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:
A tad bit of humor from President Ronald Wilson Reagan;
Ken McClenton is the Exservative Conservative — or is he?
Fresno State U: white chicks dabble with Islamic burkas;
“Wearing a hijab can be very liberating,” says ignorant GOWP bint;
“Allahu Akhbar” says black Fresno racist killer of 4, gangbanger & rapper;
Hillary Clinton confirms this has “nothing to do with Islam;”
“You Gone Need Me Before I Need You” = Racist Killer Rap;
Chicago’s devastating, murderous Easter weekend;
Cleveland’s Easter killer was a Muslim who visited the Islamic Center of Cleveland;
Jersey Joe, the Reaver of Common Sense, gives us a sense of his history and life;
Tucker Carlson vs gun control advocate; gets “shot down” by Carlson;
Sheriff David Clarke proffers solutions to Chicago’s problem;
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.
Stay tuned this Thursday for The Aftermath, when I present The Official Attorney of the Berserk Bobcat Saloon™ (otherwise known as TOABBS), the White Mamba (one each), who will be consersalating with me about sanctuary cities and various legal issues the Trump administration now faces.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. Thanks again to Mary Brockman, who manages to keep the chat room engaged and growing!
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
The Swedish government has refused to acknowledge the evil that lies under its noses presently, in the form of radical Islam. They minimize its impact, distract inquiries, dodge, block, obfuscate and outright deny that Islam has any sort of deleterious effect whatsoever on the nation.
That’s their story and they’re sticking to it. No matter who gets hurt.
Bloody tire tracks from the truck utilized in the Stockholm terror attack.
Stockholm police make terror arrest: Injured man ‘confesses that he drove hijacked lorry into shoppers’ killing four
by Anthony Bond, Rachel Bishop and Patrick Lion
Swedish police have arrested a man in north Stockholm who has confessed to carrying out a deadly truck attack in the centre of the city, local media reports.
The man has some light injuries and said he was responsible for the attack, Reuters reported quoting local news outlet Aftonbladet.
Senior police officer Mats Lofving said: “We don’t know whether this incident is isolated or whether we can expect more.
“We have police positioned at several strategic places with a particular risk threat.”
Dead Swedish citizens lying in Swedish streets due to a naive Swedish government.
Police sources told public broadcaster SVT the device was found in a bag, and had not been detonated, adding that the attacker had “burned himself”.
Forensics officers and bomb disposal squads worked through the night at the site of the massacre in Drottningatan, a busy shopping area of the Swedish capital.
The lorry was left partially embedded in the Ahlens department store after being ploughed into pedestrians on Friday afternoon, killing four people and wounding 15 others.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, although both Isis and al-Qaeda have recently released propaganda calling on followers to carry out vehicle rammings and containing bomb-making instructions.
Isis propaganda has continued attempting to incite terror attacks in Europe, the US, Australia and other countries supporting military operations against its fighters.
An issue of its Rumiyah magazine issued in November advised jihadis to launch vehicle attacks in an article citing the Nice lorry attack that killed 86 people as a “superbdemonstration”.
“Having a secondary weapon, such as a gun or a knife, is also a great way to combine a vehicle attack with other forms,” it read.
One of my favorite references, Tucker Carlson, speaks to Nigel Farage about the incident in Sweden and the wake-up call that must accompany the act.
No matter how you deny, no matter how you try, Swedish government, your ignorant and naive views are currently coming back to bite your citizens in their arse. And it’s killing them. Your politically correct views are not only corrosive and corruptive, they are deadly.
Sweden will ‘never go back’ to the days of mass immigration after failed asylum seeker launched Friday’s truck attack in Stockholm, says the country’s shell-shocked PM
by Arthur Martin & Mario Ledwith
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pledged to change his country’s liberal attitude
It comes after Rakhmat Akilov, from Uzbekistan, killed four in a terror attack
He drove a 30-ton truck down into a department store in Stockholm on Friday
There are more than 3,000 migrants living unlawfully in Stockholm alone
The Prime Minister of Sweden has vowed his country will ‘never go back’ to recent levels of mass immigration after it emerged the terrorist who killed four people in a truck attack was a failed asylum seeker.
Stefan Löfven pledged to change his country’s liberal attitude, insisting the massive influx allowed during the 2015 migrant crisis would never happen again.
Rakhmat Akilov, from Uzbekistan, hijacked the lorry and deliberately drove into pedestrians on central Stockholm’s main shopping street on Friday afternoon.
It was a copycat of the attack carried out in London last month, when Khalid Masood killed four pedestrians and injured dozens more with a Hyundai 4×4. Swedish police said there were clear similarities.
Akilov is thought to have carried out reconnaissance along his route days earlier.
Four were killed and 15 injured when he drove a 30-ton truck down a pedestrianised area and smashed into a department store. Chris Bevington, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Britain, was killed close to his office.
But it emerged yesterday Swedish authorities had given Akilov four weeks to leave Sweden after his final asylum appeal failed in December.
He was being sought by police and immigration officials for deportation – but evaded them simply by giving a false address.
‘Sweden will never go back to the [mass migration] we had in autumn 2015, never,’ Mr Löfven said yesterday.
‘Everyone who has been denied a permit should return home.
‘This makes me feel enormously frustrated. If you have been denied a visa you are supposed to leave the country.’
Akilov, 39, had expressed support for Islamic State and world-wide extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose UK members included jailed hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
Akilov reportedly told police that he carried out the attack on the orders of Islamic State.
