Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Research Shows Google’s Search Manipulations Tried To Rig Election For Hillary


New research shows just how much Google’s search manipulation affects voters when making decisions. During the 2016 election, it was obvious that Google manipulated searches to favor Hillary Clinton while showing disproportionately negative stories about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.


And now we know just how effective all that had been, and it almost left us with Hillary as president.


Hillary Clinton may have lost by a substantially larger margin had Google not manipulated the search results in her favor. Even trending negative searches about the corrupt democrat were suppressed. According to an exclusive by Breitbart, the conclusions are based on 16 months of experiments conducted with a total of 1,800 people from all 50 U.S. states. Participants in the study came from diverse ideological backgrounds, including liberal, conservative, and moderate. In order to control prior biases, participants were asked to judge political candidates that they were unfamiliar with.


The research showed that the manipulation of results pages in search engines can shift the voting preferences of undecideds by anywhere between 20 and 80 percent, depending on the demographic –meaning Google was attempting to rig the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton.


The voting preferences of participants who saw no search suggestions shifted toward the favored candidate by 37.1%. The voting preferences of participants in the search suggestion groups who saw only positive search suggestions shifted similarly (35.6%). However, the voting preferences of participants who saw three positive search suggestions and one negative search suggestion barely shifted (1.8%); this occurred because the negative search suggestion attracted more than 40% of the clicks (negativity bias). In other words, a single negative search suggestion can impact opinions dramatically. Participants who were shown four negative suggestions (and no positives) shifted away from the candidate shown in the search bar (-43.4%). -Epstein, Mohr, & Martinez, The Search Suggestion Effect, 2018


Led by Dr. Robert Epstein, the researchers concluded that by using this method of manipulation, search engines can shift a “50/50 split among people who are undecided on an issue to a 90/10 split without people’s awareness and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to follow.” Meaning the real collusion during the 2016 election was not between Trump and the Russians, but was between tech giants and their propaganda scheme and the Hillary Clinton campaign. 


It is no longer a conspiracy theory that Google is manipulating people.  Just look at the heavy amount of manipulation in Google’s “suggested” searches in comparison to those of Bing and Yahoo. The researchers suggested that the search suggestion manipulation made against Google during the 2016 election when the tech giant appeared to be suppressing negative search suggestions for Hillary Clinton while allowing negative suggestions for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to remain.



This is not a coincidence, especially when considering Google was the Clinton campaign’s largest corporate contributor. Google employees, including at least six high-ranking executives, donated more than $1.3 million to Clinton’s 2016 campaign.


Call it censorship or manipulation, but the truth is…Google attempted to rig the election for Hillary Clinton by manipulating searches and suggestions, and therefore, voters minds.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Bernie Sanders: Trump Has ‘No Legal Authority’ to Bomb or Attack Syria

Bernie Sanders Trump Syria(CD) — With expectations high that President Donald Trump will order airstrikes or a bombing campaign against Syria at any time, Sen. Bernie Sanders declared Wednesday afternoon that the president has “no legal authority” to directly target the government or military forces of Syria—a sovereign nation. President Trump has no legal authority for broadening the war […]

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Sanders Feels the Burn After Surrounding Himself with Armed Police at National Walkout Rally

Sanders Feels the Burn After Surrounding Himself with Armed Police at National Walkout Rally | Bernie-Sanders-guns | Gun Control Multimedia Politics


By Aaron Kesel, Activist Post


Senator Bernie Sanders joined students participating in a national walkout to protest gun violence outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C surrounded by armed police as he delivered a hypocritical speech calling for the “courage to take out the NRA” and common sense gun control in response to the Parkland high school attack, Newsweek reported.







What’s wrong with this picture? Yup Bernie Sanders at an anti gun rally with students being protected w/armed police officers for security








Sanders live streamed his speech on his Facebook page, which towards the middle featured him moving through the crowd of cheering students and shaking their hands. As Sanders traveled through the protesters chanting for gun control, he was accompanied by three heavily armed Capitol police officers there to escort him through the students.




Multiple times in the live feed, the police can be heard asking the students to “step back and move away from Sanders,” as is the protocol with congressman and especially presidents to protect them from deranged psychopaths.


This isn’t the first time that Democrats have been ridiculed for the calls to ban firearms yet still have depended on them for safety.


In 2016, gun-rights groups called for Democrats to bar any armed security at the Democratic National Convention.


“Gun owners are demanding that the Democratic party practice what it preaches,” read a petition from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “If a political party believes that guns do not make us safer, they should set an example by rejecting any and all forms of armed security at their convention.”


Sanders frequently makes two points about his gun record, as The Washington Post reported during the 2016 election where his opponent Hillary Clinton often used his stances on gun control against him.


He has a D-minus rating from the NRA, and the NRA’s endorsement of his opponents during his first congressional race in 1988 may have cost him the election. Sanders’s most recent grade from the NRA was a D-minus. Since 1992, the first year the NRA issued a grade for Sanders, he has received between a C-minus and F. Since 1988, Sanders has been consistent on restricting the use of semiautomatic firearms (often called “assault weapons”).


Further, as per that report, Sanders voted on a 2005 law giving broad federal immunity to gun manufacturers; now he wants to suddenly ban semi-automatic firearms.








However, for three decades, Sanders has “believed we should not be selling assault weapons” like the accused gunman’s AR-15.


“These weapons are not for hunting,” he said. “They’re for killing human beings,” Sanders stated on NBC’s The View last month.


In that same interview Sanders previously also stated that Congress should close the “gun show loophole” ― the lack of federal rules mandating background checks on the sale of guns between privates sellers.


In his time in Congress, Sanders has voted against a bill in the 1990s to require a five-day waiting period to allow for criminal background checks before a gun could be purchased, voted to allow firearms on Amtrak, and expressed opposition against a lawsuit to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. However, on the other side of the coin, he has also voted for universal background checks and an assault weapons ban more recently.


In a 2015 speech while campaigning, Sanders expressed a similar argument for common sense gun control which he explained:


vast majority of hunters don’t use semi-assault weapons when they hunt, and they don’t have magazines that shoot 30 rounds at a time. So I hope as a nation we would ban these type of assault weapons so they don’t get into the hands of gun dealers.


Sanders further added that there is a cultural divide between urban and rural America on gun regulation, arguing what seemed to be to create two different regulations for rural and urban America so that everyone is happy.


“People in urban America can not demonize or stereotype people in rural America because they own guns and they hunt. While people in rural America who hunt have got to understand that guns in Chicago and LA mean a very different thing then guns in Vermont and New Hampshire. And if we can come to that understanding and cross this cultural divide we can finally come up with common sense gun solutions that the vast part of American people will support,” Sanders said, on the campaign trail.



Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Democrats have actively argued for disarming the public of assault rifles and even allowing police the power to decide who can and can’t keep their firearms if they are classified “dangerous” by government standards.


