The West Loses Turkey but Trump Works to Bring into the Fold Both China and North Korea

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS IN TURKEY, CHINA, AND NORTT KOREA. The stories are very different. • • • WE CAN SAY GOOD-BYE TO A WEST-LEANING TURKEY. The BBC reported : "Turkey's long-standing leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now 64 years old, has won a new five-year term after securing outright victory in the first round of a presidential poll. Mr Erdogan got nearly 53% with almost all votes counted. His closest rival Muharrem Ince was on 31%....Ince, from the Republican People's Party (CHP), has accused state-run news agency Anadolu of 'manipulation' over its reporting of vote-share figures. There were another four candidates on the presidential ballot, all of whom fell below 10% of the vote. The opposition is yet to officially concede but said it would continue its democratic fight 'whatever the result.'....Final results will be announced on Friday." • Erdogan will now assume sweeping new powers, won in a controversial referendum last year that was won by Ergodan with 51% backing, says the BBC, adding that the post of PM will be abolished. • The Turkish election was the most fiercely fought in many years. Erdogan had a lot of positive talking points -- a strong economy and a solid support base he created by investing in healthcare, education and infrastructure. But, Erdogan has also polarized opinion by cracking down on opponents and putting 160,000 people in jail. His routing of freedom of the press and arrests of journalists has not made him popular with the more moderate stata of Turkish society. • At 3 AM Monday morning local time, Erdogan gave a triumphant victory speech from the balcony of his party's headquarters in the capital Ankara, declaring : "The winner of this election is each and every individual among my 81 million citizens." Congratulations rolled in from Islamic leaders including Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Russian President Vladimir Putin talked of Mr Erdogan's "great political authority and mass support." • Erdogan was prime minister for 11 years before becoming president in 2014. Under the new constitution, he could stand for a third term when his second finishes in 2023, meaning he could potentially hold power until 2028. Critics argue the enhanced role of the president will place too much power in one person's hands, and that Turkey's new system lacks the checks and balances of other executive presidencies like France or the US. Erdogan maintains his increased authority will empower him to address Turkey's economic woes and defeat Kurdish rebels in the country's south-east. In his victory speech, he said Turkey would act more firmly against terrorist groups, and would continue to "liberate Syrian lands" so refugees could return to their homes there. • Mark Lowen, a BBC Turkey correspondent, reports : "Despite 90% of the media being pro-government and largely shunning the opposition, the president's posters and flags dwarfing any challenge on the streets, the election being held under a state of emergency curtailing protests, and critical journalists and academics being jailed or forced into exile, Mr Erdogan only got half of the country behind him. 'We are living through a fascist regime,' the opposition MP Selin Sayek Boke told the BBC. 'But fascist regimes don't usually win elections with 53%, they win with 90%. So this shows that progressive values are still here and can rise up.' For now, though, this is Mr Erdogan's time. With his sweeping new powers, scrapping the post of prime minister and able to choose ministers and most senior judges, he becomes Turkey's most powerful leader since its founding father Ataturk. He'll now hope to lead the country at least until 2023, a hundred years since Ataturk's creation. And a dejected opposition will have to pick itself up and wonder again if, and how, he can be beaten." • The BBC reported tight security at polling stations : "Ahead of the vote, concerns had been raised about potential voter intimidation and electoral fraud. Voter turnout was high at almost 87%, the state broadcaster Anadolu. Rights activists have said the press is not free to report on all sides in Turkey. It has become the world's biggest jailer of journalists under Mr Erdogan's rule, according to monitoring groups. Mr Erdogan has already cautioned his rivals against claiming foul play, saying: 'I hope nobody will try to cast a shadow on the results and harm democracy in order to hide their own failure.' " • Europe has dithered for more than a generation about whether to give Turkey the chance to become an EU member state, or at least have a special relationship with Europe. This was a matter of discussion long before Erdogan took the reins of Turkish politics in his hands. France has always loudly rejected these proposals, all the while welcoming legal and illegal migrants whose political and religious views mimick Erdogan's. Germany has, for good reasons, remained on the fence about Turkey -- there are 10 million Turks living in Germany, brought in because Germany needed and needs workers. And, German Chancellor Angela Merkel looked to Erdogan to bail out of her self-inflicted open border catastrophe in 2015, finally negotiating alone without asking for help from the EU to pay Turkey upwards of €7 billion to hold and house migrants on their way to Germany as illegals or asylum seekers -- and to seal the western borders of Turkey so that these migrants could not sneak into an EU country and claim asylum. The deal has its rather gaping flaws, but it is working resonably well if saving Merkel from her open-border fiasco is the goal. I bring this up because Europe has routinely taken the position that Turkey is not and can never be "European" -- as if France's enclaves of Moslems are "European." In fact, Germany's Turkish residents are often very "European" and were generally opposed to Merkel's open door. The United States, during both Republican and Democrat presidencies -- at least until Obama -- urged the EU to negotiate a place for Turkey in the EU, as a member or as a special neighbor, reminding Europe that Turkey is a key NATO member and provides the eastern frontier of NATO's defenses. The US has critical airbases in Turkey that provide cover for Syrian and Iraq operations. But, as we often witness, Europe has its own insular approach to most of the non-EU world. So, Turkey was rejected. And, Erdogan decided to look for neighbors and allies elsewhere. His pro-Islamic positions, his general rejection of Israel, his attempts to undo the secularization so well anchored in Ataturk's Turkish consititution, his personal preference for radical Islam being foisted on Turkish citizens as security-based -- all these actions are somewhat reactions -- to being rejected by Europe. The world and Turkish citizens will now pay the heavy price of a Turkey officially ambivalent about western values and NATO's role in the country that will put European defenses at risk on its easern flank. Erdogan's courting of Russia's Putin, his deals with the ayatollahs of Iran, his on-again-off-again relationship with Israel, all will continue and undoubtedly get worse. And, Europe will shout -- see, we told you so, Turkey is Islamic and does not deserve to be in the EU because of its human rights record. Sigh !!! As with most issues, Europe cannot see that it is often its own shortsighted policies that cause the problems that it then cites as the reason for its policies. • • • TRUMP SENDS HIS BIG GUN TO CHINA FOR MILITARY EVALUATIONS. The Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday that the Department of Defense has announced that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is enroute to China. It will be his first visit to China. The Free Beacon wrote : "Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will make his first visit to China this week for talks with Chinese military leaders amid growing tensions over China's militarization of islands in the South China Sea. Mattis told reporters aboard an Air Force E-4B jet, en route to northern Alaska that he plans to gauge China's strategic approach to the United States during talks in Beijing. 'On our relations with China, obviously we're reviewing our military-to-military relationship [to] make sure it's aligned within our larger strategic framework,' Mattis said. The Defense Secretary described the upcoming meetings in China, which will include talks with senior generals, as an exchange on 'strategic perspectives' on topics of mutual concern to 'determine where we have common interest and where our interests diverge.' • Under Mattis, the Pentagon for the first time in decades identified China, along with Russia, as a strategic military threat under a new national defense strategy made public in January. The strategy labeled China a strategic competitor, reflecting the new White House national security strategy that has focused on economic and trade threats posed by Beijing's unfair policies. • The visit to China will be key, coming as the US issues warnings about China's recent deployment of advanced antiship missiles and air-defense missiles on disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Free Beacon says "the missile emplacements violate a September 2015 pledge by Xi, announced during a summit with then-President Barack Obama, that China would not militarize the disputed islands. The islands also are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, and several other states in the region. China has built up some 3,200 acres of new islands in the sea over the past several years and quietly added military facilities, including runways, bunkers, storage areas, and recently missiles. As a result of the missile deployments, the Pentagon blocked China from sending navy ships to take part in the upcoming US-led international naval exercise called Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC. Mattis is scheduled to arrive in China as naval forces from more than two dozen nations kick off the exercises later this week. The timing of the Mattis visit coinciding with the start of RIMPAC will likely be viewed by the Chinese as further highlighting the snub of the PLA Navy." But, Mattis says of RIMPAC that : "The idea is to maintain transparency, to maintain understanding what each other is doing. Navies can be one of the most stabilizing influences in terms of counter piracy, freedom of navigation, disaster relief, humanitarian support." • Recently, several US warship passages in the South China Sea were met with Chinese warships that tried to force the Navy vessels out of the region. China also recently fired a laser at US military aircraft flying near a Chinese military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. The laser injured the eyes of two aircrew members aboard C-130 transport aircraft flying to a nearby US base. China in recent months also has increased its military coercion of Taiwan, an American ally, by flying bombers near the island, which is located 100 miles off the Chinese southern coast. • Mattis, according to the Free Beacon, declined to characterize US-China tensions over the South China Sea, Taiwan, and Beijing's theft of American technology as the beginning of a new Cold War : "We have larger issues and you see those being handled." Mattis told reporters he believes China shares the US interest of seeking a denuclearized Korean Peninsula : "That's their policy. But by and large I want to go in and take a measure for where they're at today and see where our interests converge. At the same time I'm going in to do the listening this time and make certain that where we can, we can engage in a transparent strategic conversation.....that's the whole reason I'm making the trip, instead of just sitting in Washington and reading news reports, intelligence reports, or analysts' reports." • • • TRUMP CALLS OUT CHINESE US INVESTMENTS AS PART OF TRADE ISSUE. CNBC said Monday that : "The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that President Donald Trump plans to bar several Chinese companies from making investments in US tech. The newspaper also reported that the administration wants to block additional technology exports to China. Both measures are expected to be announced by the end of the week. Increasing trade tensions between the US and its key trade partners, including China, have kept Wall Street on edge. But, late on Monday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called the WSJ's story "fake news." He also said that investment restrictions against China and other countries are not immediately forthcoming and that the falling market was overreacting, and he added that measures will impact not just China, but all countries "that are trying to steal our technology." • Meanwhile, the Hong Kong based South China Morning Post reported on Sunday that Beijing "won’t target" US firms in China to hit back at US President Donald Trump’s trade threats. The SCMP says Chinese authorities are "keen to reassure foreign businesses in China and retaliation against them has "never been on the cards," quoting Chinese government sources. One source said : "A big worry for China is that foreign investors are opting to leave the country. The option of targeting US firms in China has never been on the cards.” Chinese President Xi Jinping held a roundtable with foreign business executives