Search the Community

I'd bet if polled, dems on capital hill as well as those on here would have 100% support if Obama fired Comey. Now if he should have been fired then (I believe he should have been fired in July) there is no question to the validity of firing him now. If he made unethical decisions in July and October he was likely to continue making poor, politicized decisions in the future.

Remember this? Sources inside the FBI and Justice dept were mad at Comey. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/13/fbi-doj-roiled-by-comey-lynch-decision-to-let-clinton-slide-by-on-emails-says-insider.html http://nypost.com/2016/10/06/fbi-agents-are-ready-to-revolt-over-the-cozy-clinton-probe/ http://clashdaily.com/2016/10/corruption-source-fbi-doj-investigation-hillary-speaks-team-unanimously-wanted/ http://www.redstate.com/joesquire/2016/10/07/veteran-fbi-agents-upset-james-comey/ The decision to let Hillary Clinton off the hook for mishandling classified information has roiled the FBI and Department of Justice, with one person closely involved in the year-long probe telling FoxNews.com that career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged. The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case. “No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com. A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.” “It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.” The FBI declined to comment directly, but instead referred Fox News to multiple public statements Comey has made in which he has thrown water on the idea that politics played a role in the agency’s decision not to recommend charges. “I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation – including people in government – but none of that mattered to us,” Comey said July 5 in announcing the FBI’s decision on the Clinton emails. “Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way." Andrew Napolitano, former judge and senior judicial analyst for Fox News Channel, said many law enforcement agents involved with the Clinton email investigation have similar beliefs. “It is well known that the FBI agents on the ground, the human beings who did the investigative work, had built an extremely strong case against Hillary Clinton and were furious when the case did not move forward,” said Napolitano. “They believe the decision not to prosecute came from The White House.” The claim also is backed up by a report in the New York Post this week, which quotes a number of veteran FBI agents saying FBI Director James Comey “has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his cowardly whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.” “The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time. I hold Director Comey responsible,” Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit, told the Post. Retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello added to the report, saying, “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.” Especially angering the team, which painstakingly pieced together deleted emails and interviewed witnesses to prove that sensitive information was left unprotected, was the fact that Comey based his decision on a conclusion that a recommendation to charge would not be followed by DOJ prosecutors, even though the bureau’s role was merely to advise, Fox News was told. “Basically, James Comey hijacked the DOJ’s role by saying ‘no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case,’” the Fox News source said. “The FBI does not decide who to prosecute and when, that is the sole province of a prosecutor -- that never happens. “I know zero prosecutors in the DOJ’s National Security Division who would not have taken the case to a grand jury,” the source added. “One was never even convened.” Napolitano agreed, saying the FBI investigation was hampered from the beginning, because there was no grand jury, and no search warrants or subpoenas issued. “The FBI could not seize anything related to the investigation, only request things. As an example, in order to get the laptop, they had to agree to grant immunity,” Napolitano said. In early 2015, it was revealed that Clinton had used a private email server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home to conduct government business while serving from 2009-2013. The emails on the private server included thousands of messages that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively. Federal law makes it a crime for a government employee to possess classified information in an unsecure manner, and the relevant statute does not require a finding of intent. Although Comey found that Clinton was “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he said “no charges are appropriate in this case.” Well before Comey’s announcement, which came days after Bill Clinton met in secret with Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, there were signs the investigation would go nowhere, the source told FoxNews.com. One was the fact that the FBI forced its agents and analysts involved in the case to sign non-disclosure agreements. “This is unheard of, because of the stifling nature it has on the investigative process,” the source said. Another oddity was the five so-called immunity agreements granted to Clinton’s State Department aides and IT experts. Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, along with two other State Department staffers, John Bentel and Heather Samuelson, were afforded immunity agreements, as was Bryan Pagliano, Clinton's former IT aide, and Paul Combetta, an employee at Platte River networks, the firm hired to manage her server after she left the State Department. As Fox News has reported, Combetta utilized the computer program “Bleachbit” to destroy Clinton’s records, despite an order from Congress to preserve them, and Samuelson also destroyed Clinton’s emails. Pagliano established the system that illegally transferred classified and top secret information to Clinton’s private server. Mills disclosed classified information to the Clinton’s family foundation in the process, breaking federal laws. None should have been granted immunity if no charges were being brought, the source said. “[Immunity] is issued because you know someone possesses evidence you need to charge the target, and you almost always know what it is they possess,” the source said. “That's why you give immunity.” Mills and Samuelson also received immunity for what was found on their computers, which were then destroyed as a part of negotiations with the FBI. “Mills and Samuelson receiving immunity with the agreement their laptops would be destroyed by the FBI afterwards is, in itself, illegal,” the source said. “We know those laptops contained classified information. That's also illegal, and they got a pass.” Mills’ dual role as Clinton’s attorney and a witness in her own right should never have been tolerated either. “Mills was allowed to sit in on the interview of Clinton as her lawyer. That's absurd. Someone who is supposedly cooperating against the target of an investigation [being] permitted to sit by the target as counsel violates any semblance of ethical responsibility,” the source said. “Every agent and attorney I have spoken to is embarrassed and has lost total respect for James Comey and Loretta Lynch,” the source said. “The bar for DOJ is whether the evidence supports a case for charges -- it did here. It should have been taken to the grand jury.” Also infuriating agents, the New York Post reported, was the fact that Clinton’s interview spanned just 3½ hours with no follow-up questioning, despite her “40 bouts of amnesia,” and then, three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing. Many FBI and DOJ staffers believe Comey and Lynch were motivated by ambition, and not justice, the source said. “Loretta Lynch simply wants to stay on as Attorney General under Clinton, so there is no way she would indict,” the source said. “James Comey thought his position [excoriating Clinton even as he let her off the hook] gave himself cover to remain on as director regardless of who wins.” The decision by Comey and Lynch not to prosecute has renewed FBI agents’ belief that the agency should be autonomous. “This is why so many agents believe the FBI needs to be an entity by itself to truly be effective,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We all feel very strongly about it -- and the need to be objective. But that truly cannot be done when the AG is appointed by a president and attends daily briefings.” Adding to the controversy, WikiLeaks released internal Clinton communication records this week that show the Department of Justice kept Clinton’s campaign and her staff informed about the progress of its investigation. Leaked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s gmail account show the Clinton campaign was contacted by the DOJ on May 19, 2015. “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon wrote in relation to the email documentation the State Department would be required to turn over to the Justice Department. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, who previously served in the U.S. Treasury Department in the Office of Chief Counsel for the IRS, where he was responsible for litigation in the U.S. Tax Court, said it was clear from the start that the FBI never intended to prosecute. “This was a fake, false investigation from the outset,” Sekulow said.

