Fear of Casualties Will Cause Us To Lose Without A Shot. Will The De-gagged FBI Informer Meet A Foul Death Prior To Testifying? Dumping On Trump Unjustified?

This is a frighteningstatistic!
25% of the women in this country are on medication for mental illness. 
That's scary. It means 75% are running around untreated. 
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If Donald Trump deleted all of his emails, wiped his server with Bleachbit and destroyed all of his phones with a hammer, would the Mainstream Media suddenly lose all interest in the story and declare him innocent?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ My advice to Trump regarding N Korea and Iran: N. Korea:   Apply stringent and painful sanctions and inform our allies doing business with N Korea they no longer have access to our banking system. If N Korea does not come to the table attack them with all we have, including cyber warfare. If they do come to the table then tell them we do not trust them, based on past history, and we will maintain the sanctions until they dismantle their nuclear and missile programs. Iran: First, move the American Embassy to Jerusalem and send a signal to Iran we are serious. Second, apply stringent sanctions and inform our allies and anyone doing business with Iran they no longer have access to our banking system. Maintain the sanctions until the regime collapses and/or tear up the Iran Deal. If Iran does not stop funding terrorism and continues with their nuclear and missile program attack them with everything we have. Neither is likely to happen because we are paralyzed by fear of the casualty rate and potential escalation to a nuclear confrontation so we have already lost the war without firing a shot. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Left click on envelope:  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ As I suspected would happen, the FBI informant has been de-gagged.   Now the question is, will he meet a foul unexplained death before he testifies as so many others who have been engaged with the Clinton's?  Once the dam breaks the water starts rushing out in full force. Stay tuned. (See 1 and 1a below.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Everyone seems to be coming out and bashing Trump.  Most recently we  heard from Mc Cain, followed by GW and then Corker and Flake. Most see nothing wrong with Trump's policies.  They just do not like him, like his personality, like his crudeness etc. Much of what they are spouting is either contained in a puerile response and/or are self-serving and in- consistent with their concerns.  If they truly believe Trump is a true threat to America why tuck their tails and run away?  Why not stay and fight? Specific to G.W, he kept quiet for 8 years while Obama constantly dumped on him and then, all of a sudden, came out in an oblique manner,and criticized Trump.  Did GW do it to defend his brother - who Trump attacked during the campaign tagging him "low energy Jeb." As for Mc Cain, perhaps his brain tumor is impacting his mental balance and/or he can never forgive Trump for his comment about not being a hero because he was a POW. Corker stupidly assisted Obama in allowing him to shove The Iran Deal down our throats and Flake seems appropriately named. (See 2 below.) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I have consistently argued a better educated citizenry is critical for the survival of our Republic. (See 3 below.) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dick
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1) IRS agent’s email says groups were targeted ‘primarily because of their political party affiliation’
By Stephen Dinan 

Lawyers think they have finally found the smoking gun in the IRS’s tea party targeting scandal: an email from an IRS agent to her supervisors alerting them that the agency was, in fact, singling out some groups’ applications for extreme scrutiny “primarily because of their political party affiliation.”

The email was released last month as part of a massive document dump in a class-action lawsuit filed in Ohio by hundreds of conservative groups who were targeted for extra review and intrusive questioning.

It contradicts the IRS’s official stance over the years contending that conservative groups were wrongly scrutinized, but it was a result of their behavior, not their politics.

Instead, the April 1, 2011, email from Elizabeth C. Kastenberg, an official in the agency’s exempt organizations division, says it was explicitly the organizations’ politics that landed them on the target list.

“These cases are held back primarily because of their political party affiliation rather than specifically any political activities,” Ms. Kastenberg wrote in an alert to other IRS employees, including her supervisor.

Edward Greim, the attorney for NorCal Tea Party Patriots and hundreds of other groups that are part of the class-action lawsuit, said that was a major admission.

“What Kastenberg was saying was they have all different activities, and so there’s no ‘political activities’ that cut across this group. Instead, it’s really their political party affiliation they have in common,” he said.

