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Trump Purportedly Planning Grant Ban for Groups That Don’t Disavow Abortion: Reason Roundup

No grants for groups that “support” abortion. The U.S. already prevents federal funding from covering abortion services. Now the Trump administration may cut off any group that so much as talks about abortion.

On Friday, Donald Trump is expected to announce plans to resurrect an old rule prohibiting federal grant money from going to any group that even discusses abortion as an option for pregnant women. The rule would also prohibit funds from going to health clinics or organizations that share a space or affiliation with an abortion provider, according to what White House officials have told the AP and other news outlets.

The rule was first drafted under President Ronald Reagan, but it was never implemented and was withdrawn by President Bill Clinton. Then as now, doctors and health groups noted that abortion is a legal medical procedure and argued that making family planning grants contingent on pretending it’s not an option represents a serious interference in doctor-patient relationships. “I cannot imagine a scenario in which public health groups would allow this effort to go unchallenged,” Jessica Marcella of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association told the AP.

Some libertarians will inevitably argue in favor of the move on the grounds that anything that cuts federal spending is good. But that rests on a faulty premise, since the change doesn’t signal one cent of a reduction in federal funds overall. It would simply shift who is eligible to receive the money and how free their speech can be.

To the extent that this means more unintended pregnancies and more undesired births, we could actually see a net increase in federal expenditures on health care and family planning. There’s no way this move is really a fiscally conservative one. For most pushing the change, it’s about religious doctrine or morality.

And for Trump? Winning would seem to be one prominent motive. “In addition to the policy implications,” notes NBC, “the decision is a monumental signal by President Donald Trump to anti-abortion activists entering a mid-term election cycle in which Republicans are worried that they will lose seats in Congress—and perhaps control of one or both chambers—because of a lack of enthusiasm within the GOP base.”

In this case, it doesn’t matter if the policy has a chance of succeeding, just that Trump is perceived as being on the same page as his anti-abortion supporters.

There’s still a possibility that the Trump administration will hold out on them, however. Contra most other outlets, NBC is reporting that the White House “will stop short of giving abortion foes one provision they sought: a gag rule prohibiting recipients from discussing abortion with pregnant women.”

According to NBC’s source, the rule change will only apply to groups “that perform abortions, support the procedures or receive referrals about them.” But that language is way too ambiguous to offer much reassurance that this isn’t creating a sort of viewpoint-based determination on whether abortion can be discussed in these settings.

FREE MINDS

U.K. porn scheme grows ever more complicated. In the wake of the U.K.’s new rule requiring age verification for all online porn viewers, the government is proposing a workaround that would let audiences opt out of handing their personal data to porn sites. Instead, they can pick up a “porn pass” at their local newsstand or corner shop (presumably without the shopkeeper storing a record of the customers’ IDs after checking their ages, or else the whole rigmarole would be pretty pointless).

“Trench coats are coming back!” quips Tim Cushing at Techdirt. “Somewhat of an ironic turn of events, given how much government effort was expended trying to limit the amount of public porn consumption by shutting down theaters and heavily regulating distribution of pornography.” Now, “instead of heading to porn shops in shady areas of town, porn consumers will be headed to newspaper kiosks to publicly announce their desire to consume porn in the privacy of their own homes.” Or so the U.K. government hopes.

QUICK HITS

  • The “Extreme Vetting Initiative”—Trump’s proposed system of predicting which potential immigrants would be troulbe—has failed, “dealing a reality check to the goal of using artificial intelligence to predict human behavior.”
  • There are rumors of an Anthony Scaramucci and Michael Avenatti show in the works.
  • Provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics show that the U.S. birth rate is down two percent overall in 2017, and down for all groups except women ages 40 to 44 (where it’s up two percent).
  • HBO won a copyright battle with a graffiti artist who argued that fleeting glimpse of street art constituted copyright infringement.
  • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally approved a new, non-opioid-based pill to help with opioid withdrawal symptoms.
  • Prominent Democrats are opposing a Jared Kushner–backed prison reform bill because it doesn’t include sentencing reform.
  • Trump has turned “there’s probably no doubt that [the FBI] had at least one confidential informant in the [Trump] campaign” to this:

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Santa Fe High School On Lockdown Following Reports Of Active Shooter

A Santa Fe High School is on lockdown after an active shooter has been reported on campus. One student told local media that she saw a gunman shoot a female student, but that has so far been unconfirmed.