By all accounts Rod Rosenstein is a man of integrity. Even dems currently like him. Does the left suggest Trump forced him to write this? GMAFB. If you can read this with an open mind and think for a second Trump fired him inappropriately you need to seek help. MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FROM: ROD J. ROSENSTEIN DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL SUBJECT: RESTORING PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN THE FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation has long been regarded as our nation's premier federal investigative agency. Over the past year, however, the FBI's reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. That is deeply troubling to many Department employees and veterans, legislators and citizens. The current FBI Director is an articulate and persuasive speaker about leadership and the immutable principles of the Department of Justice. He deserves our appreciation for his public service. As you and I have discussed, however, I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors. The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. There is a well-established process for other officials to step in when a conflict requires the recusal of the Attorney General. On July 5, however, the Director announced his own conclusions about the nation's most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders. Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do. In response to skeptical question at a congressional hearing, the Director defended his remarks by saying that his "goal was to say what is true. What did we do, what did we find, what do we think about it." But the goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then - if prosecution is warranted - let the judge and jury determine the facts. We sometimes release information about closed investigations in appropriate ways, but the FBI does not do it sua sponte. Concerning his letter to the Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would "speak" about the decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or "conceal" it. "Conceal" is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment. My perspective on these issues is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties. Judge Laurence Silberman, who served as Deputy Attorney General under President Ford, wrote that "it is not the bureau's responsibility to opine on whether a matter should be prosecuted." Silberman believes that the Director's "Performance was so inappropriate for an FBI director that [he] doubt the bureau will ever completely recover." Jamie Gorelick, Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton, joined with Larry Thompson, Deputy Attorney General under President George W. Bush, to opine that the Director had "chosen personally to restrike the balance between transparency and fairness, departing from the department's traditions." They concluded that the Director violated his obligation to "preserve, protect and defend" the traditions of the Department and the FBI. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush, observed the Director "stepped way outside his job in disclosing the recommendation in that fashion" because the FBI director "doesn't make that decision." Alberto Gonzales, who also served as Attorney General under President George W. Bush, called the decision "an error in judgement." Eric Holder, who served as Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton and Attorney General under President Obama, said the Director’s decision"was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and traditions. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season." Holder concluded that the Director "broke with these fundamental principles" and "negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI." Former Deputy Attorneys General Gorelick and Thompson described the unusual events as"real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation," that is "antithetical to the interests of justice." Donald Ayer, who served as Deputy Attorney General under President H.W. Bush, along with former Justice Department officials, was"astonished and perplexed" by the decision to "break[] with longstanding practices followed by officials of both parties during past elections." Ayer's letter noted, "Perhaps most troubling… is the precedent set by this departure from the Department's widely-respected, non-partisan traditions." We should reject the departure and return to the traditions. Although the President has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former Department officials. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.