Although, U.S. President Donald Trump has since backtracked on his remarks stating that he wanted to confiscate guns “from certain individuals deemed to be dangerous.”


Meanwhile, in the state of Florida, where the Parkland shooting took place, confiscating firearms has already taken place under Florida’s new gun-control laws, temporarily removing guns from a 56-year-old man’s possession.


Four firearms and 267 rounds of ammunition were ordered removed from the man who was determined to be a potential risk to himself or others; or as Trump would state, a man “deemed to be dangerous.”


The guns and ammunition have been temporarily removed from the man under the state’s new “risk protection” law, which is also sometimes called “red flag” legislation, Lighthouse Point City Attorney Michael Cirullo confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel.


In the beginning of March, House Democrats in agreement with Trump have introduced a bill H.R.5087 that if passed would ban the sale of semi-automatic firearms. The legislation opts to prohibit the “sale, transfer, production, and importation” of semi-automatic rifles and pistols that can hold a detachable magazine, as well as semi-automatic rifles with a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.


Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., announced the legislation entitled: “Assault Weapons Ban of 2018.”


In the gun debate, there is only one video that ever needs to be seen and that’s the Congressional hearing testimony of Suzanna Gratia Hupp, a survivor of the Luby’s shooting, also known as the Luby’s massacre. The attack left 23 people dead and injured another 27 when a deeply disturbed man, George Hennard, drove his pickup truck through the front window of a Texas restaurant.


On October 16, 1991, George Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby’s Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, screaming “This is what Bell County has done to me!” then opened fire on the restaurant’s patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89.


During the shooting, Hennard approached Suzanna Gratia Hupp and her parents. Hupp had actually brought a handgun to the Luby’s Cafeteria that day but had left it in her vehicle due to the laws enforced at the time, forbidding citizens from carrying firearms.


According to her testimony in favor of Missouri’s HB-1720 bill (a law to allow concealed carry), after she realized that her firearm was not in her purse but “a hundred feet away in her car,” her father charged at Hennard in an attempt to subdue him, only to be gunned down; a short time later, her mother was also shot and killed.


Hupp expressed regret for abiding by the law in question by leaving her firearm in her car, rather than keeping it on her person. She further stated that she didn’t blame the killer or the gun; she blamed her legislators because she couldn’t protect herself and her family.


It is worth noting in Hupp’s statement she expressed that she was not a representative of the NRA when she gave her testimony.



The Second Amendment is a right of the people; if you ban sales from lawful citizens, you will encourage black market sales of firearms where the weapons aren’t registered. In such a case, all the criminals will be armed while forcing innocent civilians to be easy targets for a lunatic/lunatics or worse  — tyranny will rise, as history has proven from dictatorship to dictatorship time and time again.


Again, we will ask the question why would anyone be excited about disarming themselves under any president who shows contempt for the U.S. Constitution and due process, while simultaneously increasing the availability of military weaponry to the nation’s police? Shouldn’t we have learned the lessons of history by now?




Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on FacebookTwitterSteemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.


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The post Sanders Feels the Burn After Surrounding Himself with Armed Police at National Walkout Rally appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Democrats: US Should ‘Urgently Engage With Russia’ to Avoid Nuclear Conflict

Russia Nuclear Weapons(ZHE) — During a routine Congressional hearing on Wednesday, US military leaders publicly admonished Russian President Vladimir Putin for unveiling six powerful new weapons during his annual address to lawmakers, including what’s believed to be a modified Iskander ballistic missile capable of defeating US and NATO anti-ballistic missile systems. Using Putin’s escalation as one more justification for asking that all of […]

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Group Led by Bernie Sanders Unveils Bill to Force Removal of US Forces From Yemen

Bernie Sanders Yemen(COMMONDREAMS) — As the Trump administration continues to expand the U.S. military’s role in fueling the Saudi-led coalition’s deadly assault on Yemen—which has killed at least 10,000 civilians and sparked “the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis“—a coalition of senators led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bipartisan joint resolution on Wednesday that calls for the removal of American armed forces from […]

Friday, January 5, 2018

Ellison Goes Full Subversive Promoting Antifa

Ellison is not just some obscure outlier — he’s a major player in the national Democrat Party with the backing of its leadership.


“Lawmaker” Ellison embraces “revolutionary” collectivist lawbreakers.“Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, caused a stir on social media Wednesday when he posed with a book promoting the violent ‘Antifa’ movement,” Fox News reports. “In a post on Twitter, Ellison said that he found the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” at a Minneapolis book shop and said it would ‘strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.’”


That’s doubtful, especially since if the domestic enemies are anything like their foreign counterparts, they’re more contemptible and failed man-children than anything else. The only reason they get away with their crap is because the system they want to destroy doesn’t typically roll tanks over dissenters. Those like them are the ones who do Killing Fields after they slaughter their way to power.


Besides, Trump is an avatar for those who voted for him because they believe in the issues he campaigned on. Ellison means to strike fear in their hearts.


So it’s no surprise that he would add support for frustrated, raging and violent vandals to his list of allies hostile to the Republic from which sprang the Bill of Rights. Or that he was the first choice of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid to head the DNC.


They did that knowing Ellison is a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And the Caucus (with Ellison specifically identified) maintains “ties” with the Communist Party USA and “close ties” with another “progressive” group, the Democratic Socialists of America, the domestic arm of Socialist International. The DSA devoted a page on their website (until they took it down to try to hide it—this link  goes to the Internet Archive record, which they can’t erase) to hymns glorifying their “struggle.”


The following examples should be of special interest, since the people they’re talking about are pretty much you and me:


Too many of our countrymen still are sleeping. What will you do today to help wake them up? And tomorrow and the next day…?


Naturally, such people can’t be armed if the revolution is to succeed. Ellison has a plan for that, too. His response to being asked why the Democrat Party doesn’t “come out against the Second Amendment”:


“I sure wish they would. I sure wish they would.”


Americans who regard the Constitution as a superior mechanism for advancing individual rights than Islam, which Ellison also embraces,  are smeared as members of “extremist anti-government movements.” And speaking of which, just what the hell was Ellison swearing to when he placed his hand on Thomas Jefferson’s Koran and swore an oath?  And do we all know what Jefferson understood about the implications to freedom based on real-world experience?


Not exactly friendly to the “no law respecting an establishment of religion”proscription, is it?


Of course, Marxism brooks no competition as well, and Ellison has positioned himself to ride either horse. Still, in a way his being so over-the-top in his radical departure from traditional “red state” America can be used to advantage by showing people that as deputy chair of the DNC, he’s not just an outlier. He represents the leadership of the Democrat Party. It’s more than simply “our friends across the aisle” with whom we can “agree to disagree.”


These people mean to rule, and ultimately, only one thing will stand in their way. That would be those of us retaining the means and the will to prevent it.


