big signal,” Stephanopoulos translated this morning on GMA. 

Similarly, Cohen signaled he would have something to say in “official form” about whether President Trump knew in advance of that Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian attorney with entourage, the latter team allegedly promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trump has insisted he was not aware of the meeting. –Deadline Hollywood

Davis then rattled off a list of reasons why Cohen and Trump are nowhere near agreement on various official government positions.

He [Cohen] mentioned the FBI and said he respected the FBI as an institution, and actually thanked them even though they raided his offices. Donald Trump has said the opposite. 

He then said he believes the intelligence community’s assessment unanimously that Russia meddled in the election, and then he went on to say anyone that believes Mr. Putin can’t sustain that position. Exactly the opposite from Mr. Trump. 

Then he said that he does not understand that Trump tower meeting, he thought it was a dumb decision – something that Mr. Trump wouldn’t necessarily like to hear. –Lanny Davis

When asked to opine on the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election and whether he thought there was any criminal behavior described in the Inspector General’s report, Davis said he saw no criminal behavior by any of the subjects of the report, and that former FBI Director James Comey’s “terrible judgement” cost Hillary the election. 

* * *

As for Friedman’s Ferraris, since the embattled “taxi king” appears to be going through a bit of a cashflow crunch at this moment, if anyone were to offer him a lowball proposal to take over the payments, the bid would almost surely be hit.

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Greenfield: More Democrats Believe In UFOs Than America

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

  • 58% of Democrats believe in UFOs, but only 32% are proud to be American.

  • Only 37% of Republicans believe in flying saucers, but a full 80% are proud of their country.

Almost twice as many Democrats are willing to believe in being abducted by space aliens than in their country. Hillary Clinton had promised that if elected, she would find out the truth about the little green men and suggested that the planet had already been visited by aliens.

“Maybe we could have, like, a task force to go to Area 51,” she suggested.

The chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John Podesta, an obsessive UFO buff, appeared on an episode of Ancient Aliens which claimed that Hillary Clinton was defeated to suppress the truth about space aliens.

Like Podesta, the Democrat (space rather than illegal) alien obsession dates back to Bill’s era. When Bill Clinton appointed Webster Hubbell as his Associate Attorney General, he gave him two priorities.

“If I put you over at Justice I want you to find the answers to two questions for me,” Hubbell recalled. “One, who killed JFK. And two, are there UFOs.”

Hubbell didn’t find any UFOs, but he had to resign after only serving a year and was sent to jail for fraud.

The Clintons may have picked up their flying saucer obsession from Laurance S. Rockefeller, a environmentalist UFO obsessive and major Clinton donor who got them involved in his UFO Initiative. Hillary may have just been grifting an old man who contributed to their legal defense fund, but there’s no reason to think a woman who responded to the Republican midterm victories of ’94 with a séance that consulted Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t believe what most of her fellow Democrats do.

Laurance S. Rockefeller was a founding trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which recently underwrote the push for a nuclear Iran while insisting that its nuclear weapons program didn’t exist.

According to the party that “believes” in science, Iranian nukes don’t exist, but flying saucers do.

All this helps explain why the Democrats were so quick to retreat into conspiracy theories after losing the 2016 election. Just as they did after the JFK assassination and the 2000 election. It’s natural for them to believe the worst of a country they already distrust. The left’s core beliefs are a series of conspiracy theories about class, race and gender. These conspiracy theories explain everything from crime rates to poverty to social problems. Most leftist programs are geared toward fighting a conspiracy by white people, by men, by the wealthy and the middle class that doesn’t exist except in the minds of the left.

America has been shattered by generations of social policies that completely bypass the problems they’re trying to solve from the inner city to the campus because they’re too busy getting revenge against the evil white male conspirators by making it harder for them to get into college or get a job.

That’s what happens when you turn over the country to Marxists watching the sky for lights and watching social statistics for any discrepancy that they can blame on the white male conspiracy. The inability to understand the difference between correlation and causation that trips up so many conspiracy theorists is also the disparate impact claim underlying the left’s allegations of discrimination.

And disparate impact simply means that all correlation must imply racist causation.

If a job requires a high school diploma, if there are laws against littering or if a standardized test is demanding, and more black people are disadvantaged by that, that is disparate impact. And disparate impact proves a racist conspiracy that requires state intervention. No matter how dubiously legal.

Adding new conspiracy theories to the central leftist conspiracy theory is easy. UFOs, Russians rigging elections and CIA Cubans killing JFK are small potatoes compared to the conviction, expressed in so many leftist texts from Marx’s Das Kapital to Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, that all the beliefs you grew up with are a lie and everything around you is the end result of a vast conspiracy.

Democrats are the party least likely to know that the earth revolves around the sun once a year. Only between 48% to 27% of the enlightened supporters of the Party of Science actually knew this.

45% of liberals believe in astrology. Only 23% are proud of America.

Three-quarters of Democrats believe that thoughts can influence the physical world. Over half believe in ghosts.

Almost a third of Democrats, twice as many as Republicans, believe in “spiritual energy”. 35% of liberals compared to 18% of conservatives are believers.

