Retain Ice, Get Rid of FISA Courts. Obama/Hillary Up To Their Armpits So Build That Brick Wall of Separation. Capturing The Middle. If Putin Why Not Obama?

Keep ICE perhaps, get rid of FISA Courts. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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This also is another excellent article that connects the Benghazi dots.  We should have learned by now when Obama accuses someone he is more than likely to have e committed the act himself and he could not have a better ally than Hillary.The man was/remains a. master liar and eventually  he will be exposed as totally aware of the Russian Collusion Fraud, Bhengazi etc. (2 below.)

Naturally, the Trump haters tell us nothing could have happened without Putin knowing about it and one would believe the same logic would apply to Obama

This is one of the sanest and most insightful op ed’s pertaining to Trump written by a Democrat I have ever read. ( See 2a below)
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State Republicans list 10 rationale reasons why Stacey  Abrams is not suited for Georgia besides appealing to black voters.  Her views are far more suitable for our book end states or most foreign governments who hate Israel, are socialist oriented etc. (See 3 below)

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Why Europe is yesterday and Putin seems therefore, larger than life. (See 4 below.)
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These various postings reveal Bhengazi was an orchestrated disaster and the reason why it happened was covered up by Obama and his band of liars.

I suspect we will ultimately learn the same about Russian Collusion.  Obama may not be that tall but his arm pits seems to be high enough.

Hillary should be in jail but I doubt anything will happen because the mass media will scream if Trump pursues her .Consequently, another brick will be added to building that wall between the elite and the rest of us mortals when it comes to everyone being subject to the rule of law. 

Probably other bricks will be added to that same separation wall regarding Obama. Can you envision Trump pursuing the first black president for  what amounts to real "treasonous" behaviour?

That said, Trump still needs to capture the uncommitted middle and that is why I believe Van Dyck's article is relevant.  American's love change and tire quickly.   What they love today they despair about tomorrow.

Dick

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1)The FBI over the weekend finally released its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications for warrants against former Trump aide Carter Page, and now we know why the bureau resisted disclosure. Even in heavily redacted form, the applications confirm that the FBI relied on dubious partisan evidence to justify its warrant and withheld relevant information from the court.

The applications also vindicate the criticism of the FBI’s surveillance requests that were laid out in February by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. The committee’s findings were based on a review of the FISA applications, which were still classified at the time. The main Nunes claim was that the FBI made the Steele dossier—which was commissioned by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee—“an essential” part of its initial application. The FISA documents confirm this.

More than half of the first FISA application’s 66 pages are devoted to technical matters and a history of Russian electoral interference. Of the roughly 25 pages that focus on Mr. Page, much of it reports his dealings with Russians, his response to the news that he was under investigation, and a largely redacted conclusion.

The guts of the application is titled “Page’s Coordination With Russian Government Officials on 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Influence Activities.” This is the FBI’s evidence section, and, though heavily redacted, it looks to be almost entirely dossier-related.

Its opening paragraph says that the “FBI has learned that Page met with at least two Russian officials” on a trip to Russia in 2016 and that it got this information from an “FBI confidential human source (Source #1),” who is dossier author Christopher Steele. Most of what is unredacted that follows details the dossier’s claims about these Russian meetings, with further reference to “Source #1.”

This is important given that FBI assistant director Bill Priestap told Congressional investigators in October 2017 that the FBI’s efforts to corroborate the dossier were still in their “infancy” at the time of the first application. Months later former FBI Director Jim Comey referred to the dossier as “salacious and unverified.” To date no investigator has offered public proof of the dossier’s most damaging claims. Yet on the basis of an uncorroborated document commissioned by a rival presidential campaign, the FBI accused a U.S. citizen of being an “agent of a foreign power” who should be wiretapped.

Mr. Nunes also reported that the FBI did not inform the FISA court that the dossier and trusted “source” (Christopher Steele) were paid by the Clinton campaign. And sure enough, nowhere do the FISA applications mention the words Clinton, Democratic National Committee, Fusion GPS (the Clinton-financed oppo research firm that hired Mr. Steele), or Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson.

