Saturday, December 23, 2017

New FBI chief replaces his top lawyer amid mounting questions over agency after anti-Trump texts revealed

Via Billy

James Baker, the top lawyer at the FBI, has been reassigned, as the bureau comes under heightened scrutiny by congressional Republicans

James Baker, the FBI's leading lawyer who was a confidante of fired FBI Director James Comey, has been reassigned from his post, as the agency's top personnel are under high scrutiny.

Baker told colleagues he will assume different duties for the bureau, the Washington Post reported.

Baker oversees the bureau's Office of General Counsel, and has received such awards as the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in counter-terrorism in 2006.

He also was the subject of a leak investigation over the summer after Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a crackdown on leakers.

Christmas '75' - '77?

 Clickable 

Virginia and Emily (l to r) were both born in Saigon.  Wish little girls would always stay this age as they love their daddies!  :)  Virginia:  Whatever happened to the picture on the wall where I caught you twirling around on the ferry from Seattle to Victoria?  That was a favorite.
(Thuy just mentioned that she thought it was 1977 as she remembers making the dress Emily is wearing)

No, Democrats — Keeping Your Own Money Isn't 'Theft'

Via Billy

 

"A heist," "looting the federal treasury," "ransacking the middle class." Democrats truly have no shame.


Half a lifetime ago, it was an easy sell: Tax cuts were the mechanism to put more of your money back into your pocket. Buoyed by leadership from a Republican in the White House, congressional Democrats fell in line and enacted tax cuts that supercharged the American economy to the tune of more than a million jobs in just one month.

Despite that documented success in the 1980s, as well as the proof of presidential leadership on the issue before and since, this most recent reform only passed because Republicans stuck together and took advantage of reconciliation rules in the Senate to thwart minority Democrats from bottling it up.

So what brought on the change?

More @ Patriot Post

The Joy of a White Christmas: Upholding Our Traditions

Via comment by Reborn on Christmas at Greenpoint (1930)


We made this video to celebrate the beauty and majesty of the European season of Yule/Christmas.

We hope it reminds everyone of the importance of our European tradition, customs, heritage, and ancestry. For our European ancestors, the celebration of Yule/Christmas was some of the most important, sacred, and cherished traditions and times of the year. We make this video to to also emphasize the importance of upholding tradition and heritage for the present and future generations as well. For a person with strong roots inevitably has strong principles!

Media warn about a tax apocalypse and other outlandish journalistic offenses

Via Billy

http://a57.foxnews.com/media2.foxnews.com/BrightCove/694940094001/2017/12/19/270/152/694940094001_5687357487001_5687341686001-vs.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

There’s lying like a rug and lying like the media. In the former, the person just collapses motionless. In the latter, the person actively seeks to distort the truth and convince people that a tax cut is actually a hike.

That’s the script of almost every major media disaster in 2017. Journalists misrepresent the details and try to convince their audience with a mix of invective and shouting. It’s precisely what happened with the GOP’s tax cut vote.

Media attacked the plan 24-7 and then labeled it “deeply unpopular.” Shocker. MSNBC compared the move to a “post-Soviet kleptocracy” and claimed the GOP is “stealing from the rest of us, stealing from the majority,” as New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg did. Her fellow columnist Paul Krugman called it a “nightmare,” though he also predicted post-election “we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

More @ Fox

Was the Steele Dossier the FBI’s ‘Insurance Policy’?

Via Billy

http://c3.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/styles/original_image_with_cropping/public/uploaded/trump-russia-steele-dossier-fbis-insurance-policy-clinton-campaign.jpg?itok=pl3W_rF2
......................while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign — and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than — what’s the word? — resist.

The rest @ NRO

Bannon Puts Jared Through the Grinder (With friends like this........)

 Steve Bannon is pictured. | Getty Images

Former Trump chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon milled his former Oval Office colleague Jared Kushner into a bloody chunk of battle sausage this week and smeared him across the shiny pages of Vanity Fair. You’ve got to read Bannon’s quote three or four times to fully savor the tang of its malice and cruelty. After scorning the Russia collusion theories as fiction, Bannon acknowledged the grisly reality that the Russia investigation poses for his former boss. And he blamed it all on Kushner, for having created the appearance that Putin had helped Trump. Dropping Kushner head first into the grinder, Bannon turned the crank.

