A Look Back at My December 2106 Predictions for 2017

HOW DID I DO WITH MY 2017 PREDICTIONS? Here's a review of what I said in December 2016. Most important is the fact that I didn't make any specific predictions for 2107 -- I said : "I have been trying to make a list of predictions for two weeks. But, I cannot come up with one. Why? Because the list is so negative that it makes me ill." • Well, with that great start , I then actually made a prediction : "Donald Trump is going to be a very good, maybe even an outstanding, President. My negativity has nothing to do with Trump. But, it does have a lot to do with the Progressive Democrat evil that is sometimes called "error," and it has a lot to do with the latent compulsions lurking in the Republican Party elites to destroy everything that could prevent them from preserving their 'elite' privileges." • I have to say that was a pretty good description of what 2017 has produced. • And, then I wrote about several topics. • • • The first was what I called "THE TRUMP ERA IN GOP POLITICS." I named it "the one reason I have for optimism as 2017 begins...my bedrock of belief in the principles and voters of the Republican Party. That Republicans could cut through the lies and fake news and elect Donald Trump is the latest reason for my optimism. I've spent 18 months browbeating the GOP elties. They deserve more beating that I could ever give them alone, but social media has provided ample support. They were the incarnation of the impulse to save yourself -- the French say it so well, 'Sauve qui peut' -- every person for himself, save yourself." We know, looking back on 2017, that the GOP elite leadership that tried "to run as fast as they could away from Donald Trump because they were sure his massive defeat would take them down, too" were wrong, and many of them saw that after the GOP nominating convention and came around. I noted the "almost-selfless practicality of RNC Chair Reince Priebus, who must have said to himself, 'I have a party to save and that means supporting Trump.' It is ironic that in saving his party, Priebus saved himself." Ah, but he didn't save himself. Prizebus fell because he couldn't make order stick in the Trump White House. So, Rience Priebus fell to General Kelly, who has done a remarkable job of making the West Wing run smoothly. But, I don't fault Reince Priebus -- he tried to support President Trump, but it took a tougher soldier to do the job. • • • THE #NEVERTRUMP GOP NEO-CONSERVATIVES. I noted in December 2016 that "there were those who, unwilling to quietly steer clear of Trump, broadcast their contempt for the non-politician who actually represented real GOP voters. Mitt Romney epitomizes that bunch of traitors and while I can try to forgive him, I will never forget his spewed-out venom or his fawning post-election switch to 'Trump the Winner.' Never, Never, Never should Romney be given a seat or a kind word at a GOP gathering. Ditto the smug duo of George Will and Bill Kristol, as well as Governor John Kasich. Senator Lindsey Graham is rapidly approaching that spot in my sensibilities. Watching his need to attack Trump everyday on mainstream media is watching pure self-destruction at work. Remember this : Elephants do not forget." • Senator Lindsey Graham seems to be trying to accommodate President Trump, perhaps because they both want a strong military and are willing to work together to achieve it. I also find that when Senator Graham is free of the hovering influence of Senator John McCain, he is more reasonable and Republican. Maybe he will finally be a real Republican again. • We have neither seen nor heard much from either Kasich or Romney in 2017. There are those who want Romney to run for the Seante from Utah if Senator Orrin Hatch retires. Normally, I would say that Senator Hatch, who has served long and well, should step aside, but a "Senator" Romney is not something I would easily accept. • What was most "distasteful about these GOP traitors, was their waving the 'conservative' flag as they deliberately set about to destroy the last chance conservatives would ever have to save the Republic." That was my sense of the GOP establishment in December 2016 and it hasn't changed much. They are the Swamp Creatures of 2017 who smile while they sharpen their knives against their own party's President. They took almost all of 201 to see that Hillary Clinton's never-ending string of alleged corruption and illegal conduct sullied not only Hillary Clinton and her tight-knit group of devoted hacks. The aura of corruption sullies the republic, and they are perhaps coming latel, but coming, to the realization that she must be brought to the bar of justice. • • • SAVE THE REPUBLIC. I wrote last December : "Just as in 1860, conservative Americans knew that Lincoln was their only hope to save the Union, in 2016, conservative Americans answered 'present' once again. Save the Republic from the elites, both Republican and Democrat, who will have America's back only when it is professionally and personally to their advantage. Save the Republic. From those are happy to accept the support of real voters as long as they know they won't actually be held accountable when they disregard our concerns and wishes. Save the Republic." I asked all who are on this mission to Make America Great Again "to beware. Beware of the media, any media, or any politician or writer, even those we used to trust, who suggests compromise, or who tries to tell us that Trump is foolish, dumb, unsophisitcated in the ways of governing, or just plain wrong. They are wrong! Do not let them put doubts into our minds. We have a mission to accomplish -- Trump said as much when he reminded us often during the campaign that he is our voice and that he will never desert us -- and it it true that only President Trump can make our mission succeed." • And, I have to give full credit to the millions of conservative and Republican and Independent Deplorables who have stood tall with President Trump through a year of the most outrageous attacks on a President and presidency since Lincoln was attacked on all sides for trying to save the Union. • • • THE DEMOCRAT MELTDOWN. I said a year ago that : "I've spent the better part of the last 8 years trying to figure out if Barack Obama is the evil genius sent as the Manchurian Candidate to destroy the traditional, constitutional America, or if he is just one more rather ordinary, not too smart cannon-fodder victim of the Progressive globalists, chosen because he is neither white nor black, neither American nor foreign, neither a warrior nor a pacifist, neither a politician nor an intellectual." I concluded that, in fact, Obama is a "nothing. But, whatever Barack Obama was, he presided over the collapse of the Progressive plan to corrupt American values and convert Americans into a statist mob of unthinking, ammoral blobs." Obama was, literally I now believe, simply the latest, and last, of the Progressive intruders. He and the Democrat activists focused on distracting us : "the Black Lives Matter movement that became an out-of-control Soros-funded attack by underclass blacks on American society; the rights of transgender Americans that pitted millions of parents and school districts against a handful of transgenders cynically used by Obama to try to destroy American family values; the fetishism toward pop culture used to teach violence and race hatred; and, the use of American war weariness to cede territory and strategic advantage to the West's antagonists determined to bring it down." Meanwhile, I was clear that Obama had ignored Americans' real problems : "addiction to Meth and opioids that destroyed small towns; 'medical' marijuana that hyped up Americans in despair to make them forget the real problems facing them and their country; decades of unchecked illegal immigration that undercut the dynamics of the normal US workforce; endless promises of education that never produced anything but more and more illiterate and uneducated graduates; the dead American Dream of a steady, well-paying job, a home, marriage and children; and the impression that carefully picked photo ops and words were aimed at creating the false impression that police were the real problem, not the professional thugs and petty hoodlums they were trying to control." The result was that Obama left millions of Americans who used to vote for Democrats feeling "abandoned, mocked, and belittled. The Democrats didn’t just have a bad year. Whether they can ever bring themselves to admit it or not, Democrats had a bad 2016, a bad Obama presidency and a bad 50 years before that." • The ProgDems, as I have called them this year, are losing the battle for the hearts and souls of middle class America. It may take some more time to finish off the extreme Left Progressive agenda they preach, but 2017 was the year in which they "lost." • • • THE END AND THE BEGINNING. In December 2106, I quoted David Prentice, who wrote in American Thinker : "It's safe to say Americans on the right are sickened by the same old tired playbook of the left...using the race card, the gender card, the 'stupid' card, the insensitive card, the tax cuts for the rich card, and the 'green' card has worked for them. They have had more than a compliant media; they have had a collusive media that has agreed with the Democrat elites every day for decades, helping them form these nasty narratives about half of the country's population. It's one of the reasons we ended up with a shell-shocked Republican Party that became ashamed of its own beliefs and its own supporters. They became Stockholm syndrome Republicans, incapable of putting up a good fight against these lying, conniving, greedy leftists who stopped long ago caring about whether what they did legislatively, with the courts, or with regulation from the control of Washington bureaucracies actually had a good effect on America. They weren't helping to make a better country. The Democratic Party became power-hungry, caring only if they stayed in power, not whether they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately, too many in the GOP succumbed to this siren song and joined them." • That is all true, but the key in 2017 was that the Trump revolution broke this chain, as I wrote : "with Trump out-foxing them and winning against all odds in a massive upset." Prentice said : "The left, rather than learn something about themselves, devolved into full petulant toddlers, moaning, whining, shrieking, needing therapy -- all the things we've watched since they lost. They have been pitiful....their adult voters have failed to step forward to stop their leaders from making total fools of themselves....their leaders, including their failed President, are running around making silly excuses for their loss, each of which has been shown to be preposterous. The latest : the Russians 'hacked' the election. That carefully crafted way of phrasing this peculiar (and preposterous) talking point should say it all....Their narratives have been busted. Their media were beaten. Their corruption was exposed. Their solutions and programs have been rejected by a large majority of the US electorate -- a far greater rejection than their election loss, according to good polls. The Democrats are lucky to have anything left in the way of power....it's beyond hope for them in the next two years. The only way the conservative agenda will fail is by people on the right not uniting. Observing the Left's ability to unite around the political and cultural perversion and corruption of the Clinton-Obama clans should show us the way. If they can unite, circling the wagons around corruption and perversion, surely, we can unite to jump-start the Trump agenda -- which, make no mistake, is a great agenda, an agenda that will be good for America and all its citizenry." • We have seen all of that and more in 2017, but we are still standing and we feel the winds of change blowing through the Washington Swamp -- it took the pain and unending humiliations of 2017 to get us pointed in the right direction. • • • OBAMA'S FAILURES. Finally, I noted last December that : "The damage the Democrats under Obama have done is enormous : the worst economic recovery since World War II; the US economic engine braked to full stop; massive unemployment; a job market that gives no hope to Americans for the future; ruined alliances and support for America's enemies under a stupid, feckless President and two Secretaries of State; ISIS becoming a power that Obama was useless in dealing with; the destruction of US borders because Progressives believe borders are racist; the introduction of Obamacare to destroy US healthcare so that a Progressive nationalized government control of doctors, insurance companies, and patients could replace it. Do not believe anyone who tells you that Obamacare is a success on any level. Obamacare is a failure. The Democrat Congress and Obama lied to get it passed, lied to keep it, and are lying about how good it is now. But, the wisdom of most Americans saw the ruse. They knew they were sold a sack of garbage so expensive that they can't use it. The Democrats under Obama were particularly good at corrupting the federal bureaucracy, destroying the faith American citizens had in their government. In short, they ruined everything they touched. Prentice suggests using the Alinsky rules for radicals against the Democrat-media complex...ridicule the Left, because they are absurd; pressure them to live up to their own "rules"; point out how corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry the Clintons and Obamas are. In other words, keep them off balance with daily pressure. Make them squirm. • In 2017, we were led by the master at "making them squirm." Never has modern America had a President so toughminded and impervious to insult and lies as Donald Trump. That he sttod and took the heat in 2017 is largely the reason the Trump preisdency and the Republic survived. • • • DEAR READERS, Trump is not bad, unfit, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, unstable, or fascist. Neither are we who call ourselves conservatives and Republicans -- and proudly wear the badge of honor as Deplorables. Trump's approval rating is growing. He has demonstrated during 2017 that he is serious, well-prepared, even-handed and competent. The Progressive Democrat leadership are Losers, and they know it. But, they have no place to go, so they will hang on, ridiculing Trump and all of us who support him and his agenda. Our job in 2017 was, as I put it, to :"Stand tall -- and get to work. We need to keep winning -- not just elections, but the real war against Progressive globalism and the Democrat Party that uses it. It's time. It's important. And, one more thing to never forget -- we are the champions of the Republic. It is time to prove it." • That was my crystal ball looking ahead to 2017, and it still serves as a roadmap for Trump supporters, even as the battle shifts and takes on a new aspect. • On New Year's day, you will have my predictions for 2018. • For now, enjoy the rest of the Christmas Holiday Season and have a safe and Happy New Year's Eve celebration.