Several convoluted footnotes refer to “Source #1” (Mr. Steele) and a “U.S.-based law firm” (Clinton firm Perkins Coie), as well as an “identified U.S. person” (Mr. Simpson) who was “likely” interested in discrediting Mr. Trump. These obscure references are quickly followed by another footnote in which the FBI says that, despite that motivation, it is confident that “Source #1” is “credible.” So the FBI was vouching for this partisan source.

It’s true that the first application doesn’t mention any names. But it does refer to “Candidate #1” (who is clearly Donald Trump ), “Candidate #2” ( Hillary Clinton ) and “Political Party #1” (Republicans). The FBI had an obligation to tell the court that the dossier and its “credible” source had been retained and paid for by “Candidate #2” and “Political Party #2” (Democrats), but it didn’t. By the way, Mr. Comey signed three of these applications, yet he claimed on his recent book tour that he “still” didn’t know who paid for the dossier.

The FISA documents also confirm that the FBI cited a Sept. 23, 2016 story in Yahoo News to buttress its Steele dossier information with the court—even though Mr. Steele was also the source for the Yahoo News story.

Democrats insist that the FBI used the Yahoo story only to describe Mr. Page’s response to the investigation, not for corroboration. The applications show otherwise. The FBI cites the Yahoo News story after its dossier-evidence section, noting that the story said that “intelligence reports” and a “well-placed Western intelligence source” had also made claims like those in the dossier. But the “reports” were the dossier, and the “Western intelligence source” was Mr. Steele.

Our media friends are dismissing all this as no big deal because they say Mr. Page’s history of personal Russian dealings justified his surveillance in any case. Yet so far no one has produced evidence that Mr. Page was anything but an innocent abroad who liked to boast about his contacts. He certainly was a minor figure in the Trump campaign.

And that still doesn’t justify the FBI’s use of uncorroborated partisan smears as part of its application. At best the FBI appears to have played fast and loose with the facts to stretch the ethical boundaries of the FISA statute. At worst the FBI dissembled to target a man because they wanted to unleash a counterintelligence campaign against a presidential campaign. Either one tarnishes the FBI’s reputation.

Democrats and their media allies won’t admit any of this because they are invested in the narrative that Russian meddling elected Donald Trump. But two years of investigation later we’re still waiting to see evidence of that. What the FISA applications show is that the FBI did abuse its surveillance powers. There’s still more to learn, and Mr. Trump should declassify and release everything that can be safely disclosed.


1a) Abolish the FISA Court

The introduction of judges shields the executive branch from accountability.

By  William McGurn

On the gentle summer evening that was last Saturday night, the Justice Department finally made public the October 2016 application for a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign official. The application’s release kicked off a furious effort by Democrats and their allies in the press to gaslight the American people into disbelieving what they could read with their own eyes. Yet notwithstanding all the sound and fury, its 412 pages—even in redacted form—largely vindicate the principal object of Democratic attack, California’s GOP Rep. Devin Nunes.

Back in February, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Mr. Nunes, issued a report stating that the Steele dossier, compiled by a former British spy, was “an essential part” of the application for a warrant on Mr. Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In this Mr. Nunes was supported by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who testified to Congress that without the Steele dossier there would have been no warrant.

The Nunes report further claimed the FISA application didn’t inform the judge that the Steele dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Here too Mr. Nunes has been proved right.

True, the application includes a convoluted reference to the FBI’s “speculation” that “Source #1” ( Christopher Steele ) was hired to dig up information to “discredit Candidate #1’s campaign” (Mr. Trump’s). Surely a more honest way of presenting the facts would be as follows: The campaign and party of Candidate #2 (Hillary Clinton) paid Source #1 to produce a dossier to discredit her rival, Candidate #1.

Lost in the competing narratives, meanwhile, is the larger FISA scandal. The Page warrant confirms that a FISA court effectively insulates those who deploy the most formidable powers of the federal government from the consequences of what should be an extraordinary decision: spying on a fellow American.

