Sunday, January 28th open thread: ‘Lullaby’
Here is the open thread for Sunday, January 28th. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
Last week we discussed 6 stories, did you miss any of them? If so there is an easy way to make sure it does not happen again. I understand that all of you are busy and cannot always find the time to check the blog for updates so why not subscribe to America’s Watchtower and receive email updates whenever I write a new post? That is the easiest way to follow the blog to ensure you never miss another post.
In addition to subscribing you can also follow America’s Watchtower on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the links on the right. But you will get more than that for I often post links to articles probably will not be writing about so it is a great way to keep up with what is happening.
The Twitter widget in the sidebar is fully interactive. This widget updates my tweets in real time and allows you to respond to or retweet my tweets right from the blog. It also allows you to tweet me right from America’s Watchtower.
It has been awhile since a shared anything from my favorite band so here is The Cure performing “Lullaby” live from 1990.
frui diem
Chuck Schumer rejects Donald Trump’s immigration plan
A couple of days ago Donald Trump released his immigration outline which included a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million people in return for border wall funding, an end to chain migration, and an end to the visa lottery.
Unsurprisingly Chuck Schumer has rejected the plan out of hand without even going to the table to negotiate. Here is more:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opposes the immigration framework released by the White House — a potentially fatal blow for the prospective legislation in the closely divided Senate.
The New York Democrat on Friday accused President Donald Trump of using a proposed path for citizenship for young undocumented immigrants as cover for making sweeping — and damaging — changes to the legal immigration system.
“This plan flies in the face of what most Americans believe,” Schumer said on Twitter. While Trump “finally acknowledged that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay here and become citizens, he uses them as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hard-liners have advocated for for years.”
This leads me to comment on a theory I have heard put forward in the last couple of days: We all know that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats were going to reject out of hand whatever plan the President came up with. Donald Trump probably also knew this so he offered 1.8 million “dreamers” a pathway to citizenship in the hopes of turning the tables on the Democrats. Donald Trump can now tell the “dreamers” he offered them a pathway to citizenship but the party of no, obstructionist, resist Democrats said no.
Democrats are claiming the President is playing politics with the “dreamers” but I believe Donald Trump is honestly willing to grant them a pathway to citizenship in return for some concessions, so it is the Democrats who are playing politics by refusing to even negotiate because their idea of negotiating is getting everything they want. At this point the Democrats are now holding the “dreamers” hostage.
I fully expect Donald Trump to take advantage of this during the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night. Will this play out the way Donald Trump hopes? We will have to wait and see but the “dreamers” and immigration advocates are already upset at Chuck Schumer for his handling of the government shutdown and this could add fuel to the fire.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
According to this CNN story Hillary Clinton protected a man on her 2008 campaign staff who was accused of sexual harassment and refused to fire him despite the recommendation of her campaign manager–and we are not talking about Bill Clinton here…
Here is more:
Hillary Clinton decided not to fire a senior adviser on her 2008 presidential campaign who had been accused of sexual harassment, against the recommendation of her campaign manager, two sources who worked on the 2008 campaign tell CNN.
A female campaign staffer had accused Clinton’s faith adviser, Burns Strider, of harassment that included inappropriate touching, kissing her forehead and sending her suggestive emails, the sources said. The woman shared an office with Strider.After hearing of the complaint, Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and other senior aides urged Clinton to fire Strider, but Clinton declined to dismiss him and kept him on for the rest of her failed run for the Democratic nomination, the sources said.“Patti wanted him out but she was overruled,” one source said.The other source said Clinton made clear that “we should explore other options” than firing Strider. “I certainly thought he should just be fired,” the source added.
Donald Trump proposes a pathway to citizenship for ‘dreamers’ in return for immigration concessions from the Democrats
According to this story, Donald Trump has made a new immigration proposal to the Congress which would include a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers” in return for border wall funding and other concessions from the Democrats. Here is more:
President Donald Trump proposed a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, if lawmakers agree to create a $25 billion fund to expand barriers along the Mexican border and implement other deep changes to the immigration system.
The White House proposal, presented to Senate leaders and congressional aides on Thursday, would restrict family-based immigration, the channel by which most immigrants have come to the U.S. for the past half-century. It also calls for an end to a lottery program that randomly awards 50,000 green cards annually to foreigners from countries underrepresented in U.S. immigration.
“This represents a dramatic concession by the White House to get to 60 votes from the Senate,” a senior administration official said, describing the bill as a “compromise on many fronts.”
