Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue:
- Wiretap
- Coup
- Lawnmower
- Repeal
- UN
- Grants
- Norway
- Wiretap. CNN last week broke the news that the O’Bama regime used FISA warrants (they needed two – both against someone who was a private citizen) to wiretap former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. The surveillance started sometime before the election and continued well into this year. This makes the Trump claim last March that the regime was wiretapping Trump Tower completely accurate. The leak from either the FBI or the Mueller investigation (likely both) claims that some of the intelligence collected “sparked concerns about Manafort encouraging Russians to help with the campaign. CNN cited three sources for the leaks, two of which cautioned that the evidence collected was not conclusive. CNN claims (somewhat idiotically) that Trump does not appear to be the target of the wiretaps. This claim is disingenuous at best, as the intelligence community is very good at crafting their FISA requests to ensnare people who they would never be approved to wiretap. In other words, if you know that no court would approve a direct wiretap on Trump, what better way to wiretap him than to get warrants allowing you to do so to everyone he talks with? And the O’Bama regime was very, very good at doing this. His minions still are, which is why we see these leaks to CNN. https://hotair.com/archives/2017/09/18/investigators-wiretapped-manaforts-phones-may-picked-conversations-president-trump/
- Coup. Many people on our side of the political fence have described the ongoing festivities as a coup against President Trump. Daniel Greenfield writing in Frontpagemag last week described what was going on quite bluntly in the piece linked below. The O’Bama spying operation on Trump started during the campaign, as a vehicle to gather dirt that could be used to damage Trump and assist Hilary during the election campaign. The O’Bama regime serial liar Susan Rice lied about unmasking names of Trump officials a month before leaving office. These names include Flynn, Bannon and Kirschner. Essentially desperate O’Bama regime officials were laundering their surveillance requests on political adversaries behind the curtain of national security, and their appointees and hires in the various intelligence agencies were doing their level best to assist them. The O’Bama espionage operation closely tracked Trump’s political progress. The first FISA request took place a month after he was nominated. The second one was in October, likely intended to provide fodder for the October Surprise (which never happened). Following the election, the O’Bama operation switched from trying to defeat him to undoing the results of the election. And in the current operation of the Mueller investigation, it is still going on. The important thing to remember is that while individual actions may be legitimate, the overall pattern is what defines this as a criminal enterprise. And spying on two campaign leaders is a pattern. Greenfield describes this as a race against the clock, as O’Bama has to bring down Trump before Trump starts indicting and jailing the participants in the festivities. This is why Mueller is pressuring Paul Manafort so vigorously. Greenfield ends with the observation that the O’Bama regime violated the norms so often for their policy goals, they couldn’t afford to be replaced by anyone but one of their own. It is raw fear. Too bad for them. http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267923/why-obama-really-spied-trump-daniel-greenfield
- Lawnmower. President Trump continues to be one of the great trolls of the left. Latest action was Lawnmower Boy, an 11-year old who has a lawn mowing business. He sent President Trump a letter asking if he could mow the WH lawn. The O’Bama WH ignored an earlier letter to O’Bama by the kid. Perhaps he didn’t look like O’Bama’s son, Travon. In any case, the kid was mowing the WH lawn with his Dad proudly watching when President Trump comes out to visit for a bit. The photo I saw included a high five between two very happy people. It didn’t take long for the humorless left to start muttering dark things about breaking the child labor laws as a vehicle to criticize Trump for taking advantage of the kid. What the critics don’t understand about this is that at his heart, Trump is an entrepreneur. He loves it, is good at it, oozes it (along with his persuasion chops). And he hears from a young entrepreneur doing something that will end up building his business. He embraces the opportunity, the kid, and his father, giving a lesson to one and all about American exceptionalism. https://hotair.com/archives/2017/09/18/predicted-lawnmower-kid-now-victim-trumps-evil-regime/
- Repeal. The cussing and discussing in the US Senate on O’BamaCare repeal continued unabated last week, with most of the usual suspects now publicly against the legislation – Senators McCain (RINO, AZ), Collins (RINO, ME). Alaska US Senator Murkowski has not publicly announced her opposition but it is expected. Senators Rand Paul (R, KY) and Ted Cruz (R, TX) are speaking out against the legislation. And in a sane world, they would be correct, but we are kind of at the point where anything done will be a start rather than a finish. It is uncomfortable to watch, especially for those of us who want the festering carbuncle on the body politic that is O’BamaCare removed immediately, and with extreme prejudice. But Trump is a process president, and is willing to let the process play itself out. The process does a bunch of things, most of them good. This time around, they ended up with something that is more conservative than the last couple attempts. That is progress. It also serves to undercut support for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as someone who supposedly can get something done. If he can’t get legislation to the President’s desk like he promised him after the election, if he can’t get his majority to pass something that they all voted for multiple times over the course of the last seven years, what good is he? As of this writing, the majority pulled the legislation from the process. It will be back. Why? Because we are about to be down one or two no votes soon. McCain is fighting a deadly brain cancer. Incurable brain cancer. Robert Menendez (D, NJ) is in the latter stages of a federal bribery trial, likely to be convicted. Chris Christie (R) is still the governor and will be able to appoint a replacement, at least for long enough to vote to repeal O’BamaCare. Keep watching this space. This is far from over.