Like so many other bad ideas, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act comes out of the 1970s. Senate hearings led by Idaho Democrat Frank Church exposed controversial domestic spying on Americans. Along with the general antipathy toward all things Nixon, it led Congress to enact FISA in 1978 and Jimmy Carter to sign it into law.

In the decades since, the nation has become accustomed to having oversight and accountability that should be imposed by the people’s elected representatives fobbed off on special counsels, inspectors general and the like. We forget what a break FISA marked with our history, under which only the president, as commander in chief, was understood to have the power to surveil American citizens without warrants to gather foreign intelligence to protect the nation. The new idea aimed to temper that power by introducing another branch, the judiciary, into this process.

As even the redacted version of the document released this weekend ought to make clear, a FISA court is no guarantee against surveillance abuse. To the contrary, it can invite questionable assertions of this extraordinary power because no one is ever really on the hook. In this case, instead of vetting Mr. Steele’s specific allegations, the FBI got away with deeming him “reliable” because they’d found him credible in other cases.

Perhaps the redacted material includes some verification of Mr. Steele’s claims. But so far there’s no hard evidence, and Mr. Page hasn’t been charged with anything. Is this really the way an intelligence agency should declare an American citizen “an agent of a foreign power”?

When President Trump tweeted Monday morning that it was “looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon,” the common rejoinder was four judges had signed off on it.

Now ask yourself: Would Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who signed one of the renewal applications) and others be so quick to put their names on something like this if they didn’t have a FISA judge to give them cover?

The argument is not new. Just before FISA became law, a Yale law professor wrote a prophetic article in these pages about the abuses to come. His name was Robert Bork, and among his worries were that judges would show undue deference to intelligence agencies, that congressional committees wouldn’t be able to summon judges to explain their warrant approvals, and, above all, that giving courts the last say would have “the effect of immunizing everyone, and sooner or later that fact will be taken advantage of.”

In the short term, Mr. Trump would serve himself better by forgoing tweets about witch hunts and instead ordering the declassification of documents that would show the American people just what the Justice Department and the FBI did in 2016. In the longer term, Congress should consider getting rid of FISA courts altogether. Because without judges to hide behind, executive officials who order spying on their fellow citizens will have to own those decisions themselves.

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2) BENGHAZI AND THE MATCHING SERIAL NUMBERS 

So here's the REAL story: Ambassador Stevens was sent to Benghazi to secretly retrieve US made Stinger Missiles that the State Dept had supplied to Ansar al Sharia in Libya WITHOUT Congressional oversight or permission. 

Sec State Hillary Clinton had brokered the Libya deal through Ambassador Stevens and a Private Arms Dealer named Marc Turi, but some of the shoulder fired Stinger Missiles ended up in Afghanistan where they were used against our own military.   On July 25th, 2012, a US Chinook helicopter was downed by one of them.  Not destroyed only because the idiot Taliban didn't arm the missile.  The helicopter didn't explode, but it had to land and an ordnance team recovered the missile’s serial number which led back to a cache of Stinger Missiles kept in 

Qatar by the CIA. 

 Obama and Hillary were in full panic mode, so Ambassador Stevens was sent to Benghazi to retrieve the rest of the Stinger Missiles. This was a "do-or-die" mission, which explains the Stand Down Orders given to multiple rescue teams during the siege of the US Embassy. 

 It was the State Dept, NOT the CIA, that supplied the Stinger Missiles to our sworn enemies because Gen. Petraeus at CIA would not approve supplying the deadly missiles due to their potential use against commercial aircraft.  So then, Obama threw Gen. Petraeus under the bus

when he refused to testify in support of Obama’s phony claim of a “spontaneous uprising caused by a YouTube video that insulted Muslims.” 

Obama and Hillary committed TREASON! 

THIS is what the investigation is all about, WHY she had a Private Server, (in order to delete the digital evidence), and WHY Obama, two weeks after the attack, told the UN that the attack was the result of the YouTube video, even though everyone KNEW it was not. 

