“We Are Doing Putin’s Job For Him”: Globalist Traitor John McCain Laughably Claims That Releasing A Memo Exposing FBI Corruption Only Helps The Russians

With today’s release of the so-called FISA memo, many within the government and media have been quick to attack not only the contents of said memo but also the very idea of transparency in deciding to release it to the public in the first place.

From James Comey pathetically claiming it was a nothingburger when it exposed his direct corruption, to the likes of CNN who have run continuous coverage attacking the president and Republicans for releasing the memo rather than actually focusing on its contents, it is clear that the deep state apparatus is running scared.

Now, globalist traitor and public anti-Trump critic John McCain has weighed in on the memo’s release, predictably attacking the idea of transparency while once again bringing up the laughable excuse that releasing it somehow helps the Russians.

That’s right, in John McCain’s sick mind, exposing widespread (and possibly illegal) corruption within the FBI and the DOJ is a terrible thing because it magically helps Putin.

McCain’s statement on the memo release reads:

In 2016, the Russian government engaged in an elaborate plot to interfere in an American election and undermine our democracy. Russia employed the same tactics it has used to influence elections around the world, from France and Germany to Ukraine, Montenegro, and beyond.

Putin’s regime launched cyberattacks and spread disinformation with the goal of sowing chaos and weakening faith in our institutions. And while we have no evidence that these efforts affected the outcome of our election, I fear they succeeded in fueling political discord and dividing us from one another.

The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s. The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded.

Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.

Not only is McCain using the tired excuse that doing something that hurts the deep state in turn helps Russia, the globalist puppet is also directly shilling for Robert Mueller despite his obvious bias and anti-Trump sentiment.

While we already know McCain to be a globalist insider, he may actually have another reason for blaming Russia as he was the man who actually passed the Trump disinformation dossier to the FBI itself!

I reported on this shocking fact at the time:

In the wake of the release of a disinformation dossier on President-elect Donald Trump, it has been revealed that none other than establishment Republican John McCain was responsible for passing the document to the highest reaches of the FBI.

McCain, of the apparent belief that this information was extremely important, actually passed the documents to FBI director James Comey last month, according to a report by The Guardian.

“The Guardian can confirm that the documents reached the top of the FBI by December. Senator John McCain, who was informed about the existence of the documents separately by an intermediary from a western allied state, dispatched an emissary overseas to meet the source and then decided to present the material to Comey in a one-on-one meeting on 9 December, according to a source aware of the meeting,” the Guardian report reads.

“The documents, which were first reported on last year by Mother Jones, are also in the hands of officials in the White House.”

When you consider the above report, it makes perfect sense that McCain would attack the memo’s release for he was directly involved in the conspiracy against Trump in the first place!

With that being said, after today’s memo release at least the American people will know who is and isn’t working against the democratically elected president based off their own responses to this ever unfolding scandal.

Nikki Haley Pranked By Russian Comedians: "Putin Absolutely Meddled In The Binomo Election!"

Do you know Binomo?” the impersonator asked. “They have declared independence. They had elections, and we suppose Russians had its intervention.”

“Yes, of course they did, absolutely,” Haley confidently replied.

And with that US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley got punked by well-known Russian comedians and professional pranksters Vovan and Lexus (Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov) - sometimes called "The Jerky Boys of Russia" - who had previously phone pranked figures ranging from Elton John to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Rep. Maxine Waters to Senators Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

The duo reportedly phoned Haley"s office hours after the UN voted to condemn Trump"s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Thursday, pretending to be Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister of Poland, in what ended up being a 22-minute conversation.

Image via Agencias

Poland was one among the thirty-fine nations abstaining from the vote and is also set to begin a two-year term as a member of the UN security council - a stance which Haley praised,  tweeting soon after the vote “We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN." In a somewhat comical and seemingly desperate follow-up to the vote which was an embarrassing and resounding affirmation of American isolation on the Israeli-Palestine issue, Haley then formally invited the 64 countries who either voted "against" or abstained (or just didn"t show up) for Thursday"s UN General Assembly vote on the Jerusalem resolution to a "friendship" party (was "Binomo" on the list of invites?).

So let"s just say it hadn"t been a good week for Haley, who apparently assumes there"s a place called "Binomo" in the South China Sea, and that the ever-treacherous Putin meddled in their elections.  The call continued with Haley, who as one of America"s top diplomats is supposed to be knowledgeable and familiar with all countries across the globe, stating that "we"ve been watching very closely... issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea" - in reference to the mythical Binomo:

“And we’re aware of that. We"ve been watching that very closely. And I think we will continue to watch as we deal with the issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea,” Haley replied.

Continuing with the issue of supposed Russian meddling in democratic elections in various corners of the globe, the Polish PM-impersonator asked Haley whether or not “Putin [will] be aggressive regarding Europe next year?”

“It is hard to know what Russia is doing right now. I think what we have seen in the Security Council and otherwise is they are trying to be relevant in every region and they are trying to have some sort of say in every region,” she replied. “In some cases, it has worked for them and in some cases, it hasn’t. So they don"t have the influence that I think they would like to have but they are certainly trying to get that.”

“I think that many of the other countries, whether it is the Security Council or otherwise, are watching it very cautiously and carefully to make sure that they don"t get too much of a foothold where they can cause chaos,” she continued.

“They are aggressive and they can be difficult to work in the Council... And they [Russia] do try to cause some disruption, but we manage them and we continue to remind them what their place is,” Haley told the ‘Polish PM.’

According to RT News Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, took to Facebook to criticize Haley’s rhetoric, saying “Nikki, do you really want Russia to remember all of its ‘places’ in the world?" - while also calling Haley"s perspective “somehow short-sighted” in what was perhaps an ironic understatement. 

#PrayForBinomo

— Lina Arabi (@LinaArabii) December 23, 2017

The pranksters also inquired whether Haley had heard (the made up claim) that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had accused Kevin Spacey of harassing him in 2015, to which the ambassador replied that she would research it further. 

Though Vovan and Lexus have received widespread media coverage after various pranks within the last couple of years, so far only Russian and independent media have covered the latest Nikki Haley phone call, which Haley"s office has neither confirmed nor denied (and is not likely to address it at all). Regardless, it is a moment where the prevailing culture of "Russiagate" paranoia has resulted in embarrassment for yet another top US official, as Stolyarov (a.k.a. Lexus) told Russian media in an interview, “Nikki Haley is a member of Trump’s cabinet. An ambassador to the UN holds a lot more clout in their country than on ours… It’s very funny when such a person is responsible for foreign relations in the US.”