Just weeks after her email, the issue was brought to the attention of then-senior IRS executive Lois G. Lerner, based in Washington, who was briefed on how agents in Cincinnati were handling the nonprofit status applications of tea party and other conservative groups.

Told at a July 2011 meeting that groups were being singled out under a target list, Ms. Lerner ordered that the list’s name be changed from “tea party” to “advocacy groups,” but that did not stop the intrusive scrutiny of applications, the documents say.

In fact, the scrutiny got worse. Ms. Lerner approved the practice of sending letters demanding information such as names of donors, according to the documents.

That contradicts the conclusions of the Justice Department, which under President Obama and President Trump has concluded that Ms. Lerner does not deserve to face charges over how she handled the matter. The Obama Justice Department reported that Ms. Lerner was working to clean up matters, not to continue the targeting.

Ms. Lerner was deposed in the lawsuit, but her testimony remains under seal and was redacted in the latest court filings. She and another IRS employee, Holly Paz, have told the court that they could face threats or harm from renewed attention in the case, and a judge has sided with them.

The Cincinnati Enquirer asked the court Wednesday to release the full versions without redactions, saying the judge never justified sealing the documents.

The bulk of the new filings in the case, though, try to puncture the picture Ms. Lerner painted when she first alerted the country to the targeting, planting a question at a May 10, 2013, tax law conference so she could break the news — and put the IRS spin on it — days before the agency’s inspector general released a damning report.

Ms. Lerner at the time blamed agents in the Cincinnati IRS office, where nonprofit applications are decided. The geographic separation from Washington is intended to shield the decisions from politics, according to the lawsuit.

She said the agents “didn’t do it with a higher level of review” and “didn’t do this because of any political bias.”

Ms. Lerner retired from the IRS in the wake of the scandal, which spurred multiple congressional investigations and lawsuits demanding that the tax agency clean up its act.

The Albuquerque Tea Party, which was one of the first to be flagged as a tea party case in March 2010, wasn’t approved as a nonprofit organization until this summer.

In two cases still pending in federal court in the District of Columbia, tea party groups say they fear they are still suffering the effects of the targeting. They want assurances that having been singled out for scrutiny won’t mean they will have to face more frequent audits or other penalties.

A federal judge in that case has ordered the IRS to disclose the names of employees whom the agency blames for the targeting.

In the Ohio class-action lawsuit, meanwhile, the tea party groups say the IRS subjected their applications to lengthy delays and, because the scrutiny was politically motivated from the start, it meant IRS agents were illegally looking at taxpayers’ information.

The IRS told The Washington Times that it would not comment on pending litigation or the depositions in the Ohio case, but it did seem to downplay the importance of the Kastenberg email suggesting that the agency knew it was singling out groups based on their political ideology.

“It’s important to note that this email is not a new document and has been provided to numerous congressional committees in early 2014,” the agency said.

The IRS did not specify those committees, and the email’s key contents do not appear to be cited in any of the public reports released by the panels that investigated the targeting.

The nature and scope of the targeting has been controversial from the beginning, when conservative groups told members of Congress that they felt stonewalled by the IRS.

Even as top IRS officials were telling Congress there was no targeting, the agency was fending off inquiries from its own internal auditor, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

How many of those were conservative groups remains controversial. TIGTA released a report this month arguing that liberal-oriented groups also had applications picked out for special scrutiny from 2004 to 2013 — though to a far less significant degree than the conservative and tea party groups.

Democrats said the fact that some liberal groups faced intrusive scrutiny, and even some of the same inappropriate questions, from the IRS shows that the tax agency was out of control but not politically motivated. They said that contradicted the story Republicans tried to tell.

“It did not seem conceivable to some of my friends on the other side that there was management disarray, that it had to be political,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, said at a hearing with IRS and TIGTA officials on Wednesday.

But Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said — and the inspector general confirmed — that conservative groups made up a far larger portion of the targets.

In the class-action lawsuit, the tea party groups say it’s not just numbers, but also the extent of scrutiny.