Poor MC. Let me check.....who is POTUS? Oh that's right its Trump....I guess he did enough campaign events in the right places. Work smarter.....not harder. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/09/trump-has-held-more-than-220-campaign-events-with-more-than-1-2-million-attendees-since-june-2015/ Donald Trump held over 220 campaign events since jumping into the Presidential race in June 2015. More than 1.2 million people have attended his events since last year. According to a post on Reddit Trump has held events with as many as 31,000 participants. (Note that this list only includes campaign speaking engagements and not fundraisers or visits with government and corporate leaders.) When comparing the Trump campaign with the Clinton campaign since the conventions in late July the results are staggering. Donald Trump held 31 campaign events in August. More than 198,000 people participated at these events in August and for 7 of these events (Columbus, Harrisburg, Ashburn, Wilmington, Abingdon, West Bend and Akron) Trump had overflow crowds. Hillary Clinton on the other hand held only 11 campaign events in August and had a meager 10,000 people show up at her events. Donald Trump has materially outpaced Hillary Clinton in rallies and in attendance at campaign events since the conventions in late July. Trump held triple the number of events that Clinton held (32 – 11) in August and had 20 times the number of participants. From August 17th through the 31st alone Trump campaigned in front of 88,000 at his events to only 400 (yes 400) for Hillary at her one event since the 17th! While Trump continues to smash Clinton in attendance at events, Clinton continues to take time off. Clinton has no Clinton campaign rallies scheduled in the foreseeable future. Hillary must not be holding events either because she is too sick or she doesn’t want to show the little support for her campaign to date. In early August at a small gathering at a union hall in Nevada, Hillary ‘froze’ and needed to be comforted by what appeared to be a medical doctor who got on stage and patted her back while spurring her on. He has since disappeared but Clinton’s episodes have not. At a subsequent event in Florida Clinton froze again. The lines to get into Trump events are making news on social media but the mainstream media remains silent about Trump’s monstrous crowds. The line on Tuesday to get into the record setting event in Everett, Washington was a good example:

Might want to add this is the first phone call not the one in July.

Susan Rice admitted it in her testimony to congress. Pretty obvious here an I don't think anyone else has picked this up. She obviously was reading or listening to conversations that went on at Trump Tower. So when Rice unmasks people getting spied on its not political in nature but when Trump wants to get to the bottom of Ukraine meddling in our election it is. Got it. https://www.businessinsider.com/susan-rice-revealed-why-she-unmasked-trump-associates-names-2017-9 We now know why Susan Rice requested to 'unmask' the names of Trump associates Former national security adviser Susan Rice told the House Intelligence Committee that she "unmasked" the names of President Donald Trump's associates because she wanted to find out why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates visited Trump Tower in New York last year without notifying the US government, CNN reported on Wednesday. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, UAE's crown prince, traveled to New York during the transition period in December 2016 and reportedly met with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. According to CNN, the Obama administration felt "misled" by the UAE, which was why Rice requested that Trump associates' names be unmasked. A senior Middle East official acknowledged to CNN that the UAE did not inform the US of the crown prince's visit in advance but denied that the UAE had misled the Obama administration. The official said that the December Trump Tower meeting was merely part of an effort to build a relationship with the incoming administration. The crown prince's trip to New York came shortly before the UAE brokered a January 11 meeting between a Trump associate and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands to create a back channel of communication between Trump and Russia. UAE officials reportedly facilitated the meeting in the hopes of encouraging Russia to distance itself from Iran, a major Kremlin ally. The Trump administration has often expressed its skepticism of Iran, and Trump on the campaign trail frequently derided the 2015 nuclear deal Iran reached with the US and five world powers. News of Rice's unmasking request first emerged in April, when Bloomberg reported that Rice had tried to learn the identities of several Trump transition team members whose communications with foreign officials were picked up as part of the US' routine intelligence-gathering operations. According to Bloomberg, documents showing that Rice made the unmasking requests were uncovered by the National Security Council's former senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who was fired by national security adviser H.R. McMaster in July. Cohen-Watnick was involved in providing documents related to the incidental surveillance of members of Trump's transition team to House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes in March. Although Nunes recused himself from his committee's investigation, he subpoenaed the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI in May — without telling his Democratic colleagues — for intelligence documents containing details of any unmasking requests made by Obama administration officials and the former CIA director to learn the names of Trump associates who communicated with foreign officials. Trump and his allies have painted Rice's unmasking requests as inappropriate and political in nature, but Rice told NBC's Andrea Mitchell in April that allegations she unmasked Trump associates for political reasons were "absolutely false."

