5333 private links
Glenn Donovan
20 hours ago
Here’s how lame conservatives are. Garrow is a legendary progressive biographer, beyond his MLK work. This book on Obama, Rising Star, was published in 2017. I of course read it as I’ve found the only way to accurately understand a US presidency is by reading the books written after as our media sucks so badly at reporting anything accurately or in depth anymore. I knew all of this in 2017. Why on earth does it take some Leftist rag publishing an interview with the author 6 years later make a big splash? //
instead of what a bankrupt fraud of a person Obama is. How his life is defined by trying to be ‘black enough’ and how inside is a man without a sound moral compass. Fyi, this is why celebrity and wealth are what he focuses on cuz he’s empty and confused deep down inside. Due to his very effed up childhood of course.
Obama is much more white than he ever was or will be black. He hates this about himself. The reason he married Michelle is that she was called ‘white’ by other blacks where she grew up on the South Side of Chicago. The truth of Michelle is that she’s a climber and she and her family did everything they could to remove her from the black community in Chicago, from school to activities etc. They both were struggling with a legit black identity. Lol. //
Garrow is clearly a Progressive hit man and he represents that bizarre corner of Progressive politics where all they do is try to out moralize each other, nothing is ever good enough or pure enough etc. I had more empathy for Obama after reading this book.
Why? Cuz his mother and his father abandoned him. He was raised by a grandma VP of a bank and her dissolute, pothead husband – Obamas maternal Grandpa – who was a horrible influence on him as a teenager. Obama was screwed from birth by most of the member’s of his ‘family’. He emerged into the world lost, seeking an identity. Garrow’s book is deep and incisive about all of this and you get a much more human view of Obama, while of course noting his hack political vibe (he’s just a hack, always has been, it’s nothing new). He just acted white enough for Dems to try running him for POTUS. In a sense, they used him as much as he used the voters to fill up that empty spot inside of him that will always be lost and not good enough and aching for the love of his mother and father. Fame and celebrity and wealth won’t do it and I’m sure Obama has discovered this by now.
The White House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that could help people admit they were wrong and come around to his way of thinking.
Ironically enough, I thought of the “permission structure” remark reading David Samuels’ interview in Tablet with Obama biographer David Garrow, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism of the year. That’s because the entire article is a really effective “permission structure” for a lot of Obama voters and moderates to finally admit he’s an entirely overrated, largely failed president who was far more radical than he ever let on. He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way.
In other words, he’s pretty much the guy his critics on the right said he was all along. //
As Garrow observes, “What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. … Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?” //
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect America ever to stamp out racism (or any other sin for that matter), but King’s call to a virtue-based vision of equality was nonetheless deeply taken to heart by most Americans. Otherwise, the fact it took just 40 years for America to go from assassinating civil rights leaders and turning firehoses on peaceful black protesters to electing a black president is just another “historical accident.” //
Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not explicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, a man who, in Garrow’s considered words, “did not buy into identity politics.” Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan’s vision of race in America.
Being a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures as a matter of the content of your character and judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming… well, it seems hard to believe Obama would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there’s ample evidence that Obama and his defenders do dodge accountability by blaming a more socially acceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists and Republicans.
The White House is refusing to share details about its coordinated efforts to engage in a federal takeover of election administration. //
When President Biden ordered all 600 federal agencies to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process” on March 7, 2021, Republican politicians, Constitutional scholars, and election integrity specialists began to worry exactly what was up his sleeve.
They had good reason. The 2020 election had suffered from widespread and coordinated efforts by Democrat activists and donors to run “Get Out The Vote” operations from inside state and local government election offices, predominantly in the Democrat-leaning areas of swing states. Independent researchers have shown the effect of this takeover of government election offices was extremely partisan and favored Democrats overwhelmingly. //
As with previous efforts to destabilize elections, the chaos and confusion that would occur are part of the plan. The Executive Order copied much of a white paper put out by left-wing dark money group Demos, which advocates for left-wing changes to the country and which brags on its website that it moves “bold progressive ideas from cutting-edge concept to practical reality.” Not coincidentally, Biden put former Demos President K. Sabeel Rahman and former Demos Legal Strategies Director Chiraag Bains in key White House posts to oversee election-related initiatives. //
One of the concerns shared by the members was that Biden was directing agencies to work with third-party organizations. Nobody knows which third-party organizations have been approved by Rice for her political efforts, nor which are being used. They also asked how much money is being spent on the effort, which statutory authorities justify the election activities, and what steps are being taken to avoid Hatch Act violations. They received no response. //
It is unclear why Biden and his political appointees are being so secretive about the work that went into their plan to engage in a federal takeover of election administration.