last Thursday and promised that China’s market would remain open. The source said this “sent a very clear message from the top leadership” that US firms were still welcome. • The SCMP says that since China’s total imports of US products were US$130 billion in 2017, it would be practically impossible for Beijing to impose tariffs on the same scale of US products, leading to suggestions that Beijing might restrict US investment and tell Chinese companies not to do business with American firms. A SCMP source said this option was not under consideration while China was still trying to de-escalate the tensions : "China talks tough but treads warily in tackling Donald Trump’s trade threats. US companies had an outstanding US$256 billion in investment in China by the end of last year, exceeding China’s outstanding investment of US$140 billion in the United States, according to a report by the National Committee of US-China Relations and Rhodium Group in April. Chinese investment in the United States dropped to US$29 billion in 2017 from US$46 billion in 2016, but the flow was still twice the level of US investment in China last year, according to the same report." • Efforts by both sides to defuse the tensions are continuing before the first batch of tariffs on Chinese products comes into effect on July 6. Sources told the SCMP that one of Beijing’s key negotiators, commerce vice-minister Wang Shouwen, had spoken to US businesses in China in search of a last-minute compromise. National Economic Council staff in Washington had also contacted former US government officials and China experts in recent days to assess the chances for high-level talks in the next two weeks that would include Vice-President Wang Qishan, Bloomberg reported, citing unidentified sources. • Money and Markets reported early last week that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Detroit Economics Club that China is engaging in “predatory economics 101” and an “unprecedented level of larceny” of intellectual property. He said China’s recent claims of “openness and globalization” are “a joke,” adding that China is a “predatory economic government” that is “long overdue in being tackled,” on matters that include IP theft and Chinese steel and aluminum flooding the US market. “Everyone knows...China is the main perpetrator,” he said. “It’s an unprecedented level of larceny. Just ask yourself : Would China have allowed America to do to it what China has done to America?” Pompeo raised the trade issue directly with China last week, when he met in Beijing with President Xi Jinping and others. Pompeo said : "I reminded him that’s not fair competition." Pompeo described US actions as “economic diplomacy,” which, when done right, strengthens national security and international alliances. We use American power, economic might and influence as a tool of economic policy. We do our best to call out unfair economic behaviors as well.” • • • CHINA'S RESPONSES. The South China Morning Post published an Opinion piece on Monday by Gustavo Oliveira, geographer and political ecologist at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, about China's soybean imports, saying that timing, huge demand and structural bottlenecks diminish Brazil’s reliability as a backup soybean supplier to China. Oliveira wrotes : "Boycotting US soybeans by turning to Brazil’s bumper harvest seems like an ace in the hole for Beijing, since soybeans alone account for 10% of total US exports to China. Moreover, destabilizing US agricultural exports could turn the traditionally conservative and soy-dependent American Midwest against the Republican Party in November’s midterm elections. After all, China’s gargantuan market accounts for 65% of global soybean imports; thus, without being able to offload its harvest to China, the economy of the US Midwest would essentially risk collapse." • But can China count on Brazil to substitute US soybeans? Oliveira says 'no'....First, seasons alternate between the northern and southern hemispheres. So while US soybeans are harvested from late September through November, Brazilians gather in their soybean crops from February through May. This distinction means the recent sabre rattling between Washington and Beijing has taken place during the Brazilian harvest-and-export season, when abundant supplies enable Chinese companies to avoid US imports....This dynamic will shift after September, however, when Brazilian harvests are mostly exported, and international buyers must turn instead to US supplies. Second, total annual demand for soybeans in China exceeds Brazilian export capacity. In fact, it exceeds global export capacity, excluding the US crop. At 97 million tonnes, China’s soybean imports in 2017-18 account for 30% of total production in the rest of the world, gobbling up almost the equivalent of total production in the US (119.5 million tonnes) and Brazil (119 million tonnes). But Brazilian processors must crush at least 43 million tonnes of their soybeans domestically to supply the country’s world-leading livestock sector, leaving only 76 million tonnes for export. That is 21 million tonnes short of China’s demand. The next largest producer, Argentina, produces merely 37 million tonnes, down from 57.8 million tonnes last year due to severe drought. To meet the needs of its domestic processors and European demand for soy oil and meal, however, Argentina is already tapping its stocks, leaving almost nothing for China." • Brazilian stocks are also very low, hovering below 2% of domestic supply since 2013. so, says Oliveira, to prevent a trade war, "Beijing may agree to import a larger share of US soybeans, much to the chagrin of Chinese companies that have invested in Brazil and broken the US suppliers’ monopoly. If tariffs take effect next month, there will certainly be record Chinese imports from Brazil, and US soybean exports will realign to Europe and other smaller markets. But Chinese buyers will still need to swallow some high-tariff US soybeans." • Oliveira also points out the factthat Brazilian exports face significant structural bottlenecks and political instability, noting last month's massive truck drivers’ strike that paralysed the country for 11 days. In addition, according to Oliveira, "political upheaval may grip Brazil this October, when general elections proceed without the most popular candidate, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, barred on corruption charges widely seen as politically motivated. Another wave of massive strikes could curtail Brazilian exports -- precisely when US suppliers gain the upper hand." • The SCMP also noted on Monday that : "China’s central bank said on Sunday it would unlock at least US$100 billion for the country’s lenders to bail out troubled state firms and to help small businesses, as Beijing tries to shore up growth under the shadow of a trade war with the United States. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in a statement it would cut the reserve requirement ratio, the share of deposits lenders must put aside with the central lender, for commercial banks by half a percentage point from July 5. The cut would free up 500 billion yuan (US$76.86 billion) in funds for the big banks, including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank, to finance debt-to-equity swaps, a measure often used for troubled state enterprises. It would also free up 200 billion yuan for smaller banks to boost lending to small businesses across the country, the central bank said. The move is a 'targeted operation' aimed at supporting the weak links in the economy and not a change to the country’s 'neutral and prudent' monetary policy stance, the PBOC said." Although the PBOC statement did not mention China’s trade row with the US, or its recently released weaker economic indicators that are worrisome to more than America, the reduction in the reserve ratio will come into effect a day before the first of President Trump’s additional tariffs on Chinese products are due to be implemented. • Deng Haiqing, a visiting scholar at Renmin University of China, wrote in a note that the PBOC’s move represented a significant shift in China’s policy, and was not just fine-tuning : “The authorities have started to see the pain inflicted on the real economy from deleveraging, and they are trying to reduce it." Beijing has been rolling out its debt-for-equity scheme across the country since 2016, says SCMP, and the deal involves state companies borrowing money from the big banks to reduce their debt levels, but if they fail to repay their loans, part of the debt can be restructured as an equity stake. While the scheme has been very popular among banks and state firms, the PBOC said big lenders were running short of funding for it. It also said that banks should not use the funds to help 'zombie companies.' " • Shao Yu, the chief economist with Orient Securities in Shanghai, wrote in a brief note that the funds, once released by the central bank into the commercial banking system, may flow into places that the central bank doesn’t like. Shao wrote : "It’s a very twisted way of supplying liquidity -- although the central bank always wants released funds to flow into places where it wants to see, the results can be very different.” • According to SCMP, China’s economic expansion has slowed sharply in recent months with investment and retail sales growth in May falling to their lowest levels in decades. Meanwhile, China’s stock market plunged to two-year lows after Trump escalated trade threats last week. A flurry of bond defaults also took place in China’s onshore market this year, reflecting financial stresses as the central bank kept liquidity supply tight. Tan Han, a fixed-income analyst at Guotai Junan, a Chinese brokerage, wrote in a note that a cut in required reserve ratio alone can’t make a fundamental change to China’s economic and financial situation, and Beijing needs to roll out other policies, such as proactive fiscal spending, to bolster growth." • So, Trump's decision to force China to stop its predatory trading practices not only comes at a bad moment in China's economy, but it also comes with negative implications for soybeans, one of China's largest food crop imports, for its currency, and for the PBOC's efforts to re-fund China's debt-ridden smaller businesses. • • • IS CHINA 2018 LIKE JAPAN 1989? American Thinker published an article last Wednesday that notes the similarities between China's economy today and Japan's in the 1980s. The article quotes "China's Next Ten Years" by Roy C. Smith of NYU’s Stern School of Business in the summer 2018 Independent Review. Smith writes : "Thirty years ago, Japan’s borrowing was out of control, expanding factories and building at an insane pace. A single plot of land in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California. Their educational system was flawless, and their exports became ever more sophisticated. We in the west were stunned by Japanese successes and wanted to emulate them. Then in 1989, the Japanese economy imploded. Real estate prices went into the toilet, zombie corporations all owned each other, the Nikkei dropped from 40,000 to 7,000 and stayed there, and stubborn deflation marred a generation. Young people were not able to get jobs, to marry, or to have kids." Today, says Smith : "China, the factory of the world, is financially leveraged to the hilt. There are banks and shadow banks and no one seems to know how much has been borrowed or how many loans are in default. Regional potentates arrange for development with money that they don’t have. Decisions on what is produced and ideals that are to be pursued (like the touted turn toward 'high tech') are made by political bosses who get their clues from the doctrinaire NYT and Economist." • American Thinker asks whether "Donald Trump is helping make the inevitable Chinese internal market collapse occur sooner than later? He may, probably consciously, be arranging the cash-flow crisis, factory closures, and joblessness that will destroy the Chinese economy. Smith argues : "Let’s assume that President Trump imposes an incremental 25% tariff on Chinese goods imported to the USA....We would have to make stuff ourselves and the protected producers could raise prices of manufactured goods by the 25% of the tariffs since that’s the extent to which they will be protected from market forces, but the increases are only on the manufacturing costs and should raise the retail prices by a measly 2.5%. The impact in the USA should not be that severe. The increased costs would be cheaper than any shooting war in the Far East." • Never underestimate Trump and his inner circle of advisors. As I noted after the Singapore summit with North Korea, the real answers to where Kim Jong-un's future lies for his country will be played out not on the Korean peninsula but between the United States and China. • • • SPEAKING OF NORTH KOREA. American Thinker's editor Thomas Lifson published an article on Sunday titled "North Korea ditches anti-US propaganda." Lifson points out what few are talking about -- North Korea is no longer brainwashing its subjects that the US is a mortal danger. Lifson writes : "In a potent signal that Kim Jong-un has succeeded in persuading the rest of his regime to go along with denuclearization and ending its rogue regime status, North Korea has reversed course on its indoctrinating of the domestic populace. Anyone in the least bit curious about whether or not North Korea’s promises at Singapore to President Trump are real or not ought to be celebrating this as major news." Lifson notes that only non-US and pro-Trump US media are reporting the NK propaganda shift -- the BBC, Russia’s Sputnik News, and the New York Post. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other US mainstream media are completely uninterested. Lifson quotes the BBC: "Over the past few months, it seems, North Korea's propaganda has been changing its tune. Banners and posters displayed across the capital and other towns have typically featured the US as a brutal imperialist aggressor and South Korea or Japan as Washington's willing allies. But visitors to the country say they've seen those posters replaced by propaganda pushing economic progress and the inter-Korean rapprochement. Leading newspapers in the tightly controlled country have also seen a shift in tone, a sign the country is starting to reflect its recent diplomatic thaw to the people. The vast majority of North Koreans have very little access to information, so state media and propaganda have a far greater impact than elsewhere in the world. With the US traditionally depicted as the main enemy, propaganda has not held back on showing how Pyongyang would respond, depicting missiles destroying the US or troops crushing invaders. The posters are meant to inspire patriotism, build confidence in the leadership and a give sense that the struggles of life are for the greater glory of the nation." Lifson shows an old line, anti-US propaganda, a poster from an elementary school featured in Wikipedia -- it shows schoolchildren shooting an American soldier. But, as the New York Post indicates : "Gone are the posters depicting the US as a 'rotten, diseased, pirate nation' and promising 'merciless revenge' on American forces for an imagined attack on the totalitarian country. In their place are cheery messages touting and praising the prospects for Korean reunification and the declaration Kim signed in April with South Korean President Moon Jae-in promising 'lasting peace,' according to reports." Lifson's example of a post-Singapore propaganda poster (DPRK News via BBC) shows pure white children holding and releasing white doves over a Korean peninsula that is a flourishing green tree. Again Lifson quotes the BBC : "The BBC points out how unusual is the disappearance of anti-US propaganda : 'All the anti-American posters I usually see around Kim Il-sung Square and at shops, they've all just gone,' Rowan Beard, a tour manager at Young Pioneer Tours, told the Reuters news agency. 'In five years working in North Korea, I've never seen them completely disappear before.'....Even the anti-American trinkets which used to be sold to tourists as souvenirs have begun to change. No longer, for instance, can you find the postcards, posters or stamps that famously showed North Korean missiles heading for Washington. 'They're always very popular, not very subtle, and, as of now, have all been removed,' Simon Cockerell, general manager at Koryo Tours, told Reuters.....'In tone, the US is now depicted as if it is a normal country,' explains Peter Ward, North Korea expert and writer for NK News. 'All references to US actions that North Korea considers a hostile acts have disappeared from the paper.' There's even what Mr Ward describes as 'neutral' coverage of the US quitting the UN human rights council.' " • As Lifson says : "If President Trump succeeds, as looks increasingly likely, what will all the bureaucrats who have built careers on the 'peace process' with North Korea do to earn a living? Where will their journalist friends go to get valuable anonymous sources on the never-ending process? The answers to these questions are obvious, and explain why the news embargo on North Korea continues in the mainstream media." • • • DEAR READERS, if the shift in propaganda doesn't fully convince you of Kim's good intent, consider this as reported by Epoch Times : "On June 24, the US military said they had moved about 100 wooden coffins to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The move comes in preparation for North Korea’s return of the remains of American soldiers who have been missing since the 1950-1953 Korean War." That same day, 158 metal transfer cases were sent to the US air base near Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and would also be used to send the remains home, US Forces Korea spokesman Colonel Chad Carroll said. Carroll told the Associated Press that plans for the repatriation were 'still preliminary,' and denied a report from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that US military vehicles were carrying over 200 coffins and planning to cross into North Korea on Saturday." • President Trump said after the Singapore summit on June 12 that Kim had agreed to return the remains. Previously, US officials and Trump himself said that the remains are believed to be some or all of the more than 200 complete sets of remains that the North Koreans have had for some time. However, the precise number and the identities -- including whether they are US or allied troops -- won’t be known until the remains are tested, reported AP." More than 35,000 Americans died on the Korean Peninsula and 7,702 are still missing in action, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Of those, an estimated 5,300 are believed to be in North Korea. North Korean officials have indicated in the past that they have the remains of as many as 200 US troops. A prior repatriation agreement between the United States and Korea stalled in 2005 due to political tensions. The deal had lasted for 15 years, allowing the United States to recover 229 sets of remains and identify scores of others. • In his press conference while enroute to China; Defense Secretary Mattis told reporters the UN Command in South Korea is prepared for North Korea to turn over remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War : "We're optimistic it will be done because that was an agreement coming out of Singapore." • Perhaps just to keep the pressure up a tad on both China and North Korea, Secretary Mattis stopped on his way the China to visit Fort Greely, Alaska, the location of American ground-based interceptors -- part of the anti-missile system that would be used to counter any North Korean missile attack. Currently, 40 ground-based interceptors are deployed and more are being added. • It is, as my friends often tell me these days, good to have a President who actively pursues America's interests wherever they lead, and to know that he has, unlike his predecessor, excellent relations not only with America's military but also with the many nations around the world that look to America and her military for leadership and support.

Rule of Law Matters : Indict Obama-era Known FBI/DOJ Anti-Trump Cabal Criminal Conspirators Now

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT EVENTUALLY WE WILL GET THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT THE OBAMA WITCH HUNT ON TRUMP. The facts are dripping out like maple syrup on a very cold January morning. But, they ARE dripping out. • • • THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE RUSSIAN DOSSIER AND THE OBAMA STATE DEPARTMENT. Conservative Tribune's Joe Saunders wrote a column on Friday about "a 'Russian collusion' lead special counsel Robert Mueller might want to follow up on." Saunders wanted to point out to Mueller that : "The investigators who’ve spent more than a year trying to find evidence that the Donald Trump presidential campaign was working with the Russian government might have gotten a big clue from testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday about which influential Americans knew about Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. And it wasn’t the circle around the man heading the Republican ticket. According to the Daily Caller, Obama administration 'cybersecurity coordinator' Michael Daniel told a Committee hearing that then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice had ordered him in August 2016 to 'stand down' rather than respond to Russian cyber-attacks during the campaign." • The Susan Rice order was first reported in March in the book “Russian Roulette,” by Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Washington bureau chief for the liberal magazine Mother Jones, according to the Daily Caller. These two are in Representative Nunes' frypan for having leaked news about the Russian Dossier. Keep in mind that Isikoff and Corn were the only two reporters to write about the Russian Dossier before the 2016 election, apparently after interviewing Dossier compiler Christopher Steele. They and Obama State Department senior staffers Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Elizabeth Dibble “appear to be key to the State Department’s role in handling Trump-related Russia information,” the Daily Caller article reports. Nuland came forward in February to acknowledge that she received and handled information from Steele. Winer wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on February 8 asserting that he was being unfairly targeted by Nunes. The Daily Caller reported that : “Winer and Nuland suggested in their disclosures that they determined Steele’s reports were too hot for the State Department to handle. They have both claimed they referred the information to the FBI, which was better suited to verify Steele’s still-unverified allegations.” Winer “would later serve as a source for Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff and Mother Jones reporter David Corn, the two veteran reporters revealed in their recent book, ‘Russian Roulette.’ Winer vouched for Steele to both Isikoff and Corn...about Steele’s allegations....The State Department’s involvement in Trump-Russia matters has received little media attention, but it has grabbed the 'interest' of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes." Nunes has said he is investigating "major irregularities" in how the State Department handled unspecified information used in the Russia investigation. The Dossier, authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, was key in launching the investigation. Victoria Nuland, who was the Obama State Department’s top Russia expert, revealed in Senate testimony on June 20 that : “I was first shown excerpts from the Dossier, I believe in mid-July of 2016. It wasn’t the complete thing, which I didn’t see until it was published in the US press.” Dibble, the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in London, “was reportedly one of the first US officials to receive information about a May 2016 conversation that Papadopoulos, the Trump advisor, had with Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the UK,” the Daily Caller noted. It was also revealed at the same Senate hearing on June 20 that Steele had briefed State Department officials in October 2016. “The briefing suggests closer contacts between Steele and the State Department than the agency has acknowledged,” the Daily Caller noted. • • • OBAMA’S CYBER CHIEF SAYS SUSAN RICE GAVE ‘STAND DOWN’ ORDER ABOUT RUSSIAN MEDDLING. The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross wrote an article on Wednesday detailing the Susan Rice stand-down order : "Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security advisor Susan Rice told him to 'stand down' in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign. Michael Daniel, whose official title was 'cybersecurity coordinator,' confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference. Rice’s order to Daniel was first reported in 'Russian Roulette'...by Michael Isikoff and David Corn [who] reported that Daniel was developing strategies to respond to Russian cyber attacks on US companies and political campaigns. He proposed using what’s known as denial of service attacks to take down Russian propaganda news sites and to attack Russian intelligence agencies. Another idea was to announce a bogus 'cyber exercise' against a Eurasian country. The goal was to put the Kremlin on notice that its infrastructure could easily be targeted by the US. Rice opposed the proposals, according to 'Russian Roulette.' 'Don’t get ahead of us,' she told Daniel in a meeting in August 2016, according to the book. Daniel informed his staff of the order, much to their frustration. 'I was incredulous and in disbelief,' Daniel Prieto, who worked under Daniel, is quoted saying in 'Russian Roulette.' 'Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?” Prieto asked. Daniel confirmed the exchange on Wednesday, during a round of questions from Idaho Senator Jim Risch. 'That is an accurate rendering of the conversation at the staff meeting,' he testified. 'You were told to stand down, is that correct?' Risch, a Republican, asked Daniel. 'Those actions were put on the back burner, yes. That was not the focus of our activity during that time period,' Daniel replied. He noted the White House cybersecurity team did continue working to respond to Russia, but with a smaller staff and a less aggressive approach. 