Santa Fe Police, the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies are responding to the scene.

SantaFe

Sophomore Leila Butler told ABC13 that at about 7:45 am fire alarms went off and students left their classrooms. Some students believe they’ve heard shots fired. She is currently sheltering with other students and teachers near campus.

 

 

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Emerging Market Massacre Continues – Latam FX At Weakest In History

All the pesos are getting pounded – Argentine, Colombian, Chilean, and Mexican – but the ‘best indicator of EM turmoil’ – the Brazilian Real – is really suffering…

But the Rand is the worst…

As the Emerging Market massacre continues to accelerate…

Amid an incessantly strengthening USDollar.

 

Latin American currencies just keep selling off even as commodities, the region’s main exports, rise. The LACI index is at the lowest since January 2016, and the lowest relative to emerging markets peers ever…

 

It’s not just FX, Emerging Market Debt is suffering its worst year since at least 2012…

Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas points out more evidence of calm before EM ETF bloodbath is traders (EEM) are bailing now, and allocators (IEMG) while not yet leaving haven’t added inflows at all for 20+ days straight…

Roughly translated – the professionals are dumping to retail (while we have previously noted just how exuberantly the professionals are pitching this ‘dip’ as a buying opportunity in EM)…

And Bloomberg’s KLisa Abramowicz points out that the biggest local-currency emerging-markets ETF has lost nearly 20% of its assets since the beginning of April, dropping to $6.5 billion from $7.9 billion.

 

 

 

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Study: Voters Worried About Political Correctness Flocked to Candidate Trump

TrumpIn the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, I suggested that Donald Trump’s unlikely victory was partly the result of backlash against political correctness—something the Republican candidate deftly turned to his advantage during both the primaries and the general election.

A year and a half later, there’s a good amount of evidence supporting this theory. Take this study, produced by a team of researchers at the University of Montana and Syracuse University, titled “Donald Trump as a Cultural Revolt Against Perceived Communication Restriction: Priming Political Correctness Norms Causes More Trump Support.” According to its abstract:

In this framework, support for Donald Trump was in part the result of over-exposure to PC norms. Consistent with this, on a sample of largely politically moderate Americans taken during the General Election in the Fall of 2016, we show that temporarily priming PC norms significantly increased support for Donald Trump (but not Hillary Clinton). We further show that chronic emotional reactance towards restrictive communication norms positively predicted support for Trump (but not Clinton), and that this effect remains significant even when controlling for political ideology. In total, this work provides evidence that norms that are designed to increase the overall amount of positive communication can actually backfire by increasing support for a politician who uses extremely negative language that explicitly violates the norm.

These findings complement work done by the mathematician Spencer Greenberg, which showed that believing “there is too much political correctness in this country” was the second most reliable predictor of whether a person would vote for Trump (second only to being a Republican).

When I first started writing about the political-correctness-backlash theory, there was much agreement but also plenty of criticism. Since I write frequently about the excesses of political correctness on college campuses, some said I was committing the “pundit’s fallacy” of thinking an issue I care about is something everybody cares about. In a piece for the Niskanen Center, McGill University political scientist (and occasional Reason contributor) Jacob Levy accused me of “mapping my list of excesses onto the voting behavior of 80,000 very-low-information voters in three states.” In particular, Levy thought this explanation was relatively unlikely because the pertinent voters would have been poorly acquainted with “any particular political dispute that isn’t on national television that day.”

I thought that part of Levy’s analysis was probably wrong, given that political correctness—on campus and off—is one of the most exhaustively covered topics on cable news and talk radio. Moreover, many regular folks encounter political correctness in the course of their day-to-day lives, even if they aren’t constantly inundated with examples of it all around them.

Happily, the very same Niskanen Center has now published a piece by Michigan State University’s Daniel Grossmann casting some doubt on Levy’s claim that “a lot of butterflies flapped their wings to bring about the November 8 result, but we have particularly little reason to think that [political correctness] was one of them.”