Alexander Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny were born to a Jewish family in the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.[1] Beginning in 2008, Vindman became a Foreign Area Officer specializing in Eurasia. In this capacity he served in the U.S. embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine and Moscow, Russia. Returning to Washington, D.C. he was then a politico-military affairs officer focused on Russia for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Vindman served on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon from September 2015 to July 2018.[9]

We have. The Obama administration gave them military support. That surprises you somehow tht the US supports someone we call terrorists? Oh and its not just the Turks. I really don't give a shit about them. They like so many other so called allies are our friends to benefit one thing.....themselves. You think they would fight along side of us outside their homelands? The PKK engaged the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) forces in Syria in mid-July 2014[137] as part of the Syrian Civil War. In August the PKK engaged IS in Northern Iraq and pressured the Government of Turkey to take a stand against IS.[138][139] PKK forces helped tens of thousands of Yazidis escape an encircled Mount Sinjar.[140] In September 2014, during the Siege of Kobanî, the PKK, receiving direct U.S. military support,[141] engaged with Islamic State forces in Syria who were attacking Kurdish city Kobane, which resulted in conflicts with Turks on the border and an end to a cease-fire that had been in place over a year.[142] The PKK accused Turkey of supporting ISIS. The PKK participated in many offensives against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.[143]

Pretty bad? It was horrific how LE and the media treated him. Investigation and the media[edit] Early news reports lauded Jewell as a hero for helping to evacuate the area after he spotted the suspicious package. Three days later, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the FBI was treating him as a possible suspect, based largely on a "lone bomber" criminal profile. For the next several weeks, the news media focused aggressively on him as the presumed culprit, labeling him with the ambiguous term "person of interest", sifting through his life to match a leaked "lone bomber" profile that the FBI had used. The media, to varying degrees, portrayed Jewell as a failed law enforcement officer who may have planted the bomb so he could "find" it and be a hero.[2] A Justice Department investigation of the FBI's conduct found the FBI had tried to manipulate Jewell into waiving his constitutional rights, by telling him he was taking part in a training film about bomb detection, although the report concluded "no intentional violation of Mr. Jewell's civil rights and no criminal misconduct" had taken place.[6][7][8] In a reference to the Unabomber, Jay Leno called him the "Una-doofus".[9] Other references include "Una-Bubba,"[10] and (of his mother) "Una-Mama." Jewell was never officially charged, but the FBI thoroughly and publicly searched his home twice, questioned his associates, investigated his background, and maintained 24-hour surveillance of him. The pressure only began to ease after Jewell's attorneys hired an ex-FBI agent to administer a polygraph which Jewell reportedly passed.[2] In October 1996, the investigating US Attorney, Kent Alexander, in an extremely unusual act, sent Jewell a letter formally clearing him, stating "based on the evidence developed to date ... Richard Jewell is not considered a target of the federal criminal investigation into the bombing on July 27, 1996, at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta".[1

Oh no's the horror. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/food-inflation-in-the-united-states/ Seasonally adjusted changes from preceding month Un- adjusted 12-mos. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. ended 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 Aug. 2019 All items.................. .2 .4 .3 .1 .1 .3 .1 1.7 Food...................... .4 .3 -.1 .3 .0 .0 .0 1.7 Food at home............. .4 .4 -.5 .3 -.2 -.1 -.2 .5