Whatever the case, Americans have a right to know whether these bureaucracies that are meddling in elections have experts in for each state’s election laws, what type of training is going on to ensure that state laws are being followed, whether they are allowing inspections and oversight to ensure no illegal activity, how they are determining whether a third-party group is genuinely non-partisan, whether they are allowing state investigators to approve money, and how much is being spent on this federal takeover of elections.
In the years before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals. //
Our best-selling book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties" chronicled how a failed "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations led by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton relied on an appeasement strategy that ultimately backfired with Russia.
Putin's spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.
The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden. //
By 2013, Putin had taken Americans to the cleaners. He got massive energy supplies that he now uses as a strategic weapon; he got toothless disarmament treaties that history suggests he will not abide by; he compromised American utility companies, getting them hooked on his cheap nuclear fuel supplies; he got his spies freed and sent home to a hero's welcome in Moscow; he got advanced cyber and military technology; and, not least, he compromised key figures in America's political class.
What did Americans get in return? Not much. Here's a simple test: Has your utility bill gotten cheaper since 2009? //
But Obama, Clinton, and Biden got a lot. As just one example, before Obama even left office in 2017, he set up the Obama Foundation. One of his very first donors was Exelon Corporation, which had received billions in cheap Russian nuclear fuel sales thanks to the 123 Agreement. Exelon, which was known as "the President's Utility" pledged a staggering $10 million to Obama's foundation before he was even out of office.
Biden's family and its partners got hooked up with the former mayor of Moscow's family, who sent at least $3.5 million to a company cofounded by Hunter Biden. Thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop, we know that the Russian oligarch behind that $3.5 million may have invested upwards of $200 million in other Biden-linked entities and that Joe Biden personally benefited from his son's business dealings. And this is all before Biden was named Obama's point man in Ukraine.
We were failed by 20 years worth of general officers. There needs to be an accounting. No matter what dumbf*** calls Joe Biden made, the military had an obligation to anticipate, do better, and not blame Biden for them screwing the pooch as they did in the past 72 hours.
cdrsalamander
@cdrsalamander
Anyone with 4-stars resign yet this weekend?
I distinctly remember all the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes abt reducing a footprint in Syria a few years ago ... norms and all.
Anyone? Did I miss something?
2:09 PM · Aug 15, 2021 //
ziegler.von.strahn
2 hours ago
something that not too many people know about........and might explain why we wasted so much there.
Afghanistan is thought to have about 1 trillion worth of lithium and other rare metals.
Now that we are leaving, will be interesting to watch how involved China becomes. //
Scotty2Hotty ziegler.von.strahn
2 hours ago
Yah, that's why we were there for 20 years and never took out billions in rare minerals.
Cuz we stayed there to get them.
The reality is that, during Trump’s tenure and despite the Afghan government’s many imperfections, Afghanistan had made great strides. The government controlled most of the country’s territory. There was real economic growth. Women could work. Children could go to school.
Further, the cost of fostering regional stability by maintaining a stable Afghanistan was well within reason. The U.S. was spending less in Afghanistan in a year than we used to spend in a week. American forces were training and advising Afghan forces. Our troops were not fighting wars and taking causalities. This was clearly sustainable.
And how, in heaven’s name, is Trump to blame for Biden’s disastrous decision to cut and run? Trump was negotiating with the Taliban, but there was nothing wrong with that. The negotiations were conditions-based, and Trump made clear the Taliban would be held accountable for its actions.
Moreover, Trump’s team made sure that if, in the end, the Taliban proved untrustworthy, the remaining U.S. force had been sized and scoped to present a serious deterrent to the Taliban and be sufficient to protect U.S. interests.