Furthermore, the Taliban knew that the administration had aided and abetted the enemy WITHOUT Congressional oversight or permission, so they began pressuring (blackmailing) the Obama Administration to release five Taliban generals being held at Guantanamo. 

Bowe Bergdahl was just a useful pawn used to cover the release of the Taliban generals.  Everyone knew Bergdahl was a traitor but Obama used Bergdahl’s exchange for the five Taliban generals to cover that Obama was being coerced by the Taliban about the unauthorized Stinger Missile deal. 

So we have a traitor as POTUS that is not only corrupt, but compromised, as well and a Sec of State that is a serial liar, who perjured herself multiple times at the Congressional Hearings on Benghazi. Perhaps this is why no military aircraft were called upon for help in Benghazi:  because the administration knew that our enemies had Stinger Missiles that, if used to down those planes, would likely be traced back to the CIA cache in Qatar and then to the State Dept’s illegitimate arms deal in Libya. 

2a) To Beat Trump, Get a Grip

Democrats won’t win in 2020 by calling him a ‘traitor’ and doubling down on identity politics.

By Ted Van Dyk

Democrats are determined to remove President Trump from office in 2020—or before, if that becomes possible. If precedent holds, he can be unseated in 2020 by a candidate perceived as his opposite: experienced, serious, knowledgeable about policy. If Democrats attempt to rush the process, amid current charges that Mr. Trump is a “traitor” and Russian agent and that his Supreme Court nominee is an extremist, they will further energize their take-it-to-the-streets wing but alienate all but partisan Northeast and Pacific Coast voters.

The present political and media rage over Mr. Trump’s alleged sellout to Vladimir Putin is an overreach. Any damage done at their recent summit pales compared with the effects, for instance, of the earlier Yalta Summit at which Stalin got a dying President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cede him Eastern Europe, or the Khrushchev-Kennedy Vienna Summit, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin Crisis and a huge buildup of U.S. ICBM forces and budget. Mr. Trump stumbled in Helsinki, but stumbles do not amount to treason.

Democrats and some media are now calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment, presuming that a post-November Democratic House majority would bring such a vote. But it is a risky strategy that would polarize Americans deeply. The case against him would have to be airtight and based on indisputable fact. Otherwise Mr. Trump would be strengthened rather than harmed.

Democrats should take a fresh look at why and how Mr. Trump won the 2016 election. The party’s national leadership claims it was because of support from white supremacists, religious nuts, nativists, misogynists and Latino-haters. This is a failure to recognize what actually happened. President Trump was the consequence—not the cause—of a nationwide loss of confidence in all of the American establishment: political, media, cultural, business, financial. Sen. Bernie Sanders played on similar sentiments on the Democratic side and, had he known his potential sooner, could have won his party’s nomination.

Most voters knew before the election that Mr. Trump was a crude, freewheeling, womanizing egotist, a man who very well might finance his ventures with money from sketchy sources. They discounted all those negative factors because he was so obviously different from the establishment candidates in whom they had lost trust. Think about it: In one campaign, Mr. Trump polished off the Bushes, the Clintons, and even Ted Cruz. Voters did not love Mr. Trump; they rejected the other guys.

So where does that leave Democrats? A writer at the Washington Post recently put together a list of the top Democratic presidential contenders for 2020. Ranked first, not surprisingly, was Mr. Sanders, given his strong 2016 showing. Also near the top was former Vice President Joe Biden, who relates well to middle-American voters. But most of the rest of the contenders take an angry, accusatory line toward Mr. Trump. Leading the pack were Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, from Massachusetts and California, respectively, where bashing the president earns cheers from the party faithful.

Shrill attacks and identity politics got a strong start during Bill Clinton’s two presidential terms. Under fire on multiple fronts, the Clinton White House took an aggressive posture toward critics, asserting that it was just “fighting back.” Democrats repeated that pattern in President Obama’s 2012 campaign. They labeled Mitt Romney, a temperate former governor of Massachusetts, as antiwoman, antigay, antiblack, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant and a tool of big finance. That theme worked so well that Democrats repeated it in congressional races two years later. Now the beat goes on, only stronger, against Mr. Trump.