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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”


The post Ellison Goes Full Subversive Promoting Antifa appeared first on Oath Keepers.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

"Somebody Screwed Up" - House Must Vote Again On Tax-Reform Plan After Procedural Snag

Update: In an interview with MSNBC"s Chuck Todd, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy offered the most honest explanation yet for the Senate Parliamentarian finding that three provisions in the final Trump tax bill violate Senate budget rules - meaning that the House will need to hold another vote on the bill.


"Somebody screwed up," Kennedy said.



Still, Kennedy reiterated that observers shouldn"t read too much into the delay. Republicans have been scrambling to put the bill together and pass it before the end of the year - a notably tight deadline. Some exhausted staffer was probably responsible for the oversight, he suggested.


"We have the votes, we"ll have the votes tomorrow. If necessary, we"ll have the votes the day after that," Kennedy said on MSNBC.


The Senate is still expected to vote on the bill Tuesday night after removing the offending provisions.


* * *


In an embarassing reversal of what House Republicans had celebrated as a done deal, the House will need to vote again on the final version of the tax reform plan passed earlier this afternoon. The second vote is the result of a technicality in one of the bill"s provisions. According to Bloomberg, the Senate parliamentarian found three provisions in the final bill that violate the Byrd Rule, and the Senate will have to strip them from the bill before passing it, according to Bernie Sanders, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who had earlier hinted that he was looking into possible Byrd Rule violations.


Then the House will need to hold a second vote on the newly modified bill.


“It is our intention to raise a point of order to remove these provisions from the conference report and require the House to vote on this bill again," Sanders said. The House now expects to take another vote on the tax bill tomorrow morning, according to email from majority leader’s office; that vote would clear the bill for Trump’s signature, assuming the Senate passes the bill with the required changes later this evening.



According to the Byrd Rule, lawmakers can challenge provisions in a bill if they would significantly add to the deficit. Democrats have identified three such provisions.


Republicans brushed off the delay as a minor inconvenience. Kevin Brady, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said they weren"t a big deal. However, Brady told CNBC that it"s unclear how this will impact the vote on the stopgap spending bill that must be passed before Friday at midnight or the federal government will enter a Christmas shutdown.


One of the provisions is related to a detail in the bill that would benefit a private college in Kentucky. Another would allow families to use tax-advantaged 529 accounts for home-schooling expenses, according to the Associated Press.


"Members are advised that we expect Senate Democrats to insist on a Byrd Point of Order on the Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 1, which is likely to be sustained," said guidance from House Majority Whip Steve Scalise"s (R-La.) office, which was sent to GOP lawmakers, according to the Hill.


"As such, Members are further advised that an additional procedural vote on the Motion to Concur is expected tomorrow morning, which will clear the bill for President Trump’s signature," his office added.


The second vote will likely take place on Wednesday, and is expected to pass, according to CNBC. However, the chance that the wheels could fall off at the last minute can never be ruled out.


Earlier, the House approved the tax plan in a 227-203 vote with 12 Republicans joining all the Democrats in opposition.









Thursday, December 7, 2017

Stockman: Why The Deep State Is At War With Trump

Authored by David Stockman via The Mises Institute,



If you were a Martian visitor just disembarked from of one of Elon Musk"s rocket ships and were therefore uninfected by earth-based fake news, the culprits in Washington"s witch-hunt de jure would be damn obvious.


They include John Brennan, Jim Comey, Sally Yates, Peter Strzok and a passel of deep state operatives -- all of whom baldly abused their offices. After Brennan had concocted the whole Russian election meddling meme to sully the Donald"s shocking election win, the latter three holdovers -- functioning as a political fifth column in the new Administration -- set a perjury trap designed to snare Mike Flynn as a first step in relitigating and reversing the voters" verdict.


The smoking gun on their guilt is so flamingly obvious that the ability of the Trump-hating media to ignore it is itself a wonder to behold.


After all, anyone fresh off Elon"s rocket ship would learn upon even cursory investigation of the matter that the National Security Agency (NSA) intercepts electronically every single communication of the Russian Ambassador with any person on US  soil -- whether by email, text or phone call.


So the clear-minded visitor"s simple question would be: What do the transcripts say?


In fact, a Martian visitor would also quickly understand that the entire world -- friend, rival, foe and enemy, alike -- already knows of NSA"s giant digital spying operation owing to Snowden"s leaks, and that therefore there are no "sources and methods" on the SIGINT (signals intelligence) front to protect.


Accordingly, the disinterested Martian would undoubtedly insist: Declassify the NSA intercepts and publish them on Facebook (and, for old timers, on the front page of the New York Times) so that the truth would be known to all.


The Deep State Watergate


Of course, that would punch a deep hole in the entire RussiaGate witchhunt because NSA, in fact, did record Flynn"s late December conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. And there was not a single word in them that related to alleged campaign collusion or otherwise inappropriate communications by the in-coming national security adviser to a newly-elected President who was three-weeks from inauguration.


Indeed, as explained below, Mueller has effectively told us that Flynn"s communications with Kislyak were clean as a whistle.


Accordingly, there was no reason whatsoever -- as in none, nichts, nada and nugatory, too -- for the FBI"s January 24th interview of Flynn. Four days after the inauguration,  Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and the FBI were wasting the time of the new President"s national security advisor for no earthly reason except to administer a "gotcha quiz" on what they knew from the transcripts to be completely innocent conversations with the Russian Ambassador


The content of the calls was entirely about pending policy matters. That is, the UN security council resolution condemning Israel"s settlements policy and Obama"s belligerent new anti-Russia sanctions. With respect to both of these matters, the incoming President had a publicly known policy position different from the incumbent"s, and about which his team was completely entitled to communicate with official foreign ambassadors.


So the January 24th interview itself was a Nixonesque abuse of the nation"s law enforcement machinery to strike at a political enemy -- albeit a mighty legitimate one who had just become occupant of the Oval Office by will of the American people.


These new-style Deep State "plumbers" who openly broke into the White House that day, in fact, conducted a blatant entrapment exercise with malice aforethought. Its only possible purpose was to bait Flynn into contradicting the word-for-word transcripts in the FBI"s possession -- intercepts which had been illegally "unmasked" by Brennan"s political witch-hunt for Russian election malefactors.


And we use the "illegal" word purposefully to underscore that the only ultimate justice here is for Obama"s rogue CIA director to be locked-up.


Brennan"s post-election leakathon of phony Russian meddling accusations was so threadbare of valid national security evidence that it even included falsehoods from the completely discredited and ludicrous Steele dossier -- which was paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign. And it culminated in the evidence-free screed of January 6th that was nosily presented to Obama as an intelligence community"s assessment but was actually a hatchet-job authored by Brennan and a hand-picked silo of anti-Trump analysts and fiction-writers like the now outed Peter Strzok of the FBI.