Trump, in fact, handed Biden a problem mostly solved. All Biden had to do was negotiate a lasting settlement from a position of strength or maintain an economy of force presence in Afghanistan if the Taliban failed to deliver. Instead, Biden just decided to call it a day and call the troops home regardless of what the Taliban did on the ground. //
This is the Obama-Biden playbook. Disengage in dangerous situations, and hope everything doesn’t go to hell in a handbasket. And when those fond hopes don’t pan out? Time to make excuses; shift blame; do anything but deal with the problem—unless there is absolutely no alternative. //
Biden is carrying on exactly the same foreign policy. Caving to Russia on Nord Stream 2. Refusing to confront China on the origins of COVID-19. Pleading with Tehran to let the U.S. back in the Iran nuclear deal.
No good will come of this.
To summarize, the flow of information likely went from McFarland to Hill to Wallander. Once inside the White House, it went from Wallander to Rice to Obama (and later onto Ignatius at the Washington Post).
The Bottom Line: Wallander possessed a virulent anti-Trump sentiment, motive, access, and credibility because of her senior position and experience – she had it all. She’s the leaker. Prove me wrong.
Iran’s hard-line parliament in December approved a bill that would suspend part of UN inspections of its nuclear facilities if European signatories did not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions by February.
The IAEA struck a three-month deal with Iran to have it hold the surveillance images, with Tehran threatening to delete them afterward if no deal had been reached.
It’s not clear now if they’ve deleted those three months’ worth of images. But, it means the IAEA has no ability to assess what Iran has been doing. Imagine the temerity to play around IAEA like this.
So, the normal reaction one should have to this is that they’ve been playing these games, one should not bend over for them — because they haven’t acted in accordance with the deal, to begin with.
Iran has already shot far past the maximum allowable uranium enrichment levels defined in the Obama-era deal. They’re now up in the range of 63 percent enrichment using their new IR-4 centrifuges and have announced that they will soon be installing their IR-9 centrifuges which are allegedly far faster and more efficient. This puts them only a few steps away from being able to make a bomb.
Why would you continue to lift sanctions, given these games? But, unfortunately, that’s exactly what Biden is doing.
In reporting on apparent CIA involvement in spying on an American citizen, RedState’s Bonchie observed:
If this were a Republican implicated, it’d be treated as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.
And so it would. Therefore: Let’s treat it as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.
During today’s White House press briefing, McEnany was asked by CBS News Radio correspondent Steven Portnoy to explain what “Obamagate” was and what crimes were allegedly committed because apparently he’s been asleep at the wheel for the last three-plus years as this story has unfolded, with many of the players being exposed – no thanks whatsoever to the leftists in the mainstream media. //
“I’m really glad you asked because there hasn’t been a lot of journalistic curiosity on this front. And I’m very glad that you asked this question,” McEnany said.
“Look, there were a number of questions raised by the actions of the Obama administration. The Steele dossier funded by the Democratic National Committee, the opposition political party to the president, was used to obtain FISA warrants to listen in on conversations of people within the Trump campaign.
There was the unmasking, the identity of Michael Flynn. And we know that in a January 5th meeting in the Oval Office with President Obama, Sally Yates from the Department of Justice learned about the unmasking – not from the Department of Justice or for the FBI. She learned about it from President Obama and was stunned and can barely process what she was hearing at the time because she was stunned of his knowledge of that.
We know that there was a lot of wrongdoing in the case of Michael Flynn. The FBI notes, for instance, that said we could ‘get him to lie’ as they pontificated their strategy. We know that the identity of this three decade general was leaked to the press, a criminal leaked to the press of his identity in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.”
“These are very serious questions, they’ve been ignored by the media for far too long,” McEnany continued to a flustered Portnoy, who seemed to be stunned she would suggest such a thing.
She went on to talk about the wrongdoing of the other players in the scandal, like “Andy McCabe leaking to the Wall Street Journal and then lying about it.” She also noted that she’d be “happy to talk about James Clapper lying before Congress saying the NSA does not monitor phone calls,” which she stated was “an inaccuracy, to say the least.”