Grossmann’s piece cites the Montana/Syrcause study, among others, to argue that cultural issues mattered far more to Trump voters than economic issues. Raising the salience of cultural issues and political correctness—a strategy undertaken not just by the Trump campaign, but also inadvertently by the Clinton campaign, which thought smearing Trump supporters as racists and sexists would increase the pro-Clinton vote—helped Trump.

It’s difficult to parse how important this was, since many voters who picked Trump because he was anti-P.C. would have voted for him anyway. Conversely, voters who weren’t just anti-P.C. but outright racist may have picked Trump because they saw him as the more racist candidate. It might be true that they also wanted Trump to win for ordinary anti-P.C. reasons, but these voters can’t vote twice.

That distinction matters, because the perception of Trump as racist actually hurt him among voters, according to Grossmann:

His negative statements about minority groups were recognized by voters—but not positively. In open-ended responses, “racist” was the number one negative thing said about Trump even among Republicans. And a surprisingly high proportion of Trump voters said they did not like him personally, often citing his language.

In paid advertising, it was the Clinton campaign that repeatedly raised these issues and endlessly replayed Trump’s statements. That made their ad campaign a vast historical outlier compared to prior elections; Clinton talked a lot less about policy issues and a lot less positively overall. Clinton raised the salience of norms about off-limits race and gender discourse, believing it would help her win votes (but may have also activated views of political correctness).

“Voters can simultaneously 1) dislike Trump’s bigotry 2) dislike Dems’ harping on it 3) perceive that Dems used to care about white working class, now only care about minorities 4) mistrust Republicans on class, but perceive Trump as different,” Grossmann explained on Twitter. “In fact, [this] pattern seems dominant.”

The Montana/Syracuse study puts it this way:

It is clear that support for Trump (and opposition to Clinton) is especially likely amongst people who feel emotional reactance to restrictive communication norms—and importantly, this effect goes beyond political ideology….

Although Donald Trump presents an interesting paradox of sorts to modern political pundits, his emergence is precisely what a theory focusing on the backfiring of social norms would expect. It is a paradox, but a theoretically expected one: As restrictive norms become ever more salient and heavy-handed, the more they will work in the short-term. But in the long-term, this salient heavy-handedness increases the likelihood that they will ultimately backfire. And this backfiring doesn’t just occur for norms that are genuinely repressive to political freedom—it also occurs for norms that have a clearly good and noble aim.

The present study suggests that communication norms that are designed to increase the amount of positive communication may ultimately backfire in political figures like Donald Trump—figures who do anything but increase the amount of positive communication. His emergence should serve as a lesson for students of cultural change and deviance. He is not the first and will certainly not be the last example of popular figures emerging in response to restrictive norms–and the present work illustrates specific psychological processes that help us better understand why that occurs and when it will occur.

Caution is still warranted—the election came down to just tens of thousands of votes in three states, and so several explanations could hold some theoretical claim to having been decisive. But it seems that the political correctness butterfly was indeed flapping xer’s wings quite strenuously on November 7, 2016.

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Boulder Legislators Spray-Fire From the Hip at ‘Assault Weapons’

The “assault weapon” ban that was unanimously approved by the Boulder City Council this week is a model of simplicity compared to other legislative offerings of this genre. The federal ban proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), for example, lists six forbidden rifle features, “157 dangerous military-style assault weapons,” and “2,258 legitimate hunting and sporting rifles.” Boulder’s ordinance does away with the bewildering gun catalogs and focuses on three rifle features:

1. a pistol grip or thumbhole stock

2. a folding or telescoping stock

3. any protruding grip or other device to allow the weapon to be stabilized with the non-trigger hand

The ban covers semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines and have one or more of those features. Anyone who already possesses a newly prohibited firearm has until the end of the year to register it, surrender it, destroy it, or move it outside the city limits.

