Mueller has zip, so what is his aim?

This can be illustrated by the case of Papadapoulos. Rush describes the salient facts:

"“But even though there’s a great deal of evidence that Papadopoulos colluded with Russia, there’s no charge along those lines.” That’s not what Papadopoulos has been charged with, which is utterly strange. All there is… “There’s just a single false statement charge on which — according to the plea agreement — he’s probably looking at no jail time. And if there is, it’s not gonna be any more than six months. Why no collusion charge?” Papadopoulos is out there admitting that he had this professor and he was telling this professor stuff and the professor said he had dirt on Hillary.

He was trying to arrange a meeting between the professor and the campaign, and Papadopoulos wanted to be the go-between. He wanted to be a powerful guy. He wanted to come up with evidence that would help the Trump campaign defeat Hillary, blah, blah. But none of that is what he’s been charged with — none of it — even though he admits it. “Why no collusion charge? Because collusion is not a crime.” Did you know that? It isn’t a crime.

 

So, if collusion is not a crime, then what is the purpose of Mueller's "investigation?" Simple. Mueller will continue to push the envelope so Trump does something that the Democrats can use to impeach him and eventually remove him.

The reason the indictments were brought now.

The 'Drive by Media' was having an orgasm over the weekend over the leak to CNN that Mueller is ready with his first charges. Some talking heads were chortling that Trump's campaign managers may face 20, 30, 40, 70 year prison sentences. When the indictments were unsealed the reality set in.

1. None of the charges stemmed from the 2016 election.
2. All the charges are either inconsequential or are duplicates.
3. Manafort's constitutional rights were violated in the collection of the evidence.
4. None of the charges reflect on Trump.

So, why were the indictments brought mow?

Because the Swamp was getting nervous about disclosures of the actions of the Hillary campaign. In fact, the Hillary campaign was colluding with the Russians and the British and set up elaborate schemes (like shuffling payments through law offices) to keep the activities hidden by claiming Attorney-Client privilege.

The anti-Trump conspiracy: the beginnings.

hours ago

Patrick J. Buchanan About | Email | Archive

Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of 11 books. His latest book is "Nixon's White House Wars."

                   

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Well over a year after the FBI began investigating “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Vladimir Putin, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has brought in his first major indictment.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has been charged with a series of crimes dating back years, though none is tied directly to President Donald Trump or 2016.

With a leak to CNN that indictments were coming, Mueller’s office stole the weekend headlines. This blanketed the explosive news on a separate front, as the dots began to be connected on a bipartisan plot to bring down Trump that began two years ago.

And like “Murder of the Orient Express,” it seems almost everyone on the train had a hand in the plot.

The narrative begins in October 2015.

​

​

Then it was that the Washington Free Beacon, a neocon website, engaged a firm of researchers called Fusion GPS to do deep dirt-diving into Trump’s personal and professional life – and take him out.

A spinoff of Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard, the Beacon is run by his son-in-law. And its Daddy Warbucks is the GOP oligarch and hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer.

From October 2015 to May 2016, Fusion GPS dug up dirt for the neocons and never-Trumpers. By May, however, Trump had routed all rivals and was the certain Republican nominee.

So the Beacon bailed, and Fusion GPS found two new cash cows to finance its dirt-diving – the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

To keep the sordid business at arm’s length, both engaged the party’s law firm of Perkins Coie. Paid $12.4 million by the DNC and Clinton campaign, Perkins used part of this cash hoard to pay Fusion GPS.

Here is where it begins to get interesting.

In June 2016, Fusion GPS engaged a British spy, Christopher Steele, who had headed up the Russia desk at MI6, to ferret out any connections between Trump and Russia.

Steele began contacting old acquaintances in the FSB, the Russian intelligence service. And the Russians began to feed him astonishing dirt on Trump that could, if substantiated, kill his candidacy.

Among the allegations was that Trump had consorted with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel, that the Kremlin was blackmailing him, that there was provable collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In memos from June to October 2016, Steele passed this on to Fusion GPS, which passed it on to major U.S. newspapers. But as the press was unable to verify it, they declined to publish it.

Steele’s final product, a 35-page dossier, has been described as full of “unsubstantiated and salacious allegations.”

Steele’s research, however, had also made its way to James Comey’s FBI, which was apparently so taken with it that the bureau considered paying Steele to continue his work.

About this “astonishing” development, columnist Byron York of the Washington Examiner quotes Sen. Chuck Grassley:

“The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises … questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends.”

The questions begin to pile up.

What was the FBI’s relationship with the British spy who was so wired into Russian intelligence?

Did the FBI use the information Steele dug up to expand its own investigation of Russia-Trump “collusion”? Did the FBI pass what Steele unearthed to the White House and the National Security Council?

 

Did the Obama administration use the information from the Steele dossier to justify unmasking the names of Trump officials who had been picked up on legitimate electronic intercepts?

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed they did not know that Perkins Coie had enlisted Fusion GPA or the British spy to dig up dirt on Trump.