A fifth of Democrats fear the “evil eye”.

If you can name a superstition, knocking on wood, walking under ladders or stepping on a crack, polls show that Democrats are more likely to believe in it.

Democrats are 60% more likely to fear black cats than Republicans (so much for the anti-racist party) and 33% more likely to fear the number 13.

The rational and enlightened elite who want to make all our decisions are also 54% more likely to think that opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck.

A fifth of Democrats believe it’s unlucky to walk under a ladder. Nearly a fifth believe in fortune telling.

The left liked to think that dispensing with the old truths of G-d and country would make them smarter and more rational. Instead it reverted them to the paranoid superstitions of paganism.

Instead of moving forward to the fabled “right side of history”, they’re retreating into pre-history.

They haven’t replaced G-d with reason, but with flying saucers, storefront psychics, black cats, bad luck ladders and umbrellas, the wrath of Mother Earth, safe spaces, and the magical powers of dolphins.

They haven’t replaced nationalism with the enlightened embrace of the entire human race, but with a paranoid racial and political tribalism which is eager to believe the very worst of outsiders. Instead of transcending the nation for the world, they’ve become hostile toward most of the country. They haven’t become broadminded. Instead they’ve lost even the broadmindedness that Americans used to have.

Their policies not only haven’t made the world better, but they haven’t made them better people.

50 years after HUAC vanished into the mists of time, they’re finding Russians under every tree. 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, they’re frantically defending racial preferences in education. Their vaunted journalism has been reduced to an outrage machine feeding them insane conspiracy theories. One week, Trump is a Russian spy. The other, his family is in league with China. One week, he’s about to destroy us by going to war with North Korea. The next week, he’s selling us out to North Korea.

The Democrats have learned to love xenophobic nationalism in the service of tribal ideologism. The Party of Peace fears the rest of the world as much as the Party of Science believes in spooks and UFOs.

Democrats inhabit a demon-haunted world of superstitions and conspiracies. Instead of being enlightened, they were robbed of the confidence in the Creator and America that resounds from every patriotic Fourth of July anthem and song. They sold their birthright for the pottage of fear and hate.

They cower in safe spaces, fear the other and live their lives in the shadow of irrational terrors.

Unable to function as citizens of a society, they retreat into conspiracy theories and plot to bring down their country while replacing it with a utopia based on magical thinking and its sordid orgy of blood.

Having lost faith in G-d and country, it is easier for them to believe in flying saucers than in America. 

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“Get The F*** Out:” Gun Store Owner Confronts Sacha Baron Cohen After He Enters In Disguise

Sacha Baron Cohen has duped dozens of high-profile politicians and celebrities, including Sarah Palin and a handful of Congressmen, who are featured in segments on his new show “Who Is America?” While watching the thinly disguised actor deliver his absurd questions, it’s almost impossible not to wonder: How do these people fall for this? But even an actor as skilled as Cohen isn’t able to dupe everybody.

So when one gun store owner in Riverside, Calif. recognized Cohen mid-shoot, things got a little testy. Norris Sweidan, the owner of Warrior One Guns & Ammo, recounted his story to Fox 11.

The incident unfolded at Warrior One Guns & Ammo in February 2017. Owner Norris Sweidan said Cohen and a camera crew met him at his store, claiming to be filming a documentary about a Hungarian immigrant wanting to buy a gun. Immediately, Sweidan said, something about the situation just didn’t seem right.

“He comes in, off the bat you can see in the video I’m looking like, this guy does not look like a Hungarian immigrant, tight ass leather pants, a beard, it just didn’t fit,” Sweidan said. “The moment his words came out of his mouth I was like this guy is full of s***.”

As soon as Sweidan realized who he was dealing with, he called Cohen out…

“I’m looking at the producer and I’m just like am I being fooled right here?” Sweidan said. “And I just kept looking at the guy and I was like you’re Borat, as soon as I said that his eyes just looked at me like, and he did a turn right out the door.”

…Prompting Cohen to walk out and leave his crew behind.

“We’re talking to the people they don’t wanna give us an answer, we basically told them to get the f*** out, you guys are all full of s***, have a great day, get out,” Sweidan said.

Sweidan said he immediately realized what Cohen was up to, and was not pleased.

“Once I knew it was Borat, we already know his game and his bull*****, so we knew he’s here to make a mockery, and of what? Gun owners? The gun business, gun shops,” Sweidan said.

The gun store owner also had a few choice words for the “firearm advocates” who appeared in Cohen’s promotional video for his mock “Kinder Guardians” program.

“You’ve got some gun advocate holding a bunny on some gun, if you’re a gun advocate, what the f*** are you doing holding a gun with a bunny on it, really?” He said.

He added that Cohen picked the wrong gun-store owner to mess with and also had some choice words for Showtime.

“He was fake, the producers were fake, the show was fake, and Showtime is fake to be honest with you,” he said. “They want a real story, come talk to us. Well give you a real story.”