The rationale for banning folding or telescoping stocks is, as usual, rather mysterious. But the city council argues that the other targeted features “allow for greater control of the weapon,” so that it can be “kept pointed at a target while being fired.” The city council’s explanation of the ordinance says the guns it covers have “military features” that “allow rapid spray firing for the quick and efficient killing of humans.” It adds that “a rifle fired from the shoulder recoils and must be brought down and onto a target before another round can be fired.” The law’s authors seem to be imagining a situation in which a mass shooter is “‘spray firing’ from the hip,” as a New York judge described it in a 2013 decision upholding that state’s “assault weapon” ban.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh took a skeptical view of that scenario in a widely read 2014 post. “There’s a reason that the expression ‘shoot from the hip’ tends to refer to actions that are less effective because they are less deliberate,” he noted. “Because you’re not actually sighting down the barrel of the gun, you’re going to be extremely inaccurate…While such lack of accuracy may matter less if you’re shooting a fully automatic (not that I recommend shooting this way even with a fully automatic), it will make your shooting much less effective if you’re shooting a semi-automatic. People ‘spray firing’ a semi-automatic from the hip are thus making themselves less dangerous to the people they’re shooting at (compared to normal firing when one is actually sighting down the barrel). Nor are they making it easier to fire a lot of rounds quickly; one can fire just as quickly in the normal shooting position as when firing from the hip.”

The Boulder City Council acknowledges the importance of accuracy when it argues that semi-automatic rifles can be just as lethal as machine guns. “The automatic firing mechanism does not present a significant increase in the lethality of the M-16 when compared to the AR-15,” it says. “The military trains its personnel to use repeated single shots, which are more accurate. Military training is for personnel to shoot at 12 to 15 rounds per minute or one round every four to five seconds.”

By comparison, “a New York Times analysis of the Parkland, Florida, shooting estimated that Nikolas Cruz fired as quickly as one and a half rounds per second.” The implication—that Cruz could have killed more people if he had fired more slowly and carefully—seems somewhat at odds with the notion that “rapid spray firing” from the hip is the way to go if you want to maximize casualties. The city council also overlooks the importance of accuracy in explaining the need to ban bump stocks and other “multi-burst trigger activators,” which are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable. Bump stocks are an intolerable threat to public safety, the city council says, because they “increase a weapon’s rate of fire.”

In short, Boulder’s legislators argue that accuracy is more important than speed when comparing semi-automatic rifles to machine guns but speed is more important than accuracy when deciding whether to fire from the hip or the shoulder and when deciding whether to use an accessory that makes your rifle fire more like a machine gun. Those positions are convenient for people determined to justify this ordinance, but they do not seem logically consistent.

“‘Spray fire’ is a phrase used only by gun control advocates to scare people who do not know better,” says Michael Bazinet, director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group. “You do not need ‘a protruding grip or other device to allow the weapon to be stabilized with the non-trigger hand’ to keep a semiautomatic rifle on target. That is a patently ridiculous statement.”

Laws like this one are always more about scapegoating and virtue signaling than protecting public safety. The gesture in this case is especially empty, not only because the ordinance does not extend beyond Boulder’s borders but because it probably will never take effect. Under Colorado law, “A local government may not enact an ordinance, regulation, or other law that prohibits the sale, purchase, or possession of a firearm that a person may lawfully sell, purchase, or possess under state or federal law.”

On Wednesday the Mountain States Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinance on behalf of several gun-owning Boulder residents. “This ban is tantamount to Boulder attempting to stop drunk driving by banning Subarus,” said Cody Wisniewski, the attorney representing the plaintiffs. “It accomplishes nothing other than making criminals of law-abiding citizens.” The lawsuit argues that the gun law, which also bans magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and raises the minimum age for possessing a firearm to 21, violates the Colorado and U.S. constitutions as well as state law.

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Chinese Firm’s Assets Frozen By France Over Alleged Links To Syria’s Chemical Weapons

Despite the fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has yet to produce its fact-finding report into last month’s alleged chemical attack in Douma, France has implicated and moved on a Chinese firm said to be connected with Syria’s chemical weapon’s program.

France has frozen the assets of multiple international and Middle East companies, including a China based trading company over links to the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC) – also widely known by its French initials CERS – which is the Syrian government’s chief defense technology and missile research arm widely blamed for producing Syria’s chemical weapons. 

Chinese and Syrian businessmen shake hands behind their national flags during a meeting in Beijing, on May 8, 2017. Image via Reuters.

The South China Morning Post reports via the AFP:

The businesses include Sigmatec and the Al Mahrous Group, both based in Damascus; Technolab in Lebanon; and a trading company in Guangzhou in China, according to a list published in the government’s official gazette.