Issued under cover of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Director of National Intelligence (the confirmed liar, James Clapper), this document amounted to a sweeping abuse of the national security apparatus in furtherance of purely political purposes and vengeance against Deep State critics. It capped a 5-month long, Brennan led campaign of naked political exploitation of the national security machinery that made the Nixon White House look like a Boy Scout Jamboree.


As we will demonstrate below, Brennan never had hard proof of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians to influence the election because if it existed it would have leaked in full "smoking gun" splendor long ago.


The Russian Hoax


We are referring here, again, to NSA digital intercept evidence that Russian state actors used the internet to remotely hack the Podesta and DNC servers in order to steal and then disseminate their politically embarrassing contents and thereby "influence" the US election in Trump"s favor.


Yet aside from the asinine claims about Russian troll farms and trivial amounts of Facebook ads and other such social media monkey business, that"s all she wrote. There has been no other tangible allegations of election "meddling" that rise to even minimal plausibility.


And you don"t have to be fresh off Musk"s Martian rocket ship to recognize it; you can google it yourself, but nothing -- we mean -- nothing comes up on the screen.


Yet as to the DNC emails, there has already been a compelling demonstration by ex-NSA super SIGNET sleuth, William Binney, that the DNC emails were downloaded on a memory stick by a staff insider from his own computer, not remotely hacked by Russian trolls.


That"s because the download speed of 22.7 megabytes per second embedded in the Guccifer publication of the DNC email trove was impossible to achieve from Russia or Romania or anywhere else outside of the DNC offices in July 2016 when the "hack" allegedly occurred. The highest average ISP speeds in the US during the first-half of 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications at 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively, while average speeds on US systems were in the order of 11 megabytes per second.


In short, the embarrassing DNC emails about election-rigging against Bernie Sanders by the Democratic Party apparatus were almost surely sucked out of the DNC"s servers by an insider with a thumb drive (which can download at the indicated speeds), not some nefarious Kremlin operative 3,000 miles away.


And as for Podesta"s emails, the Donald was surely right all along: Any 400-pound slob on a couch could have hacked an email account protected by a password called, well, "password".


Stated differently, if either of these email troves were "hacked" by remote Russian agents the digital footprint of that action is stored at one of the massive NSA server farms. 


Accordingly, it would have been unmasked at the get-go by Brennan"s hand-picked apparatchiks, thereby giving rise to another virtual certainty: Namely, such NSA intercepts, if they actually existed, would be such politically radioactive "proof" of Trump collusion that they would have been leaked from the endlessly porous US government long ago.


Moreover, any such digital evidence -- which must exist or there was never a hack in the first place -- would have drastically foreshortened Mueller"s investigation, too. That is, Mueller would have gotten NSA"s digital logs the day he opened up shop in May and would have had no other investigative task than to track down any digital evidence of Trump campaign involvement with such a Russian hacking operation.


We say "digital evidence" because unless one of Trump"s inner circle traveled to Moscow to secretly collude with the Kremlin in an off-the-grid manner on the DNC/Podesta hacks, NSA would also have the intercepts to prove it. To wit, the schedules, phone calls, text messages and emails of the Trump family and inner circle are all out there in the NSA server farms. Every one of them.


Were there a shred of evidence on these digital logs proving or even hinting at Trump campaign complicity in the alleged DNC/Podesta hacks, it would not have been overlooked by the Brennan"s inquisitors; and it would have been dispatched by Mueller"s gunslingers in no time at all.


So let"s be clear on the matter. The Donald is the ultimate seat-of-the-pants one man show who essentially relies upon his four family members (Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared Kushner) and a few trusted advisors. Yet none of them were sent to Russia during the relevant time frame -- and had they colluded in any other way Mueller would have nailed them for any untoward digitized interactions with the Russians in a heartbeat.


That"s right. Anyone disembarking from Elon"s rocket ship could also google the fact that only two people -- Carter Page and George Papadopoulos -- even remotely involved with the Trump campaign went to Russia or tried to go there.


But Carter Page was a no-count volunteer who went to Moscow on his own dime and who never even met Trump.


Likewise, Baby George Papadopoulos was a 29-year old kid who got drafted onto Trump"s foreign policy advisory panel from, apparently, the phone book when the GOP foreign policy establishment boycotted to nearly a man/women the Trump campaign prior to the convention.


Accordingly, Baby George"s claim to fame is that he appeared in exactly one photo with the Donald on the day the foreign policy advisory committee was announced in order to appease an endlessly nagging gaggle in the press and among Trump"s legions of opponents.


If Papadopoulos had done anything more serious than sit for a photo op designed to prove Trump got his foreign policy advise other than from "watching TV," as the Donald had previously averred, his guilty plea would have hinted at it.


But, no, what Mueller"s high priced legal gun-slingers got him on was -- again -- technical perjury. So as we review Mike Flynn"s alleged crimes just recall that the Baby George"s sin was to say he meet some dufus UK professor -- who was also a phony expert on Russian affairs -- before Papadopoulos was announced as a foreign policy advisor on March 19, 2016.


As it happened, he actually meet him about a week earlier and was therefore truthful with the FBI. But these modern-day, hair-splitting Torquemadas nailed him for the "crime" of not mentioning that he knew on March 10 that he was to be appointed to the Trump committee, and that knowledge somehow colored his March 15 meeting with this no-count English go-between.


You can"t make this stuff up!


The Perjury Trap of the Century


In any event, how do we know that every word on the Flynn transcripts were perfectly legal and appropriate and did not in the slightest manner compromise so-called national security?


Simple. Mueller"s "Statement Of The Offense" tells us so.


In the case of the Russia sanctions conversation Flynn was trying to make peace, and in the case of the UN censure resolution against Israel he was trying to make trouble. But the latter is what presidents and their advisors do all the time, and the former is a wonderful idea that Washington should try far more often.


In fact, just consider the words of Mueller"s charge:


....FLYNN falsely stated that he did not ask Russia"s Ambassador to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating in response to sanctions that the United States has imposed against Russia. FLYNN also falsely stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of FLYNN"s request.


 


In fact, this criminal charge actually narrates the actual tick-tock of a more peaceful world struggling to be born in real time.



Accordingly, Mueller charges that on December 28th the Russian Ambassador first called Flynn after the Obama White House announced another spiteful round of petty sanctions against Putin associates.


The in-coming national security advisor, in turn, discussed "what if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador" with a senior official of the Trump transition; and according to Mueller"s criminal complaint, the two agreed that "members of the Presidential Transition Team a Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation."


Good for them!


There upon the very same day Flynn dialed-up Kislyak and, as the felony charging document contends, "requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner."


Self-evidently, the wheels of peace began to turn because the complaint notes that on December 30 "Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at the time."