Now, leaked tapes of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif are exposing just how the terrorist nation responded to the killing. Further, it shows how much of an idiot our current president is. //
Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
Our Administration’s exquisite strike on Qasem Soleimani had a massive impact on Iran and the Middle East. You don’t have to take my word for it. Ask @JZarif. President Biden still thinks it was a mistake. #AmericaFirst #AbrahamAccords //
What the tapes reveal is an Iran where Zarif is a nobody, with Soleimani and the IRGC basically running the show, including regarding relations with Russia. //
In other words, the death of Soleimani was a massive blow to Iran’s ability to project strength to its allies and to continue terrorist attacks in places like Iraq. Joe Biden, being the idiot that he is, opposed the attack on Soleimani just as he opposed the attack on Osama Bin Laden. The one consistent in our foreign policy the last forty years has been Biden being continually wrong about it. //
The Jerusalem Post notes exactly how this will be spun, and I think they are dead on.
The leaked tapes lead to one of several conclusions. They seem to cater to a Western worldview that depicts Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani as “moderates” who are confronting the “hardliners” in the IRGC and Supreme Leader’s office. This leak appears timed to encourage this view as the US considers re-entering the Iran Deal. //
This is how Biden will try to pivot after the leaking of these tapes. They will claim that Soleimani was actually a detriment to peace, even though Biden opposed his killing and removal from power, and that it is now safer to make a new “deal” with Iran. Biden, in a laughable fashion, will actually try to use his own past idiocy as proof his current idiocy is acceptable.
New emails uncovered by Judicial Watch’s FOIA request detail how FDA employees were working with buyers to get 'fresh' aborted baby organs for experiments. //
In what should have been a national headline, the exposure of the U.S. government’s involvement in trafficking aborted baby bodies is now even more newsworthy following Friday’s announcement from the White House. At President Biden’s direction, the Department of Health and Human Services reversed the Trump administration’s policy protecting preborn Americans from the callous dehumanization of organ harvesting and further desecration of their bodies in research disguised as “science.”
This sickening decision now gives license to our “best and brightest” government researchers and agencies, those in charge of steering the country towards medical breakthroughs and scientific progress, to use the skin, brains, and eyeballs of children in research that affects all of us and is funded by our money. For this very reason, we must know the full extent of how federal agencies traffic aborted baby body parts. //
FDA Requested Boy Organs to Create Humanized Mice
The FDA went so far as to request organs from baby boys to use in “very important and … challenging” surgeries to create humanized mice. ABR responded that they would do their best but could make no promises due to the “nature of termination procedures,” which mutilate a baby’s body beyond physical recognition. //
If you’ve managed to read to the bottom of this list, you’re no longer wondering why the federal government covered up these documents for so long. But you may be wondering why this story isn’t a national headline and why journalists, many of whom claim to be uncovering humanitarian abuses, still choose to ignore it.
There may be mainstream media silence and gaslighting by medical experts who tell us there’s nothing to see here, but the American people know better. We are no longer immune to the utter depravity of our federal government’s partnership with the corporate abortion cartel and their cowering beneath the guise of science. The truth is on the fighting side.
Back in February 2013, Fox’s James Rosen asked the State Department’s Victoria Nuland if the Obama Administration had been holding secret talks with Iran. Nuland denied it. //
So later in the year after it became obvious that that was in fact a lie and that they had been holding secret talks, Rosen asked then State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki about it.
QUESTION: Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal?
MS. PSAKI: James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that. . . //
Fox then later discovered that exchange between Psaki and Rosen then mysteriously edited out from the video on the State Department’s official website and Youtube channel. Eight minutes including that part and other comments on the Iran Deal were replaced with a white-flash effect.
The Obama Administration initially denied it was deliberate, blaming it on a “glitch.” But they later were forced to admit that the very same day of the comments, a video editor got a call from a State Department official to eliminate that portion of the briefing from the video. //
But the ACLJ, through their FOIA efforts in the whole matter, were able to discover an email from Jen Psaki with information relevant to the lie about Iran and when the secret negotiations actually started. But it’s so redacted it’s hard to tell what it says. So the ACLJ is requesting an unreacted version. The Biden State Department is refusing to turn it over, claiming security reasons.
Now a federal judge has ordered that the Biden State Department has to turn it over to the court by March 12, 2021.