In their filings, they argue that the tea party groups faced up to 17 waves of inspection, each of them potentially involving illegal scrutiny because they were spurred by illegal political considerations.

In the end, cases subjected to extra scrutiny were denied nonprofit status at a rate of about 2 percent — much higher than the rate for all other nonprofit applications, which was less than half of 1 percent.

The latest documents also detail the expansion of the targeting, starting with the Albuquerque Tea Party application in March 2010, to 50 to 100 cases by the end of that year. By December 2011, the number was 172 cases, and by June 7, 2012, 282 groups had been pushed into delays and intrusive scrutiny.

The IRS eventually admitted that it snared more than 450 groups for extra scrutiny based on its targeting criteria.


1a) A Crime Or Just 'Baloney'? Hillary Clinton Russian Scandal Keeps Getting Worse

Clinton Scandals: As evidence grows of actual collusion and possible illegal pay-for-play ties between Hillary Clinton, her closest political allies and Russian officials, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate declares on C-Span "it's the same baloney they've been peddling for years, and there's been no credible evidence by anyone." She called the stories "debunked."

Far from it.

On Tuesday, two House investigative committees announced they would start looking into the questionable Uranium One deal that Clinton approved while serving as the nation's top diplomat — a deal that delivered effective control of 20% of the U.S.' uranium mining assets to Russia's state-owned Rosatom, and led to millions of dollars in "donations" to the family Clinton Foundation.

With the Senate already investigating this shady if not outright illegal deal, a spate of Russian-related investigations involving Hillary crony and former campaign Chairman John Podesta and his brother Tony, we may soon find out what's baloney and what's not. But the growing body of evidence suggests possible crimes committed by Clinton and former President Bill Clinton through their power base and family enterprise, the Clinton Foundation.

The sudden re-emergence of the Clinton-Russia nexus — we reported on it last year — is mostly thanks to reports in The Hill and The Daily Caller last week showing that the FBI and Justice Department had found evidence that Russia had bribed a U.S. uranium trucking firm to further Moscow's reach into the U.S. atomic energy industry.

It didn't end there, however. As The Hill reported Tuesday, "They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill."

This is just one of a number of scandals that Hillary Clinton has embroiled herself in over the last few years. And the revelations just keep coming — turning what was initially claimed as minor contretemps into major commissions of crime. And yet, her response is always the same. Deny, call it "baloney," until the painful truth emerges.

Heck, remember the Clinton email scandal? It's not dead. Under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the State Department has processed some 32,000 pages of Hillary Clinton's emails but, The Daily Caller reports, has "released a small fraction of those." There are still some 40,000 other pages to be "processed," which could take years.

Meanwhile, last week, it came out that Hillary's top aide Huma Abedin sent some 2,800 government emails from her disgraced husband's unsecured laptop, a crime.

Also this week, John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill, reported that the FBI watched as a "multiple arms of Vladimir Putin's machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of state, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records."

The FBI ultimately arrested and deported a 10-person Russian spy ring, including a "Cynthia Murphy" who, in 2010, had edged perilously close to Hillary's State Department circles through a job she held with a leading Democratic financier.

After the arrests and spy deportations, Hillary's office was quick to say there was "no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring." But as Solomon and Spann note, "there's definitive evidence the Russians were seeking their influence with a specific eye on the State Department."

Did it work? Well, as The Hill's report said, "Agents were surprised by the timing and size of a $500,000 check that a Kremlin-linked bank provided Bill Clinton for a single speech in the summer of 2010" which "came just weeks" after Hillary helped put together a trip of high-level U.S. tech executives to help Vladimir Putin build his own mini-version of Silicon Valley.

Just another coincidence, of course.

It has also emerged in recent weeks that both John Podesta, Hillary's former campaign chief, and his brother Tony, had extensive business ties to the Russians that appear to have enabled them separately to use their political clout to line their own pockets. Again, just this week, Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller revealed he's now looking at Tony Podesta's lobbying efforts on behalf of Ukraine here in the U.S.