More "unnamed sources" but the left seems to love them. Lot's of discrepancies. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ukrainian-official-appears-to-cast-doubt-on-quid-pro-quo-claim An unnamed Ukrainian official said that Kiev was not made aware that the U.S. suspended security funds until a month after President Trump's call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, which calls into question the whistleblower's account and Democrats' arguments that there was a quid pro quo for the aid. The official told The New York Times that Zelensky's government was unaware about the aid issue until a month after Trump's July 25 phone call in which he discussed Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The whistleblower complaint – citing U.S. officials – claimed that officials in Kiev knew that the military aid could be in jeopardy in early August, but the whistleblower admitted to not knowing "how or when they learned of it." The Trump administration reportedly began placing transcripts of Trump's calls with several foreign leaders in a highly classified repository after leakers publicly divulged the contents of Trump's private calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia in 2017. The complaint stated that Trump made a “specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike" -- a request that does not appear in the declassified transcript of the call released by the Trump administration on Tuesday. Trump mentioned CrowdStrike, but did not demand the server. Additionally, the complaint said Trump "suggested that Mr. Zelensky might want to keep" his current prosecutor general, a claim not supported by the transcript. CBS News reported late Thursday that the whistleblower complaint further inaccurately claimed that a State Department official was on the call with Zelensky.

If CNN is correct I see no crime here. Trump pressured Ukraine's President to investigate Biden's son Trump did not discuss a pending aid package to the country in the July 25 call, indicating that there may not have been an explicit quid pro quo outlined by the President in the conversation, the source familiar with the issue told CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/20/politics/wsj-trump-ukraine-calls-biden-investigation-giuliani/index.html

Not buying it. This was filed in July.

Yep. Clearing their land to hopefully create economic gain for their country. Good for them. While such fires are annual occurrences during the dry season, the 2019 fires were brought to the attention of the scientific and international community in July and August 2019 after the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, INPE) released statistics based on satellite observations documenting at least 75,336 wildfires burning in the country from January to August 23, 2019, with more than 40,000 within the Amazon rainforest, the highest number since data collection began in 2013.[4][5][6][7] Satellite images from NASAcorroborated INPE's findings that the Amazon forest has faced more intense wildfires in 2019 than in previous years.[8] INPE and other experts attributed the wildfires to slash-and-burn approaches to clear land for logging and farming to support Brazil's exports such as beef. The Brazilian and Bolivian governments had recently enacted policies allowing for increased clearing of rainforest areas for farming and logging.[9][10] Since 2004, Brazil has taken some measures to reduce the acceleration of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, but the increased rate of deforestation in 2019 raised concerns from environmental experts due to the importance of the Amazon basin in climate change mitigation.[11][12]Additionally, slash-and-burn techniques and subsequent wildfires may threaten the protected lands of the indigenous peoples in Brazil within the rainforest.[13]

Personally I thought our summer was average to below average. July was up a bit but June was not warm and August has been super. Next 7 days hardly a temp above 80.

Considering that the average MONTHLY wage in Venezuela is 97,352 Bolivars, or the equivalent of $12.50 as of July, 2017, 12 dollars an hour is nearly an entire month's work at minimum wage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae By STEPHEN LABATONSEPT. 11, 2003 The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. ''There is a general recognition that the supervisory system for housing-related government-sponsored enterprises neither has the tools, nor the stature, to deal effectively with the current size, complexity and importance of these enterprises,'' Treasury Secretary John W. Snow told the House Financial Services Committee in an appearance with Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who also backed the plan. Mr. Snow said that Congress should eliminate the power of the president to appoint directors to the companies, a sign that the administration is less concerned about the perks of patronage than it is about the potential political problems associated with any new difficulties arising at the companies. The administration's proposal, which was endorsed in large part today by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would not repeal the significant government subsidies granted to the two companies. And it does not alter the implicit guarantee that Washington will bail the companies out if they run into financial difficulty; that perception enables them to issue debt at significantly lower rates than their competitors. Nor would it remove the companies' exemptions from taxes and antifraud provisions of federal securities laws. The proposal is the opening act in one of the biggest and most significant lobbying battles of the Congressional session. After the hearing, Representative Michael G. Oxley, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, announced their intention to draft legislation based on the administration's proposal. Industry executives said Congress could complete action on legislation before leaving for recess in the fall. ''The current regulator does not have the tools, or the mandate, to adequately regulate these enterprises,'' Mr. Oxley said at the hearing. ''We have seen in recent months that mismanagement and questionable accounting practices went largely unnoticed by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight,'' the independent agency that now regulates the companies. ''These irregularities, which have been going on for several years, should have been detected earlier by the regulator,'' he added. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was created by Congress in 1992 after the bailout of the savings and loan industry and concerns about regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios. At the time, the companies and their allies beat back efforts for tougher oversight by the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the Federal Reserve. Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families. This year, however, the chances of passing legislation to tighten the oversight are better than in the past. Reflecting the changing political climate, both Fannie Mae and its leading rivals applauded the administration's package. The support from Fannie Mae came after a round of discussions between it and the administration and assurances from the Treasury that it would not seek to change the company's mission. After those assurances, Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chief executive, endorsed the shift of regulatory oversight to the Treasury Department, as well as other elements of the plan. ''We welcome the administration's approach outlined today,'' Mr. Raines said. The company opposes some smaller elements of the package, like one that eliminates the authority of the president to appoint 5 of the company's 18 board members. Company executives said that the company preferred having the president select some directors. The company is also likely to lobby against the efforts that give regulators too much authority to approve its products. Freddie Mac, whose accounting is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a United States attorney in Virginia, issued a statement calling the administration plan a ''responsible proposal.'' The stocks of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae fell while the prices of their bonds generally rose. Shares of Freddie Mac fell $2.04, or 3.7 percent, to $53.40, while Fannie Mae was down $1.62, or 2.4 percent, to $66.74. The price of a Fannie Mae bond due in March 2013 rose to 97.337 from 96.525.Its yield fell to 4.726 percent from 4.835 percent on Tuesday. Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators. ''The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,'' said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ''Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie's operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.'' Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'' Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed. ''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.