"The US Has Crossed The Line": Russia Warns Trump Decision To Arm Ukraine Will "Lead To Bloodshed"

Russia has reacted fiercely to the end of week breaking news that President Trump plans to approve the legal sale of US antitank missiles and possibly other advanced systems to the Ukrainian government in a move that could change the battlefield calculus of the war between Ukrainian and Russian-aligned forces in the Donbass region along the Russian border. ABC News described the "total defense package of $47 million includes the sale of 210 anti-tank missiles and 35 launchers" which will be sure to harm Trump"s longtime stated goal of improving relations with Moscow.

Though Kiev has long had limited access to US lethal arms through private contracts with American and international arms producers, this represents a significant escalation involving the likelihood that advanced US systems would be used directly on Russian-aligned militias in the eastern Donbass region and potentially Russian forces along the border. Up until now, the White House has been reluctant to escalate the war so openly, as it did when it supplied anti-Assad fighters in Syria with sophisticated TOW anti-tank missiles.

While the US State Department claims the move is "defensive" in nature, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov charged the US with deliberately "crossing the line" and pushing the Ukrainian authorities "towards new bloodshed," adding that "American weapons can lead to new victims".

Ukrainian army soldiers perform a weapons exercise at a training ground outside Lviv, western Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015. Image source: AP via Common Dreams

"Kiev revanchists are shooting at Donbass every day, they don"t want to conduct peace negotiations and dream of doing away with the disobedient population. And the United States has decided to give them weapons to do that," Ryabkov said. He further slammed the US as an "accomplice in igniting a war" whose political leadership is “blinded by Russophobia and eagerly applaud the Ukrainian nationalist punitive battalions.”

Indeed a number of outspoken Russia hawks in Congress were enthusiastic over the possibility of heavier and direct arms flow to Ukraine, including John McCain, Bob Corker, and Tom Cotton - all supporters of the original Ukraine Freedom Support Act signed into law by President Obama in December 2014, though never fully enacted.

So you"re telling me Putin ordered his puppet Trump to arm Ukrainians that are hostile to Putin?

This is some crazy 5th dimensional chess. https://t.co/AH4Ma9YShs

— Serge (@Zinvor) December 23, 2017

Cotton for example - recently rumored to be Trump"s pick for CIA Director - said of the new initiative for arms exports to Ukraine: "This is a break from failed Obama era policies to make Russia pay a cost for its aggression. With this decision, the Trump administration is reminding Vladimir Putin and his cronies that they lost the Cold War, and we won’t tolerate their bullying of our friend Ukraine."

But Russian leaders have warned that through the decision the US may be dragged deeper into a quagmire which could result in direct confrontation with pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine"s east. Aleksey Pushkov, member of the Russian Senate security committee, told RT News that delivery of the more advanced systems like the Army"s M-148 Javelin Portable Anti-Tank Missile would require US military advisers on the ground, which could be targeted by separatist forces. 

Pushkov told RT, the US “has enough problems already to allow itself to be involved in adventures of the [Ukrainian] regime. And we know too well how adventurous Kiev may be.” This comes as authorities in Kiev are already requesting that Washington adds anti-aircraft missiles to its shopping list as well, according to multiple reports. 

Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a statement calling for "disengagement and the withdrawal of heavy weapons" in the Ukrainian conflict, a scenario now much further away from taking shape than ever. But after years of covert American involvement in the Ukrainian proxy and civil war which has raged since 2014 - and which a leaked recording confirmed was precipitated by the US State Department - it appears that hawks like McCain, Cotton, and Corker are finally getting their way.

The Yield Curve Is Crashing-er

Stoccks are at record highs on the basis that Marco Rubio might a "yes" and John McCain will make it through the weekend... but if everything is so awesome, why is the yield curve collapsing?

This is the 5th weekly plunge in the yield curve in a row - the longest streak since March 2016

 

The yield curve is now the flattest since Nov 2007, with the flattenig accelerating...

 

2017 is the fastest yield curve collapse since 2007...

 

If this is not going to end badly, we are going to need more QE - as JPMorgan shows in the chart below - each episode of QE steepened the curve and lengthened the current cycle...

"You Grow Up Wanting To Be Luke Skywalker, Then Realize You"ve Become A Stormtrooper For The Empire"

Authored by US Army combat veteran Daniel Crimmins via Upriser.com,

You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.

Question: How do you Americans as a people walk around head held high, knowing that every few months your country is committing a 9/11 size atrocity to other people. Imagine if the 9/11 terror attacks were happening in America every few months. Again and again, innocent people dying all around you. Your brothers and sisters. For no reason.

Daniel Crimmins from U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division answered:

Many of us are unable. Many of us watched 9/11, and accepted the government and media’s definition of the attack as a act of war rather than a criminal action. A smaller portion, drifting along passively thought a major war was coming, that people we knew were going to fight and die. Some of us maybe worried about our younger brother being drafted, despite being in college. Now, it seems stupid, but in the 72 hours after 9/11, some Americans, maybe suffering from depression, certainly with a mind shaped by comic books and action movies, ate up the “us vs. them” good vs. evil rhetoric spouted by the cowboy in chief. After all, he was the president, and no matter how bright you might think yourself, you can still be swayed by passion and emotion, led to terrible decisions.

Some of us, therefore, left our dorm rooms, and walked down Main Street to the recruiter’s office. Some of us were genuinely surprised the office wasn’t full to bursting of young men eager to avenge their fallen countrymen. Some of us were genuinely surprised when we had to push the recruiter to stop trying to sell desk jobs and just let us join the damn Infantry.

Image via Upriser.com

Some of us got enlisted, then, and went down to Georgia, head high to mask the anxiety and fear they might have helped. Perhaps some number of Americans in this situation discovered that maybe it hadn’t been the best idea, but would be goddamned if they were going to admit it, and let everyone back home smuggly remark on how right they were.

So they persevere. They learn to work as a unit, to look past personality issues, to see each other as Soldiers rather than as a race, or economic status, or any of the other things people hate about each other. They learn to kill.

Then some of these people, perhaps while sitting hungover in the platoon area in the Republic of Korea hear that we have invaded Iraq. They have “Big Scary Bombs”, and Saddam Hussein, the secular Arab dictator had somehow colluded with the devoutly religious Osama Bin Laden to attack the US. They hated our freedom, you see.

Then some of these young American men might transfer back to Georgia and be assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, and end up in Iraq in January of 2005. And maybe these kids, still drunk on Fox News and fantasies of glory and renown being enough to win their ex-girlfriends back, are excited to go to Iraq. Sure, we hadn’t found any WMDs yet, and we had Hussein in custody, but they were still somehow a threat and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Jeffersonian democracy. Inside every dirka is a good American, yearning to be free.