McCain's Dossier Connection and Obama Life Lies about His Birth Certificate and Harvard Costs -- Lingering Thoughts from 2017

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT 2017 IS ALMOST OVER. And I'm trying to cram all my still unspoken thoughts into a few lines. • • • THE RUSSIA DOSSIER. American Thinker's Thomas Lifson wrote on Thursday an article that gives me hope for the final dismissal of the Russia Dossier, the idea that Trump or his team "colluded" with the Russians or anybody else, and the sense that special counsel Robert Mueller is living on borrowed-time life support. Lifson wrote : "I am hoping 2018 will be the year of blowback for those who colluded to use the FBI and DOJ to prevent the election and then the presidency of Donald Trump....There is a growing belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators' views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system. Investigators who favor this theory ask a sensible question : Is it likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheming, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America – except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?" • That question lays bare the No Evidence Nonsense that America and President Trump have endured for 18 months. The gestation period for the Asian elephant is 18 - 22 months, and for the African bush elephant, it is 22 months. Donald Trump is an elephant -- a true Republican elephant -- as the GOP's symbol is the elephant. Perhaps by June 2018, all the No Evidence Trump haters will have been silenced by the rebirth of the GOP Trump Elephant. Perhaps it is the gentation period we are experiencing. Perhaps the Trump presidency has had to be borne by us Deplorables as a pregnancy, and we are waiting to give birth to the conservative Republican President Trump we know exists. • To be very serious, although gestation is also a very serious matter, Lifson goes on to say : "The idea that the Russians favored Trump has always struck me as ridiculous. Putin had already discovered that nine-figure donations to the Clinton Foundation would buy permission to start cornering the world uranium market, a longtime goal of his. And Putin's foreign policy goals had advanced sharply under Hillary's stewardship at State. The mess she triggered in Libya is still bedeviling the US and our European allies, who are drowning under waves of refugees. From his point of view, what's not to like about a Hillary presidency?" And as Tom Maguire wrote : "The DNC and Hillary campaigns were paying large sums of money to "collude" with the Russian sources that were libeling Trump in the Dossier. In order to win the election! Now that "collusion" with Russia has been identified as a sin, the Democrats have a lot to answer for. It's going to be an interesting year." • • • WHAT DID JOHN McCAIN KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT??? TheHill's Olivia Beavers wrote on Wednesday that : "The House Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to an associate of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his connection with the controversial Dossier containing unverified allegations about President Trump and his ties to Russia." TheHill confirmed on Wednesday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes wants to talk to David Kramer, a former State Department official and current senior director at the nonprofit McCain Institute -- Senator McCain insists he has nothing to do with the McCain Institute, it just uses his name, got it? -- about his visit to London in November 2016, a source familiar with the matter confirmed. The story of David Kramer and the Russia Dossier flows thus, according to TheHill : "While in London, Kramer met with the dossier's author, former British spy Christopher Steele, at McCain's request, to view 'the pre-election memoranda on a confidential basis,' according to court filings. Kramer then flew back to the US and delivered a copy of the memos to McCain, who then handed the documents to the FBI." • The subpoena for Kramer to appear before House investigators on January 11 comes after his December meeting with the Committee. The Russia Dossier has long been a key interest of Republicans, who want to find out if its claims were used as the basis for a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign associates. Democrats, on the other hand, are interested to learn whether the allegations made against the President in the Dossier are true, because most of the Dossier remains unverified. But, we know that the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign partly funded the Dossier, by paying a law firm to handle the relationship with the opposition research firm Fusion GPS that created and distributed it. • I know John McCain is a very sick man whose life may already have largely played out. I know Reagan's 11th Commandment about never speaking ill of fellow Republicans. BUT, I cannot help but wonder whether John McCain hates Donald Trump so profoundly that he was willing to risk his reputation by organizing to tout to the US Intel community and FBI a sleazy Dossier with the goal of destroying his enemy -- the Republican who could, like the little red train engine, while McCain could not, get to the White House. Trump has resoundingly dismissed the memo as "fake." McCain's office did not immediately respond to requests of TheHill for comment. I sincerely hope I am wrong -- that Senator McCain was just getting the Dossier into his hands as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for transmittal to the FBI. I sincerely hope that Senator McCain did not, when Kramer delivered the salacious Dossier to him, read it and say 'Ah-ha, At last I've got him' and then decide that the FBI was the best vehicle for destroying President Trump. I sincerely hope. • • • SHUTTING DOWN THE OBAMA LIFE-LIES -- HARVARD. Back in September 2008, while Barack Obama was still a candidate in his first presidential campaign, Newsmax contributor Kenneth R. Timmerma asked : "How exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?" Timmerman said the way the Obama campaign has answered the question was "simply hard work and student loans." But, Timmerman pointed out new questions raised "about Obama’s student loans and Obama’s ties to a radical Moslem activist who reportedly was raising money for Obama’s Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991. The allegations first surfaced in late March, 2008, when former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a former business partner who was 'raising money' for Obama had approached him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School. In the interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about twenty years ago from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Moslem and Black Nationalist who was a 'mentor' to the founders of the Black Panther party at its founding in the early 1960s. Sutton described al-Mansour as advisor to 'one of the world’s richest men,' Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal. • Prince Alwaleed -- now under arrest and being investigated in Saudi Arabia for corruption-related charges -- catapulted to fame in the United States after the September 11 attacks, when New York mayor Rudy Guiliani refused his $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan, because the Saudi prince hinted publicly that America’s pro-Israel policies were to blame for the attacks. • Sutton knew Al-Mansour well, since the two men had been business partners and served on several corporate boards together. As Sutton remembered, Al-Mansour was raising money for Obama’s education and seeking recommendations for him to attend Harvard Law School : “I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,” Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter, adding “The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas.” • Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that Sutton’s account was “bogus” and a “fabrication that has been retracted” by a spokesman for the Sutton family. LaBolt referred Newsmax to a pro-Obama blog published on Politico.com by reporter Ben Smith. In a September 3, 2008, blog entry, Smith wrote that “a spokesman for Sutton’s family, Kevin Wardally” said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments about Obama and Khalid Al-Mansour." Smith suggested the retraction “put the [Obama/Al-Mansour] story to rest for good.” Wardally told Smith : "the information Mr. Percy Sutton imported [sic] on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairman’s closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview.” When asked which parts of Percy Sutton’s statements were a “fabrication,” LaBolt said “all of it. Al Mansour doesn’t know Obama. And Sutton’s spokesman retracted the story. The letter [to Harvard, which Percy Sutton says he wrote on behalf of Obama], the ‘payments for loans’ -- all of it, not true,” he added. • Newsmax contacted the Sutton family and they categorically denied Wardally’s claims to Smith and Politico.com. So there was no retraction of Sutton’s original interview, during which he revealed that Khalid Al-Mansour was “raising money” for Obama and had asked Sutton to write a letter of recommendation for Obama to help him get accepted at Harvard Law School. Sutton’s personal assistant told Newsmax that neither Mr. Sutton or his family had ever heard of Kevin Wardally. ”Who is this person?” Sutton’s assistant, Karen Malone asked Newsmax. When told that he portrayed himself as a “spokesman” for the family, Malone told Newsmax, “Well, he’s not.” • Timmerman stated in the 2008 Newsmax article that : "According to a 2006 New York magazine profile, Wardally is part of a 'New New Guard' in Harlem politics that has been challenging the 'lions' of the old guard, Charles Rangel and Percy Sutton. That makes him an unlikely candidate to speak on behalf of Sutton. Sutton maintains an office at the Manhattan headquarters of the firm he founded, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. ICBC owns New York radio stations WBLS and WLIB. Sutton’s son Pierre (“Pepe”) runs ICBC along with his daughter, Keisha Sutton-James. Malone told Newsmax that she had consulted with Sutton’s family members at the station and confirmed that no one knew Kevin Wardally or had authorized him to speak on behalf of the family." • Asked to explain why it was that no one at Inner City Broadcasting Corp. knew of him or accepted him as a family spokesman, Wardally responded later that he had been retained by a nephew of the elder Sutton, who “is in our office almost every week.” Wardally works for Bill Lynch Associations, a Harlem political consulting firm. The nephew, Chuck Sutton, no longer works with the elder Sutton at Inner City Broadcasting, but for a high-tech start-up called Synematics. “Percy Sutton doesn’t go out idly on television saying things he doesn’t mean,” a well-connected black entrepreneur who knows Sutton told Newsmax. • Ben LaBolt’s claim that “Al Mansour doesn’t know Obama” was contradicted by Al Mansour himself in an extended interview with Newsmax. Comparing the revelation of his ties to Obama to the controversy surrounding Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Al Mansour said that he was determined to keep a low profile to avoid embarrassing Obama : “In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him...I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation.” Al Mansour said he was deliberately avoiding any contact with the candidate : “I’m not involved in any way in celebrity sweepstakes. I wish him well, anything I can do if he lets me know, I’ll let him know what I think I can do or can’t. But I don’t collect autographs. I wish him the best, and hope he can win the election.” He repeatedly declined to comment on the Percy Sutton allegations, either to confirm or to deny them. • This background leads into another Barack Obama mystery. Then-Senator Obama refused to instruct Harvard Law School to release any information about his time there as a student, or about his student loans. Newsmax reported that it contacted the Dean of Students, the Director of Student Financial Services, the Registrar, and the Bursar of Harvard Law School. None would provide any specific information on Barack Obama’s time at Harvard, except for his dates of attendance (1988-1991) or his year of graduation, 1991. A spokesman for the law school, Michael Armini, told Newsmax it was Harvard policy not to divulge information on alumni without their approval. • Sources close to the Sutton family told Newsmax that Percy Sutton wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama to Ogletree at Khalid Al-Mansour’s request, but Ogletree declined to answer Newsmax questions about this. • The issue Newsmax was trying to resolve was the matter of payment for Obama's suudies at Harvard Law School. Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Armini told Newsmax that Harvard was “very generous” with financial aid, but only on the basis of need. The Obama campaign told Newsmax that Obama self-financed his three years at Harvard Law School with loans, and did not receive any scholarship from Harvard Law school. LaBolt denied that Obama received any financial assistance from Harvard or from outside parties. “No -- he paid his way through by taking out loans,” he said in an email to Newsmax. • At the time, Harvard cost around $25,000 a year, or $75,000 for the three years that Obama attended. And as president of the Harvard Law Review, he received no stipend from the school, Harvard spokesman Mike Armini said : “That is considered a volunteer position. There is no salary or grant associated with it.” • So if the figures cited by the Obama campaign for the Senator’s student loans are accurate, it means Obama came up with more than $32,000 over three years from sources other than loans to pay for tuition, room and board. Where did he find the money? Did it come from friends of Khalid Al Mansour? And why would a radical Moslem activist with ties to the Saudi royal family be raising money for Barack Obama? All are question the Obama campaign still won’t answer. • BUT, Michelle Obama, speaking at a campaign event in Haverford, Pa, in April, 2008, claimed that her husband had “just paid off his loan debt” for his Harvard Law School education. In an appearance in Zanesville, Ohio, in February, 2008, she bemoaned the fact that many American families were strapped with student loan payments for years after graduation : “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books,” she said. The first of those best-sellers netted the couple $1.2 million in royalties in 2005. • In response to Newsmax questions about the Obama’s college loans, a campaign spokesman cited a report in the Chicago Sun claiming that Obama borrowed $42,753 to pay for Harvard Law School, and “tens of thousands” more to pay for undergraduate studies at Columbia. The same report said that Michelle Obama borrowed $40,762 to pay for her years at Harvard Law School. But, a Newsmax review of Senator Obama’s financial disclosures found no trace of any outstanding college loans, going back to 2000. • As a US Senate candidate, Barack Obama was required to file a financial disclosure form in 2004 detailing his assets, income, consulting contracts, and liabilities. Newsmax says that "Obama listed 'zero' under liabilities in 2004 and in all subsequent US Senate financial disclosure forms. Under the Senate ethics rules, he is required to disclose any loan, including credit card debt, of $10,000 or more. The only exception to the reporting requirement is mortgage debt on a principal residence. The Senate reports also directly contradict Michelle Obama’s claim that the couple had 'only just' paid off their student loans after receiving book royalties paid out in 2005 and 2006 -- well after her husband had been elected to the Senate." • Apparently, Michelle Obama misspoke, according to the version provided by the Obama campaign by Newsmax." Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that the loans Senator Obama took out to pay for Harvard Law School “were repaid in full while he was a candidate for the US Senate [in 2004], and under the rules, the modest outstanding balance he repaid was not reportable as a liability on his personal financial disclosure reports.” The Senator repaid the loans on “the expectation of a significant increase in family income” as a result of the paperback edition of his 1995 book, Dreams of My Father, LaBolt said....The paperback eventually sold over one million copies, which under the standard industry royalty for trade paperbacks of 7.5%, earned him $1.2 million. But, Obama didn’t report income from the book until 2005, so it’s unclear how he was able to repay his student loans in 2004." Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt had no answer as to why the Obamas failed to declare the loans, stating the obvious that “because interest on the loans was not deducted, it would not appear on the Obamas’ personal return.” • Was Barack Obama funded at Columbia and Harvard Law School by the radical Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal? Did Obama have support from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Moslem and Black Nationalist who was a 'mentor' to the founders of the Black Panther party? We do not know. Just as we do not know what Barack Obama wrote while in either university because all his papers have been sequestered and are not available to the press or public. What we do know is that Barack Obama has more secrets -- more personal information -- carefully hidden away from the American public than any other President of modern times. WHY??? • • • SHUTTING DOWN THE OBAMA LIFE-LIES -- THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE. In late November, TheHill's Jacqueline Thomsen wrote : "President Trump is still privately questioning the authenticity of former President Obama’s birth certificate." Thomsen was quoting the New York Times. A Senator, who asked not to be named, told the NYT that Trump is "having difficulty moving on from his past claims that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Trump led the 'birther' movement against Obama, claiming for years that the former President was born outside of the US. Obama eventually released a copy of a Certificate of Live Birth to counter Trump’s claims. During the presidential campaign, Trump grudgingly said 'Okay, Obama was born in the US. I'm saying it,' or words to that effect. • InfoWars published an article by Jerome Corsi on December 12 that stated : "Infowars.com has learned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigators had discovered bombshell evidence that the CIA and or other government entities illegally hacked into Hawaii Department of Health records searching for birth records on Barack Obama. According to information received by the investigators, the government breaches began on November 14, 2008, just after Obama won his first presidential election, and continued until January 12, 2011, three months before the White House released a computer version of what President Obama claimed was his authentic “Long-Form Birth Certificate” from 1961. Michael Zullo, formerly the commander and chief investigator of the Cold Case Posse (CCP), a special investigative group created in 2006 in the office of Joseph M. Arpaio, formerly the sheriff in Maricopa County, an Arizona State Certified Law Enforcement Agency, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, provided Infowars.com sections of an electronic surveillance database created by whistleblower, Dennis Montgomery, in 2013. • The electronic surveillance database provided to Zullo in late 2013 by then-confidential informant, Dennis Montgomery, working with Sheriff Arpaio’s office, according to InfoWars : "was apparently created by the NSA as part of the NSA’s illegal and unconstitutional Project Dragnet electronic surveillance of US citizens, first revealed by news reports published in 2005, as further documented by the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. As Infowars.com reported in June, the decision of a federal court to take the case of former contractor Dennis Montgomery advances the story Infowars.com reported in March that the National Security Agency illegally conducted surveillance of potentially millions of citizens for years, with a database that suggests both Donald J. Trump and Alex Jones were under unauthorized government monitoring. The description of the Montgomery lawsuit can be accessed at < https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/klayman-and-montgomery-file-for-tro-against-comey-and-fbi-nsa-and-cia---defendants-in-case-alleging-obstruction-of-justice-300476903.html >. Montgomery is represented by well-known conservative attorney and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman. • Montgomery ultimately turned over to the FBI 47 hard drives including information he supplied to Zullo concerning Obama’s fraudulent birth certificate and highly classified information he had removed from the NSA. On December 15, 2016, Arpaio and Zullo held a press conference releasing the results of a multiple-year forensic investigation concluding the computer image that Barack Obama released on April 27, 2011, of his alleged Long-Form Birth Certificate (LFBC) was a forgery. The evidence Arpaio and Zullo have now released to Infowars.com -- including a list of the CIA IP addresses used in the breaches of Hawaii Government Department of Health Vital Records, the Hawaii Government Department of Health Archives, and the Hawaii Government, Office of the Governor -- strongly suggests the CIA played a role in the forgery, breaching Hawaii government computers in the Obama birth certificate quest. The InfoWars article can be accessed at < https://www.infowars.com/bombshell-evidence-of-cia-role-in-forging-obamas-birth-certificate/ >. • InfoWars states that other data indicates the CIA also breached the University of Hawaii’s extensive records on Hawaii history and genealogy. The IP addresses, both from the Hawaii government offices breached and from the CIA proxy IP addresses used in the breaches. Zullo said : “Montgomery also traced the IP data paths of the breached servers and discovered on a number of occasions information was sent from the breached Hawaii computers, only to be routed to a server located in Jakarta, Indonesia. From Indonesia, the data was sent back through the server in Jakarta, routed back to government servers in the United States. Montgomery claims the server used in Jakarta was operated by the CIA at the time the breaches were executed.” • Zullo explained to Infowars.com that when Montgomery first brought this information regarding the CIA breaching the Hawaii government offices to investigators in 2013, the information was considered a “universe shattering” discovery : "especially when this information was paired with other information Arpaio’s investigator already had collected prior to 2013 but had yet to reveal. In specific, while investigating in Hawaii, Zullo had received specific information a person connected to top officials in the Hawaii Department of Health alleging that prior to the release of Obama’s Long-Form Birth Certificate by the White House on April 27, 2011, the Hawaii Department of Health was in the process of forging a birth certificate for Obama. Additionally, Arpaio’s investigators sent to Hawaii were told that this same person had validated to trusted sources that an Obama birth certificate had been forged and that the attending physician named on the forged document was known to be deceased, and was believed to have destroyed all birth records after leaving practice. According to this trusted source in Hawaii, a deceased physician with no known archived practice records was considered by forgers to be the ideal physician of record to name on the forged birth certificate manufactured for Obama." • InfoWars says : "Subsequently, Zullo also received credible information from two sources that two different independent hospital administrators in meetings held in 2008, as Obama was preparing to run for President, participated in searches of all hospital records on the island to identify which hospital was Obama’s birth hospital. Both hospital administrators attested that no hospital in Hawaii had any records proving Ann Dunham Obama had been a patient, or that Barack Hussein Obama was born there. 