'It’s not accurate to say that all activity ceased at that point,' he said, declining to describe the activities in an unclassified hearing." • The Conservative Tribune's Joe Saunders column on Friday said : "Could it be because the Obama White House wasn’t terribly interested in reacting to the Russian interference? It’s important to remember that in August 2016, with the mainstream media acting as a national cheerleading squad for Hillary Clinton, it still looked to the Washington establishment that Barack Obama was going to be succeeded by a Democrat -- and if Russian activity wouldn’t stop it, or even helped it along, who was to complain? But on a more sinister note, it’s entirely possible that Rice was installing an insurance policy in the event of the unthinkable happening and Trump actually won the presidency. The anti-Trump crowd at the Obama administration’s FBI certainly knew about 'insurance policies.' In fact, text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page used those exact words, even though it’s never been clear exactly what they were referring to. What Rice was doing, by preventing her own cybersecurity czar from taking action on the Russians, could well have been setting up a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead to the Trump campaign if the election somehow turned out differently from how Democrats had tried to rig it. That would make it appear that Russian influence over the election’s outcome had boosted the Republican candidate, and tarnish Trump’s presidency even before he took the oath of office. Even without testimony about Rice’s intent -- which is unknowable at this point -- no one can deny that that’s pretty much how events eventually played out. This kind of setup for Trump isn’t the 'Russian collusion' Mueller and his team of Trump-hunting zealots are expecting, of course. But more than a year into his investigation, which has turned up exactly zero public evidence that the Trump campaign was working with the Russians, checking it out might give him something to follow up on. So far, the Mueller investigation has cost American taxpayers at least $17 million. It would be nice to get something for that money. Even if it’s not what Mueller is looking for." • • • STEELE INVESTIGATIONS HAVE FOCUSED ON THE FBI, BUT THE STATE DEPARTMENT WAS INVOLVED. The Daily Caller revealed on Wednesdat that : "Former British spy Christopher Steele visited the State Department in October 2016 and briefed officials there about his work on the infamous anti-Trump Dossier....'Based upon our review of the visitor logs at the State Department, Mr. Steele visited the State Department, briefing officials on the dossier in October 2016,' Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said during a hearing held to review the US government’s response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Steele’s visit to Foggy Bottom in Washington, DC, prior to the election has not been previously reported. Burr revealed Steele’s visit during an exchange with Victoria Nuland, who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs in former President Barack Obama’s administration. Burr’s revelations suggest the agency maintained interest in Steele and his report much longer than previously known. Nuland was the State Department official who in late-June 2016 signed off on a meeting between Steele and the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome. Nuland was familiar with Steele’s previous work on Russia- and Ukraine-related issues. Steele began investigating President Donald Trump in June 2016 on behalf of Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was working for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. A former MI6 officer with experience in Moscow, Steele wrote 17 separate reports for the 35-page Dossier. The first report was filed on June 20, 2016. The last one is dated December 13, 2016. Nuland said Wednesday that she first saw memos from Steele’s Dossier in mid-July 2016." • Prior to her testimony on June 20, Nuland had told CBS on February 4 that she and other State Department officials referred the Dossier to the FBI : “This needs to go to the FBI, if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate." Nuland said Wednesday that she “actively chose not to be a part” of the October 2016 briefing. She also claimed that she “was not aware of [the briefing] until afterwards.” [We might ask Nuland to choose between not wanting to be present and so not going to the meeting or not knowing about the meeting -- both cannot be right.] • The State Department’s handling of the Steele Dossier is being investigated by at least one congressional committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Republicans on the panel have questioned what Nuland and other State Department officials did with the Steele information. The Daily Caller says : "Another subject of interest in that investigation is Jonathan Winer, a longtime diplomat who left the State Department in 2017. Winer has acknowledged that he met Steele during the summer in 2016 and discussed the retired spy’s Trump-related work. Winer, who has known Steele since 2009, passed summaries of Steele’s Dossier to others at [State]. He gave the summary to then Secretary of State John Kerry. It has previously been reported that Kerry was briefed on the Dossier. It is unclear if he met with Steele during the former spy’s visit to State in October 2016. Winer was also a source for the only two journalists to write articles based on Steele’s allegations prior to the 2016 election. The journalists, Michael Isikoff and David Corn, revealed their contacts with Winer in their recent book, 'Russian Roulette.' ” • Susan Rice's unmasking of hundreds of Trump team names; her stand-down order about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and her CYA "to self" memo on Inauguration Day trying to exonerate Obama of wrongdoing in the Trump witch hunt -- all suggest just how involved the Obama White House was in the attempt to falsely pin on Trump the Democrats' own collusion with Russia actually meant to destroy Trump. • • • SPECIAL COUNSEL MUELLER, THE SWAMP'S ATTACK DOG. The Gatestone Institute doesn't often write about the Mueller Russian "collusion" investigation. But on June 7, J. Christian Adams wrote a long piece titled "The Swamp Strikes Back." You can read the entire article at < https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12033/swamp-strikes-back >. • Adams writes : "The culture of the DC metropolitan area is one of wealth, privilege and self-proclaimed sophistication. The bureaucrats and insiders know what is best for you, best for your business, best for themselves, and they can make a nice living without being disrupted. Trump campaigned on disrupting this comfortable power perch; that is what they most hate about him. • We Deplorables know that we are talking "Swamp" here. And, Adams says : "Each week, Robert Mueller's Wonderlandian investigation into 'Russian Collusion' appears 'curiouser and curiouser.'....First, Mueller indicted General Michael Flynn for not telling the truth to an FBI squad that appeared unexpectedly at the White House to question him, when now it turns out that Peter Strzok, who interrogated him, said he had not lied. It also now turns out that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may later have altered Strzok's interrogation notes, and then destroyed the evidence. Mueller then indicted Paul Manafort for allegedly laundering money through an Alexandria, Virginia, oriental rug store -- a 'process crime.' Notably absent from it in any indictment was the mention of Russia, collusion or even elections. Moreover, the order from the Department of Justice, signed by Rod Rosenstein, stipulated one more directive : '(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and (iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).' As well as : '(d) Sections 600.4 through 600. l 0 of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations.' As Judge T.S. Ellis said to Mueller on May 4 : 'You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud. You really care about getting information that Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.' " • In fact, the only Mueller indictments that relate to Russia were aimed at a nest of Russians who could be labeled The Three Stooges trying to influence American public opinion using pro-Trump tweets during the 2016 election. The crimes alleged by Mueller were that the Russians were foreign agents trying to influence American elections through social media. In other words, says Adams : "the Russians were doing what they have internationally for decades -- attempting to influence domestic American politics through fronts and propaganda. When the sock puppets, incidentally, had the nerve to ask for proof, Mueller asked for a delay, which the judge refused to grant. As Andrew McCarthy, former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, noted, 'as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job : Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.' " • As Adams point out, if Mueller was interested in indicting those who try to influence foreign elections, he should had taken aim at what the Obama State Department did in 2015 -- to Israel : "Then, the Obama State Department funneled $350 thousand US taxpayer dollars to OneVoice, an anti-Netanyahu political operation during Israel's parliamentary elections. OneVoice used American tax dollars to build a political voter database, train activists, and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama's campaign apparatus. American tax dollars were funneled through Netanyahu's foes and eventually ended up back in the pockets of Obama's political machine. Now the same gang that used American power to try to bring down the Israeli Prime Minister is sanctimoniously objecting to Russian interference-by-tweeting." • Adams does not spare the FBI, calling its frenzy about the Russian tweets sinister : "The singular lesson for history of the seemingly widespread corruption at the senior levels of the FBI, Department of Justice, and the State Department is that a phony 'Dossier' about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was used to obtain -- by misrepresenting its contents to a judge -- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against private citizens. The Dossier was cooked up and paid for by Democrat political operatives with ties to the presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. When Representative Devin Nunes suspected that the admittedly 'unverified' phony Dossier was used to obtain wiretap warrants of American citizens, he was right. But it gets worse. After the warrants were obtained and telephone calls of private citizens were tapped by the FBI, Obama Department of Justice officials, and some people...inside the Obama White House, authorized the unmasking of the content of those conversations. Unmasking means that the transcripts and identities of Americans were revealed, violating their Fourth Amendment right to privacy. For good measure, Obama officials even changed the rules about how widely those unmasked transcripts could be distributed inside the DOJ, thus expanding the universe of potential leakers. And leak they did. In short, Democrats produced a phony document to make candidate Trump look creepy, then Obama DOJ officials working with sympathetic FBI staff and outside political operatives, obtained FISA search warrants by lying to FISA judges four times in order to target the Trump campaign in an apparently unlimited fishing expedition for a crime -- none ever having been specified as is required by law -- even after the President was duly elected. If all of this were not enough, a small core of powerful FBI senior staffers -- as opposed to the FBI's remarkable rank and file -- was steering this entire affair, while simultaneously texting each other about their hatred for candidate Donald Trump." • Adams accuses the Obama FBI and DOJ senior officials of using their powers first to do what could be done to "exonerate at least 13 possible crimes committed by Hillary Clinton. That, at least was the number committed before information emerged that her campaign and the DNC had funded the Dossier; later findings must have added a few more....The Swamp actors' other objective was apparently to sabotage Trump's presidency if Trump won. Peter Strzok wrote, 'I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he 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...' by using their powers in the Russia probe to destroy the President politically. • Adams is not the first to call the cabal's actions "banana republic" tactics used "where political differences are criminalized and weaponized -- and [it] is fundamentally anti-Constitutional. It appears to be -- on the part of some of the heads of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the State Department and President Obama's White House -- part of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice and abuse power in order -- as former US Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph diGenova put it, 'to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.'