Under the DACA program recipients are given legal status but do not have a pathway to citizenship so this is a major concession to the Democrats. And beyond that, in addition to the 690,000 DACA recipients the pathway to citizenship would be extended to people who did not apply for DACA–bringing the number up to 1.8 million.
Also included in Donald Trump’s proposal is an end to chain migration and the visa lottery program.
I had come to the realization that trading DACA for border security, ending chain migration and the visa lottery was probably the best deal we could hope for but this goes beyond that and I believe if this ever passes Donald Trump’s base will erode.
Sure, Donald Trump would be making good on one of his biggest campaign promises but will that be enough to keep his base happy if he concedes citizenship to the “dreamers?” I do not think it will be.
I think this will so inflame his base that they will stay home in 2018, leading to a Democratic takeover of the Congress, and quite possibly make him a one term President.
But the question remains, will the Democrats go along with this plan? Much like the Republicans used Obamacare as a political pawn with no real desire to repeal the legislation, I believe the Democrats are more interested in using the “dreamers” as political pawns than they are in helping them. If the Democrats let the opportunity to grant citizenship to “dreamers” slip away from them they could face backlash as well.
Donald Trump has called the Democrats’ bluff and it will be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Secret Societies have long been the subject of various conspiracy theories, but now Trey Gowdy has revealed that newly released texts between disgraced former Russia investigation official Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page alluded to a secret society of sorts within the FBI and the Injustice Department which would be working against Donald Trump. And this was the day after the election.
Here is more:
“We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of [Trump’s] election, that there may have been a secret society of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI — to include Page and Strzok — that would be working against him,” Ratcliffe said Monday on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“There’s a text exchange between these two FBI agents, these two supposed to be objective fact-centric FBI agents, saying that perhaps this is the first meeting of the ‘secret society,’” Gowdy said.
“So of course I’m going to want to know what secret society you’re talking about because you’re supposed to be investigating objectively the person who just won the Electoral College; so yeah I’m going to want to know,” he said.
We already know Peter Strzok and Lisa Page discussed an “insurance policy” to take down Donald Trump and while this seems to allude to the Russian dossier it seems possible this was part of the “insurance policy” as well.
But there is more: according to this story Peter Strzok and Lisa Page also engaged in texts talking about “fixing” the damage which was done during the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
“It’s the day after the election and it’s the same two people that were discussing a little bit later in the texts the damage they had done with the Clinton investigation and how they could ‘fix it’ and make it right,” Gowdy said.
“That is a level of bias that is stunning among law enforcement officers,” Gowdy said.
I still remember James Comey once saying, “don’t call us weasels, we are not weasels” and I have to agree with him. The term “weasels” is much too mild a term to describe what the FBI agents and Department of Injustice officials who were apparently working against the President-elect are.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
According to this story, last April FISA released a court ruling which went unreported by the mainstream media (shocking!) which showed vast abuses by Barack Obama of the FISA system.
On April 26, 2017, an unsealed FISA Court Ruling unveiled a number of criminal activities that Barack Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in during his time in office. The report to date received little attention. Now interest is brewing due to the recent actions of Congress and the report that is expected to be released in the upcoming weeks.
The FISA Court Ruling shows widespread abuse of the FISA mandate. According to the report, Obama’s FBI and DOJ performed searches on Americans that were against their 4th Amendment rights. This went on for years. One paragraph in the report states that 85% of the Section 704 and 705(b) FISA searches made during this time were non-compliant with applicable laws and therefore criminal.
In addition, the report cites that at the same time that Obama’s DOJ and FBI were illegally searching Americans against their rights and unbeknownst to them, Obama’s FBI was providing this information to outside contractors who had no business or legal cause or claim the information.
There is really nothing more to add to this, it speaks on its own. #ReleaseTheMemo.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Newly released texts show Loretta Lynch knew no charges were coming against Hillary Clinton, meanwhile the FBI loses 5 months of texts
While the mainstream media has been focused on the government shutdown and assigning blame the FBI released another 384 pages of texts between former Mueller Russian investigation teammates Peter Strzok and Lisa Page which seem to indicate they both knew Hillary Clinton was not going to be charged in advance. They also seem to show Loretta Lynch also was aware in advance.
Here is more:
The Justice Department has given various congressional committees nearly 400 pages of additional text messages between two FBI officials who were removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
One of the newly discovered messages, lawmakers said, appeared to indicate that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page knew that charges would not be filed against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a result of the investigation into her email server — before Clinton was interviewed by the bureau.
This is the exchange in question:
“Timing looks like hell,” Strzok texted Page.