More @ Politico

James Comey drubs 'partisan' scrubbing at the FBI! :)

Via Billy


Must be satire. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Former FBI Director James Comey lashed out at the drama unfurling at his former agency.

Rallying late Friday in defense of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence's longtime general counsel James Baker, who is reportedly being reassigned as his potential role in leaking the infamous Trump dossier to the media has come under scrutiny, Comey issued an uncharacteristically specific tweet.
"Sadly, we are now at a point in our political life when anyone can be attacked for partisan gain," Comey tweeted. "James Baker, who is stepping down as FBI General Counsel, served our country incredibly well for 25 years & deserves better. He is what we should all want our public servants to be."

USS Kirk Rescue April 29, 1975

Via mind jog from Minh Dinh Nguyen


Aguna was also named after the ship that rescued his family and was born on-board.



Evacuation
********************************

  A father goes 'badass' to save his family

 The crew of the USS Kirk frantically wave away Ba Van Nguyen as he approaches the ship with his family.
 Ba Van Nguyen's helicopter smashes into the water after he risks all to save his wife and their three children.

 Kent "Chippy" Chipman reunites with Mina Nguyen, who was just 10 months old when he helped save her life.
"I'm the guy who caught you" (When dropped from the helicopter)

 A 10-month-old Mina Nguyen cries after she is dropped into the arms of a sailor after her father's high-risk escape.
A 10-month-old Mina Nguyen cries after she is dropped into the arms of a sailor after her father's high-risk escape.

********************************
Nguyen shuffled to his feet from his wheelchair, straightened his jacket as he looked at Jacobs, and, with a trembling right hand, he saluted. 

If you'd seen him in the crowded room that night, you might not have given him a second look.

He was the frail old man in a wheelchair. He wore a black ascot cap, a burgundy tie and a gray tweed jacket that covered his 140-pound frame. Ba Van Nguyen couldn't speak, could barely move; just a tiny man in a roomful of big Navy men swapping war stories.

But rewind the clock 40 years, slap a pistol in Nguyen's shoulder holster, add about 10 pounds of wiry muscle, and strap him into the seat of a military helicopter armed with an M60 machine gun and he becomes something else:

A total badass.

On April 29, 1975, Nguyen did something that could have been ripped from the script of a "Mission Impossible" movie. He was fleeing from the North Vietnamese army with his wife and their three young children as communist soldiers crashed the gates of Saigon. For 20 excruciating minutes, Nguyen's copter literally hovered between life and death.

More @ CNN

Issuance of Global Magnitsky Executive Order; Global Magnitsky Designations

Via Michael

Sergei Magnitsky.jpg
​The President has issued a new Executive Order on December 20, 2017 Blocking the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuses and Corruption. OFAC is concurrently releasing new FAQs related to this Executive Order and the office is publishing the following designations.

OFFICE OF FOREIGN ASSETS CONTROL

Specially Designated Nationals List Update

The following individuals have been added to OFAC's SDN List: 

More @ Treasury

Get PAID up to $80,000 to move to struggling towns

Via Billy

A down payment assistance grant is also available for everyone that offers up to 4% of a first mortgage, with no repayment necessary

Towns in rural America are attempting to revitalize their increasingly anemic communities by incentivizing people to move out to the countryside.   

Cash grants, student loan pay offs and free land giveaways are just some of the enticements smaller communities are offering to a younger generation of Americans looking to leave the big city, where in some places individuals can utilize up to $80,000 worth of incentives to relocate. 

According to USA Today, rural America encompasses 75 per cent of the country, but only 16 per cent of its population, the lowest in the nation's history.   

Numbers show that 54 per cent of the population in 1910 lived in rural communities, but dropped to just 19 per cent in 2010, according to a report by real estate website Zillow 

More @ Daily Mail

BLM investigator alleges misconduct by feds in Bundy ranch standoff

Via Billy



A scathing memo from the lead investigator who assessed how federal officers handled the 2014 armed standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy accuses agents of far-reaching misconduct, recklessness and unrestrained antipathy toward the family.

The 18-page document, obtained Thursday by The Oregonian/OregonLive, is dated Nov. 27.