Just more baloney?

At a certain point, a mass of facts begin to coalesce into a pattern — a pattern of criminality. One of the great triumphs of the Democrats in the past decade is they've managed to convince much of the public, the media and even some in Congress that the 2016 election was somehow stolen by Donald Trump working in cahoots with the Russians.

In reality, the Democrats have been knee-deep in Russian muck for decades — especially Hillary "Russian reset" Clinton.

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2) George W. Finally Found His Voice

By Brian C. Joondeph

 George W. Bush stayed mum during most of his presidency. He started with a strong voice in his first year as president, after 9/11, when gave a rousing and uplifting speech to the nation and the world, standing atop the rubble left behind by Islamic extremism.

His voice then faltered as he tried to make the case for invading Afghanistan and Iraq to avenge the atrocities of 9/11. His voice did not explain that most of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia or that Saddam Hussein was not behind the 9/11 attacks. As the war dragged on, American soldiers returned from the Middle East in coffins. Shades of Viet Nam, an ill-conceived war, unclear aims, based on massive intelligence failures at best, lies at worst, with no end in sight.

President Bush was silent, while his political enemies, including the media, repeated the mantra, “Bush lied, people died” incessantly. “A lie told often enough becomes the truth” as Vladimir Lenin told us. No pushback from Bush. No explanation. No defense of his Iraq and Afghanistan invasions. Simply silence.

The now-former president’s only words were weak. “There’s no need to defend myself,” Bush explained in an interview. “I did what I did and ultimately history will judge.”

Judgment was delivered last November with the election of Donald Trump. After 16 years, this momentous judgment was delivered by the American people, against both the Bush and Clinton families.

Not only during his presidency did he lose his voice, but also during the eight years of Barack Obama. Fast and Furious, Obamacare, Benghazi, chaos in the Middle East, the Iran nuke deal and an anemic economy weren’t enough to distract George W from his painting and mountain biking to utter a single word.

He chose to respect the time-honored tradition of former presidents not commenting on or criticizing their successors. A worthy endeavor, practiced only by former Republican presidents, not Democrats, who can’t wait to insert themselves back into the spotlight. Bush honored that for eight years, while Obama was president. With Trump’s election, that tradition ended.

There was George W., finding his voice only minutes into the Trump presidency, saying to his sister-in-arms Hillary Clinton, “That was some weird s—t”, after Trump’s inaugural speech.

Then there was his recent speech at a conference he convened in New York. The New York Times gleefully reported that George W., “emerged from political seclusion on Thursday to deliver what sounded like pointed rebukes of the current occupant of the Oval Office and the forces of division that propelled him to power.”

Bush “defended immigration and free trade, denounced nationalism and bigotry,” leaving little doubt who he was criticizing. He found his voice, absent for most of the past 16 years, during both his and Obama’s tenure in the White House.

Then again, how could Bush criticize Obama? Obama continued many of the Bush policies. Endless wars, started by Bush, continued by Obama. Open borders, promoted by both. Bush doubled the national debt, Obama doubled it again, hardly grounds for criticism as he continued Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility.

Both started their presidencies with low unemployment, ending with high unemployment. Both started with congressional majorities of their own party. Both lost those majorities during their presidencies.

Both fabricated either the rationale for war in the Middle East or the excuse for leaving Americans to die in Benghazi.

Both scorned the Tea Party, and now both mock the so-called “forces of division,” also known as Trump voters. Bush was silent when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables” but now has his voice agreeing with Mrs. Clinton.

Birds of a feather. The Clintons, Bushes and Obamas. All three families would be comfortable lunching at Kennebunkport. The Trumps would be as unwelcome as Al Czervik, the Rodney Dangerfield character in Caddyshack, was at the Bushwood Country Club, lunching with Judge Smails.

The uni-party, the establishment. The Bushes leaning a bit to the right, the Clintons and Obamas way to the left, but all part of the ruling class. The elite, the anointed. Globalists favoring endless wars, open borders and big government. George W. is in good company with his father and pals Bill and Barack, fellow travelers seeking the “new world order” which Pappy Bush spoke of in 1990.