Two Syrian nationals will also face asset freezes, as well as a person born in Lebanon in 1977 whose nationality was not given.

The asset freezes were signed by French Finance minister Bruno Le Maire.

French finance minister Le Maire and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in public statements linked the businesses to CERS, which they alleged is “the main Syrian laboratory in charge of developing and producing unconventional chemical weapons and ballistic launchers.” 

Last month’s US-led airstrikes on Damascus primarily targeted sites connected with CERS such as the Barzeh research center, which was destroyed by well over a dozen tomahawk missile strikes; however, the OPCW during prior routine inspections connected with the late 2013 US-Russia brokered deal to decommission Syria’s sarin stockpiles reported that it found “no evidence” of chemical weapons at the site. 

Over the past years of war in Syria, France has consistently accused President Bashar al-Assad of both using chemical weapons on civilians and misleading weapons inspectors as to the current status of his program, in spite of both former Secretary of State John Kerry and OPCW inspectors declaring the 2013-2014 decommissioning process a monumental success. France was part of the US-led coalition that launched a massive missile attack against Damascus and other locations in Syria on April 13. 

John Kerry in May of 2014 to CNN: “We got all of the chemical weapons out.” 

In April 2017 France produced an intelligence paper which attempted to cast doubt over Syria’s US-Russian sponsored decommissioning of its chemical program: “France assesses that major doubts remain as to the accuracy, exhaustiveness and sincerity of the decommissioning of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal,” the paper stated.

Concerning the latest asset freeze targeting Chinese and other international companies with links to the Damascus based Syrian research center, the French ministers’ joint statement identified a total of nine companies implicated, according to Reuters: “Three people and nine companies have been targeted for their role in the research and/or acquisition of materials for the development of chemicals and ballistic weapons for this country,” the statement said.

The punitive measures come just as some 30 countries are set to meet in Paris on Friday to discuss erecting international mechanisms aimed at identifying and punishing countries involved in the development and use of internationally banned chemical weapons. 

Last January France announced that it sanctioned 25 individuals and companies over suspected links to Syria’s program, which also included Chinese citizens. China has been long positioned itself as the chief international investor in post-war Syria, with Defense One news reporting that “Over the past year, Chinese-Syrian negotiations over trade and investment expanded from early diplomatic exchanges to commitments of nearly $2 billion in reconstruction contracts. China has become Syria’s largest trade partner, snapping up 80 percent of its exports.”

As China eyes rebuilding Syria in close economic partnership with Damascus, its companies will likely increasingly be targeted by the West, itself hopeful of sweeping up the economic spoils of a post-Assad Syria. 

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Sergei Skripal Discharged From Hospital After Exposure To “Deadliest Nerve Agent On Planet Earth”

It’s a miracle!

Yulia and Sergei Skripal were reportedly in a critical condition for weeks following the attack, at one point, their doctors feared that they would suffer brain damage if they managed to survive.

But, just weeks after his daughter was discharged, Sergei Skripal has been released from hospital despite being ‘attacked by Russia’ using one of the “deadliest nerve agents in the world” just two months ago.

Doctors gave no details on the condition of Skripal, and his current location is not known at this time.

As a reminder, the Russian double-agent was poisoned in Salisbury alongside his daughter, Yulia, in early March. As RT reports, her recovery was much quicker and she has been out of hospital since last month.

However, Yulia Skripal has not been seen in public since she was discharged, and the only public statement from her was issued by British police.  The Russian embassy says it has been refused access to the Russian citizens.

Citing patient confidentiality, a hospital spokesperson said they were unable to comment on any details about patients, but said: 

“Treating people who are so acutely unwell, having been poisoned by nerve agents, requires stabilizing them, keeping them alive until their bodies could produce more enzymes to replace those that had been poisoned.”

England’s National Health Service issued a statement this morning:

“Sergei Skripal has been discharged from Salisbury District Hospital. Mr. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were admitted to the hospital along with DS Nick Bailey after having been exposed to a nerve agent on 4 March 2018. All three have now been discharged.”