'Queens Hospital was the hospital originally named by the Obama family as the birth hospital, but when it developed that Queens did not have records of Obama’s birth, the family shifted to story to claim Obama was born at Kapiolani Hospital,' Zullo told Infowars.com. 'Queens Hospital quickly reported publicly that Obama was not born in their hospital,' Zullo continued. 'The admission of Queens Hospital that no birth record existed presented a serious problem for the already belabored Obama birth narrative,' Zullo said. Kapiolani refused to comment neither confirming nor denying Kapiolani Hospital was Obama’s birth hospital,' he stressed. 'To date, Kapiolani has not produced a single shred of evidence that any original birth records exist, nor has Kapiolani Hospital ever produced any supporting documentation or released any information that proves Stanley Ann Dunham was a patient at Kapiolani in August 1961 who gave birth to a son, Barack Obama, supposedly born on August 4, 1961,' Zullo insisted." • Adding further skepticism surrounding the validity of the Obama Certificate, was the fact that, according to InfoWars : "Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie gave an interview to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2011, announcing he had launched an investigation into the matter of Obamas birth record, promising he would be able to locate the original copy of Obama’s long-form birth certificate that he would subsequently make public. As of 2011, Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Hawaii Department of Health had found Obama’s Long-Form Birth Certificate. To the contrary, he only suggested his investigations to date had identified a rather obscure listing or notation of Obama’s birth that someone had made in the state archives. Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Hawaii Department of Health had found Obama’s long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate. The governor only suggested his investigations to date had identified an unspecified listing or notation of Obama’s birth that someone had made in some unspecified archive. 'It was actually written, I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down,' Abercrombie said. Zullo discounted Abercrombie’s 2011 claim. 'If Abercrombie’s allegation is to be believed, it is apparent that what Abercrombie claims to have discovered was an unspecified document or some type of written indication of Obama’s birth event that someone would have made over 50 years ago on a piece of paper found buried in some archive out of the customary chain of custody for official vital statistics birth records documents,' Zullo told Infowars.com. Zullo stressed the achieved document Abercrombie claimed to have found has never been made public." • “What is clear from Abercrombie’s statements is the fact that he could not locate the original vital record at the Hawaii Department of Health, in other words, there was no Long-Form Birth Certificate located in the file vault at Hawaii Department of Health in 2011,” Zullo pointed out. “Had an original Long-Form Birth Certificate existed for Obama, I would have thought Governor Abercrombie would have been able to locate it rather easily,” Zullo concluded. • Zullo went on to point out to InfoWars that a written statement of former Hawaii Director of Public Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued in October 2008 cast further doubt that an original 1961 LFBC for Obama ever existed in the Hawaii Department of Health archives. On October 31, 2008, Fukino issued a statement that read in part : “Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawaii, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Senator Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures." BUT, says Zullo : “No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii.” • Zullo noted : “The problem here is that Fukino claims to have physically inspected the original birth certificate in 2008. However, in 2011 some 3 years later Governor Abercrombie goes on an exhaustive search to locate the same document, but it is nowhere to be found. It is not in the bound volume as in accordance with state policies and procedures. Somebody is lying.” • Zullo explained to Infowars.com that this investigatory background lent credence to Montgomery’s claims in 2013 that the CIA or some other government actors had covertly breached Hawaii government computers looking for original and authentic Obama birth records : “The CIA breach would also enable the undetectable insertion of fraudulent digital information of a fictitious birth event to be surreptitiously implanted into the Hawaii Department of Health vital records computers database. Once the fictitious record has been created that would allow an unsuspecting clerk to simply locate the fraudulent record in the computer database and print a computer-generated Short-Form Birth Certificate (SFBC) without ever verifying the existence of the original Long Form Certificate (LFBC) in the file room vault. Hawaii did in fact originally produce a Short-Form Birth Certificate in 2008. In an attempt to quell the growing controversy and to satisfy the questions surrounding the Obama birth narrative, a Short-Form was released in 2008 during Obama’s presidential campaign. However, that was a digital record and not an original Long Form Birth Certificate. This did not satisfy the growing number of skeptics.” • Zullo stressed that Montgomery’s information does provide a possible scenario in which government operatives would have had the ability to insert Obama’s birth records electronically into the Hawaii government official database by breaching the Hawaii government computers without detection of the intrusion. Zullo concluded : "While it may have been easy for the Hawaii Department of Health to produce a Short-Form Birth Certificate from the information now located in Hawaii’s electronic vital statistics database, the problem came when Obama was forced to produce his Long-Form Certificate of Live Birth. That’s when the White House released to the public via the internet a computer-generated PDF File of a purported Long-Form Birth Certificate claiming to be a copy of Obama’s birth records located in the Hawaii Department of Health vault on April 27, 2011." • This, in Zullo’s analysis, was Obama’s fatal mistake : “What the White House released was not a physical hard copy document. It was not a copy of any verified authentic document, it was absolutely nothing. It was a computer-generated PDF file containing a copy of something that had its metadata erased from the electronic file, making it impossible to determine origin and authenticity of the file.” Because of this, Zullo insisted the PDF file released by the White House on April 27, 2011, as Obama’s legitimate Long-Form Birth Certificate has zero legal probative value and as such cannot be considered an official document created and certified by the issuing State as called for by statute : “This PDF file cannot be relied on as proof a birth event in any legal setting. It is not paper, it was created in cyberspace and resides in a computer. On April 27, 2011, Obama showed the nation and the world absolutely nothing.” • Then, on December 15, 2016, Sheriff Arpaio and Chief Investigator Zullo held a press conference to announce the conclusion of their forensics investigation that established the long-form Hawaiian birth certificate that President Obama released in a White House press conference on April 27, 2011, was a forgery. The White House had claimed the Long-Form Birth Certificate released on April 27, 2011, was a computer copy of the original Obama birth certificate, dated August 4, 1961, that the Hawaii Department of Health has never released publicly, but claims to have in a Department of Health archives vault maintained in Honolulu. At the press conference, Zullo showed a video of Obama’s birth certificate -- alongside one obtained from Johanna Ah’Nee that forensic experts said contained “nine points of forgery” -- establishing that Obama’s Long-Form computer-generated birth certificate released by the White House on April 27, 2011, had been copied from Ah’Nee’s birth certificate. The You Tube video can be accesed at < https://youtu.be/XBw-Q4-slqI >. • I have no proof that the Obama PDF birth certificate is either real or a forgery. But, I have many questions about it and about whether Barack Obama was actually born in the United States. It is long past the time when knowing the truth would have made a practical difference to the Obama presidency. Today, IF Obama is not a natural born citizen eligible to be elected President, perhaps his perks and pensions could be stripped away. More important, perhaps the Supreme Court would agree to nullify all the executive orders he signed, and/or nullify laws he signed, like Obamacare. The real mystery remains -- why would a President not want to present a hard copy of his birth certificate? Why would a President want to be dogged by the allegation that he is not a natural born American citizen. Why would he hide and obfuscate when asked to prove he is a US citizen. • Sadly, logic suggests that he is not a natural born citizen and fraudulently sought and won the presidency. • • • DEAR READERS, Progressives like Barack Obama think that if they lie often and loud enough, the world will believe them. So, they lie about themselves, they lie to their supporters, and they lie about President Trump. They call him anti-Semite -- his Jerusalem actions prove he is Israel’s greatest ally. They call him sexist -- he has contributed to countless women shattering glass ceilings and achieving firsts for female professionals, and three of the most powerful people in the Trump White House are women, but the ProgDems ignore that and call one of them "ugly." They call him a liar -- even while he always strives to keep more campaign promises than any President we’ve ever had. But, these lies push more people to Trump as they judge him for his actions instead of the ProgDem lies. Trump has been and will be accused of many crimes, but none will stick because they are entirely Fake. Obama, I suspect, is now busy setting up Hillary Clinton, Chicago style, as the fall guy -- and it will be easy because of her corrupt life -- for his own administration’s corruption of the FBI, CIA and NSA. Neither Obama nor Hillary can reconcile themselves to honest elections, where there is a chance they'll lose. President Trump won fair and square, relying on his message and his voters. The Democrats are at their wits’ end. They can’t scare Trump. They can’t fool Trump voters. They can’t silence the conservative websites. What was done in dark corners is coming into the light. • As for John McCain, I wish him well. I pray for him. I hope before he dies he comes to terms with the damage he has done to himself and to his country by trying to destroy President Trump. But, try as I may -- just as for Romney and the Bush family -- I cannot forgive John McCain for his treachery toward the only honorable American political party of the past 160 years. The Grand Old Party. May the Trump GOP elephant now feeling its birthing pangs live long and prosper.