“Yeah, that is awful timing,” Page agreed. In a later message, she added: “It’s a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought.”
The “she” in question is none other than Loretta Lynch and it was written about her announcement that she would accept whatever the FBI’s conclusion was. The whole investigation was a fraud, we all knew that of course but this is more proof.
But it gets even worse because the FBI admitted it did not preserve the texts between these two for a five month period between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. The timing of these missing texts is quite convenient when you consider what happened during this period:
You had the Flynn conversation with the senior transition officials as been reported in the press so their conversations about that–missing.”
“Buzzfeed publishes the Steele dossier January 11th 2017–text messages between the two are missing,” Sekulow said.
“Peter Strzok interviews Michael Flynn on January 24th 2017, the text messages between them are missing.”
“Comey is fired by the president of the United States May 9th 2017, their text messages are missing,” Sekulow continued.
“Robert Mueller Special Counsel appointed May 17 2017-text messages missing based on a glitch.”
The Russian dossier (the insurance policy Peter Strzok and Lisa Page talked about?) was released and Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel. The day after Robert Mueller was appointed the record of these texts resumes. That doesn’t look to suspicious does it?
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Sunday, January 21st open thread: ‘Breed’
Here is the open thread for Sunday, January 21st. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
Last week we discussed 6 stories, did you miss any of them? If so there is an easy way to make sure it does not happen again. I understand that all of you are busy and cannot always find the time to check the blog for updates so why not subscribe to America’s Watchtower and receive email updates whenever I write a new post? That is the easiest way to follow the blog to ensure you never miss another post.
In addition to subscribing you can also follow America’s Watchtower on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the links on the right. But you will get more than that for I often post links to articles probably will not be writing about so it is a great way to keep up with what is happening.
The Twitter widget in the sidebar is fully interactive. This widget updates my tweets in real time and allows you to respond to or retweet my tweets right from the blog. It also allows you to tweet me right from America’s Watchtower.
After two weeks of more mellow choices with the musical selection I have decided to ramp it up a notch or three this week. Here is Nirvana performing “Breed” live from 1991.
frui diem
Last week it was reported that Fusion GPS is still investigating Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia but nobody knows who is currently paying for the investigation. I meant to get to this story last week but I never got to it, but here is a little bit about it:
The controversial research firm Fusion GPS is still investigating alleged ties between President Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, according to several sources who spoke to this reporter.
What’s not known is who is paying for the continuing research? Fusion GPS officials could not be reached immediately for comment.
Earlier today a New York Post reporter, Paul Sperry, hinted that Robert Mueller may be paying Fusion GPS:
He does not back up this claim with any evidence, it looks more like speculation on his part to me. It almost looks like what the Democrats and the left-leaning mainstream media have been doing over the last year, throwing out speculation as truth and then using it to attack the President.
But still I find it interesting that the Democrats do not want the Republicans to find out who is paying for the continued “research” and I would not put it past the FBI at this point after what we have already learned. I am going to adopt a wait and see attitude on this story until we learn more.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
In the last couple of days we have learned of a House Intelligence Committee memo written by chairman Devin Nunes which allegedly shows abuse of the FISA court by Barack Obama, the FBI, and the Department of Justice during the 2016 election.
While conservative websites and blogs have been all over this story the mainstream media has been silent. However with momentum seemingly growing to release this memo it would seem the mainstream media will not be able to ignore it forever so the spin is already beginning as they look to get ahead of this story.
Here is more:
This is how a media smear works. House Republicans view a secret memo on the Obama administration’s spying on the Trump campaign, express outrage at what they learned and demand the memo be released to the American people so they can see what their government was doing.
A left wing site, Hamilton68, that tracks alleged, but unnamed, “Russia-linked influence networks on Twitter” announces those alleged networks are promoting the Release the Memo hashtag.
Then NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian trumpets the unsubstantiated findings of the left wing group with a false statement accusing House Republicans of working with Russian propagandists, “Russian propagandists and House Republicans have joined together to embrace #releasethememo.
A left wing website releases an unsubstantiated claim and then NBC runs with it as truth (sounds eerily like the way the Russian dossier story went down) in an effort to discredit the memo before anyone learns (including NBC) what is in it.
It is pretty clear what NBC’s intent is here, but it is ironic that while the so-called news outlet will bash conservative sites for running with this story it was CNN which ran with an substantiated report on the Russian dossier by left-leaning BuzzFeed and NBC is doing it again with this story.
The mainstream media is being exposed and hopefully soon so will Barack Obama, the FBI, and the Department of Injustice.
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
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