Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said this week that, by Friday, Judge Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed as a SCOTUS jurist to replace Antonin Scalia, who died a little over a year ago on February 13th of 2016 at the age of 79 whilst vacationing at a West Texas ranch.
The Senate is on the verge of a major rules change sparked by Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to be a Supreme Court justice, as Republicans and Democrats barrel toward a partisan showdown on the Senate floor over the future of the filibuster.
The first procedural vote on Judge Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, is expected Thursday morning—a vote where the GOP is expected to fall short. As a result, Senate Republicans are expected to use a procedural motion that would eliminate the filibuster for this and future Supreme Court nominations—expanding on changes that Democrats initiated in 2013.
What were the changes initiated in 2013 by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid? From the WSJ.com:
Reid, Democrats trigger ‘nuclear’ option; eliminate most filibusters on nominees
by Paul Kane
Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.
Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.
The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.
Confirmation of three US DCA picks to the DC Circuit.
In the long term, the rule change represents a substantial power shift in a chamber that for more than two centuries has prided itself on affording more rights to the minority party than any other legislative body in the world. Now, a president whose party holds the majority in the Senate is virtually assured of having his nominees approved, with far less opportunity for political obstruction.
Reid said the chamber “must evolve” beyond parliamentary roadblocks. “The American people believe the Senate is broken, and I believe the American people are right,” he said, adding: “It’s time to get the Senate working again.”
Translated: it’s best for my party and my party is in charge therefore that’s what we are going to do.
Republicans said the way Democrats upended the rules will result in fallout for years. “It’s another raw exercise of political power to permit the majority to do anything it wants whenever it wants to do it,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the GOP’s parliamentary expert, told reporters.
Republicans vowed to reciprocate if they reclaim the majority.
Thank you. History, meet schadenfreude. Shake hands and come out fighting.
“Democrats won’t be in power in perpetuity,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), a 27-year member. “This is a mistake — a big one for the long run. Maybe not for the short run. Short-term gains, but I think it changes the Senate tremendously in a bad way.”
Shelby was remarkably prescient.
From November 22nd, 2013.
Can anyone remotely say “goose and gander”? WSJ.com continues:
After the Senate Goes ‘Nuclear’ on Supreme Court Nominees, Will Legislation Be Next?
Republicans are expected Thursday to change the Senate’s rules to make it easier to confirm Supreme Court nominees. The move has aroused concern that legislation may be the next target.
The Senate, its occupants worry, is just one step away from acting a whole lot like the House if the party in the minority is no longer able to block legislation.
Right now, most bills need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate. Most of the time, Democrats and Republicans have to work together unless unless one party controls more than 60 seats in the chamber. Currently Republicans hold 52 seats. Both parties have tried to use the chamber’s procedural tools to their advantage, leading to more frequent standoffs.
Constitutional Option Unstoppable: John McCain and Lisa Murkowski Will Vote Yes
by Ken Klukowski
WASHINGTON,D.C.—Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced on the Senate floor Wednesday that they will not allow a filibuster of Neil Gorsuch, and will instead vote for the constitutional option to restore a simple-majority vote to confirm Supreme Court nominations, making that outcome now almost certain.
Really? And how will they manage to halt it?
Earlier during the day Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed that he had the 50 votes he needs—plus Vice President Mike Pence as a tie-breaker, if needed—to invoke the constitutional option and confirm President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee.
With his towering stature in the party, both in seniority and later as the 2008 presidential nominee, McCain was seen by some as the de facto chairman of the Gang of 14 effort in 2005 to save the option of filibustering judicial nominees in the future — but allowing through many of President George W. Bush’s nominees that were then being blocked by a Democratic filibuster. Ironically, that strategy’s architect was none other than Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who implemented it in 2003.
Do you see this? Do you see the wheels within wheels? On the other hand, this is McCain serving McCain and, simultaneously when it pleases him, doing the work of the GOP.
“The unprecedented nature of the Democrats’ filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee has left me in a difficult position,” the Arizona senator lamented on the state of affairs in 2017, and after surveying years of past practice in Senate confirmations.