So you fight. You kill. Watch friends die. Its usually quick, almost never quiet, but for the rest of your life, when you remember sitting at the bar with them, they’re blown open. You picture the nights you spent downtown at Scruffy Murphy’s, but instead of the stupid hookah shell necklace, your boy’s jaw is blown off, and his left eye is ruined, and he’s screaming.

You fight, you kill, you watch friends die, and you notice a distinct lack of change. You kick in doors and tell terrified women to sit on the floor while you and your friends ransack their home, tearing the place apart, because they might be hiding weapons. There is no reason to believe this house in particular is enemy, same for the next one, and the one after that, or the seven before; they just happened to be there, and maybe they had weapons. Probably not, they almost never did. There were a few times when we had deliberate raids based on solid intel and we’d turn up some stuff, but generally we were just tossing houses because we could.

Then maybe your FISTer [field artillery forward observer] forgets to carry the remainder, and drops a mess of mortars on the village your supposed to protect. Maybe the big Iraqi running at you screaming was just mentally ill. Of course, you won’t know this until after you’ve put seven rounds through his rib cage, and his wailing, ancient mother is cradling his body, spitting at you.

Maybe when you get back to the FOB [Forward Operating Base], the Platoon Sergeant tells you you did the right thing; next time, it might be a suicide bomber. They tell you it was an honest mistake, it wasn’t your fault. They tell you to go get some chow, take a shower if the water works, and sleep it off. You did good work that day, apparently.

Chris Hondros" well-known "One Night in Tal Afar" photograph (Getty Images) showing the aftermath of a checkpoint shooting - Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed after their car unwittingly approached a US Army checkpoint at dusk in Tal Afar, Iraq.

During chow, the TV is on AFN, and they are rebroadcasting some Fox News show, and you’re hearing about drone strikes, and all the great things we’re doing, and you can’t help but see that poor dumb assholes face, looking past his mother as he bleeds to death. He’s in pain, obviously, but he has the most perfectly confused look on his face. He doesn’t comprehend what’s happening. Little more hot sauce on your eggs doesn’t really help.

Then you realize you haven’t seen anything to support the idea that these poor fuckers are a threat to your home. You look around and you see all he contractors making six figure salaries to fix your shit, train Iraqis, maintain the ridiculous SUVs the KBR dicks ride around in. You consider the fact that every 25mm shell costs about forty bucks, and your company has been handing those fuckers out like shrapnel flavored parade candies. You think about all the fuel you’re going through, all the ammo and missiles and grenades. You think about every time you lose a vehicle, the Army buys a new one. Maybe you start to see a lot of people making a lot of money on huge amounts of human suffering.

Then you go on leave, and realize that Ayn Rand has no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. You realize that Fox News and Limbaugh and John McCain don’t respect you or your buddies. They don’t give a fuck if you get a parade or a box when you get home, you’re nothing to them but a prop.

Then you get out, and you hate the news. You hate the apathy, and you hate the murder being carried out in your name. You grew up wanting so bad to be Luke Skywalker, but you realize that you were basically a Stormtrooper, a faceless, nameless rifleman, carrying a spear for empire, and you start to accept the startlingly obvious truth that these are people like you.

Maybe your heart breaks a little every time some asshole brags about a “successful” drone strike.

Your statement is correct enough; if all of America was one dude, that dude would not give a shit about the little brown people we’re burning and crushing and choking to death. We aren’t all like that, but it makes me incredibly, profoundly sad to see what my country actually is.

Some of us care, and I think there are more every day.

Republican Leaders Say GOP Has The Votes To Pass Tax Plan

Update: Mitch McConnell has confirmed that the Republicans have the votes to pass the Senate"s tax-reform plan. McConnell"s comments put a slight bid back in stocks, which have fallen sharply following Mike Flynn"s guilty plea.

 

McConnell says Republicans `have the votes" for Senate tax bill https://t.co/WdC1mWiyJd pic.twitter.com/cGbSwodXxx

— Shailendra Nair (@shailendra_nair) December 1, 2017

              

* * *

John Cornyn, the No. 2 man in the Republican Senate leadership, said Friday that they have secured enough votes to pass the Senate version of the Republican tax reform bill, according to the Washington Post. Earlier in the morning, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jerry Moran of Kansas, both said they’d support the bill, but Maine’s Susan Collins had said she’s still unconvinced. Hours later, Lindsey Graham echoed his claims.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he planned to back the bill after announcing last week that he would vote against it because it didn’t provide enough tax relief to taxpayers who use the pass-through rate. Steve Daines of Montana, who objected to the bill on similar grounds, also said he’d vote for the bill.

Cornyn said the leadership had “at least 50” votes, but are working to secure one more ‘yea’ vote to provide a buffer against any surprises, like when John McCain voted to kill the senate’s repeal and replace plan over the summer.

Speaking with reporters outside of a meeting with the Republican caucus,Cornyn said “We have at least 50, and we’re still working."

The comments from Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, came just hours after Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he planned to back the bill. He was one of the final holdouts, though the GOP needed a little more help to ensure they had the 50 votes they needed. Cornyn did not say who else had committed to support the package.

 

Johnson’s support followed a late night of negotiations, following a standoff on the Senate floor Thursday when Johnson and two other members aired concerns about the bill.

 

He has long complained that the tax cut package does not provide enough benefits for a certain type of business, though he has requested numerous changes in recent days and it could not be immediately learned what precisely made him decide to back the bill.

 

Support from the Wisconsin Republican is a boost for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), but GOP leaders still need to win backing from at least one more holdout before they can be assured they have enough votes to pass the bill.

Unsurprisingly, Tennessee’s Bob Corker and Arizona’s Jeff Flake were two of the last confirmed holdouts. Both men were pushing measures that would reduce the bill’s impact on the deficit by paring back some of the proposed cuts. As the Post points out, the two men represent a unique challenge for the Republican leadership because they aren’t running for re-election.

Collins has suggested that she plans to support the tax package, but she is insisting on several changes of her own, including a plan to allow Americans to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes and an expansion of the child tax credit. Collins already helped vote against the Republican repeal and replace plan and has a history of voting against tax cuts.

GOP leaders were meeting in McConnell’s office Friday morning to try to resuscitate the bill after a proposed trigger that would raise taxes if revenue targets were missed was rejected by the senate parliamentarian.

“I think Senator [Steve Daines (R-Mont.)] and Senator Johnson are supporting the bill, and we’re working hard to get the last two members we think we need to get onboard - Senator Flake and Senator Corker,” said Sen. John Cornyn, the second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate.

 

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) was also attending the meeting in McConnell’s office. As he entered, he told reporters that lawmakers were still trying to figure out how to resolve the concerns raised by Corker and Flake. Corker had wanted to put a provision in the bill that would automatically raise taxes after five years if the growth projections that GOP leaders had promised did not come to fruition.