Indeed, Russia didn"t merely take "reciprocal" actions, as Flynn requested, but did absolutely nothing at all. Even more progress!


Then on the last day of the year, Kislyak called Flynn back and "informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FLYNN"s request".


And then there is just white space in the Russia-related section of the charging document. Not a single word or hint that the Kremlin was paying off the Trump Administration for nefarious promises it had made in return for Russia"s campaign help.


For crying out loud, that white space itself proves there was not so much as a single clause or veiled code word in the transcripts about pre-election collusion or other untoward arrangements between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin -- or the FBI plumbers would have asked about it on January 24, Flynn would have lied, and it would be in the plea deal.


Indeed, the possibility that there is something untoward in the Flynn intercepts which Mueller chose to keep under wraps and did not stipulate in the plea is preposterous in the extreme.


After more than one year of investigation that has produced exactly zero hard evidence of pre-election collusion it is beyond impossible that at long last Mueller would have abjured. That is, refrained from putting a grain of content into what anyone getting off Musk"s Mars rocket can see is an utterly bogus Russia meddling case.


At the end of the day, Mueller"s perjury did occur in the context of a crime. But the felony was the Brennan-led Russian meddling inquisition.


Especially after the shocking result on November 8, the Deep State and its collaborators and shills in the Democratic Party, official Washington and the mainstream media were not about to be rebuked by the unwashed demos of Flyover America.


Indeed, if you are not caught up in the RussiaGate hysteria and witch-hunt, it"s as plain as the nose on your face


To be sure, the perjury trap sprung on Flynn was justified by Hillary partisan, Sally Yates, on the grounds that Flynn"s alleged "lie" to the Vice President left him vulnerable to "blackmail" by the Russians.


What undiluted hogwash!


The best poker player on today"s international stage, Vlad Putin, finally gets a US President with a rational attitude about Russia, and he plans to burn him day one?


C"mon. Whether she intended it or not or had gamed it out thoroughly, the history records will show that the sanctimonious Hillary partisan and politically ambitious, Sally Yates, then and there killed the best chance for peace on earth since the Soviet Union fell in 1991.


Sally Yates, James Comey, and John Brennan are the real criminals here.


As Justin Raimondo so eloquently put it:


Think about it, folks: both the US and the Russians possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy all life on earth several times over. This sword of Damocles is hanging over us by a thread, just as it loomed large during the last cold war with Moscow. It’s a  machinery of annihilation that is set on hair-trigger alert, and any number of events could unleash it: a miscalculation, a foolish bluff, a misunderstanding, a technical glitch, a showdown similar to the Cuban missile crisis. All that stands between us and utter extinction is the hope that this apparatus of death can be restrained by mutual agreement. Bravo to the Trump administration for making peace a priority. If this is now a crime, and even “treason,” as the mouth-breathers of #TheResistance would have it, well then let the Washington Inquisition make the most of it.



The point was also underscored cogently by Andrew McCarthy of the National Review.


As McCarthy argues below, differences on foreign policy are essentially now being criminalized; and the Donald"s justified desire to shutdown the Brennan-inspired political witch-hunt called RussiaGate is being falsely characterized as obstruction of justice rather than what it actually is -- an effort to prevent the Deep State"s insidious assault on American democracy from going any further.


While all that plays out, though, behold the frightening thing Mueller’s investigation has become: a criminalization of politics. In the new order of things, policy differences are the grist for investigation and prosecution.


Nevertheless, Trump’s victory caused consternation in the Obama administration for two reasons. First, and most obviously, Obama did not want his policies reversed. Second, neither Obama nor his party could abide a judgment of history holding that the election of Trump, the bane of their existence, was a result of the American people’s rejection of the Obama agenda and of Hillary Clinton, the hapless candidate nominated by Democrats to carry that agenda forward.


...The ongoing Mueller probe is not a good-faith investigation of suspected espionage or other crime. It is the exploitation of the executive’s intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement powers in order to (a) criminalize Trump political policies with which the Obama administration disagreed and (b) frame Clinton’s electoral defeat as the product of a traitorous scheme rather than a rejection of Democratic-party priorities.
Finally, we couldn"t agree more with McCarthy that General Flynn is a very foolish man. He was not required to speak to the FBI when agents came to interview him on January 24.



Moreover, as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency he surely knew that the FBI would have been monitoring Kislyak and that the FBI had recordings of the conversations the agents wanted to ask him about.


That he agreed to submit to the interview anyway, and then to lie, is surely one of the stupidest acts coming out of official Washington that we can recall from 47 years of observation. But perhaps it does explain why America"s legions of puffed-up generals have been such abysmal failures for onwards of a half-century now.


So it is fair enough to say that Flynn has no one to blame but himself, and that a person of such poor judgment should never have been chosen to be the president’s principal national security adviser in the first place.


Then again, the American people should also understand why Flynn has gone down and why the Donald"s political scalp is fairly waiting to be lofted from the Washington Monument.


To wit, the Deep State has turned its own crimes during and after the 2016 election into nothing less than a coup d"etat against American democracy.



 









What Life Is Like For A Million People In Puerto Rico Who Still Don"t Have Power

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,


If you ever wondered what it would look like if the grid collapsed here on the mainland, the island of Puerto Rico is a tragic, real-life case study.



These stories show us what life is like for more than a million people who STILL don’t have power and running water nearly 3 months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated their communities.


According to a website showing the status of utilities on the island, four months after two hurricanes wrought havoc, 32% of Puerto Ricans are still without power and nearly 10% are still without running water. However, even those who have running water must boil it.


But statistics don’t tell the real story.


At first, it was a war zone.


In the first days after the grid went down, chaos ruled. I vetted as many of the stories as I could and concluded:


…there is very little food, no fresh water, 97% are still without power, limited cell signals have stymied communications, and hospitals are struggling to keep people alive. There is no 911. Help is not on the way. If you have no cash, you can’t buy anything. As people get more desperate, violence increases. (source)



A friend wrote this post about her family on Puerto Rico:


“My family has lost everything. My uncle with stage 4 cancer is in so much pain and stuck in the hospital. However, conditions in the island are far worse than we imagined and my greatest fear has been made reality. The chaos has begun. The mosquitos have multiplied like the plague. Dead livestock are all over the island including in whatever fresh water supplies they have.


 


My family has been robbed and have lost whatever little they had left. The gang members are robbing people at gunpoint and the island is in desperation. People are shooting each other at gas stations to get fuel.


 


They’re telling us to rescue them and get them out of the island because they are scared for their lives. We’re talking about 3.5 million people on an island, with no food, no drinking water, no electricity, homes are gone. Family if you have the means to get your people out, do it. This is just the first week. Imagine the days and weeks to come. These are bad people doing bad things to our most vulnerable.