“I’m left with no choice,” McCain declared. “I will vote to change the rules to allow Judge Gorsuch to be confirmed by a simple majority.”
The Nuclear Option. What is it?
That said, what is cloture?
“What if the Republicans become the majority again?” Inside baseball, but very important. Full circle. Should be no shock to anyone. But, zounds, a major shock to the Demorats who hadn’t fully anticipated that the Republicans — heretofore unpossessed of a spine — actually grew a modicum of one under a president who coiffed an orange dead cat on top of his head.
Again, more on the “nuclear option.”
Trent Lott coined the term. But here is a graphic.
One thing that I simply cannot understand. Please, someone attempt to explain to me, obviously, the advantage acquired by the Demorats in the filibustering of Judge Gorsuch. Because, once changed, the rule will allow the GOP to acquire another potential SCOTUS nominee during this term or another subsequent.
I have information to indicate there may likely be another SCOTUS vacancy extant somewhere in 2017. Then, between 2017 and 2020, my guess is that there will likely be another SCOTUS vacancy. That’s three.
By forcing a filibuster the Demorats will have, potentially, enabled the next three SCOTUS replacements. With luck they won’t be Left-leaning. This could be an unprecedented achievement in all of US history.
All under President Donald Trump.
Three Demorat Senators have had the guts to take a stand.
With 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats in the Senate, the GOP needs eight Democrats to join them to break a filibuster, which takes 60 votes.
So far, however, only three Democrats have come out saying they would support Gorsuch – Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.
Who and what? Time will tell. These are my thoughts.
It ever so pleases me to expose the hypocrisy splayed about by the Demorats, even when honest Americans are injured personally. It sucks to be you. Sometimes you have to be smarter than the propaganda. If you are not, well, there are prices to be paid. Commitments have consequences. Hey. So do elections.
Elizabeth Warren’s Female Staffers Made 71% of Male Staffers’ Salaries in 2016
by Brent Scher
Equal Pay Day Special: Warren demonstrates hypocrisy on gender pay gap
The gender pay gap in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) office is nearly 10 percent wider than the national average, meaning women in the Massachusetts Democrat’s office will have to wait longer than most women across the country to recognize Equal Pay Day.
Equal Pay Day, created two decades ago by the National Committee on Pay Equity, is scheduled by using the Census Bureau annual unadjusted gender pay gap to determine how far into the next year women would have to work to match annual earnings of men. Last year’s figures, showing that women earned 79.6 percent of what men earned, put Equal Pay Day on Tuesday April 4, more than three months into the calendar year.
Equal pay for equal work. Equal pay for dangerous work? Take a gander.
Question: just how many womyn work in these jobs? The deadliest jobs? I would submit: merely a handful at most. Lots of womyn loggers. Lots of womyn roofers. Lots of general construction laborers. Why, just the other day, I saw a massive contingent of womyn slamming down shingles on a friend’s roof. Uh no. I didn’t. I was lying there.
The above jobs? They’re too foul for most womyn. They wouldn’t denigrate themselves thusly. Those are jobs best left for the — wait for it — male barbarians. Most womyn might break a nail, after all. Worse yet, two or more. Beneath them, it is.
(The word “womyn” is insisted upon by those females who don’t want to be associated by word with men. Hence the “y.” You see?)
Sorry. Facts.
However, women working for Warren were paid just 71 cents for every dollar paid to men during the 2016 fiscal year, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
The median annual earnings for women staffers, $52,750, was more than $20,000 less than the median annual earnings for men, $73,750, according to the analysis of publicly available Senate data.
When calculated using average salaries rather than median, the pay gap expands to just over $26,051, or about 31 percent.
Consistent with previous Free Beacon analyses of Senate salary data, only full-time staffers who were employed for the entire period in question were included in the calculations.
For example, Warren’s former chief of staff Mindy Myers and her male replacement Dan Geldon were not included because neither worked the full year.
Among employees employed the entire year, only one woman, Warren’s director of scheduling, earned a six-figure salary, at $100,624.88.
Five men—Warren’s director of oversight and investigations ($156,000), legislative director ($149,458), deputy chief of staff ($119,375), Massachusetts state director ($152,310), and deputy state director ($113,750)—earned more than Warren’s highest paid woman staffer in 2016.
