Christopher Steele Was In Contact with British MI6 and Russian SVR During the 2016 Election

Via Billy

Christopher Steele was an agent of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, during the time that he was working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC, according to several current and former US intelligence officials.

Christopher Steele first became known to the American public when Buzzfeed published a now largely debunked dossier that he compiled under the guise of his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, which was working for Fusion GPS as a subcontractor. Orbis was paid $168,000 plus expenses for the compilation of the dossier. Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, has testified to congress that he did not know that Steele was in contact with Russian intelligence operatives. If Simpson was paying for Steele’s operational expenses, it would seem unlikely that he would not know where he was flying and whom he was meeting with. Although the FBI had previously paid Christopher Steele, they did not pay him in 2016. It remains unclear whether he received payments from other state actors. 

More @ The Gateway Pundit

A fantastic example of a lady not allowing herself to be a passive victim to a group of men with guns

Via Kirk

Mr. Rosenstein, What Is the Crime?

 

What’s the legal basis for his special-counsel investigation? We have a right to know.
 
For precisely what federal crimes is the president of the United States under investigation by a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department?

It is intolerable that, after more than two years of digging — the 16-month Mueller probe having been preceded by the blatantly suspect labors of the Obama Justice Department and FBI — we still do not have an answer to that simple question.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein owes us an answer.

More @ NRO

It's our Constitution -- not Kavanaugh

Via Billy

One of the best statements of how the Framers saw the role of the federal government is found in Federalist Paper 45, written by James Madison, who is known as the "Father of the Constitution:”

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."

More @ The Anniston Star

Bob Woodward — Who Just Published Anti-Trump Book — Has Been FBI Asset Since 1970s

The Washington Post published a preview of Post reporter Bob Woodward’s new book on the Trump presidency last week.

Woodward paints a portrayal of the Trump White House as having a “nervous breakdown” and an “administrative coup d’etat”.

The book was meant as a hit piece on President Trump and his administration. What comes across is what Trump supporters already know about Trump: He relies on his instincts, he is learning as he goes and has been beset by disloyal operatives determined to preserve the ways of Washington, D.C., and prevent him from ‘draining the swamp.’

More @ The Gateway Pundit

& the hurricane isn't even here yet. :) Wind 6 MPH and no rain

Three-Bagger

Via Billy

And so the Golden Golem of Greatness re-enters the hall of mirrors that Syria has become. The US intelligence “community” has informed the US Media that Syrian President Assad is planning a new gas attack on Idlib Province, where a ragtag army of US-backed “rebels” (ISIS, etc) remain holed up against Assad’s forces backed by Russian air support. Have we seen this movie before?

Is Mr. Assad truly that dumb? — since the last time a gas attack was alleged (and actually never proven), Mr. Trump averred that he would attack Syria. And what did he even mean by that? Send a barrel bomb down the Assad family chimney, or just blow up more stuff on the ground? And for what? To birth another failed state in the Middle East (just what the world needs), or perhaps start World War Three with Russia? (Ditto, with a cherry on top.)

 More @ Kunstler

'The Soviet Union was committed to rehabilitation': Fury as hard-left student group at London university mounts extraordinary defence of notorious GULAG worker camps

Via David

A student union group has been roundly condemned after mounting an extraordinary defence of Stalin's notorious gulags.

Over one million people died in the infamous worker camps in the Communist Soviet Union, while other critics of the regime were imprisoned there for years and forced to work to the edge of exhaustion.

But hard-left activists at Goldsmiths university tweeted a defence of the gulags - claiming they helped rehabilitate workers and were nicer than Western prisons.

They claimed that inmates were actually treated well and allowed to join theatre groups and write for prison newspapers. 

More @ Daily Mail

Comment on Military Wants to Put All Its Eggs in One Cloud

Via Badger

 

Military Wants to Put All Its Eggs in One Cloud

Stupidest Idea EVER! It is like those in charge want to fail. In college, I studied computers and programming in 1970. I have been a geek since before that word existed. The more developed technology becomes the easier it is to hack into or destroy. In 1970, you could not hack into a computer. Why? They were not connected to anything. Simple logic, if you do not have a port into the computer, it is impossible to hack in.