....What you are seeing is Constitutional political warfare unleashed by the bureaucracy against a President the bureaucracy apparently loathes. The bureaucracy seems now to believe that it is in charge, not the President. The bureaucrats make a good living, have comfy retirement plans, can buy life insurance at rates more reasonable than a private sector employee can, and likely think that Trump is a threat to their power. The bureaucrats have created a culture in Washington DC that extends beyond the hallways of their Departments....The Russian collusion investigation has not found any collusion because the investigation was never about collusion. It was always about an out-of-control federal government, emboldened by the lawless age of Obama, and flexing its newfound muscle. The Russian collusion investigation is about a clash of cultures, with one culture being the culture of DC insiders, and the other being the folks who pay their salaries." • • • ANDREW McCARTHY SAYS THE SAME THING. Back on May 30, the National Review published an Andrew McCarthy essay titled "Yes, the FBI Was Investigating the Trump Campaign When It Spied." McCarthy wrote : "The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate -- and, more to the point, to smear -- its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies -- the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation -- want you to know the President and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree. What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing? And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans [Senator Rubio and Representative Gowdy] who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees. Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant -- 'spy' is such an icky word -- at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because -- bet you didn’t know this -- doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation....I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that 'all is forgiven' once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between 'spies,' 'informants,' and other government-directed covert operatives. Sure!" • McCarthy took on both Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Trey Gowdy, calling them "General Clapper’s fellow fire extinguishers." McCarthy wrote : "Rubio is a member in good standing of that Washington pillar, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has had about as much interest in scrutinizing the highly irregular actions of intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the Clinton and Russia probes as Gowdy’s Benghazi committee had in revisiting Republican ardor for Obama’s unprovoked war on Moammar Qaddafi. (That would be: roughly zero interest.) Rubio told ABC News that he has seen 'no evidence' that the FBI was gathering information about the Trump campaign. Rather, agents 'were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning.'....Gee, Senator, when you were carefully perusing the evidence of what the FBI was doing, did you ever sneak a peek at what the FBI said it was doing?....the bureau’s then-director [Comey] said about the Trump campaign : 'I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.' That is an unambiguous declaration that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign....Comey went to extraordinary lengths to announce that the FBI was not merely zeroing in on individuals of varying ranks in the campaign; the main question was whether the Trump campaign itself -- the entity -- had 'coordinated' in Russia’s espionage operation." • As for Representative Gowdy, McCarthy finishes him off summarily : "Gowdy’s fire truck pulled into Fox News Tuesday night for an interview by Martha MacCallum....the congressman is suddenly on a mission to protect the Justice Department and the FBI from further criticism. So, when Ms. MacCallum posed the question about the FBI spying on the Trump campaign, Gowdy deftly changed the subject : Rather than address the campaign, he repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump personally was never the 'target' of the FBI’s investigation. The only 'target,' Gowdy maintains, was Russia. This is a dodge on at least two levels....the Trump-Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. An accomplished prosecutor, Gowdy well knows that 'target' is a term of art in criminal investigations, denoting a suspect who is likely to be indicted. The term is inapposite to counterintelligence investigations, which are not about building criminal cases but about divining and thwarting the provocative schemes of hostile foreign powers. In that sense, and in no other, the foreign power at issue -- here, Russia -- is always the 'target' of a counterintelligence probe; but it is never a 'target' in the technical criminal-investigation sense in which Gowdy used the term...unless you think we are going to indict a country....his digression about ‘targets’ is gibberish....Whether Trump himself was apt to be indicted, and whether threats posed by Russia were the FBI’s focus, are beside the point; in a counterintelligence case, an indictment is never the objective, and a foreign power is always the focus. Second, if Gowdy has been paying attention, he must know that, precisely because the Trump campaign was under investigation, top FBI officials had qualms of conscience over Comey’s plan to give Trump a misleading assurance that he personally was not under investigation....Clearly, the Obama officials did not want Trump to know the full scope of their investigation of his campaign. But just as important, they wanted the investigation -- an 'insurance policy' that promised to hamstring Trump’s presidency -- to continue. So, how to accomplish these objectives? Plainly, the plan called for Comey to put the new President at ease by telling him he was not a suspect. This would not have been a credible assurance if Comey had informed Trump that his campaign had been under investigation for months, suspected of coordinating in Russia’s cyber-espionage operation. So, information would be withheld. The intelligence chiefs would tell Trump only about Russia’s espionage, not about the Trump campaign’s suspected 'coordination' with the Kremlin. Then, Comey would apprise Trump about only a sliver of the Steele Dossier -- just the lurid story about peeing prostitutes, not the Dossier’s principal allegations of a traitorous Trump-Russia conspiracy....Shortly before he met with Trump, Comey consulted his top FBI advisors about the plan to tell Trump he was not a suspect. There was an objection from one of Comey’s top advisers -- we don’t know which one. Comey recounted this disagreement for the Senate Intelligence Committee. One of the members of the leadership team had a view that, although it was technically true [that] we did not have a counterintelligence file case open on then-President-elect Trump...because we’re looking at the potential...coordination between the campaign and Russia, because it was...President-elect Trump’s campaign, this person’s view was, inevitably, [Trump’s] behavior, [Trump’s] conduct will fall within the scope of that work....The director was unambiguous : The FBI was investigating 'potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.'....the FBI did not regard Russia as the 'target;' to the contrary, Comey said the focus of the investigation was whether Donald Trump’s campaign had coordinated in Russia’s election interference. And perspicaciously, Comey’s unidentified advisor connected the dots: Because (a) the FBI’s investigation was about the campaign, and (b) the campaign was Trump’s campaign, it was necessarily true that (c) Trump’s own conduct was under FBI scrutiny." • McCarthy also discusses the Steele Russia Dossier and FISA Surveillance : "That brings us to a final point. In support of the neon-flashing fact that the Trump campaign was under investigation when the Obama administration ran an informant at it....Probes conducted by both the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have established that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the Steele Dossier to obtain FISA-court warrants against Carter Page. The Dossier, a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project (a fact withheld from the FISA court), was essential to the required probable-cause showing; the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified that without the Dossier there would have been no warrant. So, what did the Dossier say? The lion’s share of it -- the part Director Comey omitted from his briefing of Trump -- alleged that the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Kremlin to corrupt the election, including by hacking and publicizing Democratic-party emails. ....It is a major investigative step to seek surveillance warrants from the FISA court. Unlike using an informant, for which no court authorization is necessary, applications for FISA surveillance require approvals at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI. After going through that elaborate process, the Obama Justice Department and the FBI presented to the court the Dossier’s allegations that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to undermine the 2016 election. If that was their position under oath before a secret United States court, why would anyone conceivably believe that it was not their position when they ran an informant at members of the campaign they were investigating?" • And, like Gatestone Institute's Christian Adams, McCarthy arrives at the same unavoidable conclusion : "To be sure, no sensible person argues that the FBI should refrain from investigating individuals suspected of acting as clandestine agents of a hostile foreign power. The question is : How should such an investigation proceed in a democratic republic whose norms forbid an incumbent administration, in the absence of strong evidence of egregious misconduct, from directing its counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers against its political opposition? That norm was flouted by the Justice Department and the FBI, under the direction of the Obama administration’s senior political leadership. Representative Gowdy, Senator Rubio, and General Clapper maintain that the Justice Department and the FBI were just doing what we should expect them to do, and that we should applaud them. But this claim is based on the easily refuted fiction that the Justice Department and FBI were not investigating the Trump campaign. The claim also ignores the stubborn fact that, if all the Obama administration had been trying to do was check out a few bad apples with suspicious Russia ties, this could easily have been done by alerting the Trump campaign and asking for its help. Instead, Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation." • • • DID THE FBI TAMPER WITH INVESTIGATION FIELD REPORTS? The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross reported last Wednesday that North Carolina Representative Mark Meadows claimed in a House hearing on Tuesday that : "there is 'growing evidence' that FBI officials altered documentation of witness interviews in the Hillary Clinton and Russia probes." Meadows made the revelation in a round of questioning with Horowitz, asking Horowitz to look into the "growing evidence that 302s were edited and changed...to either prosecute or not prosecute individuals. And that is very troubling.” Meadows was referring to forms that FBI agents use to summarize witness interviews. He told reporters after Tuesday’s hearing that he has seen evidence that 302s filled out during the Clinton and Russia investigations have been changed. He also said he has “more information” about the alleged alterations. Horowitz appeared to acknowledge that he is aware of allegations about edited 302s, telling Meadows : “If I could just mention, we have been getting those kind of referrals and as often happens when we issue reports like this we get other information coming to us, and we are intending to follow up on that.” • • • DEAR READERS, Patricia McCarthy, wrote an American Thinker article on June 22 that says : "We are in fact a divided nation, the mature and immature, the civil and uncivil, the decent and the indecent. We are divided between those who love this country and those who hate it. Our leftists are Marxist globalists who want to see America destroyed or at least transformed from the inside, as Khrushchev predicted fifty years ago that it would be. The Marxists have won in academe. They have won over the Democratic Party completely. Pelosi, Schumer, et al., are on board with flooding the US with illiterate migrants, numbers of them criminals, to satisfy their anti-American ideology. They and their agenda should be shunned by all Americans with a modicum of common sense. The left today is vicious beyond reason and dangerous. They are purposefully trying to incite violence against the President and his family. They are appealing to the craziest, most mentally deranged among us. They are hoping for an assassination. If it happens, as when Steve Scalise was so injured, they celebrate. It is who they are. Odious. They have descended into the abyss of revulsion from which they are not likely to recover any time soon. We need to fight back as conservatives have never before fought back. This left needs to be repudiated." • The evidence, the facts, are piling up that the goal of the Obama administration was to bring down first candidate and then President Trump. Obama's footsoldiers used every arrow in their legal and investigative quivers to hide this fact from Trump. They by turns lied and let slip some truths to Congress and the FISA court. They lied to Trump. They fed the media Fake news to advance their Destroy-Trump agenda. Before the mid-terms, these seditious Deep Staters must be indicted and made to face the Republic and its citizens under oath in a court of law -- in the nation that survives because it lives by the rule of law.