Whaaat? Leftist womyn screwing over fellow Leftist womyn? Zounds! This cannot be true. Except, well, yes, it is.
Many discount attributing gender pay differences to discrimination, arguing that these comparisons fail to take into account several contributing factors, but Warren is not one of them. Warren said on last year’s Equal Pay Day that the American workplace was “rigged against women” and called it a “national day of embarrassment” for the nation.
“Today is Equal Pay Day, and by the sound of it, you would think it’s some sort of historic holiday commemorating the anniversary of a landmark day that our country guaranteed equal pay for women,” Warren said. “But that’s not what this is about. Not even close.”
“The game is rigged against women and families, and it has to stop,” Warren continued. “It is 2016, not 1916, and it’s long past time to eliminate gender discrimination in the workplace.”
Right. It’s rigged. By womyn. Against womyn. Just ask Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren. She’s in good company. Hillary Clinton also short-sheeted womyn.
Warren is far from the only politician who pays women less than men.
Most notable on the list is failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who paid women less than men first as a senator, then as secretary of state, and as a presidential candidate. Her campaign viewed her tendency to pay women less than men as a campaign vulnerability.
Former President Barack Obama regularly spoke out about the gender pay gap, but women working at the White House were paid less than men.
Also paying women less than men were Democratic Govs. Jon Bel Edwards (LA.), who last month held an “equal pay summit,” and Andrew Cuomo (N.Y.), who has signed two executive orders this year to eliminate the wage gap.
Warren’s office did not respond to inquiries from the Washington Free Beacon. Gobsmacked, I am. Moreover, let’s stay away from facts, shall we?
BOOM Rachel Maddow gets destroyed on the wage gap myth!
The Spite House under our loving Barack Hussein Obama deigned to undercut the salaries for womyn doing the same jobs as men in the Spite House itself? Under its roof? The outrage! The betrayal!
If activists are going to use median annual salaries to claim women are paid less than men, then they ought to be consistent and call out President Obama‘s White House.
Female staffers in the White House earn 89 cents for ever dollar that male staffers earn. That’s on par with one of the numbers often reported for the misleading “gender wage gap,” which finds women earning 77 or 78 or 89 cents to a man’s dollar.
American Enterprise Scholar Mark J. Perry, who analyzed the White House data, found the median salary for the White House’s 271 female staffers to be $68,658, while the median salary for the 198 male staffers was $76,928 in 2016.
I don’t know. To me that seems to fit the word “disparity.” But I could be wrong.
“Therefore, female staffers in the Obama White House currently earn 89.25% of the median salary for male staffers, or 89.25 cents for every $1 men earn, and there is a 10.75% gender pay gap at the Obama White House,” Perry wrote. “That pay gap is slightly smaller than the 15.8% gender pay gap at the White House last year, but is still more than 2.5 times greater than the average gender pay gap for the Washington, D.C., labor market of only 4% according to the most recent data available from the Department of Labor.”
You opened the door. Never think people will not walk through it, once opened.
BZ
P.S.
Here’s another tasty tidbit that womyn will only admit singly and alone, never in a group or in public: womyn hate working in an all-female environment at any given job. But of course that’s not PC to think, much less to write here.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
Tuesday night at the Saloon we discussed:
Happy Stories: grandfather upset that home invasion victim killed his grandson and two other suspects with an AR-15 — as opposed to a pellet pistol or a butter knife?
How I conduct business at the Saloon; thanks be to those in chat;
Mother talks about how her son was tortured and killed at the hands of an illegal alien who systematically killed her son and set his body on fire;
Victims of illegal immigrant crime speak to Donald Trump;
Who is REALLY sitting next to your child in the classroom: is it an illegal alien or a 30-year-old man who shares a bathroom with 10-year-old kids? Your school probably couldn’t care less and it won’t tell you any way;
No Shaun at the Sack Heads Radio Show tomorrow night?