Yet, when Podesta testified, the lawyer sitting beside him in the committee room was Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, who had engaged Fusion GPS and received the fruits of Steele’s undercover work.

Here one is tempted to cite Bismarck that, if you wish to enjoy politics or sausages, you should not inquire too closely how they are made.

Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election.

If future revelations demonstrate that this is what went down, it is not only the White House that has major problems.

If you wish to know why Americans detest politics and hate the “swamp” that has been made of their capital city, follow this story all the way to its inevitable end. It will be months of unfolding.

The real indictment here is of the American political system, and the true tragedy is the decline of the Old

hOW THE SWAMP WORKS THE STALL.

The Clintons perfected this stall technique. First, they refuse to produce documents in a timely manner. Then they claim that they should not produce the documents because there is no interest in them. Then a few documents get lost and fond much later. Finally, the Clintons claim that "this was already investigated and there was nothing to it."

 

An example is the request for documents by Judicial Watch.

 

"

72,000 New Clinton Docs! October 27, 2017   (Weekly Update: Live with Tom Fitton)         The FBI Recovered 72,000 Pages of Clinton Records – Court Orders Explanation on Processing President Trump’s efforts to drain the Washington swamp are being seriously hindered by Deep State, particularly in the State and Justice Departments. As an example, the State Department just revealed in a federal court hearing that it has yet to process 40,000 of 72,000 pages of Hillary Clinton records that the FBI recovered last year. The revelation came in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails that were sent or received during her tenure from February 2009 to January 31, 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00687)). The case is before Judge James E. Boasberg. The hearing, which took place last week, focused on the State Department’s progress on processing the tens of thousands of emails Clinton failed to disclose when she served as Secretary of State, some of which were emails sent by Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop of her estranged husband Anthony Weiner. The State Department has processed 32,000 pages of emails so far, only a small number of which have been released, but 40,000 pages remain to be processed. We asked the court to require the State Department to identify any records from the seven FBI discs that it intends to withhold, and why, in a timely manner. The State Department disclosed to the court that it was adding extra resources to its FOIA operation but would not commit to a faster production of the Clinton emails. But right after the hearing, Judge Boasberg ordered the State Department to “explain how its anticipated increase in resources will affect processing of records in this case and when the processing of each disk is likely to be completed.” Surprisingly, the Tillerson State Department and Sessions Justice Department previously argued to the court that there was diminished public interest in the Clinton emails. In November 2016, the State Department was ordered to produce no fewer than 500 pages of records a month to Judicial Watch, emails which the FBI found in its investigation into Clinton’s non-government email system. The State Department has produced 23 batches of documents so far. At the current pace, the Clinton emails and other records won’t be fully available for possible release until at least 2020! (We originally filed the lawsuit in May 2015.) Clinton attempted to delete 33,000 emails from her non-government server. The FBI investigation recovered or found a number of these missing emails, many of which were government documents. We know that some of these recovered emails are in the pile of documents on which the State Department now sits. Secretary Tillerson should be asked why his State Department is still sitting on this mother lode of Clinton emails. It is disheartening that an administration elected to “drain the swamp” is stalling the release of documents in order to protect Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. In a related lawsuit, the State Department admitted it received 2,800 Huma Abedin work-related documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that were found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s personal laptop. The State Department expects to complete its review and production of the FBI records by December 31, 2017. This is all a slow-motion cover-up, and it’s being conducted in a department allegedly reporting to President Trump. The President needs to clean house and get the American people these Clinton documents ASAP!

Unlawful acts of Hillary.

Potential Laws broken in the Uranium One deal

·                     Bribery statute

·                     federal gratuity statute

·                     Mail fraud statute

·                     Wire fraud statute

·                     Program bribery statute

·                     Travel act statute

·                     Racketeering influence and corruption organization act

Potential laws broken in the dossier scandal

·                     Federal election campaign act, filing false or misleading
      campaign reports

·                     Federal campaign act prohibits foreign nationals and gifts in US campaigns

Laws potentially broken in the Hillary e-mail scandal

·                     Knowingly and willfully mishandling classified information

·                     Mishandling classified information through gross negligence

·                     Unauthorized removal and retention of classified material

The FBI was acting as a deep sate rogue agent by covering up laws that were broken.

The 2016 election backdrop: what happened.

The extent of the corruption of the Obama regime, the DNC and Hillary is now painfully clear. Not that the fake news Media is covering it in detail.

So what went on?

1. Hillary's campaign and the DNC paid an outfit(Fusion GPS) to 'collect dirt on Trump to be used in the campaign.

2. Fusion hired a British agent (a Mr Steele) to collect/add some tidbits about Trump and the Russians.

3. Fusion then prepared a "dossier" of made up 'facts' and a few innocuous facts to make it sound real.

4. Sen John (the Dunce) McCain heard about the "dossier" and dispatched an aid to London to get hold of the "dossier." Subsequently, McCain (the Dunce) turned the "dossier" over to the FBI.

4a. The existence of the "dossier" was known to the Media, but no one wanted to publish it until an arm of the NBC decided to print it.