Summer Saturday -- Just Plain Ridiculous

SUMMER SATURDAYS ARE FULL OF THINGS THAT ARE JUST PLAIN RIDICULOUS. • • • Let's start with Maxine Waters, the Democrat Congresswoman from California -- where else?? We already know just how ridiculous Maxine is -- she's the woman who said a few month ago when things were pretty hot between North Korea and the US that what really scared her was that if North Korea dropped a nuclear bomb on the US, Turmp would probably start a war -- Say what, Maxine?? Well, Maxine, who starts every speech with a call to impeach the President, has a new idea. The pretty ridiculous United Methodist Church has submitted a formal complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his role in the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that has led to the separation of parents from their children, Newsweek reported. The UM complaint accuses Sessions of breaking the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline, charging him with child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination, and “dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church,” such as his “misuse of Romans 13 to indicate the necessity of obedience to secular law.” The UM said about Sessions : “He is ours, and we are his. As his denomination, we have an ethical obligation to speak boldly when one of our members is engaged in causing significant harm in matters contrary to the Discipline on the global stage.” Reverend David Wright organized the formal complaint against Sessions, hoping that he would “stop the things he’s doing with his social and political power that are causing such significant harm,” according to Newsweek. But Our Girl Maxine took it one step further -- she has not only praised their decision -- she has called on the United Methodist Church to remove Sessions from its denomination. Here is her tweet : "Thank you to the 640 UM church members for bringing charges against AG Jeff Sessions for his immoral attack on families and children in the name of the Bible. Separating children from their parents demands an investigation by the church. Kick him out in the name of the Lord!" Silly us, we thought the Inquisition was a long-abandoned relic form the 16th century. I think Maxine must have forgotten another part of the Lord's advice to us -- advice He said was the most important thing for us after loving God -- Love your neighbor as yourself. Maxine, please stop being just plain ridiculous. Hillary probably just accidentally 'bit-bleached" out that particular Gospel verse, because she sent out a letter last week asking for money and saying that : "Jeff Sessions is trying to use the Bible to justify this cruelty. Let me say this: I went to a lot of years of Sunday school and even taught it from time to time, and what is being done using the name of religion is contrary to everything I was ever taught." Hillary talking about teaching Sunday School is even more ridiculous than Maxine trying to kick Jeff out of the United Methodist Church. What do these two women put in their morning coffee??? • • • Here is the sports world's ridiculosity of the week -- the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles is not a fan of soccer, known internationally as “football,” and he isn’t afraid to say it. But, now he is adding that Soccer is anti-American. Right, Michael. How you arrived at that stunner is not clear, but you might have reserved your opinion until after the curently running World Cup -- it just happens to be the most watched sports event in the entire world. President Obama didn't share Michael's opinion. He tried to get FIFA to host the event in America -- at his home town in Chicago -- to no avail. What is really ridiculously funny is that current President Trump, often called anti-American, anti-globalist and anti-everything, somehow managed to help convince FIFA to agree to let the US, Canada and Mexico jointly host the 2026 World Cup. Michael Knowles, the most popular sport in the world is coming to the United States, so if I were you, I'd figure out how to explain that you really didn't say that soccer is anti-American. In a few years, that opinion will be even more just plain ridiculous than it is today. • • • How about this for just plain ridiculous. Finland came out on top in the 2018 World Happiness Report, but what if the Finnish people don’t agree. According to the 2018 World Happiness Report, based on research conducted by Gallup, Finland is the happiest country in the world. The Finns are not so sure about the result, though -- being, as they are, a typically stoic sort of people. “Nordic people, and the Finns in particular, are emotionally introverted,” explained Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, an independent think tank in Denmark that studies happiness and wellbeing. “They rarely rank highly on expressions of joy or anger -- they are very different in that way from people from Latin America, for example, who have a more exuberant emotional expression as a people. For [the Finns], happiness is more about living a reserved, balanced and resilient life.” Some Finns laughed at the report and said that Finnish people are content more than happy. This year, for the first time, the World Happiness Report asked immigrants to take part in the survey, and the happiness of the immigrant populations were virtually identical to the results for the overall population, with Finland at the top. That is to say, both Finnish-born people and those who migrated there are equally happy. So -- maybe this happiness thing isn't intrinsically Finnish. “If Finns tell you they’re not happy, I understand,” said Finland native Anu Partanen, author of The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, who has lived in the US for a decade but plans to move her family back this summer. “They are often pessimistic by nature and reserved about their emotions. They drink too much, it’s dark, the winters are cold and hard psychologically. This Finnish happiness we hear about is not about dancing or smiling or being outwardly happy. If that’s your idea of happy, then no, they are not the happiest. Perhaps the researchers asked Finns if getting drunk in your underpants at home and calling it a national tradition is what makes them "content" or "happy." Päntsdrunk, the English version of the Finnish word kalsarikänni, which means sitting at home, alone, drinking in your underwear, is the new trend in Finland. Now we understand why Finns are "happy" -- they're just plain ridiculously drunk !!! • • • For just plain ridiculosity -- this one tops them all. Gun control hasn't done much to stop London's phenomenal murder rate. Criminals are now stabbing their victims. London, as well as the rest of the UK, has lots and lots of gun control, but it just isn't stopping murderers. So, being stoic British, and not wanting to admit that they have been bested by their less than completely socially adapted comrades, UK officials have doubled down on gun control AND gone one step further -- KNIFE CONTROL. That includes a new measure just recently suggested to force knife makers to dull their blades in a bid to head off more murders. I kid you not -- it's reported by the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal : "With Knife Crimes on Rise, British Judge Recommends Duller Kitchen Knives. The judge now wants rounded knives, just like children's scissors, to ensure that anyone running with one doesn't put his or her eye out. This should do wonders for London's swinging culinary scene, penalizing its chefs with child-style cutting instruments. And it won't work for the knife control cause either. This actually is London's second round of knife control, the first was just pure knife control targeting the carrying of a knife in London, a couple months ago, bruited about by London's leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan. It didn't work, so now they're going for child-style blades for everyone, changing the face of knives." It looks like London's abundant supply of assaulters, burglars, and murderers will have to change their choice of weapons -- pitchforks, anyone?? This, Dear Olde England, really is just plain ridiculous. • • • And to wrap up this Saturday's just plain ridiculous tales, here is the whopper. In Switzerland, two people were injured, one seriously, while attempting to return two cows back to their stall this past week. The two animals ran off while being taken up to summer pastures in Vorderthal in the canton of Schwyz on Tuesday when the cows lost their cool. A farmer was eventually able to drive a suckler cow back to its stall. But as he was closing the gate, the animal broke loose and lightly injured him. Another woman who had been trying to round up the two animals was then thrown against a parked car by the suckler cow and received more serious injuries, cantonal police said in a statement. The woman was transferred to a specialist clinic by the Swiss air rescue service Rega, while the man was hospitalized. The suckler cow was eventually returned to its stall but the other cow could not be caught and was eventually put down. Now, I can hear you laughing and it does seem just plain ridiculous. BUT, hikers often encounter cows on paths throughout the Swiss Alps. Attacks are rare but they do occur, especially when the herd contains calves. A German tourist was killed in 2015 after walking through a field containing cows and their calves in the popular tourist area of Laax in the canton of Graubünden in south-eastern Switzerland. In 2014, a family of tourists were attacked by a cow with a calf above Davos, also in Graubünden and in 2012 a woman was attacked by cows in a pasture above Saint-Gingolph in the canton of Valais, an hour from Geneva. So, while the idea of cows being dangerous is just plain ridiculous -- forewarned is forearmed, as they say. Beware of Swiss cows when you're walking in the Alps. Being chased and butted by one is painful, even though the idea of the chase may be just plain ridiculous. • • • That's it for this Saturday. Keep your eyes peeled -- now there's a pretty ridiculous English expression -- for life's ridiculosities. They're everywhere.