You see, the “cages” that the left so wailed about under Trump were really chain link fencing that served as initial holding in detention facilities. The press continually used Obama-era pictures of said facilities to go after the Trump administration in one of the greater bits of media dishonesty we’ve seen in the last decade. The realities of the situation were eschewed for partisan gain, as if CBP and ICE could just release children onto the street and tell them to figure it out.
But here’s the kicker — the facilities now being re-opened under Biden were built under Trump. Therefore, in order for a fact-checker to note that the conditions have improved under Biden, they’d have to admit that it was Trump who actually improved the conditions while also revealing it was Obama who so badly screwed them up in the first place.
Regardless, the children are no less detained than they were before. Tents and shipping containers with barred windows are hardly a bastion of freedom, though the optics are slightly better, I suppose. Yet, there’s some serious poetic justice in the Biden administration having to now own criticism for what they formerly used as a political cudgel.
According to a new report from The Washington Times, multiple members of the Obama administration met with Iran in the attempt to undermine the Trump Administration including Kerry; Robert Malley, Obama’s Middle East adviser; and Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
Andrea Mitchell
@mitchellreports
.@brhodes: "Mike Pompeo seems to be looking out not just for complicating the Biden presidency but his own political interests-These things seem designed to appeal to some American voters rather than addressing pressing national interests of the United States." #AMRstaff
Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
FACT CHECK: the real reason @brhodes is so upset is because we brokered peace in the Middle East. He gave pallets of cash to terrorist regimes in the Middle East. Our approach worked. His didn’t.
Good foreign policy doesn’t complicate anything.
Obama knew that Biden had a sweet little crime family grifting operation up and running for years. As a relative political neophyte about insider dealing and corruption in Washington in 2008, he would have been happy to have the elder Biden show him the ropes – and get in on the action!
And according to newly released texts from James Biden (brother of Joe), evidence is now emerging that Obama himself was in on the Biden family grifting, which would perhaps explain where at least some of Obama’s approximately $70 million net worth originated.
James Biden writes to #HunterBiden about @JoeBiden meeting with “the O” about “outrageous acquisitions” and “the two biggest days of our business life” in an e-mail from October 1, 2017.
But these email exchanges released today show that the agents working on the Crossfire Razor investigation had been intending to shut down the investigation as long as 60 days prior to the drafting of the order to close it down, but the matter was being kept open by FBI management using the excuse of getting NSLs which were not thought by the agents to be useful — and there was no intent to use them because of the fact that the results would not have meaningful information.
These emails further support the argument that the Flynn investigation was corrupted by motives of individuals in FBI management to simply keep digging on General Flynn until they could find something — anything — as leverage to use against him in an effort to force him out of the Trump Administration.
In November 2013 Harry Reid had rewritten the Senate Rules mid-session in order to confirm appellate court judges he was not able to confirm under the old rules requiring 60 votes to end debate on a judicial nominee. The Senate Democrats had used the same rule to hold up confirmation of appeals court judges while they were in the minority during the Bush 43 Administration. And in the elections the next fall, the Democrats in the Senate paid the price.
The GOP gained 9 seats in the senate in 2015, beating 5 Democrat incumbents //
In the same three elections, the GOP had defeated 8 Democrat incumbent Senators and taken over the seats of 5 others who retired to go from a minority of 41 to a majority of 54. Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate went from a near filibuster proof 59 votes to only44 Democrats and 2 Independents.
THAT is the factual context surrounding the refusal in 2016 by the GOP in the Senate to grant to Barack Obama the opportunity to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.
The voters HAD spoken AGAINST the idea of allowing Barack Obama — leader of a Democrat Party thoroughly and soundly rejected — the make the selection. That was the reason for holding the seat open until the 2016 election when the voters could decide whether it would be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump who would make the choice and whether that choice would be confirmed by a friendly or hostile Senate Majority.
The same dynamic does not exist today.
the rot resulting from Obama’s executive order and the firings of senior military officers has wrought extensive damage to military good order, discipline, readiness, and training – and ultimately to the nation’s national defense capabilities. The political corruption in the military needs to be reversed and the hyper-partisans purged from the ranks. Start at the top, Mr. President!