5. The Obama regime used the existence of the "dossier" as an excuse to wiretap the Trump campaign. Obama's henchmen knew that the "dossier" was a fake, but they expected Trump to lose and Hillary to cover up after she became President.

6. Hillary lost and Comey (of the FBI) - having protected Hillary during the election- now decided to try to overturn the result of the election by maneuvering to get a Special Counsel.

7. The new Attorney General was pressured by the Media to recuse himself so his Deputy AG (Rosenstein) could appoint a Special Counsel.

8. The Special Counsel picked up a bunch of Democrats to conduct his attempted Coup. As befits such partisans, they conducted night time raids of former Trump campaign Chairman.

9. The Media and the Congressional Black Caucus has conducted a noisy campaign about Trump and the Russians.

There is still no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. But, the evidence of collusion between Hillary, Obama, the Obama regime and the Russians has now emerged. The Russians wanted a company (Uranium One) and to grease the skids they paid Bill Clinton 400K to give a speech in Russia. When the sale went through, the Russians forked aver 150M to the Clinton Foundation. As you saw from the tax returns of the Clinton Foundation, a gift to the Foundation was just a way to launder money.

So, that is the swamp.

Self-Driving Cars are here.

Self-Driving Cars Will Change Everything

This is such an exciting time. Every month that passes brings major improvements in autonomous technology, more data, and more proof that the technology is already several times safer than human drivers.

And the impact that autonomous technology will have on our society is remarkable. Once self-driving vehicles become the new norm, it is projected that…

• 1.2 million lives could be saved every year due to a massive reduction in traffic accidents.
• Car ownership will fall dramatically, potentially to a level where there is only one car per every 12 people.
• Auto insurance costs will decrease by at least 60%.
• Less fuel will be consumed, resulting in a 90% decrease in emissions.

In total, it is estimated that there will be $1.3 trillion in savings from the adoption of autonomous cars. The savings will be driven by productivity gains, fuel savings, and accident avoidance.

With such a strong tailwind, it is likely that children born in the next 10 years will never need to learn to drive a car.

We are now at the very beginning of this explosive trend, but the potential is enormous… The autonomous vehicle technology market is forecast to reach $87 billion by 2030.

Fully self-driving cars are on the verge of mass adoption. Not 10 years from now—right now. In 2017.

So get ready… The future is here.

Regards,

Jeff Brown
Editor, The Near Future Report

Editor’s Note: Click here right now for Jeff’s latest presentation on the hottest opportunities in the self-driving market right now (Hint: NOT Tesla or Alphabet.)

 

AJ adds. Jeff is getting carried away by his enthusiasm. Why would car ownership decrease by making it easier to drive them? And the decrease in emissions via the self driving feature is overstated. Even the use of electricity is hyped as reducing pollution. But, the electricity has to be produced at power plants. This whole thing is a dream by enviros who seem to lack the knowledge of how things work.

An incomplete transformation of an NPR executive.

An NPR executive has retired and decided to sample the real America outside the Beltway of Washington DC. He discovered that the real America is much different from the one depicted by the Media (including NPR). Yet, he rejects the criticism of this state of affairs.

"We should all be worried that more than 65 percent of voters think there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media and that our major media institutions are seen as creating, not combating, our growing partisan divide.

Some of this loss of reputation stems from effective demagoguery from the right and the left, as well as from our demagogue-in-chief, but the attacks wouldn’t be so successful if our media institutions hadn’t failed us as well.

None of this justifies the attacks from President Trump, which are terribly inappropriate coming from the head of government. At the same time, the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.

I did that, and loved it, though I regret waiting until well after I left NPR to do so. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.

Ken Stern is the president of Palisades Media Ventures and the former CEO of National Public Radio. His book “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right” (Harper) is out Tuesday.

 

Mr Stern is wrong on two counts:

 

1. The Media no longer covers the news but makes it. And even the Author admits the Media bias. Media mavens believe that no other point of view but theirs exists, or if it does, it is not legitimate. Such a state of affairs can not be tolerated and will not be tolerated. Mr Trump is doing a great service to the Country in pointing this out;

 

2. This state of affairs has not started by the election of Donald Trump, but it forced the Media bias into the open.

 

 

 

A (Liberal) tale of two cities.

 

A Tale of Two Cities:                                

CHICAGO   HOUSTON, TX Population 2.7 million   2.15 million         Median HH Income $38,600   $37,000         % African-American 38.9%   24%         % Hispanic 29.9%   44%         % Asian 5.5%   6%         % Non-Hispanic White 28.7%   26%         Pretty similar until you compare the following:   Chicago, IL               Houston, TX             Concealed Carry   - Legal No              Yes             Number of Gun Stores None   184 Dedicated gun stores plus 1500 - legal places to buy guns--Wal-Mart, K-mart, sporting goods, etc.             Homicides, 2012 1,806   207             Homicides per 100K 38.4   9.6             Avg. January high temperature  (F) 31   63                 Conclusion :  Cold weather causes murders. This is due to climate change.