Tax Relief, Deconstructing Obamacare, Taking on the UN, Israel Support, the Booming Economy -- 2018 Mid-Term Election Issues

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT THERE ISN'T MUCH REAL NEWS. But, 2018 is mid-term election year and there are some interesting issues to consider that could have great impact on voting in 2018. • • • TRUMP VOTER FRAUD COMMISSION GETS GREEN LIGHT. Reuters reported on Tuesday that a US appeals court in Washington has upheld a lower court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud to request data on voter rolls from US states : "The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) watchdog group, which filed the lawsuit, did not have legal standing to seek to force the presidential commission to review privacy concerns before collecting individuals’ voter data. EPIC had argued that under federal law, the commission was required to conduct a privacy-impact assessment before gathering personal data. But the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the privacy law at issue was intended to protect individuals, not groups like EPIC." Judge Karen Henderson simply said : “EPIC is not a voter.” • Judge Henderson, who wrote the appellate decision, overturned the US District Court decision of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had denied EPIC’s injunction request in July. • The commission, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, was set up by President Trump in May to determine if people voted unlawfully in the 2016 presidential election. The commission’s vice chairman, Kris Kobach, the Republican secretary of state for Kansas and an advocate of tougher laws on immigration and voter identification, asked states in June to turn over voter information. The data requested by Kobach included names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliation, felony convictions and voting histories. More than 20 states refused outright and others said they needed to study whether they could provide the data. Civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have said the commission’s eventual findings could lead to new ID requirements and other measures making it harder for groups, including non-citizens, that tend to favor Democratic candidates to cast ballots. • The path is now clear for the commission to begin its work on voter fraud, although getting to results that could influence voter controls in November 2018 seems unlikely. • • • THE LITTLE-NOTED ASPECTS OF THE NEW TAX PLAN. • • MIDDLE CLASS TAX RELIEF. Everyone from the New York Times to your local TV channel on the Moon is trying to explain why the Trump tax plan will be great for business and the rich but bad for the Americna middle class -- nonsense that will be seen soon when those middle class workers begin to see more money in their paychecks because less is being deducted for taxes. • Democrat Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said of the tax law : “This is serious stuff.” He is so right, but he doesn't see why. GOP Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell answered : “I think this is an important accomplishment for the country that people will value and appreciate.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, speaking on the House floor, called the vote “a turning point” saying “this is our chance, this is our moment.” • Passage of the bill came over the strenuous objections of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, who have accused Republicans of giving a gift to corporations and the wealthy and driving up the federal debt in the process. This was the message hammered out across mainstream media -- CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC -- and it had an effect. A pre-Christmas poll from CNN and SSRS found that the tax legislation continues to be unpopular with the general public, with 55% opposing it and 33% supporting it. More people think they will be worse off with the tax bill, and a majority of people think the tax cuts will favor the rich rather than the middle class. BUT, Ryan dismissed polling that suggests the tax bill is unpopular and attributed skepticism about the legislation to pundits spreading untruths on television. He said that he is confident that once taxpayers see more money in their paychecks and enjoy the benefits of a simpler tax filing system, they will learn to appreciate the merits of the tax bill. Ryan told his weekly news conference : “Results are going to make this popular.” Ryan emphasized the tax relief the bill will provide for middle-class families, small business and workers : “This is the greatest example of a promise being made and a promise being kept.” • To be sure, the middle class tax relief that will soon appear in paychecks across the US will have an effect on the 2018 mid-term elections -- but, that is being largely ignored by the mainstream media that supports the ProgDem tax-and-spend Swamp. Tax relief for the middle class will go some way to undercutting what the Democrats saw as a chance to retrieve the Senate and reduce the House GOP majority. ProgDems have been touting the "disasters" of the Trump presidency -- more nonsense -- but it will be hard for them to actually explain to the voters back home why they voted en-bloc against reducing taxes for their constituents. The tax bill vote was on party lines -- the Senate approved the the tax bill, 51-48, and the House approved it 227-203. • • OBAMACARE STEALTH REPEAL. Perhaps the least-mentioned part of the new tax law is what Politico called its "stealth repeal of Obamacare." The new tax law repeals the individual mandate in 2019, potentially taking millions of people out of the health insurance market. In addition, the Trump administration has eliminated some subsidies, halved the insurance enrollment period, greatly reduced the Obamacare marketing campaign, and rolled out a regulatory red carpet for basic new health plans that will change the insurance landscape in ways that are harmful to former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. Unfortunately, none of these individually represent a death blow. But in aggregate, the past year adds up to a slow, stealthy erosion of the law. • Obamacare advocates acknowledge that Obamacare is weakened, but they also insist that it has so far survived the onslaught, although in a stripped-down form. Some insurers are finding their footing in the Obamacare markets -- but, whether the health plans ride out the ongoing turmoil or make a run for the exits will help determine if the law survives, and in what form. • Republicans spent a year trying and failing to repeal and replace Obamacare in a direct move, but they killed the unpopular individual mandate -- to either buy Obamacare insurance or pay a substantial fine for not doing so -- in the tax bill, and it is a sweet, surprising victory. Americans didn’t like being told to get health coverage or pay a fine. Now, Republicans can tell them, they won’t have to -- another item the GOP will sell to voters in 2018, as another example of Democrat failure to help the middle class the ProgDems always insist they are "saving" from Trump and the GOP. • With the mandate out of the way, Republicans also hope it will be easier to unravel even more of Obamacare. If they can’t get the votes to repeal it, they can still try to force its collapse. The CBO estimates the loss of the mandate would mean 13 million fewer people would be insured a decade from now. Not all health policy experts agree that it would have that destructive an effect. For all its political toxicity, experts say, the mandate didn’t impose a big enough financial penalty on individuals to do what it was intended to do -- namely, push enough young and healthy customers into the new insurance market to spread around the cost of covering the older and sicker ones. • The true impact will be clear soon enough. In October, Trump halted “cost-sharing reduction” payments to insurers, which they use to bring down out-of-pocket costs for lower-income customers -- although Congress may reluctantly restore them in its January spending bill, if Senator Susan Collins gets her way. As predicted by Republicans, many states have figured out how to make up for the lost payments in a way that let subsidized Obamacare customers get zero-premium insurance. When President Trump cut off key payments to insurers known as cost-sharing reductions, insurers, to make up for the lost revenue, raised premiums, but cleverly used the structure of Obamacare to raise prices only on certain plans. That had the effect of increasing government subsidies that help people afford insurance. The end result was a convoluted way to increase subsidies, which actually made plans more affordable for many people, helping to entice them to buy coverage. But, even with that -- rolling more of the decisionmaking and costs for health care back to the states, a goal of Republican lawmakers and President Trump -- will appeal to the Trump and conservative base in November 2018. • In the same vein of giving health care power back to the states, in October President Trump issued an executive order so that states can allow two new kinds of plans to compete with Obamacare insurance policies -- without having to abide by Obamacare’s rules. That means they don’t have to offer the full complement of Obamacare health benefits -- maternity, mental health, state-of-the-art cancer care, for instance -- and they don’t have to offer the same protections, although anyone with a pre-existing condition must be offered insurance that covers the condition. Both of these plans -- association health plans for the small-group market, and yearlong basic stopgap plans --will probably draw the younger and healthier, leaving older and sicker people reliant on Obamacare plans, and driving up the price even more, at least in the states that exercise these new options. • So, some conservative health policy experts don’t think Congress and Trump have gone far enough. They fear scrapping the mandate but leaving many rules intact could possibly set in motion an inevitable “bailout” from Congress that would let Obamacare live to see another day. Conservative analyst Chris Jacobs, for instance, wrote in The Federalist recently that lawmakers need to get the rest of the job done. Mandate repeal, he wrote, is like “pruning back the fruit of the poisonous tree” when what’s needed is an attack on its roots. • The Obamacare wars aren't over. Although the law is in tatters, it’s still here and may produce yet more political surprises. GOP Senator John Cornyn even raised one post-mandate scenario that's not on anyone's horizon right now : bipartisanship : "Arguably, doing away with the individual mandate makes the Affordable Care Act unworkable -- not that it was particularly great beforehand. So I think ultimately this will precipitate a bipartisan negotiation on what we need to do as an alternative." Senator John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican, also said he hoped there would be a bipartisan deal but said another option is trying to find 50 votes for a modified version of the Graham-Cassidy repeal bill. That bill failed to get 50 votes earlier this year. Without more push from the House -- that's relatively easy -- and the Senate GOP majoritie to actually repeal Obamacare, the issue could be a plus for Democrats in the 2018 elections -- ProgDems would be able to say that the GOP could not kill off Obamacare because it is popular, and Republicans would still be forced to say that they want "repeal & replce" without actually delivering on their promises. • • • INFRASTRUCTURE -- A BIPARTISAN ISSUE TO TRADE FOR Obamacare? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said of anothr of Trump's important agenda item -- infrastructure : "I think it's pretty popular with Democrats and Republicans." President Trump has long urged action on infrastructure and is expected to release a legislative proposal next year. He tweeted support Friday for working with Democrats on a bill : “At some point, and for the good of the country, I predict we will start working with the Democrats in a Bipartisan fashion. Infrastructure would be a perfect place to start. After having foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is time to start rebuilding our country!” But conservative groups warn Republicans should not stray from the core issues that helped them win power in 2016. Andy Roth, vice president of government affairs for the conservative Club for Growth, said recently : “It's important for Republican members of Congress to recall that they made a promise during last year's campaign to repeal Obamacare. So even though they had a difficult time doing that earlier this year, they still owe it to the American public to try again. We definitely think that they need to tackle it.” GOP Representative Mark Walker, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee Chairman, said he hopes Republicans can get both entitlement reform and Obamacare repeal done next year. Senator Lindsey Graham, who has co-authored an Obamacare repeal bill with Senator Bill Cassidy, last week reiterated his commitment to pushing his legislation in 2018 : “To those who believe -- including Senate Republican leadership -- that in 2018 there will not be another effort to Repeal and Replace Obamacare -- well you are sadly mistaken.” • McConnell and others have noted the difficulty Republicans are likely to have in passing an Obamacare repeal bill with a 51-49 majority. Repeal legislation failed in the Senate repeatedly this year, when the GOP still enjoyed a 52-48 advantage. With the midterm elections fast approaching, passing Obamacare repeal legislation could prove difficult. McConnell said last week : “The Graham-Cassidy proposal, they intend to, obviously, continue to work on. And my view of that is, as soon as we have the votes to achieve it, I would like to do that. The only observation I made yesterday that you may be referring to is, 51-49 is a pretty -- is a pretty tight majority. But I'd love to be able to make more substantial changes to Obamacare than we have.” • Complicating matters for McConnell is the fact that House Republicans are already furious that McConnell mishandled the Obamacare repeal effort this summer and have been simmering over the Senate’s unwillingness to even try to pass GOP spending bills this fall. They’re also upset that the Senate provision doesn’t include abortion prohibitions in proposed new Obamacare funding. • If infrastructure programs are to be enacted before the November 2018 elections, it seems that something on Obamacare will be needed to balance the conservative - ProgDem divide. My guess is that this will not happen and so infrastructure will become a project-by-project issue, in which the Republicans in the Senate pass everything they can get through, forgetting more controversial items -- like the Wall, for instance. Infrastructure will not be a major item for either party in November, but Obamacare will be a plus for Republicans because it reflects a guiding principle of Republican and conservative politics that is abundantly clear in the rise and fall of the Obamacare individual mandate -- which is, despite Chief Justice Roberts' opinion, another example of how Congress, and government in general, do not do well at trying to regulate the national economy. • • • THE UNITED NATIONS. When the Trump administration claimed credit this week for budget cuts at the UN, the Washington Post said : "some critics of the organization saw the prudent oversight of taxpayer money, while others questioned Washington’s determination to be seen wielding a big stick." The US mission to the United Nations on Sunday hailed the operating budget of $5.396 billion for 2018 and 2019, slightly less than the $5.4 billion requested by Secretary General António Guterres. In a statement, the mission said the United States had negotiated $285 million in cost savings as well as reducing “bloated” management and support functions. US Ambassador Nikki Haley said : “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked," calling the cost-cutting historic and promising more to come. • Using a calculation based on the size of its economy, the United States pays 22% of the UN operating budget, and 28% of its peacekeeping operations. That makes it the largest contributor among member nations, followed by Japan, China, Germany, France and Britain. President Trump has been highly critical of spending at the UN, but he is not alone in his concern about costs. Guterres, who took office shortly before President Trump, has vowed to bring efficiencies and reform to the UN bureaucracy. Negotiations over the UN budget were months in the making. A US official said US pressure helped bring about cuts to peacekeeping missions in Darfur and Haiti, freeing money to create a new special envoy for Burma to focus on returning the Rohingya people to their homes. It also involved a number of more esoteric reforms, such as a flexible workplace initiative and pension fund oversight to increase accountability. Peter Yeo, head of advocacy for the United Nations Foundation, which supports UN causes, said : “These cuts are positive news for the US-UN relationship. The cuts demonstrate that the UN is capable of tightening its belt to reflect budget constraints in donor capitals, including the US.” • When Haley first became ambassador, she said the United States would be looking for ways to make the organization more efficient, and could cut US contributions to causes and agencies it considers hostile to US interests, such as those that have leveled a disproportionate share of criticism on Israel. Mark Dubowitz, head of the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, called it a legitimate use of US resources and power : “It’s been quite successful. There were 66 countries that opposed, abstained or didn’t show up for the UN vote on Jerusalem. Those were historic numbers. It worked. It should not be a shock the US has decided to play power politics at the UN, like all other countries.” • Nikki Haley's -- that is, Donald Trump's -- historic defense of Israel and Haley's budget cuts will be a plus in the November elections because there are literally millions of Americans who do not trust or agree with UN policies and have for decades been calling for the US to withdraw completely from the UN, or at least force the organization to take more objective and cost-effective approaches to its affairs -- not, as many Americans say, continue down the path of being the world's biggest and most ineffective "debating society." President Trump is the personification of these views and he will make the most of them in the 2018 mid-term elections. • • • ABORTION AND PRO-LIFE ISSUES. Anti-abortion groups encouraged lawmakers to include abortion restrictions in the December stopgap govenrment funding bill -- something some conservatives said they would need to see at a minimum for their support of the bill. Democrats argued that the restrictions go beyond the so-called Hyde Amendment -- the decades-old language that currently bars federal funding of abortion -- to restrict how women can use their private dollars on insurance plans that cover abortion. Senator Schumer said last Tuesday the abortion language would “kill it [the funding bill] altogether,” blasting the GOP : “A good faith effort would not be laying down a marker that it must have the Hyde Amendment in it, that'll kill it altogether.” Senate Republicans wanted to resolve the spat by leaning on the White House to promise to better enforce the existing prohibitions on federal funding of abortion, which they say the Obama administration didn’t do. Technically, they note, existing law already prohibits federal funding of abortion -- it even requires insurance companies to set up separate accounts for abortion. Senator Alexander said : "Under the law, properly implemented, there should be no possible way for federal funds to be used for elective abortions. And maybe it’s a problem with the implementation of the law more than the law itself.” • BUT, then Reuters published on Wednesday its latest report in a series, saying that : "Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show. The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn’s warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue. Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January. How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear.... Neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses." • “This needs to be reviewed,” said US Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special US House committee on the use of fetal tissue. Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid. • In four of the photos, a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit uses forceps to lift a different fetus from the brownish liquid. In three other photos, a marker that includes a government evidence identification number lies beside a fetus. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said : “The actions depicted in these photos are an insult to human dignity," adding that if individuals “violate federal laws and traffic in body parts of unborn children for monetary gain,” they should be “held accountable.” • Blackburn told Reuters the discoveries in Rathburn’s warehouse raise questions about the practices of body brokers across America. Reuters says : "Such brokers take cadavers donated to science, dismember them and sell them for parts, typically for use in medical research and education. The multimillion-dollar industry has been built largely on the poor, who donate their bodies in return for a free cremation of leftover body parts. The buying and selling of cadavers and other body parts -- with the exception of organs used in transplants -- is legal and virtually unregulated in America. But trading in fetal tissue violates US law. In most states, including Michigan, public health authorities are not required to regularly inspect body broker facilities. As a result, it’s impossible to know whether body brokers who deal in adult donors are acquiring and profiting from fetuses." Photos from inside Rathburn’s warehouse offered a stark example of government failures to police the industry. They include images of rotting human heads, some floating face up in a plastic cooler. The FBI, which has been investigating Rathburn and other body brokers, declined to comment to Reuters. • Blackburn said she also found other Reuters stories about the body trade disturbing. As part of the news agency’s examination of the industry, for example, a Reuters reporter was able to purchase two human heads and a cervical spine from Restore Life USA, a broker based in Blackburn’s home state of Tennessee. The deals were struck after just a few emails, at a cost of $900 plus shipping. Blackburn said it is "sickening” how easily Restore Life sold the parts to Reuters. • • • DEAR READERS, this sale of human body parts is an issue that should be raised loud and clear by all Republicans in Congress -- and well before 2018 election campaigns begin. We would hope that it does not collapse into a partisan stand-off, with ProgDem abortion activists refusing to recognize the need for tight control of the sale of human body parts in order to protect their favored Planned Parenthood and its harvesting of fetal tissue. • Republicans have several really hot-button issues in their favor heading into the crucial 2018 elections -- the serious tattering of Obamacare, aggressive action at the UN, unflinching support for Israel, abortion restrictions and the sale of human body parts if they take up the issue, and the new tax law that benefits the middle class and business, so that jobs and the booming Trump-effect economy and rising stock market will continue. It is vital that the GOP keeps the Senate and House, adding to its majority in both, in order to push ahead with the Trump agenda to Make America Great Again. That should be every Deplorable's major goal for 2018.