 


Imagine a few weeks with no resources and the most vulnerable become desperate. What are you capable of doing if your children are sick and hungry? We have to help.” (source)



Other outlets told the same stories. Jeffrey Holsman wrote a guest post for USA Today, sharing what he was witnessing.


The sounds of automatic weapons firing were audible Tuesday evening in San Juan. We were told the National Guard had arrived, but I hadn’t personally seen a Jeep or uniform in the streets yet.


 


Total darkness has swallowed Puerto Rico, as it has every night since the 12-hour monster Hurricane Maria roared across the island with more than 20 inches of rain and 155 mph winds. I’ve never experienced anything like it: wind and rain from every direction, pounding continuously.


 


Now, a war zone best describes what’s left of what was once an emerald green gem in the Caribbean…


 


…after Maria, we face hours upon hours of waiting in lines for gas that might not be there; hours waiting in bank and ATM lines for money that might not be there; hours waiting in grocery store lines for food that might not be there. (source)



It only took a few days before people began to become ill from the tainted water. There were many injuries related to the storm, as well as the aftermath, and these crises were compounded by the lack of medical assistance.


Only 11 of 69 hospitals on Puerto Rico have power or are running on generators, FEMA reports. That means there’s limited access to X-ray machines and other diagnostic and life-saving equipment. Few operating rooms are open, which is scary, considering an influx of patients with storm-related injuries. (source)



People were unable to acquire essential medications and treatments like dialysis.


And this was only the beginning.


One month after the disaster…


A month after Hurricane Maria, the situation was still very grim. Three million residents were still without electricity and one million were without running water. (source) Officials reported 54 deaths attributed to the hurricane but many said that the number was far higher. The mayor of San Juan said that the number of cremations had doubled and put the actual casualties at closer to 500 people.



She said: “It appears, for whatever reason, that the death toll is much higher than what has been reported. What we do know for sure is that people are being catalogued as dying…natural deaths”.


 


She explained that some of the deaths relating to the hurricane were being reported as “natural causes” because the storm was the secondary factor in their death.


 


For example, some people reportedly suffocated after their respirators stopped due to the power cut…


 


…The bodies were cremated before the medical examiner could determine whether they should have been included in the official death toll.


 


Accurate information about the figure is particularly important in the US because if a person dies in a natural disaster, their family has the right to claim federal aid. (source)





Evelyn Milagros Rodriguez, a librarian at the University of Puerto Rico wrote a first-person account of the aftermath during the first month post-Maria. She reported that the books, computers, and furniture at the library were mostly ruined and that mold had invaded the building. Here’s an excerpt from her story:



What outsiders are unable to see, perhaps, is that an entire culture has arisen around the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Maria – one with typically catastrophic traits: material scarcity, emotional trauma, economic catastrophe, environmental devastation.


 


Puerto Ricans are now facing a dramatically different way of life, which means our relatives and friends in the diaspora are, too.


 


Nothing about life resembles anything close to normal. An estimated 100,000 homes and buildings were demolished in the storm, and 90 percent of the island’s infrastructure is damaged or destroyed. Not only are there shortages of water and electricity but also of food, highways, bridges, security forces and medical facilities.


 


It’s dangerous to venture outside at night. An island-wide curfew was lifted last week, but without streetlights, stoplights or police, driving and walking are dangerous after dark.


 


The official tally of missing people varies, with police tallies ranging from 60 to 80 right now. Considering Puerto Rico’s hazardous conditions and limited health care services, that number is sure to rise. We are well aware that epidemic diseases, including leptospirosis and cholera, could come next. Health concerns are further stoked by the delays and disarray of the various federal agencies tasked with handling this emergency. (source)




Leyla Santiago, a CNN journalist who had been born in Puerto Rico and still has family there, echoed the librarian’s story in her own report.


Puerto Rico has also changed forever.


 


The struggles are everywhere. And where there is help or supplies, there are lines, always lines.


 


Some days, it would be people lining up for gas. And then for food at the supermarket. The longest lines were now to use the ATM.


 


I became numb to the lines quickly.


 


When we passed another long one at the port, I didn’t think anything of it. Until it hit me.


 


Thousands were lining up to leave Puerto Rico. I watched as an old man dragged an oxygen tank, while pleading with organizers to let him on that massive cruise ship now acting as a refugee transport. Another man lifted his shirt to show the scars from an operation, hoping it would convince the right people that he needed to get off the island. (source)





Although unthinkable, it’s even worse in more remote areas of Puerto Rico. Despite their preparations, Rosana Aviles Marin’s elderly parents’ lives were devastated in their central mountain village.


The winds of up to 155 miles per hour that roared across the island buckled the house’s walls and tore holes in the ceiling, letting in water that destroyed furniture, framed photos of Marin and her siblings, and brightly colored ceramic statues of Jesus.


 


That wasn’t all it destroyed. The storm also downed power lines throughout the area, and Marin and her parents have been entirely without electricity for weeks. Much of their food went bad, they have no cellphone service, and local markets and restaurants remain closed. Her parents use a small diesel generator to power lights and, for a few hours per day, a small refrigerator. The rest of the time, she tells me during a recent trip to the area, “my parents live in darkness.” (source)



The island’s major source of revenue has been tourism, and that has all but stopped since the hurricane. Considering how badly they were struggling economically before, that is just another blow to a place driven to its knees.





The narrow blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan are deserted. Cigar shops are boarded up. Boutiques in bright colonial buildings are closed...


 


...About a third of the hotels in Puerto Rico remain shuttered. Restaurants and shops are still without power. Beaches are closed for swimming because of possible water contamination.


 


The high season begins in December, and tourism officials are hoping to lure some visitors, but that depends on when power is fully restored and how quickly hotels and attractions can repair the catastrophic damage. (source)




It’s a Catch-22. Until the tourists return, many won’t be able to afford to restore their businesses. But until they restore their businesses, the tourists won’t return.


Two months after…


Two months to the date after Maria struck with a vengeance, only half of the residents of the island had power. The return of infrastructure began in the cities and wealthier areas. Those in poor or remote areas are still waiting. 


Here’s a video of what it looks like in Puerto Rico right now as people struggle to restore electricity.



Billions of dollars were allocated by the government and millions has come in from private donors.


 


Politicians have been in and out of the island and that has led to a spending law that provides $5 billion for Puerto Rico’s recovery and billions for government agencies providing disaster assistance. Projections are that a lot more will be needed.


 


On top of that, millions has been raised and contributed by private groups and foundations and individuals.


 


Cruz (the mayor of San Juan) said people from around the United States have been sending small donations, money orders, $50 or $10 attached to cards or pieces of paper. Some gave as much as $300 to $500.