Sweidan said he believes his shop was targeted because he’s in the process of filming a pilot at the well-known location. With the release of his new show, Cohen has found himself at the center of controversy over his decision to disguise himself as a wounded veteran to fool Palin, which has led to demands that he be arrested for violating the “Stolen Valor Act” (it’s illegal to impersonate a veteran in the US). And while Cohen has clearly started working with a talented team of makeup artists, given all of this notoriety, we imagine it’ll only become more difficult for him to continue fooling would-be marks.

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Strangest Things: America Is ‘The Upside Down’

Authored by Doug ‘Uncola’ Lynn via TheTollOnline.com,

Why should Trump give any credence to the intelligence agencies who first tried to prevent, and later subvert, his presidency?

You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

– Margaret Atwood

The above quote, attributed to the author of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, is seemingly representative of the elite establishment today in their dystopian zeal to erase the presidency of Donald Trump.  How? By means of manufacturing an Attitudinal New Reality complete with Orwellian-style and Twilight Zone-type narratives reminiscent of the “Upside Down” , the other-worldly dimension of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”.

Of course, where we are today was likely inevitable from the start.

When businessman Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States, he was ridiculed by the political establishment, Hollywood, and the Corporate Mainstream Media.  When it appeared that he could actually win, the U.S. Intelligence Agencies, under President Obama, spied on Candidate Trump and set up members of his team for a grand scheme of entrapment arranged by former CIA Director, and perjurist, John Brennan; even as corrupt high-ranking officials in the FBI, like James Comey, arranged for Hillary Clinton’s crimes to be swept under the political rug.

Soon, we heard about wiretaps at Trump Tower and illegal unmasking by former National Security Director Susan Rice, even as Wikileaks released the password to Vault 7, also known as: “The Largest Ever Publication of Confidential CIA Documents” where a program entitled UMBRAGE was revealed. It was a formerly top-secret initiative whereby American intelligence agencies could mimic internet hacks from other countries, including Russia.

Unsurprisingly, the alleged mastermind behind “Vault 7 was recently indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice after being arrested for child porn on his computer, just as the Pakistani-Intelligence operative , Imran Awan, was let off the hook by an Obama appointed judge; because there was “no evidence” that congressional computer systems were compromised by Awan after a Democratic Party caucus server was replaced by a look-alike.

Paradoxically even WikiLeaks now says the murder of Democratic National Committee employee, Seth Rich, has been contradicted by Rod Rosenstein’s “July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents”:

The [Seth Rich] murder spawned several right-wing conspiracy theories, including the false claim that Rich had been involved with the leaked DNC emails in 2016, contradicted by the July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents for hacking the e-mail accounts and networks of Democratic Party officials and by the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion the leaked DNC emails were part of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Law enforcement as well as fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com, Snopes.com, and FactCheck.org stated that these theories were false and unfounded. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post called the fabrications fake news and falsehoods.

Wow.  Someone moved fast there, didn’t they? WikiLeaks, PolitiFact.com, Snopes.com, and FactCheck.org all claim there is nothing to see in the Seth Rich murder. Indeed, it appears all of the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted and all of the bases are covered.

Put a bow on it.  It’s a wrap.

Except Jack Burkman, a Washington-based attorney and lobbyist who has worked with a private investigative team to find the killer of DNC staffer, Seth Rich, recently claimed to have found a “credible” witness who will identify the murderers of Seth Rich as “a current DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent” and a “current ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent”.

Moreover, we do know because of the GOP Groundhog Day 2018 Memo, that Hillary Clinton and the DNC financed the Russian Dossier on Trump and, according to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, it was used to finally obtain the FISA warrant required to spy on Team Trump. The 90-day surveillance warrant on Carter Page was then renewed three times. It appears this was done in order to dig up political dirt and diminish Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 Presidential Election and, later, to undermine his presidency.  At the same time, the culprits specifically named in the memo (i.e. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr) seemingly conspired to bury the multifarious crimes of Hillary Clinton.

A mole in Trump’s campaign was also later revealed as Steven Halper,a 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official who was paid over $1 million by the Obama administration including $411,575 that was made in two payments by September 26, 2016.  That date was three days after a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff on Trump aide, Carter Page, that the FBI later used as supporting evidence in the FISA warrant application for Page.

Then, after Trump won the election, the phony Russian conspiracy was utilized:

1.) By online social networks to censor the alternative media

2.) By President Obama to sign into law the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act”on December 23, 2016

3.) By Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, to feloniously unmask Trump administration officials

4.) By Democrats and the Media to pressure the new president’s National  Security Advisor to resign and the nation’s new Attorney General to recuse himself from the Russia investigation

5.) By deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint his trusted, dear friend and collaborator, Robert Mueller, as Special Counsel to investigate President Trump’s non-existent collusion with Russia

6.) By Robert Mueller to transition the imaginary Russiagate Collusion into allegations of Obstruction of Justice against Trump for firing former FBI Director, James Comey

7.) By Robert Mueller to obtain minor process crimes on Paul Manafort (Trump’s former campaign chairman), Rick Gates (business associate of Manafort), George Papadopoulos (Trump’s former foreign policy advisor) and Michael Flynn (Trump’s former national security advisor)

But wait. There’s more.