The Interlaced Probes and Players in the Hillary Email Scandal, the Uranium One Deal, and the Russia Dossier/Trump Collusion Mueller Investigation

THE REAL NEWS TODAY is that it's becoming difficult to keep the probes -- and the probers -- of the Clinton-FBI-DOJ-Mueller separated. Let's try to clear the air. • • • FIRST --KEEP IN MIND THAT HILLARY & HACKS TRIED TO HIDE AND/OR DESTROY ALL THE EVIDENCE. In mid-December, government watchdog group Judicial Watch released documents from the US State Department showing that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin were allowed to "remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were 'personal' materials and 'unclassified, non-record materials," including files on Clinton's telephone calls and schedules that were not to be made public. In addition, the documents show that Abedin took five boxes of "physical files" from the State Department that included records marked "Moslem Engagement Documents." All of these documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by Judicial Watch. JW president Tom Fitton said : "We already know the Obama State Department let Hillary Clinton steal and then delete her government emails, which included classified information. But these new records show that was only part of the scandal. These new documents show the Obama State Department had a deal with Hillary Clinton to hide her calls logs and schedules, which would be contrary to FOIA and other laws. When are the American people going to get an honest investigation of the Clinton crimes?" The JW FOIA request had asked for "any and all DS-1904 (authorization for the Removal of Personal Papers and Non-Record Materials) forms completed by, or on behalf of" former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, and former Deputy chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan. The documents included, according to Judicial Watch, "a list of official and personal calls and schedules that Clinton removed, which carry a special notation that the doucments were not to be made public records." A note for those records, signed by State Department official Clarnece N. Finney Jr., states : "The Secretary's call log, grid and schedules are not classified, however, they would not be released to the general public under FOIA. They are being released to the Secretary with this understanding." Other records taken by Hillary and Huma included an electronic copy of "daily files," an electronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, an electronic copy of the Secretary's "call grid," and 45 boxes of Clinton's personal and public schedules. According to Judicial Watch, "the documents [also] indicate that Clinton removed a physical file of "the log of the Secretary's gifts with pictures of gifts." • Crooked Hillary certainly tried to cover her trail, and it seems she had help at the highest levels ofthe Obama administration -- did that help reach as high as President Obama? We need to see all the documents removed, stolen, bleached or otherwise made inaccessible to Congress and the American electorate in order to answer this question. • • • SESSIONS RE-OPENS URANIUM ONE INVESTIGATION. We should think of the Uranium One deal as the precursor to the Russia Dossier and collusion allebgations against candidate-and-President Trump. Uranium One, as we have discussed at length in prior blogs, was the shady uranium deal involving Russia and the Clintons. Attornezy General Jeff Sessions has ordered prosecutors at the Justice Department to begin interviewing agents at the FBI about evidence they uncovered during a criminal investigation of the Uranium One deal. At the heart of the 2010 deal was the fact that Hillary Clinton signed off on the Uranium One project while she was Secretary of State. The 2010 deal allowed Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, to acquire a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with mining operations in the Western United States that encompassed some 20% of the US uranium strategic material reserves. • During the campaign, Trump and others accused Hillary of giving away these US uranium rights to the Russians in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation -- in the form of direct "contributions" of as much as $125 million, and a $500,000 fee to Bill Clinton for a speech in Russia. NBC News has reported the allegations of corruption surrounding the process under which the US government approved the uranium sale, stating that the FBI gathered evidence beginning in 2009 showing the Russians engaging in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering in relation to the deal. But no charges were filed. • The initial investigation -- from 2009 to 2015 -- began while current special counsel Robert Mueller was acting FBI Director. The investigation ended under FBI Director James Comey, fired by President Trump in early 2017 for mishandling the Hillary email investigation. The investigation was supervised by then-US Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy Attorney General, and by then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI Director under Trump. • The KEY point is that both Mueller and McCabe now play a key role in the current investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation about money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI. Hillary Clinton has denied playing any role in the decision by the State Department to approve the sale, and the official who approved it has said Clinton did not intervene in his work. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the DOJ, is reviewing whether McCabe should have taken himself out of the Clinton email investigation. McCabe’s wife received more than $700,000 in campaign donations from two PACs, including one controlled by a Hillary Clinton ally. The report confirmed Horowitz has expanded his review to include whether or not the FBI investigation into claims of Trump campaign collusion with Russia is politically biased. • AG Sessions has now called for a new review of all the prior investigations of, and the facts relating to, the Uranium One deal. The Sessions investigation comes after Representative Bob Goodlatte received a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Stephen Boyd saying that Justice Department lawyers would make recommendations to Sessions about whether an investigation should be opened or expanded, or whether a special counsel should be appointed to probe a number of issues of concern. • In November, Hillary made the outlandish statement that she didn’t think Trump should investigate her because it would constitute an : “abuse of power. If they send a signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship, like some authoritarian regime, where political opponents are going to be unfairly, fraudulently investigated, that rips at the fabric of the contract we have, that we can trust our justice system.” • Hillary Clinton ought to know about "unfair" and "fraudulent' investigations of "political opponents" -- because that is exactly what has become the focus of the renewed probes into the FBI's handling of all issues related to Hillary's emails, as well as the origin and use of the highly questionable Christopher Steele "Russia Dossier" -- ordered and paid for by Hillary's campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee -- that was used a the basis for FISA survellance of Candidate Trump and then President Trump an his team, and appointent of special counsel Mueller to investigate Trump-Russia collusion ot win the 2016 election. • It is absolutely critical to keep those underlying facts clear in order to understand what is now happening. • • • LOOP 1 -- HILLARY'S EMAIL "SPECIAL" PROBE. Fox News reported last Saturday that GOP Representative Matt Gaetz told Fox's America’s Newsroom that a congressional committee has email evidence that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicated Hillary Clinton was going to get an “HQ special” regarding the investigation of her unauthorized email server and ties to the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as Secretary of State. Gaetz, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, described the circumstances at the FBI regarding the investigation as : “extreme pro-Hillary Clinton bias. The Judiciary Committee is engaged in an investigation, particularly as it relates to the handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal and any potential investigations of the Clinton Foundation and the handling of bribes or other types of improper payments. I can certainly say that my impression after these interviews is that there was extreme pro-Hillary Clinton bias that benefitted her in this investigation and that she received special treatment as a consequence of her candidacy for President. That shouldn’t happen. The law should apply equally to all Americans whether they’re political candidates or not. And so, we need to institute reforms through the Judiciary Committee for more oversight, for more transparency so that this never happens again.” Gaetz explained to Fox News that it was the committee’s intention to find out if there was a departure from standard “procedures" : "Our view is we need to find out if whether or not the procedures were departed from. And we have email evidence from Andrew McCabe indicating that Hillary Clinton was going to get an ‘HQ Special,’ a headquarters special. That meant that the normal processes of the Washington field office weren’t followed and....he had a very small group of people that had a pro-Hillary Clinton bias who had a direct role in changing that investigation from one that likely should have been criminal to one where she was able to walk. And so I think that we’ve got to ensure that that never happens again, that the same processes that would apply to any American would also apply to people who were running for president of the United States.” • We can easily agree with all of Gaetz' conclusions about process -- but it is also vital to re-open the email investigation to lay out the picture of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information and her attempts to cover up the mishandling, and then to bring criminal charges if that is in order based on the evidence. • We already know that recently released documents show that Comey edits watered down the seriousness of the FBI findings in the Hillary Clinton email probe. Fox's Jake Gibson and Judson Berger reported this on December 14, stating : "Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, released copies of the edits to Comey’s highly scrutinized statement. The original statement said it was 'reasonably likely' that 'hostile actors' gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account...changed later to say the scenario was merely 'possible.' Another edit showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as 'extremely careless' as opposed to 'grossly negligent.' " Gibson and Berger call the latter "a key legal distinction," but many legal experts say that the two phrases are interchangeable and describe the same criminally negligent action. • Senator Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the final Comey statement also removed a reference to the “sheer volume” of classified information discussed on email : “While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey’s statement in at least three respects.” Senator Johnson concluded : "In summary, the edits to Director Comey’s public statement, made months prior to the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI’s public evaluation of the implications of her actions. This effort, seen in light of the personal animus toward then-candidate Trump by senior FBI agents leading the Clinton investigation and their apparent desire to create an ‘insurance policy’ against Mr. Trump’s election, raise profound questions about the FBI’s role and possible interference in the 2016 presidential election and the role of the same agents in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation by President Trump.” • Senator Jonnson is referring to newly revealed anti-Trump text messages exchanged between FBI officials who at one point worked on the Robert Mueller Russia probe. Fox News confirmed that one of those officials, Peter Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, was the person who changed the language of the Comey statement exonerating Hillary Clinton from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” Strzok's wife worked for Fusion GPS, the company that oversaw the preparation and circulation of the Steele Russia Dossier, during the 2016 presidential election. • Thus, we have closed Loop 1 -- that same FBI officials who exonerated Hillary Clinton's probable criminal mishandling of her email classified material while Secretary of State are the same FBI officials who despised Trump and participated in the use of the Russia Dossier to build the case that Trump and Russia were in collusion to influence the 2016 election. • • • LOOP 2 -- THE STEELE DOSSIER IS THE WORK OF FUSION GPS, PAID FOR BY HILLARY & HACKS AND THE DNC. Zero Hedge wrote on Christmas Day : "The Russiagate story concocted by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, who coincidently funded Fusion GPS (the firm behind the ‘Trump dossier’ that the entire Russia election meddling is based upon), is unraveling at record speed. Mary Jacoby, the wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who is the man in the middle of the entire Russiagate scandal, boasted on Facebook about how ‘Russiagate,’ would not exist if it weren’t for her husband." Zero Hedge quotes Tablet Magazine : "A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s top-secret “sources” in the Russian government -- which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control -- but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for The Wall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed....Understanding the origins of the 'Steele dossier' is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected President of the United States....In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion’s share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.) 'It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump,' Jacoby wrote. 'Let’s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.' " • This goes directly to the nature of what became known as the "Steele dossier," or more commonly "the Russia Dossier," on which the Russiagate narrative is founded. Zero Hedge says : "The Gateway Pundit reports that the news of the Facebook post comes amid heightened scrutiny for the opposition research firm. According to Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called on a senior Justice Department attorney to look into appointing a special counsel to investigate recently demoted official Bruce Ohr’s contacts with Fusion GPS. 