Allowing a device to control your computer is a recipe for disaster. Being honest, I do not hack anymore, but there was a time I did. If you have an access point, I can promise it can be hacked. Putting all your information on a single source makes it a high value target to hack. It guarantees everyone wants in and they will get in. The best solution is to spread data out to hundreds or thousands of locations. No one location is that valuable unless you know what is there. But with everything at one location, the hacker knows what they want is there.

If I was a betting man, I’d say less that six months after completion it will have been breached. The breach will be classified because too many jobs are on the line. But within probably nine months every important document or bit of information will have been stolen.

UK Tops Sweden as Sexual Assault Capital of Europe

Via Mike

Above dated.

The UK is the Most Dangerous Country for Women in EU

It is difficult to compare crime statistics from country to country, but it at least gives us a 40,000-foot altitude overview of the dangers of foolish immigration policies. Just plot the highest concentrations of recent Muslim migrants in Europe and with just a few exceptions you have the countries where women are most exposed to sexual assault and rape. According to a September 6th Daniel Greenfield article in Front Page Magazine and European Union sex crime statistics collected by Emma Beswick and published in World News on November 24, 2017—Which EU Countries have the Highest Rate of Sex Crimes—the UK has edged out Sweden in sexual assaults.

 More @ The Times Examiner

The West’s Head-in-the-Sand Policy

 Via David                                                        Dated

 

A new, huge wave of refugees from Africa and the Middle East is rolling in. It is high time to face the uncomfortable truths.

In Africa there are 7 million more people every 100 days. If we took in one million Africans, it would make up for the population deficit in 14 days! In Nigeria alone, more children are born every year than in the whole of Europe.

In 1960 Africa had 280 million inhabitants—today it is already 1.2 billion, and by 2050 it will be 2.5 billion. Up to 66% of Africans (i.e., 790 million) want to go to Europe or the USA—a large proportion of them within the next five years.

More @ Taki

1st Edition Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol. In Prose. A Ghost Story of Christmas.

 Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol. In Prose. A Ghost Story of Christmas. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843. First edition, first state. Small octavo (6.4375 x 4.125 in; 163 x 104 mm.). [8], 166, [2] pages. Frontispiece and three additional inserted plates, all color; four in-text illustrations in black and white. Original reddish-brown publisher's cloth; front and back stamped in blind with gilt vignette on front; spine stamped in gilt. All edges trimmed and gilt. Light green endpapers. In custom maroon one-quarter morocco clamshell with dark blue and dark brown spine labels stamped in gilt. Barely visible darkening to spine and top edge of boards; mild fading to hinges; soft bumping to corners; slight rubbing to edges; tiny chip in cloth toward bottom at hinge; small spot of black staining beneath front gilt ornament, slightly larger spot of pale staining above it. Some loss of green coloring to endpapers. Crack to binding in gutter between gatherings F and G has caused them to cant from rest of text block, less than two mm. from rest of page edges. Softening of text block corners has resulted in slight loss of gilt. Occasional thumbsoiling, soft creases from page turning and evidence of dog-earing to interior of text block. Minor shelf wear to extremities of clamshell. Inscription to previous owner on front free endpaper. Near fine. Blue half-title, blue and red title-page, "MDCCXLIII" dating for Christmas 1843 release and "Stave I." Dickens's preferred format, according to Eckel. Eckel pp. 110-15; Smith II 4. From the collection of Jerome P. O'Connor. 

Current bid $3,400

Super Bowl 2006? US National Anthem by the Academy Choirs

Via Cousin Colby

Military Wants to Put All Its Eggs in One Cloud

Via Billy

I sometimes wonder what my Alexa thinks of me.

She turns on and off lights early in the morning and late at night for me – and other times for my kids. Sometimes, she plays some old Eric Clapton for Dad. Other times, it’s “Glee” and Katie Perry for them.

Obviously, Alexa is a machine and does not care how my family uses it. But the Department of Defense is another matter.

It is on the verge of spending $10 billion over the next 10 years to, in essence, buy one big Alexa for the entire military. The Pentagon describes the product it seeks to buy not as the Mother of All Alexas but as a “centralized data lake” for the military’s 3.4 million users and 4 million devices.

More @ Townhall