Nancy Pelosi: we actually have nothing on Trump and Russia;
In depth: an extended update on the surveillance of President Donald Trump
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. Thanks also to the BBS bouncer Fluffy for kicking all the louts out of Mary Brockman’s chair at the bar.
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
These Caucasoids marching with other BLM protesters: no longer allowed.
Nothing like knowing that an entire organization and movement is staffed by blatant racists. However, if there’s something I value, it’s clarity and honesty. Thanks BLM.
Black Lives Matter Philly Bans White People From Its Meetings
by Amber Randall
Black Lives Matter Philly banned white people from an upcoming event, claiming it is a “black only space.”
The April 15 meeting plans to discuss projects and initiatives for the upcoming year and act as a place for people to “meet, strategize and organize.” While children are invited to attend, white people are explicitly banned from the meeting, according to the Facebook event page.
When people began questioning the ban on whites over Twitter, Black Lives Matter Philly stayed by their ban, explaining that their meetings are “black centered.”
Anyone who identifies as “African disapora” is allowed to attend, the group explained over Twitter.
Calling Rachel Dolezal. Hello, Rachel Dolezal? Perhaps it’s time for you to weigh in on CNN because, after all, race is only a “social construct.”
I submit there may be a few blacks in America who might take issue with that. Call me wacky, but I suspect more than three blacks might think so.
After all, as Kamau Kambon says, it’s past due time to simply eliminate Caucasoids.
The terrible problem is this: not all blacks in America think this way. Take Tyrus from the Greg Gutfeld Show.
BZ, you racist! Blacks can’t be racist. Just ask them.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes created a firestorm when he released information earlier last week which tended to confirm that members of Donald Trump’s team had been surveilled and names unmasked for political purposes. Please see my two posts about the event here and here. Sotto voce, I’d care to point out this is the same Devin Nunes who, in May of 2013, revealed, as I wrote here:
Congressman Devin Nunes: the DOJ tapped phones in the House gallery
Fornicalia Congressman Devin Nunes of the 22nd district spoke on the Hugh Hewitt show Wednesday afternoon, and revealed a bombshell: not only did the DOJ tap the phones of reporters, but Nunes indicated the DOJ tapped the telephones of the House of Representatives in the gallery area — where not only reporters use the phones, but various DC politicians.
That said, here is Chairman Nunes’s initial revelation regarding the surveillance of President Trump, made on March 22nd.
This led to various products by Crane and Summit being pounded out of Demorat and American Media Maggot sphincters nationally, initially bent because Chairman Nunes dared to do his job and notify President Trump of his findings before the rest of the committee. This did not sit well with Adam Schiff, Little Chuckie Schumer, Nancy Pelosi et al.
Simultaneously, someone began to actually pay attention to a broadcast made on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” roughly a month ago, which included a revelation so large that it had been hiding in plain sight for some time. Please listen to Evelyn Farkas, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration, “out” that administration regarding the Trump campaign.
What she said was essentially this: the Obama administration ensured the leakage occurred and then tried to hide both the source of the leak as well as how the information was being shipped to “the hill,” otherwise known as the AMM.
There was only one purpose: political. The obvious intent was to damage the Trump campaign as much as possible and then undermine, minimize and block the president-elect’s ability to conduct the business necessary to assemble his team and move forward.
I can think of no other words than this: a conspiracy.
Fmr. FBI Asst. Director: Farkas Exposed ‘Conspiracy Cabal’ on Trump Surveillance
by Brendan Kirby
Law enforcement experts say Obama official must testify on ‘unmasking,’ may have admitted crime
The discussion with MSNBC host Mika Brezinski on March 2 focused on a New York Times story that appeared the day before under the headline, “Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Hacking.”
The story quoted unnamed former government officials who described efforts to “leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.” The information included evidence passed along by U.S. allies of meetings between Russian officials and Trump’s associates, and communications — intercepted by American intelligence agencies among Russians — among Russians discussing contacts with Trump officials.
The spice must flow and the evidence must be preserved. Why?
“It was more actually aimed at telling the [Capitol] Hill people, ‘Get as much information as you can and get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration,’ because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left,” she said. “So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy.”
Read this once, and then read it again, more slowly and deliberately.