'Sessions on calls for a special counsel to look into Sr DOJ Official Bruce Ohr, and wife Nellie’s contacts with Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016 : I’ve put a Senior Attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren’t being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met, and the recommended one should be established,' tweeted Fox News reporter Jake Gibson on Tuesday. Fox News reports : 'Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties -- including whether she worked on the dossier -- remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.” • • • CONGRESS FOCUSES ON McCABE OVER TEXT "INSURANCE" AGAINST TRUMP. Fix This Nation asked in a December 21 article, "What Was the “Insurance Policy” FBI Agent Spoke Of in Text Message?" • The text messages of FBI Agent Peter Strzok -- already knee-deep in the cover-up of Hillary's mishandling of classified materials -- "sent off alarm bells in the halls of Congress, but there was one in particular that investigators found disturbing....this one could not be mistaken for innocent chatter." This Strzok email said : "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office -- that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected, but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” • House Republicans have come to the conclusion that Strzok was talking about FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe when he mentioned “Andy,” but those commenting on the email phrase "insurance policy" say it is not clear what Strzok's phrase meant. According to new Wall Street Journal reporting, Strzok’s secret plot was nowhere near as nefarious as he made it sound in the message : “The agent didn’t intend to suggest a secret plan to harm the candidate but rather address a colleague who believed the Federal Bureau of Investigation could take its time because Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was certain to win the election, the people said,” WSJ reported, citing sources inside the FBI. The WSJ continued : “His text was meant to convey his belief that the investigation couldn’t afford to take a more measured approach because Mr. Trump could very well win the election. It would be better to be aggressive and gather evidence quickly, he believed, because some of Mr. Trump’s associates could land administration jobs and it was important to know if they had colluded with Russia.” • That is a reach too far. The Progressive media that still supports Hillary 100% and despises President Trump and his conservative agenda is bending over backwards to spread “innocent” explanations for Strzok’s damning texts. Don't be fooled. As Fix This Nation put it : "If the FBI really believed that the Trump campaign was colluding with Moscow to hijack the presidential election, is there any chance they would just...casually investigate? 'Oh, treason? Hmm, well, we’ll get around to it at some point'...That doesn’t make any sense. What did Strzok mean? • • • STRZOK WAS SAYING RUSSIA PROBE ‘INSURANCE POLICY’ TO DERAIL TRUMP WAS A SHAM. InfoWars suggested in mid-December that the Russia collusion investigation is a "sham." If we accept the analysis most favorable to special counsel Mueller, he fired Strzok immediately after reading the emails, including viciously anti-Trump statements, that revealed a discussion about starting the probe into Russian collusion as an “insurance policy” should Donald Trump win the presidency. Mueller fired Strzok in August without explanation. But reports surfaced in December showing that Strzok was dismissed after text exchanges with FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed a deep anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton bias. • After learning that this information had been withheld from Congress by Mueller or his staff despite multiple subpoenas, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes threatened FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with contempt-of-Congress citations : "We now know why Strzok was dismissed, why the FBI and DOJ refused to provide us this explanation, and at least one reason why they previously refused to make [FBI] Deputy Director [Andrew] McCabe available to the Committee for an interview,” Nunes said in a statement. • Nunes was undoubtedly referring to the fact that Strzok played a significant role not only in Mueller’s Russia Dossier probe, but also in Hillary Clinton’s email investigation when he changed the words from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” And, he also conducted the interview with Clinton and her top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, who it was later revealed lied to the FBI about when they learned about Clinton’s secret server. In addition, he also conducted the interview with former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn -- in a series of contacts that could be seen as illegal entrapment -- which subsequently led to his recent indictment for lying to the FBI. President Trump has commented that the damning reports explain why Hillary was not prosecuted : "Report : 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE.' Now it all starts to make sense!" That tweet alone got 52,742 Replies; 38,221 Retweets and 127,113 Likes. • Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel -- after Attorney General Sessions recused himself from all Russia-related matters in a fit of legal sensitivity that was encouraged by the #NeverTrump GOP in Congress and all the ProgDem leadership. Rosenstein was grilled recently by the House Judiciary Committee in light of the damning evidence of conflict of interest surrounding both the Russian collusion investigation and Clinton’s email investigation, and insisted that he’s “not aware of any impropriety,” adding that Mueller would allow “no bias” in the any of the investigations. “It’s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions,” Rosenstein said. “I believe Director Mueller understands that, and recognizes people have political views but that they don’t let it [affect their work.]” • Rosenstein has never publicly explained if or when he knew about the Strzok "insurance policy" email, and he has never criticized Mueller for waiting until the Washington Post was going to break the story in December before informing congressional oversight committees. • Much more importantly, we have no indication of how direct the Strzok input into the special counsel's Russia Dossier collusion investigation was, and whether he was fired only after his input had been so great that it would have tainted -- made unusable -- any and all results of the Mueller investigation. Just what did Robert Mueller -- a former FBI Director and highly respected lawyer -- think when he read the following Strzok words : “I want to believe the path you [his paramour] threw out for consideration in Andy’s office -- that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected. But I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” Did Mueller say -- 'gee, that could be a problem down the road so I just won't mention it to Congress.' Or did he show the damning email to his supervisor Rosenstein and say -- 'here, you handle this hot potato.' If that was the case, Rosenstein reached the same conclusion -- 'I just won't tell Congress about this email.' • Really !!! Just how dumb do the WP and WSJ think we are that we would believe that Strzok was merely telling his extra-marital grlfriend that they better get cracking to gather evidence before Trump was elected. NOT LIKELY, because they both believed Trump would not be elected. AND, they wanted to be sure that he would lose the election by smearing him with the Fake Russia Dossier allegations that they took at almost face value in the hope that it would be their "insurance policy" -- their sealing of Trump's fate by using unverified smut in the Hillary/DNC paid-for political campaign rag used to get FISA surveillance warrants and go after Trump and everyone they could catch in that highly questionable surveillance net. • Did the Deep State FBI say, 'What the Heck...go for it !' It would be easy -- but only IF THEY BELIEVED that Hillary would win and prevent their illegal use of the FBI for political purposes from being found out. • That string of reasoning and cover-up throws the Trump-Russia investigation’s integrity into terminal doubt. And, that is what House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is surely talking with other Republicans. He is reportedly going to write a report in 2018 alleging “corruption” at the FBI, says the Washington Post. Citing people familiar with the plan, the WP reports the Nunes project "would focus on information about the conduct of FBI officials in the course of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in last year’s election." • President Trump’s latest attacks on the FBI came on the morning of Christmas Eve, when he ripped into Deputy Director Andrew McCabe -- the then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe who investigated the Uranium One deal and whitewashed Hillary and who is now, now the deputy FBI Director -- over reports that he is to retire soon. McCabe has been a top Trump target because he worked under former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May. Trump, along with Nunes and other congressional Republicans such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, suggest the FBI was not aggressive enough in its investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. McCabe’s wife, a candidate for Virginia’s state Senate at the time, accepted campaign donations from a Terry McAuliffe political action committee tied to Hillary and Bill Clinton. This has led some Republicans, led by Trump, to say McCabe should be investigated for a pervasive bias that would taint any FBI investigation of Hillary or Uranium One that he has touched. • Thus, we have closed Loop 2 -- the same FBI officials who have demonstrated through emails a hatred for Trump and a support for Hillary Clinton that makes it impossible for them to conduct any impartial special counsel investigation into Trump's alleged "collusion" with the Russians, and who used the fallacious Steele Russia Dossier to go after Trump through FISA surveillance and then use questionable legal tactics based on their FISA collection of tainted information to drive the inference that Trump "colluded" -- whatever that means, because it has no legal significance -- with somebody in Russia -- who has never been named, for a criminal purpose that has never been explained, and by means that have never been explained. These same FBI officials who exonerated Hillary Clinton's probable criminal mishandling of her email classified material while Secretary of State are the same FBI officials who despised Trump and participated in the use of the Russia Dossier to build the Fake case that Trump and Russia were in collusion to influence the 2016 election. • • • THE NOOSE TIGHTENS. TheHill reported last week that House GOP chairmen are asking the DOJ to make FBI officials available for interviews : "The House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees are seeking to interview FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and two other agents as part of a joint investigation into the bureau's actions during the 2016 election. In particular, the investigation is looking into the FBI and the Justice Department's handling of two investigations : the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State and the investigation into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. In a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, Represnetative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representative Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ask the Justice Department to make McCabe, FBI chief of staff Jim Rybicki and FBI counsel Lisa Page available for transcribed interviews. Republican lawmakers have grown frustrated with what they have said is an unwillingness by the FBI to share details about its handling of both investigations. The letter to Sessions and Rosenstein could be a possible precursor to a subpoena. McCabe, in particular, has been the target of Republican scrutiny because of his wife's bid for the Virginia state Senate and her ties to Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe. The letter came as McCabe spent hours testifying before the House Intelligence Committee...amid Republican concerns that the FBI is biased against President Trump." • • • DEAR READERS, National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy published last Friday a truly excellent article on the timeline of events in the FBI investigations of Trump. It is titled "Was the Steele Dossier the FBI’s ‘Insurance Policy’?" You can access the article at < http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454909/trump-russia-collusion-fbi-investigation-steele-dossier-hillary-clinton-campaign?htm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-12-25&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives >. I urge you to read it. • McCarthy wrote in another article on December 4 : "Before the next aftershock, it might be helpful to make three points about where things stand. In ascending order of importance, they are: 1.) There is a great deal of misinformation in the commentariat about how prosecutors build cases. 2.) For all practical purposes, the collusion probe is over. While the “counterintelligence” cover will continue to be exploited so that no jurisdictional limits are placed on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, this is now an obstruction investigation. 3.) That means it is, as it has always been, an impeachment investigation. No sensible person thinks the Trump campaign colluded in Russian espionage. If there were such evidence, I’d be first on line demanding the President’s impeachment and removal. Nor did Trump obstruct the investigation of this non-crime by firing the FBI director....Rather, Mueller’s investigation is a semblance of law-enforcement disguising the brute reality that Trump is being punished for winning the election and defying Obama policy. If that is the way the game is going to be played, if the purpose of a special-counsel “collusion” investigation is to humiliate the opposition party by exposing its wayward foreign-policy objectives and unsavory horse-trading, then let’s investigate Obama and Iran." And, in the McCarthy article I encourage you to read, he writes : "In conclusion, while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele [Russia] Dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign -- and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that US intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected President. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than -- what’s the word? -- resist." • Finally, in a frank interview with Fox News in mid-December, Representative Peter King of the House Intelligence Committee said that Donald Trump Jr.’s official congressional interview cleared up nearly all doubt about the possibility of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia : “Nobody listening to that interview could come out of that thinking there was any collusion at all. This is totally phony.” Fox News then noted the comments of Representative Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on Nunes' House Intelligence Committee, who told CNN’s “State of the Union" that anyone with half a brain would conclude that the Trump campaign was guilty of collusion. Schiff said that the campaign’s association with WikiLeaks, the unreported meetings between Trump officials and Russian diplomats, and the Russian influence campaign all point in one direction. Fox News' response to Schiff was : "Wow, so we’re down to this now, eh? Russia offered to help the Trump campaign...the Trump campaign shrugged and said, “OK,”...and Russia then published the hacked emails on WikiLeaks? That’s the story the top House Democrat on the Intelligence Committee is going with? This is preposterous and we’re not even sure -- even if Mueller COULD prove this to be the case -- that anything described there rises to the level of a crime. At best, we’re talking about a political talking point the Democrats can use for the next three years. And even that...it’s weak, to say the least." • Mueller needs to show, at least, that some of the Russia Dossier is actually correct, and that, by all accounts and analysis, won’t happen. The Dossier was Democrat propaganda that the FBI decided to take seriously because the Obama administration and the Deep State intelligence community were determined to make sure that Trump never got anywhere near the White House. On Monday, a report from Tablet Magazine said : “To date the investigation into the Fusion GPS-manufactured collusion scandal has focused largely on the firm itself, its allies in the press, as well as contacts in the Department of Justice and FBI. However, if a sitting President used the instruments of state, including the intelligence community, to disseminate and legitimize a piece of paid opposition research in order to first obtain warrants to spy on the other party’s campaign, and then to de-legitimize the results of an election once the other party’s candidate won, we’re looking at a scandal that dwarfs Watergate -- a story not about a bad man in the White House, but about the subversion of key security institutions that are charged with protecting core elements of our democratic process while operating largely in the shadows.”