The Salibury hospital’s Chief Executive Cara Charles-Barks said:

“It is fantastic news that Sergei Skripal is well enough to leave Salisbury District Hospital,” 

Detectives from the UK’s Counter-Terrorism Policing network continue to investigate the attempted murders of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in March this year.

“This is a complex investigation and detectives continue to gather and piece together all the evidence to establish the full facts and circumstances behind this dreadful attack,” the UK’s Counter-Terrorism representative stated.

The Russian ambassador to the UK said he was happy that Skripal was alright, but he had the impression that Russia would never see the Skripals.

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Brennan “Needs Very Good Lawyer” Says DiGenova; “He’s Going To Be In Front Of A Grand Jury Shortly”

Veteran D.C. attorney Joe diGenova – who President Trump initially wanted to hire to represent him in the Mueller probe, only to have to step aside due to conflicts – sat down on Fox News on Thursday where he put a bow on what many believe was a high-stakes gamble by various members within the Obama Intelligence Community (IC) and others to infiltrate the Trump campaign and frame Donald Trump with Russiagate.

Key among the participants in this alleged plot is former CIA director John Brennan, whose involvement is thought to have dovetailed with the FBI’s recently disclosed “operation Crossfire Hurricane” – the code name given to the agency’s earliest counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. The FBI says the operation was launched following a drunken conversation between a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador and a low-level Trump associate, George Papadopoulos, who may have been set up from the start after being fed information by a professor named Joseph Mifsud, who is currently missing.

When Carlson asked diGenova for an update on recent developments, the former federal prosecutor (and special counsel to boot) said:

  • We know that Hillary Clinton was illegally exonerated
  • We know that there was a substantial effort to frame the current President of the United States with crimes by infiltrating his campaign and then his administration with spies that the FBI had set upon them
  • We have learned that the crimes were committed by the FBI, senior members of the Department of Justice, John Brennan, Mr. Clapper, Mr. Comey, and others associated with the Democratic party
  • Donald Trump and his associates committed no crimes

When asked to explain the mechanics of the setup, diGenova tells Carlson that the FBI “purposely sent people into the Trump campaign to plant false information, then forced that information to be forwarded back to CIA and then funneled to the FBI, to be used as false information in FISA applications.”

“Everybody involved in that process who knowingly participated committed a crime,” diGenova added. The lawyer then offered Brennan some legal advice: 

Tucker: So why aren’t they being held to account?

diGenova: As of today, I understand that a referral for criminal prosecution has been made by Mr. Horowitz to Mr. Huber, who is investigating the FISA leaks, the unmasking, the leaks of the unmasking and everything we described tonight. Criminal referrals have already been made, and I suggest that Mr. Brennan – who loves to make comments about the process, get himself a good lawyer. Not a good writer. 

Tucker: Wait, John Brennan the NBC news paid consultant?

diGenova: Yes, NBC News’ consultant, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the most partisan hack leader of the CIA in history, needs a very very good lawyer. 

Tucker: Criminal lawyer?

diGenova: Yes, criminal lawyer – oh yes, he doesn’t need a slip-and-fall lawyer, although he’s going to slip and fall. He’s going to be in front of a grand jury shortly.

Tucker: That’s news. 

diGenova: Yes, and that’s good news. 

Brennan, along with Strzok and former Secretary of State John Kerry were recently accused of setting “Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign,” according to journalist Paul Sperry.

Brennan also appears to have perjured himself during Congressional testimony about the Steele Dossier – and is being investigated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Devin Nunes. As Paul Sperry wrote in February:

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. –RealClear Investigations

Except, Brennan was feeding President Obama unverified dossier information according to Sperry – directly contradicting his testimony, while former NSA Director Michael Rogers told Congressional investigators that the dossier was in fact part of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in the Russia investigation.

In a March 5, 2018, letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Adm. Rogers informed the committee that a two-page summary of the dossier — described as “the Christopher Steele information” — was “added” as an “appendix to the ICA draft,” and that consideration of that appendix was “part of the overall ICA review/approval process.”