 

The tax increases would kick in through a “trigger” mechanism that was somehow tied to economic growth.

 

But the Senate’s parliamentarian told Corker on Thursday evening that there were issues with how the trigger would be designed. GOP leaders then had to decide whether to try to craft a new trigger or simply add new taxes back into the bill to lessen the impact on the debt.

 

On Friday morning, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said, “I think we’re doing real well.” When asked whether he believed Republicans had the votes to resolve the trigger issue, Hatch said, “I think so.

Corker and Flake are pushing for as much as $350 billion in tax cuts to be reversed if Republicans want the final bill to pass. There’s still no guarantee that the bill makes it to Trump’s desk - it will need to go through the reconciliation process, then be passed against by both the House and Senate.

Republican leaders are hoping to take the vote tonight.
 

"What"s The F**king Point?" - John McCain Slams Hillary"s Constant Whining

In an odd moment of clarity, Senator John McCain went "renegadey" in an interview with Esquire magazine, telling Hillary Clinton to "get over it," comparing his post-2008 doldrums with Clinton"s current struggle to understand how she lost to Donald Trump.

"You"ve got to understand that you can"t rewrite history," McCain said in the interview published today.

"One of the almost irresistible impulses you have when you lose is to somehow justify why you lost and how you were mistreated...

 

I did the right thing! I did!... The hardest thing to do is to just shut up."

""History will judge that campaign, and it"s always a period of time before they do. You"ve got to move on."

"What"s the f***ing point?" he concluded.

What"s the point indeed!! We look forward to Senator McCain claiming he was taken out of context when the establishment hears about this.

In Win For White House, Rand Paul Says He Will Vote "Yes" On Tax Reform

In a surprising reversal that President Donald Trump will undoubtedly tout as a major victory, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has publicly confirmed that he will be voting ‘Yes’ on the GOP tax plan when the senate votes on it later this week.

Paul says he will vote ‘yes’ even though the tax overhaul “isn’t perfect” and he’d like to see a larger cut. In an opinion piece published on Fox News’s website, Paul explained the reasoning behind his change of heart in greater detail.

Ultimately, Paul said, he is voting ‘yes’ because the US tax code, which has 97 different federal taxes, must be simplified. Congress can always authorize more cuts at a later date. In fact, Paul says if the public will is strong enough, Congress could authorize a new tax cut every year.

Currently, there are at least 97 different federal taxes. The tax code that instructs people how they must hand over their hard-earned money to government spans some 74,000-plus pages.

 

This is absurd, and so is the fact that government will collect over $3 trillion from taxpayers next year but still is not satisfied.

 

One of the main differences between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans, in general, favor less government and more tax cuts. That’s why I’m pleased to see us moving forward on a plan for tax cuts, and why I hope to vote to pass such a cut in the coming weeks.

Paul said he supports the Senate proposal to end Obamacare’s individual mandate penalizing people who don’t have health insurance, and that he would like to see preservation of some state and local tax deductions.

He also applauded his fellow senators for abandoning the concept of revenue neutrality, saying he’d like to see the tax cuts eliminate even more than the $1.5 trillion in revenues expected over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the CBO. Paul said he’d be comfortable with a reduction in revenue of up to $2.5 trillion.

I spoke out all year against the GOP leaders’ initial plan to make their tax reform “revenue neutral” — meaning not really a cut. I’m pleased to see my point of view has prevailed, and the current tax plan calls for a $1.5 trillion cut over the next ten years. I would have liked to see more — in fact, I offered an amendment to move it up to $2.5 trillion — but I’ve stated many times that as long as it is a real cut, I’ll vote for it, even if it isn’t as large as I would prefer.

 

I’m also pleased to note that, in part by my urging, the Senate tax-plan writers have included repeal of the ObamaCare individual mandate in the tax plan. The mandate is clearly a tax, a fact that was established by the Supreme Court when it upheld ObamaCare. So including it in the tax bill only makes sense. In addition, with CBO scoring it as a $350 billion savings, repealing the mandate helped pave the way for increased middle-class tax cuts, like an expanded child tax credit.

Winning Paul"s vote has been a top priority of President Trump, who has often expressed admiration for the Kentucky senator even though Paul has, until this point, been one of the most obstinate opponents of the Trump agenda.

However, his support doesn’t guarantee passage for the tax plan: At least five other senators have either said they’re not voting for the bill, or that they’re on the fence. However, Fox News is reporting that a deal is in the works to add more deductions to the bill to help win over Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who said two weeks ago that he would vote "no" on the bill. However, Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and John McCain remain on the fence. And while Montana"s Steve Daines has raised hackles about the bill because, he says, it favors corporations over small businesses, he recently touted a "productive" conversation with Trump, and appears to be leaning toward a yes.

We now await Trump’s congratulatory response to Paul’s decision. It should be coming any minute now.

GOP leadership says they will bring the bill to a vote on Thursday. But of course, if they fail to rally support from Republican holdouts, that could change.

Another False Flag Terror ADMISSION: Snipers In the Ukraine “Protests”

Snipers Fired At BOTH Police and Protesters In Ukraine

Remember the protests in Ukraine which led to the old leader being replaced?

If you’ll recall,  the ruthless slaughter of people by snipers was the event which turned world opinion against the Ukrainian Prime Minister, and resulted in him having to flee the country.

Italy’s 11th largest newspaper – Il Giornale – reported on an admission by several of the snipers (Google translation) :

“Everyone started shooting two or three shots at a time. It went on for fifteen, twenty minutes. We had no choice. We were ordered to shoot both on the police and the demonstrators, without any difference. I was totally outraged.

 

“So Georgian Alexander Revazishvilli remembers the tragic shootout of 20 February 2014 in Kiev when a group of mysterious snipers opened fire on crowds and cops massacring over 80 people. That massacre has horrified the world and changed the destiny of Ukraine by forcing President Viktor Yanukovich accused of organizing the shootout. But the massacre also changed the fates of Europe and our country, triggering the crisis that will lead to sanctions against Putin’s Russia. Sanctions revealed a boomerang for the Italian economy ( Watch the video ).

 

Revazishvilli’s confessions and two other Georgians – gathered by writers in the documentary “Ukraine, the hidden truths” aired tonight at 23.30 on Matrix, Channel 5 – reveal a different and disconcerting truth. The truth of a massacre and the same opposition that accused Yanukovych and his Russian allies. Revazishvilli and his two companions – met and interviewed in the documentary – are a former member of the security services of former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and two former militants of his party. Hired in Tbilisi by Mamuka Mamulashvili, Saakashvili’s military adviser, are tasked with supporting – along with other Georgian and Lithuanian volunteers – ongoing demonstrations in Kiev in return for a $5,000 final fee.