President Trump Respects Children, Borders, and the Rule of Law While Democrats Flaunt the Law, Want Open Borders, and Use Children as Political Pawns

IT ISN'T NEWS BUT WE NEED TO SUPPORT TRUMP -- HE IS RIGHT ABOUT IMMIGRATION. Congress is finally trying to do somthhing useful but it seems doomed to failure. • • • THE HOUSE CONSIDERS TWO IMMIGRATION BILLS. Republicans will consider two bills on Thursday. One is a compromise measure worked out between conservatives and centrists. The other is a more conservative alternative. We have seen in the past few days that most House Republicans are timid about the whole immigration issue -- ever since the ProgDems made it a Fake News story about children being separated from their parents (alleged parents) at the border. President Trump finally gave in and signed an executive order on Wednesday ending those separations, but is also calling for Congress to do its duty and pass legislation. The problem is that ProgDems are not going to help pass any bill that reduces the influx of illegal immigrants -- because ProgDems are open-border traitors to America who are only interested in stacking the deck in their favor when elections roll aorund and illegals are helped onto the Democrat voter rolls. • Reprsentative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, told TheHill on Thursday that she doesn't believe Republicans have the votes to pass either immigration bill. Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, told reporters over coffee that the GOP would likely still put up the bills up for a vote, even though they know they're likely to fail. Lofgren said Republicans will seek a procedural win that would sideline a discharge petition -- a motion to force a vote while sidestepping leadership -- put forth by GOP moderates. • The rules surrounding discharge petitions require that if a conservative bill proposed by Representative Bob Goodlatte gets through the Rules Committee, the petition will be terminated. The discharge petition's near-success -- it has 216 of the required 218 signatures -- set off the current immigration debate and forced conservative Republicans to negotiate with centrists in the Party. Centrist Represnetative Ryan Costello, a Pennsylvnaia Republican who is retiring, said on Thursday that a tweet from President Trump will undermine efforts to get wavering Republicans on board with the compromise immigration plan. President Trump had tweeted earlier Thursday to re-inforce his call to end the filibuster in the Senate, venting his frustration as his immigration agenda has hit a stalemate on Capitol Hill. • Representative Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican who is chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and talks with the President daily, said he is “not optimistic” that either immigration bill that the House is considering on Thursday will pass. Meadosws told TheHill : “I think at this point the more conservative bill doesn’t get to 218. It’s still up in the air whether the more moderate bill gets to 218. If I were to have to handicap it right now at this particular point this morning,” he added, “I would say no, it’s not.” The compromise measure would provide a path to citizenship for so-called (DACA) Dreamers who were brought to the US illegally as children, earmark $25 billion for President Trump’s border wall and other security measures, and stop the separation of undocumented families at the border. Many conservatives are fighting the compromise bill ahead of Thursday’s vote, fearful they’ll be attacked from the right if they back it. Conservative groups, including NumbersUSA and Heritage Action, are labeling the compromise bill as “amnesty” for providing a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million Dreamers. Meadows says he has patched over his floor argument with Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday -- Meadows was furious that the final immigration package left out several provisions that had been agreed to during earlier negotiations. Conservatives are also angry that their GOP House leadership is bringing the original version of the Goodlatte bill to the floor instead of a modified version. Meadows noted on Thursday that some conservatives are reluctant to go out on a limb and support the compromise measure because the legislation would go nowhere in the Senate : “There’s a lot of us willing to vote for this bill and maybe walk the plank, but it’s going nowhere in the Senate. I’m not even sure they’re going to bring it up.” But Meadows did predict that Congress would act on a stand-alone fix to prevent children from being separated from their parents at the border, even though Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to stop the controversial policy by allowing children to stay with detained parents. Meadows said : “I think ultimately, we’ve got to fix it legislatively. But I do believe a more narrow bill will pass the House and Senate.” • • • CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS SUPPORT TRUIMP. Fox News' Laura Ingraham interviewed the Virginia GOP Representative Dave Brat on Wednesday. Brat flailed Democrats for wanting "a campaign issue, not a solution." Brat noted that Democrats who called the separation of illegal immigrant parents and children inhumane immediately attacked the President’s executive order because it calls for keeping families together while prosecutors pursue charges against the parents. FACT: Brat said Democrats would not work with Trump earlier this year when he offered amnesty for 1.8 million illegal immigrants brought to America as children -- and are not working with a handful of Republicans who maneuvered to force a vote on an amnesty plan over the objections of House Republican leaders. Democrats also rejected proposals by GOP Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Meadows to end the separation of families at the border. Brat was adamant : "“The net conclusion is, what do they want? They want an issue in November. They don’t really want to help these kids. They don’t want to unify families; we’ve got bills to do that. They don’t want a rational immigration policy.” • Trying to blame the GOP for the border mess, Texas-based immigration lawyer Francisco Hernandez said on the same Fox show that human smuggling has become big business for organized crime in Central America : "It is a lot more profitable and a lot less dangerous for the traffickers than drugs. It costs about $10,000 per person to be smuggled from Central America....By the time they reach the border, it's the point of no return. They're not going back. The problem here is the administration tried to send a message, to tell people, 'Don't come, because we're going to separate you from your families, from your children.' But the people were already three to six months into their trek." The left-leaning Hernandez said the US should give renewable work permits to foreigners so they do not have to bring their families. • Brat rejected Hernandez' argument, noting that Democrats would not join Republican Senators who tried to craft a compromise that would codify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for illegal immigrants brought to America as children. Brat told Ingraham : "That's baloney. Six months ago in January...the Senate Democrats shut down government over this issue, right?. They said, 'Give us 700,000 DACA.' And we said, 'OK, we'll compromise. We'll meet you halfway.' And they said, 'No.' " • Brat predicted neither of the two immigration proposals Thursday would pass in the House on Thursday. He also criticized compromise legislation pushed by House GOP leaders that would give amnesty to DACA recipients in exchange for border wall funding and certain reforms to the legal immigration system : "It doesn't have the four pillars that Trump wanted. It doesn't end chain migration. It ends two of the five categories. It doesn't really get rid of the lottery system. There's no E-Verify. It doesn't take care of sanctuary cities." • A top White House aide on Wednesday again said that Congress to address immigration laws, one day after President Trump signed the executive order to halt the practice of separating families at the border. Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications, said on Hill.TV’s “Rising” that despite the President’s reversal after days of declaring “only Congress” can address family separation, he’s still looking to lawmakers to pass additional immigration reform. Schlapp said : “We know that the only way we can find a fix to this problem is if Congress acts.” She indicated the two bills that up for a vote in the House Thursday would meet the Trump administration’s standards for border security and other reforms. She said they would also close a loophole that has led to families being separated. However, she acknowledged that if either bill passes the House, it would face a difficult road in the Senate : "The action’s going to be right now, it lies in the hands of the House of Representatives, they’re looking obviously to whip those votes and see if they can get it through the House. Then we have the uphill battle with the Senate.” She added : “What the President wants is he wants to see Congress take action on this issue. For too long, for too many decades there has been little to no action made in terms of closing our borders.” • • • THE REPUBLICANS ASKING TRUMP TO OFFER OPEN BORDERS. On Tuesday, Breitbart published a list of Republican Senators demanding that President Trump end border enforcement. Thirteen Republican Senators wrote to President Trump asking him to halt immigration enforcement at the United States-Mexico border until they can pass legislation closing a legal loophole, perhaps leaving the border open for years. In a letter by Senator Orrin Hatch, he and 12 other Republican Senators have taken the extreme, open borders position that the Trump administration should release every illegal alien who crosses the southern border with a child into the interior of the US. Their plan would create a completely open border until the Republican-controlled Congress passes legislation that allows children to be detained with the border-crossing adults that they arrived in the US with. The Hatch letter read : “We, therefore, ask you to halt implementation of the Department’s zero tolerance policy while Congress works out a solution that enables faster processing of individuals who enter our country illegally without requiring the forced, inhumane separation of children from their parents,” the letter signed by the 13 Republican Senators states. “We believe a reasonable path forward can be found that accommodates the need to enforce our laws while holding true to other, equally essential values.” Here is the list of all the Republican Senators who signed the letter demanding open borders : Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Bob Corker (R-TN), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John Boozman (R-AR), Dean Heller (R-NV), Cory Gardner (R-CO), James Lankford (R-OK), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Rob Portman (R-OH). All names to remember the next time they are on a ballot near you !!! • • • A CRASH COURSE IN PROGDEM IMMIGRATION GOALS. American Thinker's Peter Barry Chowka provided the information on Thursday : "For years -- decades, actually -- the Democrats have been facilitating the invasion of our country by millions of people who are from, as President Trump once reportedly described them, 's-hole countries.' The constantly cited figure of '11 million illegal immigrants' is a joke. It has remained constant for more than a decade, while new waves of illegal immigrants arrive annually. There are more likely tens of millions of illegal aliens here. In California, according to the LA Times of July 8, 2015, non-Hispanic whites are now in the minority, having been outnumbered by Latinos, AKA 'people of color.' Little of this profound demographic shift is a result of legal immigration. This recent wave of immigrants, coming from poor countries with repressive backward regimes, as a rule do not believe in the laws and the importance and supremacy of the founding documents of this country, including the Constitution. Our domestic politics is increasingly manipulated by, and now follows and reflects, this profound demographic shift. Soon, living in the United States will totally be like living in...Mexico and Central America. (In 2017, the most powerful Democrat in the California legislature -- open borders activist and California state Senate president pro tem Kevin de León -- bragged that 'half his family' was in the country illegally, using false documents, and eligible for deportation.'....Many of the separated 'migrant children,' who are now being highlighted in the mainstream media as a story that might actually stick to President Trump, arrive without any experience, skills, or training to prepare them to live in a first-world country. As Breitbart reported on June 15 about a visit to the government facility in El Cajón, California, where migrant children are being housed : They are also given toiletries and lessons in hygiene -- literally how to flush a toilet, brush their teeth, and operate the shower, which some of the children may have never seen in their lives." • Chowka says the agenda of the Democrats and open borders advocates is now to push to finish the job and to make open borders the legal, as opposed to only the de facto, status quo : "The reason is simple : millions more illegals means millions of additional reliable votes for Democrats in their plan to make the United States a one-party socialist country like what they have achieved in the state of California in less than two decades as the result of the invasion of illegals there, most of whom can now vote." • In addition, according to Chowka : "The additional and broader intention of the activists is to de-criminalize most crimes so the jails will be emptied of people of color, who constitute prison populations far out of proportion to their numbers -- because they disproportionately commit crimes, particularly crimes committed by people of one race against another. They have already started to do this in California and other states, with unpleasant consequences." Chowka cites a June 19 in The Federalist that confirms the Democrats' intention to stop punishing crimes committed not only by illegals, but by all criminal 'parents,' especially ones who happen to be people of color. The Federalist reports that a bill introduced in the US Senate -- the "Keep Families Together Act" -- endorsed by every Democrat in the U.S. Senate : "...would actually prevent federal law enforcement agencies almost anywhere inside the United States from arresting and detaining criminals who are parents having nothing to do with unlawfully crossing the border and seeking asylum." • According to a 2014 fact sheet by Rutgers University : "More than 2.7 million children in the US have an incarcerated parent. That is 1 in 28 children....One in 9 African American children (11.4%), 1 in 28 Hispanic children (3.5%), and 1 in 57 white children (1.8%) in the United States have an incarcerated parent." • In New York, Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo recently engineered restoring voting rights to convicted felons -- a partisan politically driven move that added 35,000 voters to the election rolls. (Cuomo is up for re-election in November.) • Chowka rpeorts : "On June 19, the Los Angeles Times reported in an article by Jaweed Kaleem that Austin, Texas, a Progressive city, has declared itself the first "Freedom City" in Texas, in a challenge to Texas's state law passed last year that forbids localities from declaring themselves "sanctuary cities." City Council members unanimously passed two resolutions last week that will restrict police attempts to question immigrants about their status and curtail arrests for nonviolent crimes. One of the new city resolutions requires officers who question immigrants about status to also say that their questions about immigration need not be answered. The other resolution directs police to avoid arrests for misdemeanors, including those for smoking marijuana, having drug paraphernalia, and taking part in petty theft -- crimes that city data shows frequently end in arrests of black and Latino residents. While Austin is among the country's first so-called freedom cities, it's part of a wider movement around decriminalizing low-level offenses and decreasing arrests. According to Local Progress, a national network of progressive city officials, some council members in El Paso and Dallas are also considering 'freedom city' proposals. 