…

“Brennan put some of the dossier material into the PDB [presidential daily briefing] for Obama and described it as coming from a ‘credible source,’ which is how they viewed Steele,” said the source familiar with the House investigation. “But they never corroborated his sources.” -RCI

So, if Sperry’s tweet is correct, Brennan, the Obama State department, the CIA and the FBI conspired to set “Russian espionage traps” for minor players in the Trump campaign, planted a mole (or several) within the Trump campaign, and then used a phony Clinton-funded dossier created by a former British spy to bolster their flimsy claims as part of the ICA.

Indeed, it appears the whole house of cards is about to collapse. 

Brennan keeps flying off the handle…

As various aspects of the alleged plot have unraveled, Brennan – who insisted on being sworn in under Obama on an original draft of the constitution (without the Bill of Rights and all those inconvenient amendments), spied on members of Congress, endorsed torture, and ran Obama’s covert drone war. has become progressively unhinged. 

When former Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe was fired in March for lying under oath about leaks to the media, Brennan fired off an angry screed over Twitter in response to a celebratory tweet by President Trump, writing “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.”

McCabe was fired after the DOJ’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found that he lied four times about authorizing a self-serving leak to the New York Times claiming that the FBI had not put the brakes on the Clinton Foundation investigation, during a period in which he was coming under fire over a $467,500 campaign donation his wife Jill took from Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe.

Brennan lost it again in April after President Trump called James Comey a “proven LEAKER & LIAR,” who “leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted,” firing back once again to let Trump know that his “kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey.” 

Several weeks later after Trump tweeted “Clapper lied about (fraudulent) Dossier leaks to CNN … He is a lying machine who now works for Fake News CNN,” Brennan – who now works for MSNBC, fired back “Mr. Trump: Your hypocrisy knows no bounds. Jim Clapper is a man of integrity, honesty, ethics, & morality. You are not.” 

Clapper notably leaked information about the Steele Dossier to CNN’s Jake Tapper and appears to have lied to Congress about it under oath.

The revelation that Clapper was responsible for leaking details of both the dossier and briefings to two presidents on the matter is significant, because former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey wrote in one of four memos that he leaked that the briefing of Trump on salacious and unverified allegations from the dossier was necessary because “CNN had them and were looking for a news hook.” –The Federalist

Integrity, Honesty, Ethics, Morality & Leaking like a sieve

Speaking of leaks, Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom told Fox‘s Maria Bartiromo in March that there was a plot among “high-ranking” people throughout government – “not just the FBI,” who coordinated in a scheme to help Hillary Clinton avoid indictment. 

Kallstrom rattled off a list of involved parties – ending with Brennan…

Kallstrom: There’s no question that he and McCabe and others in the FBI and the Justice Department, and, we’re gonna find out the State Department and the National Security Advisor to the President, and the Deputy National Security advisor, and John Brennan.

While discussing Brennan’s pithy tweet in response to McCabe’s firing, Kallstrom dropped a bombshell: that Brennan had projected extreme animosity towards Trump, and was directly involved in leaks to the press. 

Kallstrom: My sources tell me that he was leaking almost weekly and daily. He was taking that bunch of phony crap supposedly from Russia, and peddling that through the Congress, all his buddies in the media, he was one of the active people. I’ve known him a long time.

Bartiromo: You think he’s involved?

Kallstrom: Oh I think he’s involved, absolutely. And I think it goes right to the top Maria.

Considering the direction things seem to be going for John Brennan and his role in what may be the largest scandal in US history, diGenova’s advice to get a “very very good lawyer” seems sound. Meanwhile, as Congressional investigators and the DOJ’s Inspector General wrap up their investigations of what happened, we wonder how much deeper the rabbit hole goes. Maybe even undersea?

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California Lurches Left As Jerry Brown Heads Into the Sunset: New at Reason

We’ve known this day was coming: the end of the Jerry Brown administration. For all of Gov. Moonbeam’s flaws, those of us with conservative, libertarian or moderate leanings know that the state government is losing the last adult in charge. The next governor will be less willing to serve as a backstop against a Legislature that’s gone far to the left.

It’s why Republicans have been muted in their criticism even as Brown pushed the cap-and-trade plan, a high-speed rail boondoggle, and budgets that obliterated spending records. My main beef is Brown failed to use much of his political capital for a Nixon-goes-to-China moment that takes on the public-sector unions. They are the main obstacle to fixing various state problems, ranging from the pension system to the lackluster public schools.