Those people did not have to die.
Are the Swedes actually beginning to understand the significance of the problem they have not only allowed to occur but gone out of their way to promote?
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.
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.
The US government is beyond massive and exists, any more, to grow beyond any logical or reasonable measure. Both sides of the aisle wish to have this trend continue and so, to an extent, do many American voters.
To bandy a word utilized by Leftists but applicable here: that is unsustainable.
Donald Trump, now president, ran on the platform of reducing government and restoring power to our military — gutted like a bad fish as it was by Barack Hussein Obama.
President Trump already crafted an executive order stating that “for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination, and that the cost of planned regulations be prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process.”
You can imagine the howls of outrage by control freaks, bilaterally, who witnessed an action by Trump to diminish their power, their cash and their dominant authority.
It’s what we elected President Trump to do. He means to accomplish that goal.
For example, what agencies does the Trump budget aim to eliminate wholesale — most you never knew existed?
The African Development Foundation;
The Appalachian Regional Commission;
The Chemical Safety Board;
The Corporation for National and Community Service;
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting;
The Delta Regional Authority;
The Denali Commission;
The Institute of Museum and Library Services;
The Inter-American Foundation;
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency;
The Legal Services Corporation;
The National Endowment for the Arts;
The National Endowment for the Humanities;
The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation;
The Northern Border Regional Commission;
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation;
The United States Institute of Peace;
The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness;
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Trump Budget Would Abolish 19 Agencies, Cut Thousands of Federal Jobs
by Charles S. Clark
With the aim of “making government work again,” the Trump White House on Thursday unveiled a $1.1 trillion budget blueprint for discretionary spending in fiscal 2017 and 2018 that would abolish 19 agencies and eliminate thousands of agency jobs.
The 54-page “America First” document, focused primarily on fiscal 2018, would boost the Defense Department and related programs at Energy by $54 billion, and Homeland Security by $2.8 billion. It would offset such increases by cutting the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development by $10.1 billion (28 percent) and the Environmental Protection Agency by $2.6 billion (31 percent). The latter cut would eliminate approximately 3,200 positions, according to the document.
The agency-by-agency plans include eliminating dozens of grant programs at the Education and Commerce departments—many of them related to climate change.
Little considered is the US debt. Please see the “live” debt clock here, if you wish to be personally gobsmacked in real time, as the national debt stands at $19.9 trillion dollars.
“The defense and public safety spending increases in this budget blueprint are offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government,” Trump wrote in his introduction. “We are going to do more with less, and make the government lean and accountable to the people. This includes deep cuts to foreign aid,” he added. “Many other government agencies and departments will also experience cuts. These cuts are sensible and rational. Every agency and department will be driven to achieve greater efficiency and to eliminate wasteful spending in carrying out their honorable service to the American people.”
Anything wrong with “deep cuts to foreign aid”? Not in my book, though Leftists, Demorats and the like bleat that foreign aid “accounts for little of our debt.” So what? Why should people who want us dead benefit from American dollars?
Anything wrong with “doing more with less”? It’s what private businesses and much smaller governments nationally have had to contend with for years.
Anything wrong with “greater efficiency” and eliminating “wasteful spending”? After all, it’s your money, the American Taxpayer.
The Office of Management and Budget also implicitly criticized the Obama administration’s management approach for focusing too much on unproductive “compliance activities” that fail to give managers sufficient freedom.
Right. Because when, in recent memory, do you recall the federal government expanding your freedoms instead of stealing your freedoms and then selling some of them back to you at a profit for them and a loss for you?
The Trump team vowed to improve procurement and other support functions by using “available data to develop targeted solutions to problems federal managers face, and begin fixing them directly by sharing and adopting leading practices from the private and public sectors.”
Aha. Are you starting to glean a common thread here?
Who didn’t like President Trump’s budget proposal? The GOP EstabliHacks.
Again with the GOP EstabliHacks, it’s all about the loss of power, control and money. Tucker Carlson interviews Demorat Eric Swalwell. Does anyone ask: “can we afford it?”
Then there was this — anticipated by me and most all other conservatives, of course.
Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said in a statement, “The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions for Americans in rural and urban communities alike.”
Here’s what Leftists know about the CPB, the NEA and PBS but will never verbalize: absent federal dollars they won’t/can’t be supported by Leftists only.
Remember Air America, the Leftist network answer to right-wing radio? It stood up and found itself remarkably unsupported by its Leftist base and other radio listeners. Why? Because it actually had to compete in an open, capitalistic marketplace and found itself lacking in two serious areas: content, and messenger. It’s content — like most everything having to do with the Left — was hyperbolic, oppressive, negative. Its hosts were predominantly unlikable. A wonderful combination if you wish to be successful.
We already know that the words “compete” and “success” are inherently offensive to Leftists of all stripes, in any event.
So we defund the NEA, CPB and PBS. Let them finally stand or fall on the basis of their content, their attractiveness and appeal — just like every other private site, channel or show that must compete in an open market.
Again, are you starting to glean a common thread here?
In other words (massive intake of breath by political EstabliHacks, drones and deep staters everywhere), President Donald Trump intends to treat the United States government much like a business.
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.
who will be consersalating with me about sanctuary cities and various legal issues the Trump administration now faces.
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.
The US government is beyond massive and exists, any more, to grow beyond any logical or reasonable measure. Both sides of the aisle wish to have this trend continue and so, to an extent, do many American voters.