 

***

 

The following day, Mamulashvili and the leaders of the protest explain to volunteers who will face a police assault at the Conservatory building and at the Ukraine hotel. In that case – he says – we must shoot at the square and sow the chaos. But one of the protagonists confesses to having received another explanation, much more comprehensive. “When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting – he replied that we can not go to the pre-election presidential elections. But who should shoot? “I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos. “

 

“It did not matter if we fired at a tree, a barricade, or the molotov. confirms another volunteer – what counts was sowing confusion.

BBC interviewed the head of the opposition’s security forces at the time, who confirms that snipers were killing both sides … protesters and police:

And the former Ukranian government security boss said the same thing. Specifically, he said:

Former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service has confirmed allegations that snipers who killed dozens of people during the violent unrest in Kiev operated from a building controlled by the opposition on Maidan square.

 

Shots that killed both civilians and police officers were fired from the Philharmonic Hall building in Ukraine’s capital, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine Aleksandr Yakimenko told Russia 1 channel. The building was under full control of the opposition and particularly the so-called Commandant of Maidan self-defense Andrey Parubiy who after the coup was appointed as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Yakimenko added.

So the chief of the government’s security forces, the head of the opposition’s security forces, and the snipers themselves  all admit the snipers were killing both protesters and police.

Similarly:

[Ukrainian Health Minister Oleh] Musiy, who spent more than two months organizing medical units on Maidan, said that on Feb. 20 roughly 40 civilians and protesters were brought with fatal bullet wounds to the makeshift hospital set up near the square. But he said medics also treated three police officers whose wounds were identical.

 

Forensic evidence, in particular the similarity of the bullet wounds, led him and others to conclude that snipers were targeting both sides of the standoff at Maidan — and that the shootings were intended to generate a wave of revulsion so strong that it would topple Yanukovych and also justify a Russian invasion.

And the Estonian foreign minister – after visiting Ukraine – told the EU foreign affairs minister that the Maidan opposition deployed the snipers – and fired on both the protesters and the police – to discredit the former government of Ukraine.

The Snipers Were Associated with the Maidan Protesters

While the mainstream media has proclaimed that the sniper fire was definitely from government forces, some of the above-cited sources dispute that claim.

Additionally, BBC reported at the time:

Reporting for Newsnight, Gabriel Gatehouse said he saw what looked like a protester shooting out of a window at the BBC’s Kiev base, the Ukraine Hotel.

BBC interviewed a Maidan protester who admitted that he fired a sniper rifle at police from the Conservatory, and that he was guided by a military veteran within the Maidan resistance. Here are actual pictures a reporter took of Maidan snipers, recently published by BBC:

(There were reportedly at least 10 Maidan snipers firing from the Conservatory.)

The Frankfurther Allgemein reported that Maidan commander Volodymyr Parasjuk controlled the Conservatory at the time:

Volodymyr Parasjuk – the leader in “self-defense units” of the revolution who had called the night of Yanukovich’s escape, on the stage of Maidan to storm the presidential residence one year ago.

 

On the day of the massacre Parasjuk was staying with his unit in the colonnaded building of the Kiev Conservatory right at the Maidan. In the days before the death toll had risen, and the fighters grew the conviction alone with limited power as before will not be able to overthrow Yanukovych. “There were at that time many guys who said you have to take the weapon and attack,” said Parasjuk recalls. “Many,” he himself had since long ago it had firearms, often their officially registered hunting rifles.

Tagesschau – a German national and international television news service produced by state-run Norddeutscher Rundfunk on behalf of the German public-service television network ARD – also reported in 2014 that at least some of the sniper fire came from protesters.

And remember, the snipers who admitted firing at both sides were associated with Mikhail Saakashvili and his party.  Saakashvili was a huge supporter of the Maidan protesters from the very beginning.  As Newsweek reports:

Saakashvili was a supporter of the Ukrainian revolution since the beginning of Euromaidan ….

Indeed, the Maidan protesters who deposed the old Ukrainian prime minister were so pleased with events that they rewarded Saakashvili by appointing him leader of Ukraine’s largest region.

Former AP and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry summarizes what kind of guy Saakashvili is:

The latest political move by the … regime in Ukraine was to foist on the people of Odessa the autocratic Georgian ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili, a neoconservative favorite and currently a fugitive from his own country which is seeking him on charges of human rights violations and embezzlement.

 

***

 

According to a New York Times profile last September, Saakashvili was there “writing a memoir, delivering ‘very well-paid’ speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state.”

 

McCain and Nuland were key neocon backers of the coup that ousted Yanukovych and touched off the bloody civil war that has killed thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, while also reviving Cold War tensions between the West and Russia. Before the coup, McCain urged on right-wing protesters with promises of U.S. support and Nuland was overheard hand-picking Ukraine’s new leadership, saying “Yats is the guy,” a reference to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who became prime minister after the coup.

 

***

 

The Georgian prosecutors also have charged Saakashvili with human rights violations for his violent crackdown on political protesters in 2007.

Context: Sniper Attacks As False Flag Terror

Random shootings are a type of false flag terror.    For example, in 1985 – as part of the “Gladio” false flag terror campaign (see number 12) – snipers attacked and shot shoppers in supermarkets randomly in Belgium, killing twenty-eight and leaving many wounded.

Shooting both sides is an especially big red flag for a false flag …

Specifically, when authoritarian regimes want to break up protests, they might shoot protesters. On the other hand, when violent protesters shoot government employees, they might be trying to overthrow the government.

But when secretive snipers kill both protesters and the police, it is an indication of a “false flag” attack meant to sow chaos, anger, disgust and a lack of legitimacy.

This has happened many times over the years. For example:

• Unknown snipers reportedly killed both Venezuelan government and opposition protesters in the attempted 2002 coup

• Unknown snipers fired during Thailand’s 2010 protests, killing both police and protesters

• And see this and this

Army Rescinds Waiver Program For Self-Mutilating, Mentally-Ill Recruits

Authored by Jonah Bennett via The Daily Caller,

The Army has decided to abandon plans to issue waivers to recruits with a history of self-mutilation or other mental health problems.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday to reporters that a September waiver memo, first reported on by USA Today, had been dropped after “terrible” messaging of the policy. However, Milley maintained the memo did not constitute a real change in policy, but rather delegated the ability to issue waivers to a lower authority - from Army headquarters to Army Recruiting Command.

“There wasn’t a change in policy,” Milley said, according to USA Today.

 

“There cannot be a change in policy by someone who doesn’t have the authority to change policy. I know it sounds circular.”