“The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the staff, the Trump staff’s dealings with Russians, that they would try to compromise these sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence,” she said. “So I became very worried because not enough was coming out in the open, and I knew that there was more.”
She added, “That’s why you have the leaking. People are worried.”
She knows there’s a leak, the reason for the leak, the means of the leak and its justification. Which led to this little joust between Sean Spicer and a journalista.
Of course, this is nothing more than fetid navel-gazing on the part of the Republicans, right? The people subject to “unmasking” were no more plain civilians than Jello is a food group, right? This has nothing to do with privacy, right? Wrong.
Joseph diGenova, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan, said Farkas and the former administration officials she referred to should be questioned under oath.
“Ms. Farkas made a major blunder and, in fact … probably confessed to a crime or knowledge of people who committed a crime,” he said. “It was a remarkable interview and amazing it went unnoticed at the time.”
We can only hope; but we know that with all of the Benghazi hearings under Trey Gowdy no one was fired or breathes air behind bars today.
But here are questions that, as per normal, no one — and I mean no one — in the American Media Maggot queue is asking.
James Kallstrom, a former assistant director of the FBI, told LifeZette it is troubling that Farkas even knew about the intelligence reports that she urged officials to spread to congressional staffers.
“How does somebody who’s not even in the administration anymore, who’s in civilian life, have access to this information?” he asked. “What kind of conspiracy cabal is this?”
What indeed? Let’s go to Circa.com for this news story.
Obama’s rule changes opened door for NSA intercepts of Americans to reach political hands
by John Solomon and Sara Carter
As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama’s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned. (More on this below.)
Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
I hope you read that quite closely. Who could unmask American names? John Brennan. Loretta Lynch. Susan Rice. Remember that.
Today, the power to unmask an American’s name inside an NSA intercept — once considered a rare event in the intelligence and civil liberty communities — now resides with about 20 different officials inside the NSA alone. The FBI also has the ability to unmask Americans’ names to other intelligence professionals and policymakers.
Stop. That power exists within, to my estimation, roughly all 17 alphabet agencies in the American intelligence community. Because I have not yet done so, I enumerate those agencies now and here:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
National Security Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Department of State – Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of Homeland Security – Office of Intelligence and Analysis
Drug Enforcement Administration – Office of National Security Intelligence
Department of the Treasury – Office of Intelligence and Analysis
Department of Energy – Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
Army Military Intelligence
Office of Naval Intelligence
Marine Corps Intelligence
Coast Guard Intelligence
All that’s missing is your local dental board’s intelligence unit. “You sir, slowly put down the amalgam.” Shh. Keep that one under your hat.
The ACLU, an ally of Obama on many issues, issued a statement a few months ago warning that the president’s loosened procedures governing who could request or see unmasked American intercepts by the NSA were “grossly inadequate” and lacked “appropriate safeguards.”
Put on your thinking caps. Ask: why would Obama do this? And why only two weeks from the end of his second term?
Nunes, as well as Trump supporters, will be trying to determine if that access was warranted or a backdoor form of political espionage by an outgoing administration trying to monitor its successor on the world stage.
Any proof Obama aides were using NSA-enriched intelligence reports to monitor his transition on the world stage could embolden the new president. But perhaps the most consequential outcome of the new revelations is that it may impact the NSA’s primary authority to intercept foreigners: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is up for renewal at the end of the year.
Ah, wait. A touchy subject for the intelligence community. Because who holds the purse-strings? Congress. Circa then nails it with this revelatory paragraph.
For years, the NSA has been required to follow strict rules to protect the accidental intercepts of Americans from being consumed or misused by other government agencies. The rules required a process known as minimization, where the identity and information about an American who was intercepted is redacted or masked with generic references like “American No. 1.”
The number of senior government officials who could approve unmasking had been limited to just a few, like the NSA director himself.
Wait. This conflicts with what we know now.
And in his final days in office, Obama created the largest ever expansion of access to non-minimized NSA intercepts, creating a path for all U.S. intelligence to gain access to unmasked reports by changes encoded in a Reagan-era Executive Order 12333.