In apparent  “violation of Justice Department policies and, perhaps, legal prohibitions on disclosure of grand jury secrets”, it appears that AP reporters and FBI agents colluded in a conspiracy against Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; who, two days after America celebrated Independence Day 2018, remained in solitary confinement.

Now, because of the ongoing efforts of Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and his personally appointed Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, it seems President Trump’s attorney client privileges have been summarily rescinded; as former President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both whistle past the graveyard.

Of course, this is exactly what deep state operatives like Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein do; they investigate others for crimes they themselves have committed.  Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special council signed off on at least one of the misrepresented, and therefore illegal, FISA applications to spy on Donald Trump.  Moreover, it was Rosenstein who advised President Trump to fire Robert Mueller’s close friend and associate, James Comey; an act for which Mueller might still one day attempt to bring an obstruction of justice charge against Trump.

Mueller was also former president Obama’s director of the FBI when the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation received $145 million in Uranium One payments for selling twenty-percent of America’s uranium deposits to Russia.

Former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp said what Hillary Clinton did with her charity and Uranium One is the biggest espionage case involving government officials in the history of this country, and “that James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, was protecting her and leaking things to the media and lying” and that John Brennan, Director of the CIA, protected “her by starting a false investigation (on Trump) and stirring things up with this (false/unverified) dossier”.

And, who led the investigation into the Uranium One sale? It was Rod Rosenstein, the same troll who hired his best friend, Robert Mueller, to investigate Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting dizzy with all those spinning concentric circles of corruption.

But that’s not all…

– Last month, questions were raised as to why Imran Awan, who was under investigation for illegally accessing confidential information on Congressional computer systems, was answering phones at his law firm, which had connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

– During FBI agent Peter Strzok’s testimony to Congress, Jim Jordon (R-Ohio) got the former FBI agent to admit that the FBI received the Hillary Clinton Funded “Golden Shower” dossier on Trump from the FBI’s Bruce Orr (whose wife worked for Fusion GPS) – which was an astounding admission on internal collusion – before Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee interrupted the exchange.

– Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said during the hearing with former FBI official, Peter Strzok, that the Inspector General discovered that nearly all of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails were sent to a foreign entity and that the FBI didn’t follow-up on that finding.

– It was furthermore revealed that FBI agent Peter Strzok, himself, actually knew Clinton’s emails were in the hands of a foreign entity, that a whistleblower from the State Department tried delivering significant evidence in the Clinton email investigation which went nowhere, and that Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, was called four times from someone wanting to brief him about it and Horowitz never returned the call.

– In the aftermath of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claiming that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had “personally redacted information and threatened House Intelligence Committee staffers” and Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert telling a TV morning show that he believed government personnel working for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were spying on his office, NBC News reported the following:

Powerful GOP Rep. Jim Jordan accused of turning blind eye to sexual abuse as Ohio State wrestling coach

 

“It’s sad for me to hear that he’s denying,” said one former wrestler. “I don’t know why he would, unless it’s a cover-up.”

 

–   It was later reported that the law firm investigating the accusations against Jim Jordan were also involved in the FISA abuse scandal by assisting both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to fund the now discredited Steele Dossier.

–   Days after the decades old sexual scandal slurs against Republican Congressman Jim Jordan were resurrected in the media, Jordan’s 21 year-old nephew died in a car crash in Illinois.

Coincidences?  Sure.

But now, the kicker:

In an effort to divert publicity away from the Capitol Hill testimony of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, and to subvert President Trump’s ongoing efforts toward peace with Russia, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the Mueller Investigation’s single indictment of Twelve Russian intelligence officers for alleged election hacking under President Obama’s watch; even though, according to Rosenstein “no American was a knowing participant” in the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and there was “no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election” .

Immediately following the indictments, Trump Tweeted these questions:

“Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?

This, as the veteran GOP political operative, Roger Stone, said he was the ‘U.S. person’ mentioned in the Mueller indictment of the 12 Russians.

Then, as initial claims were made that Republicans were preparing to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein because they felt Rosenstein had “continually stonewalled their investigation into corruption at the FBI” – Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) suddenly ruled out the possibility of impeaching Rosenstein, saying there was “not enough support for his ouster”.

The evening before his historic meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump lamented the “hatred and dissension” in the U.S. and Tweeted that “no matter what he achieves in Helsinki, journalists will bash him for being not good enough or for kowtowing to Putin”.

Just prior to his meet with Russian President Putin, Donald Trump Tweeted:

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

After Trump’s meeting with Putin, the U.S. President called the Russian leader’s denial of election meddling ‘very powerful’ – as Putin said he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, and laughed about the “golden showers” dossier.

In the press conference following their meeting, President Trump shocked the Deep State senseless by again raising legitimate (and still unanswered) questions regarding the Democratic National Committee’s missing server and Hillary Clinton’s missing emails; as Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed U.S. intelligence agents funneled $400 Million to the Hillary Clinton Campaign.

Just then, the real fun started:

–   In the immediate aftermath of the Trump-Putin meeting, the Obama Administration’s CIA director, John Brennan, charged that President Trump’s post-summit press conference with Russia President Vladimir Putin was an act of treason; as disgraced former FBI Director, James Comey, called for a coup against the sitting president by means of patriots standing up and rejecting Trump’s behavior.