 


“We’re going to use it to rebuild homes, to make sure people have good drinking water, because even if it comes out of a faucet it has to be drinkable, to schools for children. Some of the schools have been in really bad shape. Twenty-five percent of what comes into the foundation goes to other towns outside of San Juan,” she said. (source)



At two and a half months post-hurricane, PBS reported the following statistics:


  • 66 percent of power on the island has been restored

  • 93 percent of the island has access to water, but it remains on a boil advisory

  • 73 percent of cell sites are up and running

  • 982 survivors remain in 41 shelters across the island

The island still looks like a war zone.


Trash and debris from the storm remain a rampant problem. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported it has removed more than 639,000 cubic yards of debris. But it is still tasked with removing at least 2.7 million remaining cubic yards. (source)



Residents of the island are without resources and are at the mercy of FEMA…and government funding.


Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren unveiled a bill that would provide $114 billion in aid to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands…


 


[But] the package is unlikely to get a vote, analysts say


 


Meanwhile, more than 200,000 people from Puerto Rico have arrived in Florida since Maria hit, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.


 


FEMA is now moving from response to recovery mode. FEMA is still providing daily food, fuel, and water to survivors of Maria, the longest such sustained distribution after a disaster in FEMA history. (source)



You can get more details about the proposal here.


And now, the return of electricity has been further delayed.


Previously, Puerto Rican officials estimated that the island would have electricity again by December? It turns out they were wrong. Now it looks like everyone in Puerto Rico won’t have power until February… at the earliest.


PREPA acting Director Justo Gonzalez cited “natural” and hurricane damage to the power grid that was initially unidentified as the reason for the delay of power generation.


 


Others have said full power and other utilities will not be completely restored until March. (source)



Between Puerto Rico’s economic problems and an aging grid, this isn’t a speedy process.


Before the storm hit, I wrote an article predicting at least a 6-month wait before power was restored, and this was for a variety of reasons. I cited Philipe Schoene Roura, the editor of a San Juan, Puerto Rico-based newspaper, Caribbean Business, who wrote of the many reasons that it would take so long:


“The lifespan of most of Prepa’s equipment has expired. There is a risk that in light of this dismal infrastructure situation, a large atmospheric event hitting Puerto Rico could wreak havoc because we are talking about a very vulnerable and fragile system at the moment,” Ramos added…


 


…Francisco Guerrero (a fictitious name to protect his identity), a Prepa field worker for 23 years, said it would take months for Prepa to bring up Puerto Rico’s power system should a hurricane like Harvey strike the island.


 


The lack of linemen and other technical personnel, as well as a lack of equipment—including replacement utility poles for powerlines and replacement parts—are the issues of greatest concern among public corporation employees, who say they risk their lives working with equipment in poor condition that provides them with little safety.


 


Guerrero said that today only 580 linemen remain out of the 1,300 who were part of the workforce in previous years—and that’s not counting the upcoming retirement of another 90 linemen. Likewise, he said there are only 300 electrical line testers to serve the entire island.


 


The source also said that much of Prepa’s equipment dates back to the 1950s—and the more “modern” equipment that is still functional dates from the 1990s; in other words, it’s from the past century.


 


“If a hurricane like this one [Harvey] hits us, the system is not going to come online, I’d say, in over six months. Right now, the warehouses don’t even have materials. I’m talking about utility poles and other stuff,” Guerrero explained. (source)



It turns out that Rora was not exaggerating. But money and a dilapidated system aren’t the only problems. There is an issue of geography as well.


Puerto Rico’s biggest power generators are on the south of the island, but most of its inhabitants live on the north side, primarily in San Juan. There are four high-capacity transmission lines that carry power from the south to the north, and they pass through the center part of the island, the region Marin calls home. The problem is that central Puerto Rico is mountainous, full of huge swaths of thick forest, and mainly reachable only by driving on terrifyingly narrow dirt roads.


 


That makes it hard to reach those four vital lines even in the best of circumstances. In post-Maria Puerto Rico it’s even harder, because the center of the island was the region hardest hit by the hurricane. Since the government is trying to get power to San Juan first, that means those in the regions devastated most by the hurricane will be waiting the longest for power to be restored. Sánchez, the engineer, says workers would need to be flown in by helicopter to clear debris before repairs could even begin. (source)



Would you be prepared for something like this?


If you think something like this couldn’t happen to us on the mainland, you’re deluding yourself.


Our grid isn’t in fantastic shape either. For years, people in the know have been warning that our electrical infrastructure is aging and unstable. It would cost us a mindboggling 5 trillion dollars to replace the decrepit system, and age isn’t the only threat. The possibility of an EMP strike could take it down permanently (and that threat seems more real every day as tensions with North Korea rise.) If our grid was taken down by such an attack, it could kill 90% of Americans within the first year.


We would lose


  • Power.

  • Refrigeration.

  • Heating and cooling.

  • Our economy.

  • Fresh, running water.

  • Medical care.

The list could go on and on.


Few people would be ready for an event that took out the entire infrastructure for an extended period of time.  I personally lean toward a more low-tech plan for long-term scenarios like this. (For one reason, look how difficult fuel is to come by in Puerto Rico right now.)


Learning from the real-life experience of others give us just a glimpse of what we could expect.









Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Shutdown Imminent? Bitter Divisions Remain As Lawmakers Scramble To Pass Funding Bill

Lawmakers are just two days away from the expiration of the continuing resolution that"s been funding the government for the last two months, and yet many battles over a host of intractable issues are still being fought. At this point, passing something by midnight Friday - when the continuing resolution expires -is looking increasingly problematic.


Adding to the uncertainty are reports that President Donald Trump believes a shutdown could be spun as a political victory for Republicans by blaming it on the Democrats (it worked for Obama) - remarks that would seem to invalidate Mitch McConnell’s declaration that a shutdown “just isn’t going to happen."


Looming largest over negotiations is the fate of former President Obama’s DACA program - which is set to expire in March thanks to a Trump executive order. Most - but not all - Democrats want language preserving DACA attached to the funding bill - as a preliminary deal struck between Trump and “Chuck and Nancy” back in September had stipulated. Many Republicans - even many of those who ultimately support preserving DACA - feel it shouldn’t be attached to the spending bill.



Aside from preserving DACA, there are two other legislative priorities that Democrats and some moderate Republicans are fighting to include in the spending bill: An extension of a popular child health-insurance program, and a provision that would preserve federal cost-sharing payments to insurance companies for a couple of years.


Meanwhile, some conservatives are objecting to the two-week timeline favored by the Republican leadership, arguing that such a short timeline would give lawmakers more leverage to push for favors by threatening to make problems by holding tax reform hostage - something Republicans have promised to pass by the end of the year.


Here’s RealClearPolitics:


Democrats, and several dozen moderate Republicans, want to see a legislative solution for immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children -- known as “Dreamers” -- before the end of the year. Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate also hope to pass bipartisan legislation to shore up the Affordable Care Act marketplace, and lawmakers hope to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Also lingering are the expiring federal flood insurance program, and another round of disaster relief money for areas damaged by hurricanes.