There are some basic misapprehensions here. Most voters see abortion and gay rights as accepted issues and wonder why Democrats present them as threatened. They do not see racism as on the rise or the country as moving back toward Jim Crow. On the contrary, they see several decades in which the barriers to equal opportunity, legal or otherwise, have been steadily dismantled. They do worry about the problems of big-city neighborhoods: violence, drug use, broken families, unemployment, daunting dropout and incarceration rates. But they see little evidence that “white privilege” is the cause. They like immigrants and refugees but generally believe everyone should take a legal path to citizenship.

National security and the economy are the two principal issues in any presidential campaign. The Trump record in both those realms should be critiqued by Democrats. They should, in turn, offer credible alternative policies. If they do, and their presidential candidate seems reasonable, Democrats can reclaim the White House in 2020 not through a constitutional crisis but through a free election and with a popular mandate.

My own guess: By 2020, Mr. Trump will have fatigued the public. Voters will be turned off by him, just as they were in turn by the Johnson, Nixon and Carter presidencies. They will want to see another face on their TV sets. The danger is that Democrats by then may have fatigued the public even more.

Mr. Van Dyk was active in Democratic national policy and politics for 40 years. He is author of “Heroes, Hacks and Fools” (University of Washington Press, 2007)
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3) Out-of-State Stacey Abrams is not only the most extreme liberal candidate our state has ever seen, she is unfit to lead the state of Georgia.

Even though her name won't be on today's ballot - it's more important than ever before to vote Republican.

Below are ten reasons why Stacey Abrams is unfit to be governor and why voting Republican TODAY is more important than ever before.

1. Stacey Abrams is the most extreme liberal candidate Georgia has ever seen. Her policy agenda aims to roll back the $5 billion tax cuts implemented by Republican leadership, maintain Obamacare, and brags about her D/F ratings from the NRA.

2. Abrams' agenda appeals more to New Yorkers and Californians than it does to Georgians: 71% of her campaign dollars are from out of state - and half of that out of state money is from New York and California alone. That's millions of dollars from donors who don't even live in Georgia.

3. Abrams claimed the highest amount of state-funded reimbursements above any other House members, including the Speaker and other leadership: From 2011-2014, Abrams padded her state salary with more than $85,000 of state-government reimbursement claims. She dramatically curtailed her spending in 2014, yet she still was in the top 5 claimants for reimbursements each year until she resigned from state government.

4. Stacey Abrams refuses to pay her taxes, but she wants to raise yours: In 2015-2016, Abrams loaned her campaign $50,000 even though she owed the IRS $54,000. At the same time, Abrams wants to roll back the $5 billion tax cut republican leadership implemented this year.

5. Abrams personally profited more than $400,000 from part-time work registering voters: Abrams made $427,500 through her non-profit, New Georgia Project between 2014-2016. The project didn't meet its fundraising or registration goals, yet she was still able to pay herself and her political allies $1.5 million.

6. Abrams has reimbursed herself more than $84,000 from her campaign account for unclear personal expenses: Neglecting to itemize campaign reimbursements is not only unethical - it is illegal. When asked to release the itemized report, Abrams refused.

7. An ethics complaint has been filed against Stacey Abrams for misusing campaign funds to pad her pockets: Not only has Abrams been touring the national media's stages, she has been taking her book along for the ride. She is using campaign money to travel around the country to tout her book - and ultimately profiting from the sales.

8. Abrams' non-profit, New Georgia Project, was investigated for fraud by the state government: The non-profit submitted forged voter applications to the secretary of state's office.

9. Extremist liberals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both endorsed her radically liberal campaign: Click here to listen to Hillary call Abrams her "friend."

10. Abrams is bought and sold by national liberal and socialist interests: From supporting Obamacare and abortion, to vowing to increase your tax bill, Abrams' agenda is not in line with Georgia's values. 