A recent 90-minute gubernatorial debate in San Jose reminded us of what’s coming. It also highlighted the new reality, which is driven by deep demographic and political changes, and exacerbated by the relatively new top-two system, writes Steven Greenhut.

Read the whole thing.

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Windbag Jean-Claude Juncker’s Pathetic Bluff Regarding Iran Sanctions

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

EC president Jean-Claude Juncker says the EU will activate a ‘blocking statute’ to avoid Iran sanctions.

Five hours ago Reuters reported the EU Will Start Iran Sanctions Blocking Law Process on Friday.

“As the European Commission we have the duty to protect European companies. We now need to act and this is why we are launching the process of to activate the ‘blocking statute’ from 1996. We will do that tomorrow morning at 1030,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.

“We also decided to allow the European Investment Bank to facilitate European companies’ investment in Iran. The Commission itself will maintain its cooperation will Iran,” Juncker told a news conference after a meeting of EU leaders.

Solidarity Busted Already

Two hours ago the Nasdaq reported Macron Rules Out Trade War Over Iran Deal as Firms Head for Exit.

French President Emmanuel Macron ruled out on Thursday any trade war with the United States over its withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal as a wave of European companies quit business with Tehran, fearing the global reach of U.S. sanctions.

Macron acknowledged the predicament of firms wanting to trade with Iran or invest there, especially multinationals with close business ties to the United States. But he made clear bigger matters were at stake.

“We won’t start a strategic trade war against the U.S. about Iran,” he said on arriving for a second day of a European Union summit in Bulgaria. “We’re not going to take counter-sanctions against U.S. companies, it wouldn’t make sense.”

“All European Union member states are still backing this agreement, despite the fact the United States has decided not to, and we will continue talks with the United States,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters at the EU summit.

Actions Speak Louder Than Bluffs

The EU can claim it is still honoring the deal, but ultimately the decision is up to corporate CEOs. And we have seen the response.

  • Soren Skou, chief executive of Danish-based A.P. Moller-Maersk, made this statement: “With the sanctions the Americans are to impose, you can’t do business in Iran if you also have business in the U.S., and we have that on a large scale. I don’t know the exact timing details, but I am certain that we’re also going to shut down.”

  • Italian steel manufacturer Danieli announced it has halted work on finding financial coverage for orders it won in Iran worth 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion). “With the withdrawal of the U.S. from the treaty the banks are no longer ready to fund Iranian projects for fear of secondary sanctions,” Danieli CEO Alessandro Trivillin said.

EU’s Pathetically Weak Response to Donald Trump

Eurointelligence mocked the Juncker’s response last night, even before Juncker made it.

It is really quite sad to see the lack of gumption by EU leaders when confronted with Donald Trump’s threats.

The fundamental tenet of German policy will be to protect the interests of industry in general, and of the car industry specifically. That clearly sets limits to the EU’s ability to stand up to Donald Trump, and risks a major trade conflict.

Yesterday’s EU summit in Sofia agreed a broad strategy of the neither-here-nor-there kind to deal with Trump. The leaders managed to agree that they will not enter into a trade talks if the US applies tariffs to steel and aluminium from June 1, when the current and final exemption expires.

The leaders also agreed the implausible strategy to prepare protection for European companies against secondary US sanctions to be slapped on EU companies dealing with Iran. But they gave no details on how this can be done. As FAZ recently pointed out, the only companies willing and able to resist US pressure will be European importers of Persian carpets.

Jean-Claude Juncker even mentioned the possibility of invoking the blocking statute. This is the ultimate bluff. The statute would allow the EU to impose sanctions on European companies that comply with US sanctions. In other words, it would give EU companies a choice between pest and cholera. Needless to say, this has not been agreed. Nor will it be. It is a sign of the helplessness and panic of EU leaders that they even talk about it.

Windbags Juncker, Merkel, Macron

Merkel’s role in Europe is now essentially the same as Juncker’s. Both are nothing but pathetic windbags with dwindling power.

Macron wants to be the European savior but he is just another windbag who bows down to Trump internationally while accomplishing nothing domestically.

Nonetheless, this story is not over yet. The EU will at some point be forced to respond and the results won’t be pretty.

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