As the Hill points out, many Democrats would refuse to support a spending bill unless it includes the protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children.


Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), all prospects to run for president in three years, say they won’t vote for a year-end funding bill while these immigrants face the threat of deportation.


“I have been clear,” Harris said on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, noting the looming deadline to fund the government. “Any bill that funds the government must also include a fix for” the young immigrants.


Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have also warned they would oppose spending legislation unless some concessions are made to protect these so-called Dreamers.



Unsurprisingly, red-state Democrats are somewhat less enthusiastic about preserving DACA.


But vulnerable Democrats running for reelection next year in states that President Trump won don’t want any part of that strategy. They are aiming to show swing voters who backed Trump that they’re willing to work with Republicans when it makes sense.


 


“I think it’s stupid talk. You don’t want to shut the government down. That’s not where I’m going to be,” said Sen. Jon Tester. Tester said he wants the Dreamers taken care of, but “you don’t shut the government down."



The Democrats’ leaders in Congress have been wary of appearing to threaten a shutdown lest it makes them look like they’re willing to fight for their principles - something the Democratic Party brain trust apparently believes could hurt Democrats’ chances in next year’s midterms.


Like the original agreement with Trump, Schumer ultimately expects Democrats to reach a deal with Republicans that will offer some border-security concessions in exchange for preserving DACA.


The party’s top leaders, Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have assiduously avoided threats of a government shutdown, knowing it could put some of their colleagues in a tough spot.  Schumer downplayed the prospect of Democrats blocking a spending measure to force Republicans to replace the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that President Obama created in 2012 to halt deportations for certain young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.


 


“We don’t think we’re going to get to that. There are good negotiations occurring between Democrats and Republicans to come up with a good DACA program, as well as some good border security,” he said Tuesday after a meeting of the Democratic caucus.



According to Bloomberg, conservatives angling for a funding extension until Dec. 30 argue that would give them more leverage over spending demands from Democrats as well as the promises of potentially costly legislation made in the Senate. They also want to use the time to secure more money for the Pentagon.


“You’ve got the major part of our conference making sure our war fighters are taken care of,” said Mark Walker, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the 170-member Republican Study Committee. “But right behind that number you’ve got the fiscal hawks who want to control mandatory spending."



Stocks and yields were slightly lower Wednesday, while the yield on the short-term T-bill that comes due next week trimmed some of its rise but remained just below its highs from earlier in the week.



Still, several lawmakers are insisting that they won’t let the government shutdown. Is that because they fear Trump is right and that a shutdown could endanger Democrats, especially Democrats from red states, during next year’s election?


We’ll need to wait and see.









Nationwide Net Neutrality Protests Planned For Thursday

Last Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its plan to reverse net neutrality regulations that were put in place under the Obama administration in 2015. Net neutrality is the concept that all internet traffic should be treated equally by internet service providers (ISPs), regardless of the content that is delivered or who it was created by.


Statista"s Felix Richter explains that the new proposal, named the Restoring Internet Freedom order, would no longer classify ISPs as public utilities but rather as information services, meaning that telecommunication companies such as Comcast or Verizon would be legally allowed to create so-called fast lanes for content by providers that either pay for preferential treatment or that the ISP itself has a financial stake in, such as Comcast has in NBC Universal. While the FCC argues that scrapping net neutrality rules would boost investments and innovation by limiting government regulation, advocates of net neutrality argue that the concept creates a level playing field for content providers and fear that getting rid of net neutrality would stifle competition and further increase concentration in the online media landscape.


As Statista"s chart below, based on a Consumer Reports survey, shows, the majority of Americans support the current net neutrality rules and don’t think that ISPs should be allowed to regulate what content their customers can access.


Infographic: Americans Voice Support for Net Neutrality | Statista You will find more statistics at Statista


Considering the Republican majority in the commission, it is expected to pass regardless of the vocal opposition from companies and consumers alike.


More than 600 demonstrations are planned at Verizon stores across the United States on Thursday amid the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) plan to kill net neutrality.



FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made it clear last month that the FCC will vote on the fate of net neutrality on December 14. The rules currently prohibit internet service providers from charging extra fees, censorship and throttling website speeds.



The rollback is expected to pass the FCC vote next week. However, that is not stopping Demand Progress, Fight for the Future and the Freepress Action Fund who have formed the coalition called “Battle for the Net”.


Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future said in a statement: “This is the free speech fight of our generation and internet users are pissed off and paying attention. Ajit Pai may be owned by Verizon, but he has to answer to Congress, and lawmakers have to answer to us, their constituents.”


Common Dreams, a non-profit news-oriented website claims, since Pai revealed his plan to kill net neutrality rules back in mid-November, public outrage has continued to expand– despite the lack of coverage from major media outlets. Since the phone lines opened on November 21, more than 774,325 calls have flooded congressional phone lines.



On Thursday, Americans will take to the streets outside their local Verizon stores and congressional offices to protest against rolling back net neutrality, exactly one week ahead of the FCC’s planned vote.


Mark Stanley, director of communications for Demand Progress said, “With what would be a catastrophic vote by the FCC to repeal net neutrality looming, people are ready to take to the streets in protest and to offer Congress one last chance to answer the question: ‘Do you stand for your constituents’ ability to communicate and connect, or do you stand for Verizon’s bottom line?”


Verizon stores were chosen as the premiere site for the demonstrations because  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai previously was the company’s associate general counsel from 2001 to 2003.





 


Below is a list of websites, companies, and organizations who are defending net neutrality:



Here are the companies who want to end net neutrality:



Common Dreams said 27 senators including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have sent Pai a letter on Monday demanding the FCC to delay the vote. Also, 40 consumer protection groups have sent a letter to Pai asking for a delay as well.


Building on the outrage expressed by the American public, a group of 27 senators including Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivered a letter to Pai on Monday demanding that the FCC vote be delayed in the face of evidence that the public “record may be replete with fake or fraudulent comments, suggesting that your proposal is fundamentally flawed.”


 


A coalition of over 40 consumer protection groups also called on the FCC to postpone its vote on repealing net neutrality in a letter to Pai on Monday, citing a pending court case that could ultimately “leave consumers at the mercy of internet service providers.”



The attempt seemed promising on Monday, but earlier on Tuesday the FCC rejected all calls to delay the net neutrality vote, according to The Hill.


The FCC said in a statement Monday that “the vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.” In a separate statement provided to Ars Technica, the FCC hit back at those seeking a delay:


This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort to defeat Chairman Pai’s plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled. 



With the delay thwarted by the FCC, and over 600 demonstration sites planned at Verizon locations across the nation on Thursday, and with the US already in a state of constant and belligerent outrage, one wonders what else could possibly go wrong on the day the US government itself at risk of being shut down.