How has that worked out? Sending the U.S. military to secure the borders of sovereign countries around the world while leaving our own borders nonexistent. Pushing the national debt north of $20 trillion, higher than our GDP.

George W. was an integral part of all of this. He would not speak to defend his actions and choices nor would he comment on or criticize policies one would think he would be against. Perhaps he didn’t oppose those policies after all.

Instead it took the outsider, the wrecking ball, the ultimate threat to the ruling class establishment, Donald Trump to loosen George W. Bush’s tongue, awakening him from his cone of silence. His words now are meaningless, devoid of credibility after 16 years of silence. As relevant as what some Hollywood entertainer or kneeling football player thinks of Trump and his agenda.

George W. is a decent man. But rather than criticize Trump, he should realize that he is one of the reasons Donald Trump is president. Along with his father, Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Almost 30 years of disdain for ordinary Americans, culture and values. It’s time he goes back to his painting.

Brian C. Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.

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3) 

When Quality Education Becomes a Matter of National Security

By Jonathan Butcher

Surveys of our men and women in uniform indicate that finding a quality education for their children is a matter of national security.

A 2017 Military Times/Collaborative for Student Success survey of service members found that 35 percent of respondents said that “dissatisfaction with a child’s education was or is ‘a significant factor’ in deciding whether or not to continue military service.”

According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Military Strength, our armed forces already lack the resources they need. When quality of life indicators, such as access to a great education for their children, are a concern, the Military Times survey suggests more than one-third of our military could have second thoughts about extended service.

Washington should give our military families more access to learning opportunities. An EdChoice survey conducted by Braun Research, Inc., finds that 72 percent of active-duty members, veterans, and their spouses are in favor of using education savings accounts when informed of how the accounts work.

Now law in six states, education savings accounts give families the opportunity to customize a child’s education. States deposit a portion of a child’s funding from a state’s education formula into a private account that parents use to buy educational products and services for their children. Parents can buy online classes, hire a personal tutor and pay private school tuition, to name a few possible uses. Families can save money from year to year to prepare for additional high school or even college needs.

The accounts can help make reassignment easier for military families. When asked, “Did moving between states as part of your military service add challenges to your children’s education?” 70 percent of respondents to the Military Times survey said yes. In the EdChoice survey, 39 percent of military parents that used to have school-aged children and 31 percent of current military parents report enrolling their oldest child in at least four schools.

Military families are also more than twice as a likely than civilian families to say that they moved homes to be closer to their child’s school (37 percent vs. 17 percent).

With an education savings account, parents can use the funds to educate a child at home, combine services such as K-12 tutors and online classes or visit private schools with the resources to make a choice that works for their child. If the local district school to which a student is assigned is low-performing, the accounts will allow military parents to find an alternative.

The EdChoice survey demonstrates that military families are already making sacrifices for their children’s educations. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they have “significantly changed their routine” for the sake of their child’s education, compared to the national average of 38 percent.

To offer military families the opportunity to use education savings accounts, lawmakers could redirect some of the federal funds for K-12 children in military families (called “Impact Aid”) to students’ accounts. Today, Impact Aid provides federal funds to districts to help educate 150,000 students living on and off-base, along with tens of thousands of other military-connected students throughout the country.

Even if the accounts are made available to service members’ families, no family would be forced to use an account. The local public and private school options, along with homeschooling, would still be available to them without an account. And no public schools have closed due to savings account usage in states with account laws—generally, one percent or less of a state’s public school enrollment has opted to use an account since 2011 (in Arizona, Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi).

But for military parents that need access to something other than their assigned district school, the accounts can be a life-changing opportunity. “Military parents are going above and beyond the national average when it comes to supporting their children’s K-12 educational experiences,” write the EdChoice survey authors, adding that there is “an opportunity to give real schooling power to military families, who have already sacrificed so much for their country.”

Jonathan Butcher is a senior policy analyst in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation (Heritage.org).

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