'Poor people of color in our city are over-punished and over-incarcerated,' said Greg Casar, an Austin City Councilman who pushed for the resolutions. 'If people are being arrested less, we can also prevent people from being put in the deportation pipeline.' " • As Chowka states -- in recent years, law-breaking no longer carries consequences for the preferred classes – whether they are entrenched politicians, high-level Deep State bureaucrats, or illegal alien invaders. Just ask Kate Steinle's surviving relatives about that." • • • DEMOCRATS HYPOCRISY TOWARD CHILDREN. To start, Democrats -- who are literally crying over 2,000 children being cared for while their parents face deportation trials for entering the US illegally -- these same Democrats have for decades supported abortion -- killing children. They do it by ignoring science and morality in order to dehumanize unborn children. Since the 1960s, liberals and Progressives across the US have won elections by promising to keep legal their wicked “final solution” for those who want to be able to do whatever they wish in the sexual realm. For Democrats, children are only a concern when the timing is right -- when the political benefits are favorable for Democrats. Hillary Clinotn ran on a platform that supported abortion up to birth -- SHE LOST. Trevor Grant Thomas wrote this week in Americna Thinker : "The Democrat Party exists on dependency, and people that escape it pose a problem. So don’t buy that the Democrats care about separated families. Because, after all… the Democrat Party literally subsidized single motherhood in the black community for decades. It was called AFDC. The Democrat Party promoted a welfare policy that gave single women additional money for every child they had. The father need not ever be around. In many cases, the father was not even known, the father was not even identified because the Democrat Party assumed the role. If you want to talk about honestly separating families, the Democrat Party wrote the book on it and promoted it and campaigned on it and won elections on the basis of separated families where the government took over the economic responsibilities of the father." • Thomas adds that the LGBT ascendancy in US schools and society is part of the Democrat policy of usign children as pawns : "Working in concert with the welfare state is the wicked sexual agenda of the left. Whether pornography, promiscuity, or the LGBT agenda, since at least the middle of the twentieth century, the many sexual perversions of liberalism have wrought decades of death and destruction upon children, adults, and families alike in America. Among other tragic consequences, this has led to rampant divorce, disease, and out-of-wedlock births -- which, among other terrible outcomes, has given us violence, crime, filthy and deadly neighborhoods, dangerous and ineffective schools, and the like. What’s more, fatherlessness is the leading cause of poverty in the US In their efforts to buy votes and remain in power, Democrats have doomed generations of American children to growing up poor. Not being content with destroying marriage and family as God gave it to us, liberals have taken the previously unthinkable and duped tens of millions of Americans -- including those occupying the highest court in our land -- into accepting it, or even embracing it, as normal. We were deceptively told that, since no harm comes to others, 'consenting adults' ought to be able to do as they wish in their bedrooms. Ignoring the eternal truths of their Creator, when 'consenting adults' do as they wish, it’s often children who suffer the most. Millions of American children today are suffering under the myriad of lies pushed by the perverse LGBT agenda. Some are in homes without a mother or a father simply because liberals decided that it was within their “right” to redefine the oldest institution in the history of humanity. Tens of millions of US children who are stuck in government schools are not only being taught that homosexuality and same-sex 'marriage' are normal, but that biology doesn’t determine a person’s sex. Because of liberalism, children are being read to by drag queens, 'entertained' by drag queens, and even turned into drag queens! Because of liberalism, children in government schools are being provided with a study guide on transgenderism that instructs kids that a gender-deluded lifestyle is just another choice for a young person to make. Because of liberalism, children in government schools are being provided with a George Soros-funded 'sexual health toolkit' that, among other immoralities, and in spite of the significant health disparities suffered by homosexual teens, instructs them on homosexual behavior, including sodomy. Because of liberalism, those who wish to flee the immoral and unhealthy homosexual lifestyle are being hindered from doing so....If we can’t trust liberals to instruct children properly on who is a male and who is a female; if we can’t trust liberals to tell the truth on something as old and foundational as marriage and the family; if we can’t trust liberals to work to ensure that children are raised by a mother and a father; if we can’t trust liberals to protect children from sexual perversion; if we can’t trust liberals to guard the very lives of the most helpless and innocent among us, we should trust them on nothing when it comes to “the children.” • AMEN. • • • PRESIDENT TRUMP NEEDS OUR SUPPORT ON THE IMMIGRATION AND CHILDREN ISSUE. He will get 'zero' support from ProgDems. The executive order signed by Trump on Wednesday will almost certainly be overruled in court. To untangle the mess of misinformation that has come out over the past few days, we must review the legal history and motivations of the people involved. The RENO v. FLORES settlement agreement of 1997, which states (among other things) that children detained by immigration authorities must be released “without unnecessary delay” to an acceptable recipient, with parents and legal guardians preferred. Facilities, such as those seen on the news, are other options when nothing better is available....a minor cannot be detained while a parent is awaiting due process. When immigration enforcers find a family that is breaking the law, they legally must either separate the family, release the family, or release the family with a court date, and hope the family appears for a trial they know they will lose. Most people can see how a pre-trial release of “undocumented” immigrants who have already broken the law once, and don’t have government records to help find them if they fail to appear, will be functionally equivalent to just releasing them -- the Obama "catch and release" policy that simply let all illegal immigrants arriving with children escape into the US to disappear forever. • In a recent speech, Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who is supposedly against separation of families, insisted that he would not vote for any bills allowing families who were arrested together to be in the same detention facility -- because he would rather keep the pressure on President Trump. Schumer's goal is to use the current media outrage to force President Trump to end his zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigrants. But, releasing all illegal immigrants crossing into the US with a child they claim to be their own is suicide -- it invites smugglers of both drugs and humans to exploit this national security loophole. • American Thinker 's Monica Showalter wrote on Wednesday : "For the left, it's finally springtime. After months in the political wilderness, followed by the crushed hopes for the great blue wave, leftists are finally getting a grip on an issue they can pin on President Trump: family separations among detained illegal border-crossers. They're going wild with this issue, and the press is running stories about it nonstop, complete with crying children to tug at the heartstrings. But there are signs it's getting to be too much for them, driving them to overplay their hand. The child migrant crisis they have drummed up, with media cameras shamelessly exploiting the faces of crying children (they blank out unconsenting children's faces otherwise) separated from their parents, at first glance seems to be the magic bullet they've been looking for. Many Republicans, for instance, are caving on the real issue, which is border enforcement, hastily offering up new legislation that incentivizes more illegal border-crossing. Many are condemning the migrant separations and blaming Trump, too. It's a panicked response to polls showing public approval numbers dropping, and never mind that the issue itself is problematic, not quite what the left's narrative says it is, premised on laws enacted well before President Trump took office and enforced the same way by past Presidents. Only Trump is getting the blame for a now saturation-coverage situation. Instead of fighting back, as Trump does, the Republicans are caving, and this emboldens the left. Yes, indeed -- this is what passes for springtime for the Trump-hating left." • BUT, Showalter says : "Signs are emerging that this euphoria on the other side is not going to last long....foreigners are thinking twice about coming here illegally, which is the point of border enforcement. (The left is upset about this.) Most important, the left is doing what it always does, which is overplaying its hand, going overboard, diving off the deep end, something that will guarantee a turnaround in public sentiment. Leftists are starting to do lunatic things, actually, and on multiple fronts....The Twitter account of Occupy Wall Street published a cartoon Monday promoting the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents....Peter Fonda urging his fellow leftists to target the children of ICE agents in their schools and to cage Bannon Trump with pedophiles....These people are becoming unglued....this kind of behavior designed to bludgeon Trump into submission won't win any voter hearts and minds for Democrats....Lefty TV host Lawrence O'Donnell was crying about the children on his broadcast, making a spectacle of himself to persuade voters to reject President Trump. Because he bawled. He was joined in that activity by the lizard-tough MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who bawled for the cameras, too....Is that going to persuade voters to abandon President Trump and support open borders? Quite likely, the opposite. It's hysteria. And an overplaying of one's hand. This is what the left has repeatedly done in its Wile-E.-Coyote quest to Get Trump. It's not going to work this time, either, but leftists sure are making a spectacle of themselves as they do it. Call it 'Peak Left.' " • • • DEAR READERS, President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order to allow children to stay with parents caught crossing the border illegally -- moving to stop the family separations that have triggered a national outcry and political crisis for Republicans. The measure would allow children to stay in detention with parents for an extended period of time. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans scramble to draft legislation to address the same issue, but face challenges getting enough votes. In signing the EO, Trump said he wants to keep families together while also enforcing border security. He vowed his administration's "zero tolerance" policy for illegal immigration would continue. Trump, talking about the EO earlier in the day during a meeting with lawmakers, said the move would "be matched by legislation." He also said he's canceling the upcoming congressional picnic, adding: "It didn't feel exactly right to me." • The media coverage reached a fevered pitch on Monday with ProgDem propagandist networks coordinating their attacks by sending anchors to the detention centers in Texas. President Trump had seen enough. He responded to the media’s manufactured outrage by stating that he would not repeat the mistakes of previous administrations who refused to enforce immigration law : “Not on my watch. The United States will not be a migrant camp, and it will not be a refugee holding facility.” Trump’s position -- that Obama’s policy of “catch and release” under which illegal aliens are released into America after being given a court date for a deportation hearing is a magnet that only encourages more illegal immigration -- is backed up by the experts....We want safety and we want security for our country. If the Democrats would sit down instead of obstructing, we could have something done very quickly...We’re stuck with these horrible laws...We have the worst immigration laws in the entire world...You see about child separation; you see what’s going on there. But just remember, a country without borders is not a country at all. We need borders. We need security. We need safety. We have to take care of our people.” • We must support President Trump. Don't be fooled. Securing America's borders is a major priority of President Trump, as it is for a majority of Americans. He knows is is the only way to fix this disaster. Americans are compassionate. But, they should also be able to decide how many people to allow in without overtaxing the American people, or its schools, hospitals, and economy. • And, America is a country of laws. When one law can be broken without consequences, it encourages disrespect for all laws. Progressives apparently want to suspend the rule of law when it suits their purpose. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that ProgDems support mass immigration because the assumption is that most of the migrants will vote Democratic. Their motto -- "If Americans won't vote for Democrats, then we'll import people who will." • Pray for President Trump. He works 24/7 for America and the constitutional Republic.