However, Army officials previously told USA Today that the ban on issuing waivers, which was first imposed in 2009 after a spate of troop suicides, had been lifted.

The original story also attracted the attention of GOP Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, who bristled over the fact that he hadn’t been informed of the memo before reading about it in the news. He also questioned whether the Army was the right place for those with a history of self-harm.

“Self-mutilation is something that comes home to roost,” McCain said.

 

“Someone who self mutilates, I don’t understand the eligibility there.”

Milley spoke with McCain on Tuesday and told him the memo would be rescinded.

Moreover, the memo was also condemned by the Center for Military Readiness, a military policy organization, that argued not only should the Army not make it easier to obtain waivers, but the Army shouldn’t be handing out any waivers for these conditions at all.

The Army is trying to meet a recruitment goal of 80,000 for September 2018.

Goldman Still Sees 65% Chance Of Tax Reform Passing; Expects Senate To Make These Changes...

After a wave of GOP defections in recent days and waffling on timing, Goldman"s economics team apparently still sees a 65% chance of a tax reform bill being enacted by "early 2018," but warns that the final bill may look nothing like the one recently proposed by the House.

As we pointed out yesterday (see: The Republican Tax Plan Will Crush These Housing Markets), Goldman fully expects the Washington D.C. swamp, led by realtors and homebuilders in this case, to attack various components of the House"s bill, including efforts to slash the mortgage deduction cap, but don"t think those efforts will be enough to tank tax reform altogether.

Political opposition to the bill seems likely to result in changes to the bill, particularly in the Senate, but it is less likely to block enactment of a tax bill altogether. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), and anti-tax groups such as the Club for Growth have opposed the current House proposal for various reasons.

 

That said, we believe this is more likely to result in changes to the bill in the Senate rather than a failure to pass a tax bill at all.

 

These changes—for example, raising the proposed principal cap on mortgage interest deductibility and potentially making the treatment of pass-through income more generous than the initial House proposal—could crowd out other priorities, but don’t seem likely to block passage entirely. There is also a more fundamental political motivation, which is that many congressional Republicans would like to enact at least one piece of major legislation prior to the 2018 midterm election.

So, what does Goldman see changing in the Senate bill?  Here"s a recap:

Mortgage Deduction: We expect the Senate to be more generous on mortgage interest than the House’s proposed $500k cap on principal on which interest can be deducted. This might involve an initial proposal to set the principal cap at $750k, or possibly keeping the deduction as it is today (principal is deductible on mortgage principal of $1 million and home equity debt of $100k). A $750k cap might raise about one-quarter of the roughly $300bn over 10 years the $500k limitation would raise.

 

SALT: By contrast, we expect the Senate to be less generous on state and local tax deductions, potentially proposing to eliminate all state and local tax deductibility, whereas the House has proposed to allow up to $10k in property taxes to be deducted (no state/local income taxes would be deductible).

 

Estate tax repeal: The House proposal would double the amount exempted from the estate tax for the next five years, and then repeal the tax altogether after 2023. We do not expect estate tax repeal to have adequate support in the Senate, which might free up a bit less than $100bn (compared with the House bill) for other purposes.

 

The corporate tax rate: The Senate’s version of tax reform legislation looks likely to propose a 20% corporate tax rate, but we continue to believe it is likely this will be phased in rather than taking effect immediately in 2018. Our expectation is that the final House-Senate compromise will phase in the corporate rate reduction because of fiscal constraints; we also believe there is a good chance the rate will be higher than 20% and that it will potentially end up around 25%.

 

Interest deductibility: The House has proposed limiting corporate interest deductibility to 30% of EBITDA. It is unclear what approach the Senate will take on interest deductibility, but some limitation looks likely to be proposed, in our view. One alternative that has been discussed in the past is to limit the deduction to a share of overall interest expense (e.g., 70% or 80% of interest could be deducted). This would have the advantage of reducing the disruption to the most highly levered firms, and might also potentially allow for grandfathering of existing debt.

 

Base-erosion measures: The House proposal has a few measures aimed at preventing the shifting of corporate profits from the US to other lower-tax countries. One is a 10% minimum tax on foreign earnings (more precisely, 50% of foreign profits above a normal return on capital would be taxed as US income at the 20% corporate rate, for an effective rate of up to 10%). A second measure would impose a 20% excise tax on related-party cross-border transactions (discussed below). We expect the Senate to include a measure aimed at preventing base-erosion in the Senate bill as well, potentially including the foreign minimum tax, but expect the Senate to take a different approach than the proposed 20% excise tax, which has already changed in the House in any case.

Meanwhile, rumors have surfaced of late that suggest the Trump administration delayed an executive order repealing Obamacare"s individual mandate on hopes that it could be wrapped into the Senate"s tax reform bill...Goldman is skeptical...

Probably not, but it looks like it could be included in the House bill before it passes. There are two reasons this could be an attractive option. First, many Republican voters see ACA repeal to be at least as high a priority as tax reform, so combining the issues would allow Republican leaders to take action on aspects of both. Second, mandate repeal has been estimated in the past to reduce the deficit by more than $300bn over ten years because it would reduce enrollment in subsidized health insurance. This would allow tax writers to fill the hole that has been created by scaling back other revenue raisers already, and the further scaling back that is likely to occur as the process moves forward. However, there is an even stronger argument against including mandate repeal, which is simply that repeal of the individual and employer mandate—so-called “skinny repeal”—failed to pass the Senate over the summer and including it in tax reform could simply sink both efforts. So if it is included in an early version of tax reform, repeal still seems likely to be dropped before tax reform becomes law.

Of course, the much bigger issue is whether the Senate will be able to overcome a very narrow Republican majority while passing a bill that complies with "Reconciliation Rules" and the "Byrd Rule."

Yes, this is one of the reasons we expect the bill to change. “Reconciliation” bills need only 51 votes to pass the Senate if they remain within fiscal targets in the budget resolution and do not violate any existing Senate rules. A violation takes 60 votes (and therefore Democratic support) to overcome. The recent budget resolution allows for a tax cut of up to $1.5 trillion over ten years. After recent changes to the bill in the House, the bill is now estimated to increase the deficit by $1.57 trillion over ten years. A second procedural obstacle is the Senate’s “Byrd Rule”, which prohibits reconciliation legislation from raising the deficit after ten years. The House provisions are mostly permanent, which would violate the Byrd Rule. This leaves the Senate with two options: offset the cost of tax relief with base-broadening or other measures after ten years, or make the tax relief temporary. We expect the Senate bill to do some of each by partially offsetting tax reductions and then allowing whatever has not been offset to expire. This means that the more structural elements of the bill would likely be permanent, such as the limitation on individual itemized deductions and the shift to a territorial tax system for foreign corporate income, while at least some of the tax relief, including individual and corporate rate reductions, would expire after ten years.