– The New York Times offended many in the LGBT community by posting a homophobic cartoon of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as gay lovers.

– “Just days after special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officials with directing a sprawling hacking effort aimed at swaying the 2016 election” and “just hours after President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin”, federal prosecutors charged an alleged Russian agent and “Gun Rights Activist”, named Maria Butina, for using the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a conduit to influence members of the Republican Party.

–  In the wake of the Trump-Putin meeting, Russia’s elite and media celebrated the meeting as victory for Putin and “an end to the West’s attempt to isolate Russia”, as U.S. cable news network’s saw “the apocalypse”, Trump as a worse-case-scenario Russian mole, and Trump’s Helsinki performance as an act that will ‘Live in Infamy’ as much as “Pearl Harbor” or “Kristallnacht”.

–  And for the cherry on top:  Former U.S. President Barack Obama, while on foreign soil, disparaged “strongman politics” and called today’s times “strange and uncertain”, before adding that “each day’s news cycle is bringing more head-spinning and disturbing headlines”.

Anyone not clueless or pathologically self-deceived realizes if Trump had acknowledged, during the Helsinki press conference with Putin, any meddling in accordance to the contrived findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation – the mainstream media would have insinuated what they have all along:  That Trump, colluded with Russia to win the election.

That is what they want people to believe.

Except Trump didn’t, initially, play according to their rules. Instead, he brought up the missing DNC server again to a collective gasp from a worldwide audience.

And that was why we witnessed the outright panic of Deep State tools and their drones in the Corporate Mainstream Media Bubble; all of whom have created an alternate reality.

Although Trump has now said he misspoke and acknowledges the Russian meddling, all of the other information is still available out there for anyone to see.  However, Orwellian Propaganda and a Perceived Phony Parallel Universe will likely make it impossible for a talented reality TV star to ever sway the people who voted for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Recently, it was reported that the Democrats now lead the GOP by 12 million registered voters.

Nevertheless, it appears the deep state is still making plays as they continue to run out the clock until the 2018 Midterm Elections.  Even then, Trump’s fate will remain in polling booths populated by mushy-minded, lukewarm Independent Voters rallying to overcome fake news and censorshipin order to save America.

Not exactly fertile ground to plant flowers of hope, but of course anything can happen.

Regardless of who wins, however, the losers will not accept the results as the U.S. continues to unravel like Hillary Clinton’s neural synapses.

All the snowflakes can hear now is Trump’s treason with Putin. This is because, in a bullshit world, optics are everything.

As I consider the American Sheeple, and post this article about the manifestation of the Advertised New Reality, I remain haunted by a quote from Netflix’s “Stranger Things”, Season 2, Episode 5 – where a vodka-drinking, bearded, balding man wearing a robe and sporting circa 1960’s Austin Powers-type eyeglasses exclaimed:

You’re being naive, Nancy! Those people… They’re not wired like me and you, okay? They don’t spend their lives trying to get a look at what’s behind the curtain. They LIKE the curtain. It provides them stability, comfort, definition.

This… this would OPEN the curtain, and the curtain BEHIND that curtain, okay? So the minute someone with an ounce of authority calls bullshit, everyone will nod their heads and say, “See? Ha! I knew it! It was bullshit.”

That is if you even get their attention at all.

In the aftermath of FBI agent Peter Strzok’s appearance before Congress, the full Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal said:

President Trump will have to declassify a host of documents if he wants Americans to learn the truth about what happened in 2016.

Will Trump do that? Would it make any difference if he did?  Stay tuned.

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Bannon: “We’re At War With China…And We Will Win”

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon gave what was possibly his strongest live interview in recent memory (to be fair, he hasn’t given many since leaving the White House) on Wednesday when he sat down with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera at CNBC’s “Delivering Alpha” conference to discuss President Trump’s geopolitical strategy, the controversy over his performance in Helsinki and the greater purpose of President Trump’s trade war. Bannon, who looked clean-cut and unusually healthy, offered an articulate, coherent explanation of how President Trump is upending the unsustainable liberal world order and standing up to America’s biggest foes with his actions, if not always his words. Meanwhile, Bannon convincingly portrayed Trump’s political opponents as hysterics and prigs who are too focused on optics and parroting the “opposition party” media narrative.

In what was perhaps his most salient claim, Bannon insisted that President Trump’s trade war will be remembered not as the economy-wrecking disaster but with a triumph that will save the US economy.

Unsurprisingly, Caruso-Cabrera opened the interview by asking Bannon for his take on President Trump’s controversial performance in Helsinki, which drew condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike.

“The opposition media missed the point…up until the last part, when he talked about the meddling and the collusion, [the press conference with Putin] was fine. I think the president has done a terrific job.”

If Trump appeared too willing to tolerate Russia’s illegal meddling, he clearly took Putin to task over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, which some would describe as the biggest threat to NATO’s security, given Germany and much of Europe’s dependence on Russia for energy. Russia’s success in courting Europe as a customer and its alliance with Syria were too major failures of previous presidents, including Obama and Bush. Trump, Bannon said, has actually been harder on Russia than any other president since the 1980s.