The government officials who could request or approve an exception to unmask a U.S. citizen’s identity has grown substantially. The NSA now has 20 executives who can approve the unmasking of American information inside intercepts, and the FBI has similar numbers.
And executives in 16 agencies — not just the FBI, CIA and NSA — have the right to request unmasked information.
Thank you ever so kindly, Barack Hussein Obama. Stellar decision. Smashing. Brilliant.
“This raises serious concerns that agencies that have responsibilities such as prosecuting domestic crimes, regulating our financial policy, and enforcing our immigration laws will now have access to a wealth of personal information that could be misused. Congress needs to take action to regulate and provide oversight over these activities,” ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Giuliani warned in January.
Even when an American’s name isn’t included in a report, the NSA’s intercept information could be so specific that it identifies them.
I think you see both the problems and the reasons. CNN insists, however, that Farkas revealed nothing and the GOP has nothing.
Better yet (sorry for the poor audio), Farkas takes back her words and than attributes their repetition to — you guessed it — fake news.
I frequently have to remind myself that I inhabit the planet Earth, and not Zephron.
It’s interesting to note that Fred Fleitz, a former CIA officer, said:
He also questioned why so many in Washington regard as “established fact” the conclusion of U.S. security agencies that Russia meddled in the election in order to help Trump and hurt Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He said he does not think Russia believed Trump could win.
Fleitz pointed to reports that Russian agents tried to hack into the computer systems of both major parties but succeeded only with the Democrats.
“Maybe all they did was exploit the fact that the Democrats left the barn door open,” he said.
Fleitz said the Obama administration did little to counter cyber threats, not just from Russia but from China, as well.
FOX: Trump Surveilled Before Nomination, Agencies with Info Blocked Nunes for Weeks
by Michelle Moons
A Friday breaking Fox News report on surveillance of President Trump’s team that began before he became the Republican presidential nominee claimed a very senior intelligence official was responsible—as well as for the unmasking of the names of private U.S. citizens.
The report cited sources which also indicated that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) knew of the existence of the information in January, but one or more intelligence agencies blocked him, and there were only two locations where he could view the information that he called “very troubling.”
On Thursday, the New York Times began reporting what they claimed were the identities of two White House officials who were the sources of the information disclosed to Nunes.
Nunes met with sources on White House grounds on the day before he announced to reporters striking news that he had seen new and disturbing information indicating intelligence officials under the Obama administration “unmasked” the names of Trump team members who were incidentally surveilled.
Who might this “very senior intelligence official” be? Mike Cernovich writes:
Susan Rice Requested Unmasking of Incoming Trump Administration Officials
Susan Rice, who served as the National Security Adviser under President Obama, has been identified as the official who requested unmasking of incoming Trump officials, Cernovich Media can exclusively report.
The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests. The reports Rice requested to see are kept under tightly-controlled conditions. Each person must log her name before being granted access to them.
Upon learning of Rice’s actions, H. R. McMaster dispatched his close aide Derek Harvey to Capitol Hill to brief Chairman Nunes.
This reporter has been informed that Maggie Haberman has had this story about Susan Rice for at least 48 hours, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.
Who is Maggie Haberman? She is a political correspondent for the New York Times. To whom is Susan Rice married? That would be ABC Executive Producer Ian Cameron, since 1992. He left ABC in 2010. He, of course, kept his links to news and newsrooms. She was Obama’s US Ambassador to the UN and finally his National Security Advisor. She also carried Obama’s heavy water when she went of most every Sunday show possible following the Benghazi attack to claim it occurred because of a video made in the United States when, in fact, Hillary Clinton and others — as well as her daughter, Chelsea Clinton — knew and had information that was not the case at all. She knew that very night.
Here, Susan Rice speaks at length to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and both hedges and commits to nothing.
Perfect. But perhaps I should just defer to my fallback experts: Trey Gowdy and Tucker Carlson. Think ”wiretapped” vs “surveilled.”
Please note that at no point did Trey Gowdy — or has anyone trustworthy — denied that the NSA is not Hoovering every bit of digital take available in the US and abroad. If for no other reason than to make it available to certified authorities when requested.
You can’t request it if it isn’t there.