Voting Republican means voting against Stacey Abrams and her out-of-state values. 

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4)

Putin Is Weak. Europe Doesn’t Have to Be

Moscow is a sideshow. The real dangers come from within the Continent.

By Walter Russell Mead

We hear too much about Vladimir Putin these days and not nearly enough about the actual forces reshaping the world. Yes, the Russian president has proved a brilliant tactician. And, President Trump’s fantasies aside, he is a ruthless enemy of American power and European coherence. Yet Russia remains a byword for backwardness and corruption. Its gross domestic product is less than 10% that of the U.S. or the European Union. With a declining population and a fundamentally adverse geopolitical situation, the Russian Federation remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor.

Add up the consequences of Mr. Putin’s troops, nukes, disinformation campaigns, financial aid to populist parties—and throw in the power of his authoritarian example. Russia still does not have the ability to roll back the post-1990 democratic revolution, overpower the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or dissolve the EU.

The West is in crisis because of European weakness, not Russian strength. Some of the Continent’s difficulties are well known. France foolishly imagined the euro would contain the rise of a newly united Germany after the Cold War. In fact it has propelled Germany’s unprecedented economic rise while driving a wedge between Europe’s indebted South and creditor North. The Continent’s so-called migration policy is a humanitarian and a political disaster. Berlin’s feckless approach to security has left Europe’s most important power a geopolitical midget, lecturing sanctimoniously while others shape the world. Meanwhile the EU’s Byzantine government machinery grinds at an ever slower pace, creating openings for Mr. Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Europe’s weakness invites authoritarian assertion in the borderlands.

Another failure of equal consequence still is not widely understood: the failure to integrate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into Western prosperity and institutional life. The world’s 10 fastest-shrinking countries are all in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. All expect to see their populations shrink at least 15% by 2050.

For the enterprising and mobile, there is good news; between three million and five million Romanians live and work in other EU countries, enjoying opportunities they could not find at home. But for those who cannot or do not wish to move on, life can be hard. Almost 30 full years after the fall of communism, more than one-fourth of Romanians live on less than $5.50 a day. Across Romania, less than half of households have an internet connection, and only 52% have a computer.

Romania and Bulgaria—where living standards are lower than in Turkey—are exceptionally poor. Conditions are better elsewhere, but the gap between prosperous European countries like Germany and postcommunist states like Poland remains immense. Poles on average earn only a third as much as Germans. The rural, eastern parts of Poland are poorer still. Conditions in ex-Soviet countries like Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine are even worse. Corruption is rampant, with weak institutions unable to stop it.

The hubris that led so many in the West to believe that Europe had entered a posthistorical paradise is fading. A clearer if darker picture has emerged. Swaths of Central and Eastern Europe will not smoothly and painlessly assimilate into the West. If voters in these countries lose faith that Western ideas and institutions can improve their lives, the political gap between East and West will widen. When the EU is more preoccupied with internal divisions, it is less able to respond effectively to Russian moves.

Europe’s weakness has provided Mr. Putin with opportunities to promote Russian power by supporting populist parties across the EU and deepening his relationship with leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Yet even in the age of Trump, Moscow is too weak, too poor, too regressive and too remote to shape European politics. The days when Russian rulers like Catherine the Great and Alexander I could direct events across the Continent are gone for good. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany mean the most important relationship in the trans-Atlantic world is between Washington and Berlin.

President Trump is right that much of the trans-Atlantic relationship needs to be rethought. He is right that Germany asks too much and offers too little for the current relationship to be sustainable. He is right that the European Union has worked itself into a political crisis, and that the Continent’s errors and illusions strengthen Mr. Putin’s hand.

But if the president thinks Mr. Putin’s Russia can serve as the linchpin of a new American security strategy, he is overestimating Russia’s capacity, misreading Mr. Putin’s goals, and underestimating the importance of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Moscow is a sideshow. To protect American prosperity and security, Mr. Trump most needs to strike a deal with Berlin.

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