- UN. President Trump made his first speech in front of the UN General Assembly. Like he has so often done during his short, pyrotechnic political career, he infuriated the insiders and greatly pleased his base. What did he do? He defined what America First means. It does not mean USA Uber Alles. Rather it is a form of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, where the choices of individuals in the marketplace in their own best interest were what made the entire system work, what makes things better, what improves our lives. These are in no way collective decisions or choices. Rather it is the action of individual decisions and choices in the marketplace. Trump’s view is that the same thing ought to work between nations, where our choices and decisions to improve lives for our citizens work with similar choices of people in other nations to improve the overall world situation. Of course, this is anathema the globalists who want to erect a global government structure to manage our daily affairs on a minute by minute basis, and they reacted much the same as a vampire in the first ray of morning sunlight. President Trump took no prisoners as he personally went after Cuba and Venezuela as the economic disaster it currently is due to socialism working too well. He went after the Iran nuclear deal calling it an awful deal. He saved some of his best persuasion for the Norks and Kim Jong Un, calling him Rocket Man, on a suicidal path for himself and his nation. This so unnerved the Norks that they are privately contacting Republican party higher ups here in the US trying to figure out what Trump actually means. They have never been spoken to like this and are having a hard time dealing with it. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of vermin. I predict that Rocket Man will be just as powerful as the names Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, and Crooked Hillary were during the election campaign last year. Buy popcorn. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/09/19/un-speech-trump-says-rocket-man-kim-jong-un-on-suicide-mission-in-broadside-at-rogue-regimes.html
- Grants. This one is going to interesting to watch. A Reagan appointee on the Federal Bench in Illinois decided that the federal judiciary needed to be in charge of Justice Assistance Grant money given by (In)Justice to the cities and states. The Trump administration has been threatening to withhold grant monies from sanctuary cities and states. Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago took the issue to federal court and got themselves an injunction. The judge extended his ruling to cover the entire nation. The judge found that the City of Chicago established it would suffer irreparable harm if a preliminary injunction were not entered and the legal issues were not restricted to Chicago. This is interesting in that these are discretionary grant monies. (In)Justice writes the rules for those grants. Not all applicants receive these monies. We need to follow this one closely. https://hotair.com/archives/2017/09/16/chicago-judge-amazingly-rules-grant-money-can-mandatory/
- Norway. Great article out of local reporter Craig Medred comparing economic conditions and decisions of Norway and Alaska. Norway and Alaska are both similar in that they are northern entities with large oil and natural gas sectors. They both have a version of the Permanent Fund. Norway’s value recently passed $1 trillion, all earned since its start in 1990. Alaska’s started in 1977 and is currently valued at $61 billion. Given Alaska’s current recession and spending deficit, this news triggered the predictable why them and why not us? Comparisons between Alaska and Norway are not entirely apples to apples, as the governments are fundamentally different. Norway has embraced other industries than oil and natural gas – tech, fish farming, and mining for metals. They are actively making their move off an oil and natural gas based economy. Alaska, not so much. Alaska does not maximize efficiency producing salmon. We go as far as to legislatively prohibit fish farming here in Alaska. Norway is talking about growing their fish farming output five times by 2050. Alaska’s wild catch has not appreciably changed in decades, and is well on its way to economic irrelevance, less than 10% of the worldwide output of fish should Norway achieve their production goals. Instead of actively building mines and exporting metals, Alaska is doing its level best to keep those mines and metals exports from happening, all to save the commercial salmon catch that are being pounded into economic irrelevance. And the tech industry? Don’t make me laugh. Alaska can’t even manage to keep from changing the taxation rules on the oil and natural gas producers for more than a couple years in a row. Politically we have converted ourselves into one of the most business unfriendly places in the world. No business in their right mind will choose to do business in Alaska these days, and rightly so. If we want to claw our way out of the current recession and join the rest of the world, it is about time to create a stable business environment for businesses. And once that stable business environment is created, we need to lock it into place and keep it there for a generation if not longer. Repealing the ban on aquaculture is a good first step. Making Alaska a friendlier place to dig mines and export metals will be another good step. Want to be like Norway? There is a clear roadmap. We only have to choose to travel it. https://craigmedred.news/2017/09/15/norway-not/
More later –
– AG