Judge Napolitano — now back on Fox News — weighs in as well.
Don’t forget, the spying of Donald Trump actually began back in 2011. Why would that be? Because Donald Trump was seriously considering running for president in 2012. Trump was causing headaches for Obama because of the birth certificate issue and became involved in opposing Obama’s policies. Trump spoke at CPAC in 2011; that’s called a clue.
The issue was so important to Barack Hussein Obama that he decided to attend the May 1st, 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner where Donald Trump would be in attendance, in lieu of monitoring the assault and capture of Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan the same night by SEAL Team 6 — of course, a singularly-important event. Obama spent most of his speech at that dinner attacking Donald Trump. Jack Posobiec indicates that Obama had, at that time, Donald Trump under surveillance as a private citizen for political purposes only; no security issues were involved.
2011 was a significant year for the Obama administration overall because he was simultaneously spying on Angela Merkel and other world leaders. This is also, 2011, when Obama changed the rules of intercept material by the US government. You see how this all ties together.
But here’s the bottom line, in my opinion. What started out in the Grand Scheme of Life under the Imperial Obama as an intent to link Trump and his assistants to Mother Russia in order to delegitimize his entire presidency and keep him from conducting the business necessary to enable his goals, Obama and his sniveling jackanapes may have inadvertently laid a path of digital and oral wreckage right back to themselves which could yield depositions, subpoenas, grand juries, indictments and perhaps even criminal prosecutions.
In other words, his little arrangement of mines and minefields may have supremely backfired.
BZ
P.S.
Michael Flynn requesting immunity? Let us not forget that he was chucked under the proverbial political bus just a few minutes ago. He’d be a DC moron not to lawyer up. Let us also not forget how many persons in the Obama Administration requested either immunity or invoked the Fifth Amendment.
First, 5 million illegals were granted immunity under Obama.
1. Jeff Neely, the former Pacific Rim regional commissioner for the General Services Administration, pled the fifth on April 16, 2012 when Congress asked him to testify about overly-lavish spending on GSA conferences. He was eventually sentenced to prison for fraud anyway.
2. John Beale, a former official at the EPA, pled the fifth on October 1, 2013 when Congress probed into Beale’s theft of nearly $900,000 worth of salaries and bonuses from his own agency.
3. John Sepulveda, a former VA official, pled the fifth on October 30, 2013 after Congress subpoenaed him to testify as to why the department spent $6 million on conferences in Florida.
4. Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two senior officials in the Department of Veterans Affairs, each pled the fifth before Congress on November 2, 2015 when asked to testify about $400,000 they had allegedly milked out of a VA relocation expense program. They were eventually given back their jobs.
5. Greg Roseman, a deputy director of the IRS, pled the fifth on June 26, 2013, after Congress asked him to testify about why the largest contract in IRS history was awarded to a close friend of his.
6. Patrick Cunningham, chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, pled the fifth when Congress asked him to testify about Operation Fast and Furious, which trafficked more than 2,000 guns along the U.S.-Mexico border.
7. Lois Lerner, an IRS director in charge of tax-exemptions, pled the fifth numerous times during Congress’ investigation into the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said this week that, by Friday, Judge Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed as a SCOTUS jurist to replace Antonin Scalia, who died a little over a year ago on February 13th of 2016 at the age of 79 whilst vacationing at a West Texas ranch.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has already approved Judge Neil Gorsuch.
It ever so pleases me to expose the hypocrisy splayed about by the Demorats, even when honest Americans are injured personally. It sucks to be you. Sometimes you have to be smarter than the propaganda. If you are not, well, there are prices to be paid. Commitments have consequences. Hey. So do elections.
Question: just how many womyn work in these jobs? The deadliest jobs? I would submit: merely a handful at most. Lots of womyn loggers. Lots of womyn roofers. Lots of general construction laborers. Why, just the other day, I saw a massive contingent of womyn slamming down shingles on a friend’s roof. Uh no. I didn’t. I was lying there.
Whaaat? Leftist womyn screwing over fellow Leftist womyn? Zounds! This cannot be true. Except, well, yes, it is.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.