So what say you?  Will tax reform mark the Trump administration"s first major legislative victory or will John McCain spoil the party once again?

Tax Bill Fiasco: Senate Considering 1 Year Corporate Tax Cut Delay; Dollar Slides

Suddenly Republican tax reform is looking deader than a doornail.

According to the Washington Post, which cites " four people familiar with a draft of the legislation " not only is there little to no compromise on the way forward, but the only thing Senate Republicans leaders can agree on is to punt the centerpiece of the GOP tax plan by at least a year, and are considering a one-year delay in the implementation of a major corporate tax cut. This change would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent in 2019, not 2018 as currently constructed by a House GOP bill. And while the delay would save $100 billion in much needed funds, it would be met with resistance from Trump, who wants the tax cuts implemented immediately.

In any case, to ensure that companies don’t postpone major investment decisions and wait for the lower rate in 2019, Senate Republicans are considering allowing companies to immediately deduct capital investments in 2018 from their taxable income, the WaPo sources said.

The news comes amid the expected growing opposition in the Senate to the current bill. One day after Trump nemesis John McCain said tax reform is "dead on arrival", on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz said that the House tax bill could end up raising taxes on some middle-class Americans, and he pushed for assurances that the Senate bill would lower everyone’s taxes. Meanwhile, senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee are pushing for an expansion of the child tax credit beyond what was introduced in the House. They have called for raising the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000. The House bill would raised the credit to $1,600.

Furthermore, the WaPo adds, that significant differences are also expected on the individual income-tax provisions.

Senate negotiators are planning to eliminate the state and local tax deductions that families take, going further than the House bill. They are also expected to retain roughly seven income tax brackets, rather than the four the House has proposed.

 

Details could change ahead of a formal release of a bill this Thursday by the Senate Finance Committee.

There will be a number of other changes to the taxes that certain businesses pay and the way companies are taxed on overseas earnings. Senate negotiators aren’t planning to include a temporary $300 “family flexibility credit” contained in the House bill. It’s this credit, which would expire after five years, that has fueled criticism that the House bill would eventually lead to higher taxes for some middle class families.

Separately, Bloomberg reports that on Tuesday afternoon President Trump called into a meeting between Senate Democrats, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester tells reporters. Tester said that Trump spoke (maybe screamed would be a better description) for about 15 minutes by phone from Asia and insisted the rich will be hurt by the tax bill.

During the same meeting, Dem. Senator Sherrod Brown gave Cohn copies of two bills he wants in the tax package, including one that would boost income of those making $20k-$70k. Brown added that Trump said over the phone he liked the ideas in the bills Brown presented; “I don’t know if McConnell is not hearing what the president is saying or if McConnell is not paying attention," Brown says.

Or maybe Trump just hasn"t heard yet that Senate Republicans, after failing to repeal Obamacare not too long, now plans to concede on the most important aspect of Trump"s proposed tax plan.

In any case, a decision on delaying the implementation of the corporate rate has not been made, the WaPol said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), in writing his legislation, was considering having the corporate tax rate cut phase out after eight years but made a change the night before the bill was introduced to effectively make it permanent.

With the news of the potential delay hitting the market, the dollar in general, and the USD/JPY in particular was the first casualty and the pair was sold by leveraged accounts in Tokyo.

Is The U.S. Navy Being Truthful With Its Report On Recent Crash Incidents?

Authored by Duance Norman via Free Market Shooter blog,

Recently, Free Market Shooter (as well as the US Navy) questioned the cause of a string of crashes involving Navy destroyers and cruisers... all occurring this year:

Recently, the US military, unable to come up with a cause for the incidents, began investigating something else – “compromised computer systems”:

 

The military is examining whether compromised computer systems were responsible for one of two U.S. Navy destroyer collisions with merchant vessels that occurred in recent months, Vice Admiral Jan Tighe, the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said on Thursday.

 

Naval investigators are scrambling to determine the causes of the mishaps, including whether hackers infiltrated the computer systems of the USS John S. McCain ahead of the collision on Aug. 21, Tighe said during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

 

The presumption that has been made is that these vessels are being hacked, China is the responsible party, given the proximity of the vessel crashes to the nation, as well as recent incidents where the US and China have butted heads.  But it is worth asking; are these vessels being hacked?  More importantly, if they are being hacked, who is hacking the vessels, and why?

However, this author did not discount other possible causes for the incidents, including complacent Navy sailors…

It is also worth noting that US Navy vessels do not broadcast an AIS signal (which can be seen on www.marinetraffic.com) with their respective position, like nearly all other vessels, due to obvious security/defense reasons. You almost never hear news of large commercial ships crashing into each other, which is due not just to AIS, but due to the fact that they actively try to broadcast their position by other means, such as running lights.

 

Which brings in the possibility of simple human error from US Navy operators as being the cause of these crashes.  Could it be that simple complacency and/or lack of proper training has resulted in these incidents? Given the professionalism of our military, that seems unlikely, but it wouldn’t be the first (and almost certainly won’t be the last) time it has happened.

…a theme which was commonly brought up in responses to this article after it was posted on The Burning Platform:

• Here’s a more likely scenario – its driven and manned by a bunch of incompetent sailors, who very well may have gotten there through some kind of affirmative action nonsense, or social promotion, where pople get qualifications on things they aren’t competent enough to handle because no CO wants to get accused of racism or sexism for failing a black/women/whatever person on the oral board for underway watches. I’ve never been in the Navy, but I’ve seen it, many times. People given way more responsiblity that they are competent to handle, and you just sit back and wait for them to do something stupid, while hoping no one gets hurt. Also, they are probably spending more time doing mandated training on SJW type nonsense than learning how to sail their boat.


• Never attribute something to highly complex malice when it can easily be contributed to stupidity and/or incompetence. Thats how Occam would slice it.


• A complete breakdown in seafaring culture, from top to bottom. The lookouts either failed or had their reports ignored. The radarmen failed to kep track. The bridge lookouts failed, the officer of the deck failed, and the C/O failed by not ensuring that he had competent people at every position. His C/O failed because he knew that the ship captain was incapable of taut management, and likely knew that many of the junior officers and petty officers were untrained and incompetent.


• A complete failure of culture. God help them if they become hard targets in a shooting engagement.


• I’ve worked on vessels in the oil field my whole life and have seen the decline in discipline and accountability. With so many wireless devices it’s almost impossible to keep people focused on their task. If they would disconnect the internet from these vessels and keel hull a few of the captains most of the problem would go away.


• Hacking, GPS spoofing, etc are all things that should be investigated. However IMO they are unlikely. What seems more likely to me is there is a breakdown of operational discipline.