Bannon on Russian meddling from CNBC.

American foreign policy for 50 to 60 years was to keep Russia out of the Middle East…all of these super patriots…where were they on their watch? Was his command presence as strong as it was in Singapore? No. But it was a different environment.

Clearly, the problem isn’t Trump – it’s the mainstream media that focuses on “marginal optics” over the substance of the president’s actions.

The mainstream media jumps on the marginal optics – ‘its treason’ and ‘he didn’t support the intelligence community’. Let’s talk about Clapper and all these super patriots. Now, the president sometimes conflates the meddling and the collusion. Certainly the meddling is wrong…but President Obama kind of stood down.

Moving on to Trump’s performance in Brussels earlier this month, Bannon argued that if Trump is being brusque with America’s partners in NATO, it’s only pursuance of an important goal: Transforming the other NATO members into true partners, rather than “protectorates.”

Bannon: Donald Trump is trying to save NATO, doesn’t want protectorate from CNBC.

I thought the visit to NATO and the UK could’ve taken place on Nov. 7. Donald Trump has done more than any other president to save NATO. That visit – if you take the whole totality of it. Look what he did with NATO. What he doesn’t want is a protectorate. The problem we got ourselves in with this liberal rules-based order, it’s a series of commercial relationships, capital markets and American security guarantees…we underwrite the entire thing. None of our allies kick into the till. And the Europeans are the worst. They can’t sit there and tell me what a big threat Russia is when they can’t kick in their 2%. Trump is a business guy he says it’s got to be 2%, it’s got to be now.

Or, put another way:

We’re not an empire…we’re looking for allies we’re not looking for a protectorate.

If President Trump gravitates toward authoritarian leaders, it’s only because he likes “big personalities”.

Bannon on Putin from CNBC.

“He likes strong personalities…they’re strong leaders...I think he’s attracted to Putin because they’re strong leaders, they’re nationalists. If you look at what he does, he leads from strength.

The whole narrative surrounding Russia has been overblown, Bannon argued. Russia isn’t America’s greatest geopolitical adversary, as the US media would have you believe. Compared with China, Russia is an “annoyance.”

Bannon: We’re at an economic war with China from CNBC.

Russia is an annoyance. China is our great challenge. Russia’s economy is the size of Texas or New York State? It’s got lots of nuclear weapons…but in today’s warfare…nuclear weapons are taking a less important role. Trump is trying to end the Cold War and the Korean War…and all he is getting is grief from the globalists.

And that’s a huge problem, because not only are we adversaries with China, we are at war with China, Bannon said.

We’re in a war with China. Ray Dalio tweeted the other day. There’s three types of war: information war, economic war, and guns-up kinetic war. They’ve been at war with us for 25 years. Many people in this room have exacerbated the rise of China.”

Pushing back against the notion that Trump lacks grand foreign policy vision, Trump, like Reagan, is trying to build a foreign policy behind American assertiveness and optimism. Furthermore, the notion that China has advantages over the US in a trade war is laughable; the US can – and will – win, Bannon said.

If they devalue their currency they’re just going to flood more dollars out. That’s what their own people think about their economy. We allowed them to take the South China Sea. Donald Trump is not going to back off this. Donald Trump is not going to blink. Victory is when they give us access to their markets.

This trade war is going to end in victory and what you’re going to see is a reorientation of the entire supply chain out of China.

Bannon on the midterm elections from CNBC.

Bannon is optimistic about the Republicans chances in November. The problem with the Democrats, Bannon said, is they still haven’t come to terms with why they lost to Trump: They abandoned the American worker.

The meddling was on the margin, and the Democrats need to accept this. The collusion – they haven’t found one shred of evidence.

The Democrats have yet to embrace why they lost…[they] have wanted a do-over since 2:30 am on Nov. 9 – and they’ve lied and they’ve bitched and in November they’ll get their do-over…but on November 6, the deplorables will be plenty jacked up.

But in November, voters will render their decision, and whatever they decide it’ll be on Trump’s platform of economic nationalism, which has boosted economic growth and created jobs.

“It’s an up or down vote, the economy, the tax cuts the whole package. I think the Fed’s going to say in the second quarter it’s at 4%…because of economic nationalism.”

Given its strong performance over the past week, bitcoin was a popular topic at “Delivering Alpha”, and the Bannon interview was no exception. Asked if he still owns bitcoin, Bannon said he does.

Bannon on Bitcoin from CNBC.

“I like bitcoin. I own bitcoin…they are the future,” Bannon said, referring to cryptocurrencies. He’s reportedly working on launching an ICO of his own, what he’s called the deplorables coin.

He also reiterated his view on family separation (that, in this instance at least, morality is the law, as Bannon once said.):

Just like with criminals, children need to be separated. Take the emotions out.

Asked about whether he might return to the administration some day, Bannon said he “hated every second” of being in the White House. However, he’s still in close contact with the president and others in the administration.

However, after this interview, we wouldn’t be surprised to see reports about Bannon potentially making a return to the West Wing, given that there’s nothing like a strong cable news performance to win the president’s favor.