Prosecutors shared it last week with defense lawyers for Bundy, his two sons and co-defendant Ryan Payne as they were in the midst of their conspiracy trial, but it's not part of the public court record.

More @ Oregon Live

We Joined The Marines Trying To Defeat The Strongest Taliban Army Yet Dec 19, 2017



President Trump's new Afghanistan strategy will see up to 4,000 additional troops deployed to fight the deadliest Taliban army to date in the now 16-year-old conflict. But very few of them will see ground combat. That's because the war is being fought mainly by Afghan soldiers on the ground, supported by U.S. airpower in the form of drones or F-16s. 

VICE NEWS spent time with U.S. and Afghan forces as they try to beat back a Taliban resurgence that's seen the group now control or contest more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the beginning of the war. We accompanied an Afghan-led counter-insurgency operation deep into Helmand province, where local forces fight day and night to push the Taliban back using heavy artillery and mine-clearance teams that dig out IEDs with their bare hands. 

As top U.S. officials laud recent results on the battlefield, Afghan soldiers say the Taliban they’re fighting is stronger now than they’ve been in years.

Dingdong Pelosi Rips 'GOP Tax Scam' as a Way to 'Bleed The Middle Class Dry'

Via John

It would have been a great bill even if it was just a big reduction in "corporate" taxes (which are actually paid for by consumers, like us, and is therefore like a stealth-tax on individuals), but the fact that it provides more financial support to families with young children and doubles the standard deduction used almost exclusively by lower income taxpayers and at the same time lowers tax rates across the board, makes it fantastic. None of those those other things are mentioned in this liberal-slanted article below.  Fancy Nancy, says that it's "Armageddon" (LOL....she DID) and by doing so, she refilled the Kool Ade cups of liberals throughout America. I LOVE NANCY.....Like Obama, she is the political gift that keeps on giving. As Italians say, "Cent'anni, Nancy, Cent'anni !"  [wishing someone a life of 100 years]

Keep this in mind.

What is the net worth of Nancy Pelosi?

So how rich is Nancy Pelosi? According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the San Francisco democrat is the ninth wealthiest member of Congress and has a colossal net worth of $196,299,990.Dec 29, 2011

This is the same fiscally abusive woman who demanded and got, as a perk of being "Speaker of the House." a full size dedicated commercial jet to take her and her retinue of hangers-on to/from Cali/D.C. almost every weekend of the year,
as enormous taxpayer expense.  A typical "limousine liberal" that ran up annual six-figure booze bills for drinks served on "her" plane.  We know that, because she was forced to pay the in-flight booze bills.

 Nancy Pelosi's In-Flight Food And Drink Costs? $101,000

 Vince Veneziani

Jan. 29, 2010

 Paid your taxes on time? Good, 'cause Nancy Pelosi needs to pay her tab.

Documents uncovered via a FOIA request show that Pelosi racked up over $101,000 of taxpayer dollars for "in-flight services."

And by "services," she clearly meant alcohol. Look at all the booze on this receipt pictured right!
WND: But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for "in-flight services" – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That's almost $1,000 per week per round-trip flight.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.8 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time

So, Fancy Nancy, with her over-the-top rhetoric and her wild karate chop gesticulations used like punctuation marks, makes me glad she is the face of the failing Democrat Party. May she live and serve forever !

~ J.... ..

pelosi111 

NC: ATI AR-15 Pistol $349.99

Via Cousin John

ATI Tactical Omni Hybrid MAXX AR-15 Pistol, 5.56/.223 7.5" Barrel, 7" Keymod, Plum Crazy LPK - ATIGOMX556P4

ATI Tactical Omni Hybrid MAXX AR-15 Pistol, 5.56/.223 7.5" Barrel, 7" Keymod, Plum Crazy LPK - ATIGOMX556P4 
 
The ATI Tactical Omni Maxx Hybrid AR-15 Pistol 5.56/223 7.5" has a polymer upper/lower hybrid, aluminum 7" Keymod rail, polymer lower receiver, polymer upper receiver and is optics-ready. Extremely reliable while still being light, tough, and highly maneuverable. Accepts all standard AR-15 accessories. These pistol have polymer lower parts kits manufactured by Plum Crazy. Ships complete with one 30 round magazine