• However this was brought on is open for much debate. A large factor that I think contributes, is the shift away from the military from being an instrument of death to our enemies to a global force for good and social engineering experiments.

And in the case of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain, the Navy has ruled that incompetence was indeed the cause of the incidents:

The collision between Fitzgerald and Crystal was avoidable and resulted from an accumulation of smaller errors over time, ultimately resulting in a lack of adherence to sound navigational practices. Specifically, Fitzgerald’s watch teams disregarded established norms of basic contact management and, more importantly, leadership failed to adhere to well-established protocols put in place to prevent collisions. In addition, the ship’s triad was absent during an evolution where their experience, guidance and example would have greatly benefited the ship.

 

The collision between John S. McCain and Alnic MC was also avoidable and resulted primarily from complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance. A major contributing factor to the collision was sub-standard level of knowledge regarding the operation of the ship control console. In particular, McCain’s commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion to ensure the safe and effective operation of the ship. With regard to procedures, no one on the Bridge watch team, to include the commanding officer and executive officer, were properly trained on how to correctly operate the ship control console during a steering casualty.

Is the Navy being truthful in its assessment of these incidents?  More than likely, yes.  But it should be acknowledged that the Navy could be “covering up” another cause of the incident, which could be anything from the aforementioned hacking, to problems with the Navy’s Aegis system, as was previously stated on Free Market Shooter:

A far more likely scenario is that there is a problem with the Aegis system and/or other navigation systems on US naval vessels. The US Navy, known to cover up all sorts of problems in the past, would have every reason to mask the true reason behind these collisions if they are tied to a defective weapons system. Notably, the unreliable nature of the US ground-based interceptor program under questionable test conditions has led many to believe that the system is just another failed defense project sucking up billions of taxpayer dollars.  It is not far-fetched to believe that one of our deployed systems is operating with a serious defect that has been swept under the rug by the DoD.

It is also worth acknowledging that if hacking indeed was to blame, the Navy would not acknowledge it publicly.  If hacking was the culprit, the Navy would not want the enemy to know that it had isolated the issue and corrected it, allowing the enemy to go along in the belief that they could continue to compromise Navy vessels.

However, in the cases of all of these US Navy crashes, the simplest explanation is likely the correct one, and the simplest explanation is the one that the Navy provided – a complete breakdown in seafaring culture.  Still, it has to be acknowledged that the Navy could be covering for a far larger problem. 

Russia Tried To Undermine Trump After The Election

Following today"s Senate Judiciary panel hearings with social media executives, the establishment"s "Russians colluded with Trump" narrative is hanging but all but the thinnest of threads.

Having shown that so-called "Russian actors" "were trying to create discord between Americans," during the election - which politicians attempted to position as "directed against Clinton," top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump"s victory.

As we showed earlier, sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016 organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS - a Russian-linked group.

The event was shared with 61,000 users.

“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally.

 

“Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”

And that appears to have the "Russians" m.o. after the election, as Politico reports, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of his [Trump’s] election.”

“During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton.

 

After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked at the hearing.

Stretch and his Twitter counterpart, Sean Edgett, called that an "accurate" statement.

Not really the one-sided, reason-for-my-loss, Russians-colluded narrative that the left (and right establishment) would like to be spun.

The social media giants" counsels parried most grandstanding blows from the various politicians; however, there were five key moments that Politico identified during the hearings...

1) First look at the fake Russian ads

Tuesday"s hearing offered the public its first look at political ads that Facebook and Twitter have identified as being purchased by the Russia-sponsored Internet Research Agency. The companies provided copies of the ads to congressional investigators earlier this month and revealed yesterday that they were seen by millions of users in the U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) showed an advertisement depicting an altered image of comedian Aziz Ansari holding a sign deceptively claiming voters could cast ballots via text from home. Meanwhile, Coons decried a sponsored image of a kneeling solider with the text "Hillary Clinton has a 69 percent disapproval rate among all veterans" overlaid on top. Facebook has said publicly that lawmakers should decide whether to make all 3,000 Russia-backed ads it has found available for public review.

 

2) Facebook not sure whether Russian ads swayed election

Facebook wasn’t able to offer much in the form of a definitive answer when Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked the company if it felt like content on its platform had an effect on the election. “In an election where a total of about 115,000 votes would have changed the outcome, can you say that the false and misleading propaganda people saw on your Facebook didn’t have an impact on the election?” Hirono asked. Stretch dodged in response. “We’re not well-positioned to judge why any one person or an entire electorate voted as it did,” he said.

 

3) Facebook won’t say no to accepting election-related foreign money

Franken, in an especially fiery exchange, asked Twitter, Google and Facebook if they would commit to not accepting foreign money payments on election-related advertisements, saying he wanted a simple “yes” or “no” answer from the platforms — and wanted to know why Facebook didn’t catch Russian agents purchasing ads sooner. Stretch said he hesitated on the foreign currency question because “it’s relatively easy for bad actors to switch currencies. So it’s a signal but not enough.” Edgett gave a quick “yes” to Franken, and Google Law Enforcement and Information Security Director Richard Salgado said Google would need to have a good enough “signal” that the transaction was illegal to keep it from going through. “Foreigners can’t use money in our campaign, you know that?” Franken said.

 

4) Democrats — allies of tech — attack their friends

For Democrats, who have for years had a largely warm and productive relationship with liberal-leaning Silicon Valley, the hearing represented a sharp break. Several members seized upon the chance to unleash on the company reps their simmering frustrations that the tech industry’s tools -- so often pitched as the means for making the world a better place -- had harmed their nominee, perhaps even fatally. Blumenthal highlighted widely shared posts on Twitter that incorrectly claimed that voters could cast ballots for Clinton simply by tweeting. “Do you know how many thought they voted but in fact were fooled?,” Blumenthal asked Edgett, who said he did not know.

 

5) No support for Honest Ads Act

Not a single one of the three tech giants would commit to supporting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s Honest Ads Act, which would require disclosures about political advertising on their platforms. All three have rolled out and touted work to independently address the issue of ads, following the introduction of the bill. “We certainly support the goals of the legislation and would like to work through the nuances to make it work for all of us,” Salgado said. Their answers prompted Klobuchar to draw attention to the lack of external oversight on these actions. “Just to clarify, while you are taking responsibility for a lot of what happened here, and trying to make some changes, there wouldn’t be an outside enforcer for any of these policies, right?”

Finally, James Lewis, an international cyber policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the revelation about Russian anti-Trump activity on social media post-election fits with typical Kremlin information warfare efforts.

“Their goal is to create confusion and dissent. The target is the U.S. and NATO, not any particular candidate. They just want chaos..."