Watch the full interview below:

 

Note that CNBC cut the live feed from the “Delivering Alpha” conference and bounced back to their studio guests from the establishment who immediately unleashed their talking points to tear down Bannon’s awkward facts.

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E.U. Hits Google With $5 Billion Ginned-Up Protectionist Fines: New at Reason

The European Union’s antitrust bureaucracy today levied a $5 billion fine on Google, a new European record.

In a statement, the European Commission alleged that Google violated the law in three ways: unlawfully tying its search and browser apps to the Android operating system, paying manufacturers to pre-install Google Search on devices, and making it difficult for device manufacturers to sell “forked” versions of Android, such as versions running Amazon’s Fire OS.

It’s a restatement of the Commission’s preliminary conclusions from 2016, meaning Google’s arguments over the last two years have proven entirely unsuccessful, writes Declan McCullagh.

View this article.

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Billionaire Druckenmiller: “Can We Try Capitalism? Real Capitalism. Give It A Chance”

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Over the weekend I came across a recent speech given by hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller that really lays out the pitiful state of free markets around the world.

Druckenmiller gave the speech a few months ago upon receiving the 2018 Alexander Hamilton award – which is given to a figure that best carries out the spirit of one of America’s Founding Fathers.

The Alexander Hamilton Institute promotes free markets, free trade and limited government.

And Druckenmiller’s speech below is an excellent discussion of where our economy stands today and how government intervention is grossly distorting the economy– not just in the US, but around the world.

I couldn’t agree more with his sentiment. I’ve edited the piece for length, so this is just a series of excerpts. But there’s a link to the full speech at the bottom:

Can we try capitalism? Real capitalism. Give it a chance.

Not the increasingly bastardized version we have been practicing the last two decades.

And then let’s just see whether a capitalist economic system is the most effective way to bring about broad-based prosperity and the flourishing of human dignity.

For eight years I watched the Obama administration disparage the efficacy and fairness of capitalism.

The influence of government increased in every aspect of our lives.
The cost of regulation doubled. Corporate America was attacked in the name of social equality.

And our healthcare system, hard to believe, was made even more inefficient.

Now, I did not support Donald Trump. But, after he was elected, I was at least hopeful that it would represent an inflection point in the trend away from capitalism.

But . . . we missed the golden opportunity to offset some revenue loss and address generational equity when Congress passed tax reform.

Instead, government debt, which has doubled over the last decade, is set to increase to levels only reached during World War II over the next decade.

So we will have sacrificed our future during a relatively peaceful economic period . . . simply because politicians can’t say no.

Finally, let me address a distortion that is one of the greatest threats to a properly functioning capitalist system.

For years now a mix of financial repression and central bank intervention has made long-term interest rates largely determined by government fiat.

Bond-buying by central bankers, commonly referred to as Quantitative Easing (QE), has become so ingrained in current thinking that it is now in the Fed’s conventional toolkit– a tool once reserved for a depression or financial crisis is now to be used at the first inkling of the next recession.

For those of us old enough to have seen the dangers of price controls, they led to shortages, wasted resources, and disincentives to invest in what consumers want.

They inevitably led to an allocation of resources by political actors in another great afront to capitalism.

So, it is most surprising that forty years after wage and price controls were sadly rejected by every economic textbook and policymakers, today we have settled to allowing the most important price of all, long-term interest rates, to be regularly distorted by [the central bank.]

The excuse of this radical monetary policy has been the obsession with a fixed 2.0% inflation targeting rule.

The decimal point shows the absurdity of the exercise: anything below 2.0% was a failure and risked deflation– the boogeyman of the 1930s– to be avoided at all costs.

This has meant that years after the Great Recession ended the Fed has not only kept interest rates below inflation but have accumulated an unprecedented $4.5 trillion on their balance sheet by doing QE.

Global central banks, in part to keep their currencies from appreciating of these overabundant dollars, have followed with $10 trillion of their own.

Now, the irony of this is over the last 700 years inflation has averaged barely over 1% and interest rates have averaged just under 6%. So, we are seeing an unprecedented, ultra-monetary, radical monetary expansion during a time of average, average inflation over the last number of centuries.

Moreover, the three most pernicious deflationary periods of the past century did not start because inflation was too close to zero. They were preceded by asset bubbles.

If I were trying to create a deflationary bust, I would do exact exactly what the world’s central bankers have been doing the last six years. I shudder to think that the malinvestment that occurred over this period.

Corporate debt has soared, but most of it has been used for financial engineering. Bankruptcies have been minimal in the most disruptive economy since the Industrial Revolution.

Who knows how many corporate zombies are out there because free money is keeping them alive?

Individuals have plowed ever-increasing amounts of money into assets at ever-increasing prices, and it is not only the private sector that is getting the wrong message, but Congress as well.

Of all the interventions by the not-so-invisible hand, not allowing the market to set the hurdle rate for investment is the one I see with the highest costs.

Competition is a better tool than price control for protecting consumers. That applies to Amazon AND the bond market.

*  *  *

You can read the full speech here.

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The Latest Target of the Trump Administration’s Anti-Immigration Jihad: Naturalized Americans

The Trump administration’s unquenchable thirst to slam immigrants—unauthorized but also, as I wrote recently, authorizedAmerican Flaghas now taken an even more ominous turn. It is training its sights on a group largely considered sacrosanct: naturalized citizens.

It is reviving a post-9/11 counter-terrorism program called Operation Janus that was disbanded in 2016. The program’s purpose was to stop terrorists from slipping through the cracks in the naturalization process. But the Trump administration is using it to denaturalize citizens who’ve been living in the United States for decades, are married to American citizens, and have no criminal history.

Last September, the administration filed three complaints in federal courts to denaturalize three men who it alleged had obtained naturalization through “fraud.” All three were South Asians—two from Pakistan and one from India. They had come to the United States without proper papers, were ordered deported but obtained citizenship under different names after marrying American citizens. The rap against all of them is that they did not reveal their other names on their citizenship application or that they had been ordered deported.

The administration apparently doesn’t care that none of this would have necessarily nullified their citizenship petition. A deported person can still obtain citizenship if an American citizen marries him or her, as was the case in all these three instances. And the Supreme Court last year unanimously ruled in Maslenjak vs. United States that merely withholding information (such as past names) or even lying is not sufficient grounds to denaturalize someone. The falsehood has to be material to the citizenship application. (Maslenjak involved a Bosnian-Serbian woman who obtained citizenship after lying to immigration authorities about her husband’s role in assisting the Serbian army’s 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.) Anything less, it noted, would open “the door to a world of disquieting consequences,” in which a lie “would always provide a basis for rescinding citizenship,” even if the lie merely resulted from “embarrassment, fear, or a desire for privacy.”

For example, notes The New Yorker’s Masha Green, when he applied for his citizenship in 1989, immigration law banned “aliens afflicted with sexual deviation,” or those suffering from “psychopathic personality,” from entry to the United States. And when he came to this country as a gay fourteen-year-old in 1981, he was aware of his “sexual deviation.” Technically that meant that he should not have entered. But he did and he decided to append a letter to his citizenship application, informing the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he had done so. He still got his citizenship. But many others in his situation might have chosen not to fess up because their families didn’t know or they were ashamed or because that might indeed jeopardize their application even though it shouldn’t.

Still, one court has acquiesced to the Trump administration’s request to strip the citizenship of the man from India, Baljinder Singh. Singh is a Sikh who came to the United States in 1991 under the name of Davinder Singh a few years after India’s ruling regime presided over a Sikh pogrom. He was ordered deported after he failed to show up for an immigration hearing. However, he subsequently filed for asylum but abandoned his application when he married an American woman who sponsored him and put him on the path to citizenship.

The court, at the administration’s behest, has downgraded his status to that of a permanent resident, which means that if he does not appeal or loses his appeal he would be subject to deportation. The other two cases are still pending.

What’s particularly troubling about Singh’s case is that although the administration claims that it is targeting naturalized citizens with past criminal records, it didn’t outline any such record on his part.

More chillingly, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Francis Cissna claims that under the revived Operation Janus, he has cued up 1,600 cases like Singh’s for prosecution.

Operation Janus was conceived after a Customs and Border Protection employee in 2008 identified 206 people who had received final deportation orders but went on to obtain citizenship under different names. A subsequent 2014 Inspector General report flagged about a thousand more such cases. But because the odds that terrorists were lurking among them were so low, the Department of Homeland Security basically decided to deploy other counter-terrorism strategies. The program was disbanded in 2016.

But the Trump administration revived it within months of assuming office. It has created a task force in the US Citizenship and Immigration Service and is furiously hiring lawyers, the Washington Examiner recently reported. The administration claims that apart from the 1,600 cases like Singh’s it is pursuing legally, there are 315,000 more cases of suspect citizenship approval that it wants to investigate. These cases stem not from any evidence of malfeasance on the part of the applicants. Rather, they’ve been flagged because the DHS is missing their fingerprints. Why? Because the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service failed to digitize all its records.

Stripping people of citizenship is an awesome—and potentially—dangerous exercise of government power. Therefore, it is only right that the Supreme Court has set a rather high bar. Hence it is unclear how many people the administration will eventually succeed in denaturalizing. But what is clear is that it will use a lot of taxpayer resources to sow terror in yet another non-native group without any security upside for anyone. Indeed, since 1990 only seven denaturalization suits on average have been filed per year because it takes too much time and effort put together a credible case.

But Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is the brains behind the effort, is an anti-immigration zealot who doesn’t care about any of this because he doesn’t consider naturalized Americans to be real Americans, notes Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. The wait times for obtaining citizenship have doubled in the last few years. But far from tackling that problem, the administration wants to double down on harassing those already here.

Notes Kesselbrenner to Rewire.News:

The Trump administration is so concerned with enforcement in immigrant communities, they’ve chosen to prioritize this operation in ways another administration wouldn’t. It’s one thing to target these people and convict them for hiding serious criminal backgrounds. It’s an entirely different thing to go after people who’ve been citizens a long time because they were dishonest for reasons we don’t even know…It’s vindictive…and it’s totally unreasonable.

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