They were a drop in the bucket compared to Freddie and Fannie. You know the ones Bush/GOP tried to reign in 2001 and Barney Frank and others stopped it. https://www.thebalance.com/what-was-the-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-bailout-3305658 BY KIMBERLY AMADEO Updated July 28, 2019 The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout occurred on September 6, 2008. The U.S. Treasury Department was authorized to purchase up to $100 billion in their preferred stock and mortgage-backed securities. As a result, they were put into conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Keeping the two afloat cost taxpayers $187 billion over time. Treasury paid $116 billion for Fannie and $71 billion for Freddie. In August 2012, the Treasury decided it would send all Fannie and Freddie profits into the general fund. Since then, the bailout has been paid back with $58 billion in profit. Fannie remitted $147 billion, and Freddie paid $98 billion. The Fannie and Freddie bailout was greater than the 1989 saving and loan crisis, which cost the taxpayers $124 billion. It was on par with the subsequent bailout of AIG, which started at $85 billion but grew to $182 billion. Both were small potatoes compared to the $700 billion bailout of the U.S. banking system, even though only $439.6 billion of that was ever spent. The bailout kept Fannie, Freddie, and the American housing market functioning. It was supposed to be temporary. But economic conditions never improved enough to allow the government to sell the shares it owned and return Fannie and Freddie to private ownership. What Led to the Bailout Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were two government-sponsored enterprises that bought mortgages from banks, a process known as buying on the secondary market. They packaged these into mortgage-backed securities, and resell them to investors on Wall Street. The entire financial system depends on trust. The subprime mortgage crisis decimated it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were two government-sponsored enterprises that created, and remain highly involved in, the secondary market for mortgage-backed securities. Before the subprime mortgage crisis, they owned or guaranteed $1.4 trillion, or 40 percent, of all U.S. mortgages. They only held $168 billion in subprime mortgages, but it was enough to capsize the two. The two GSEs supported the secondary market, which helped American families realize the dream of homeownership. But they also helped turn that dream into the nightmare of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Been a couple at the Dubuque airshow over the years on the 3rd of July. Can't even hear the damn thing until its right on top of you. The last pass is generally low and slow with wings forward and then they sweep them on full aterburner going up and away at a 45 deg angle. Fucking awesome. Not my video.

Ended up the state passed a law saying counties couldn't have a different MW. I didn't agree with that either. I think in the end how it sits now the county MW is mostly symbolic with larger communities somewhat following it and smaller communities not. https://dailyiowan.com/2019/04/10/johnson-countys-symbolic-minimum-wage-to-increase-in-july/

"May have" being the key phrase. Be interesting to know where this ends up. Altering emails that were under federal investigation is highly illegal. An army of reddit users believes it has found evidence that former Hillary Clinton computer specialist Paul Combetta solicited free advice regarding Clinton's private email server from users of the popular web forum. A collaborative investigation showed a reddit user with the username stonetear requested help in relation to retaining and purging email messages after 60 days, and requested advice on how to remove a "VERY VIP" individual's email address from archived content. The requests match neatly with publicly known dates related to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. Stonetear has deleted the posts, but before doing so, the pages were archived by other individuals. There are several reasons to believe the reddit user is indeed Combetta, who was granted immunity by the Justice Department during its investigation of Clinton's private server after he deleted a large number of emails. The evidence connecting Combetta to the account is circumstantial, but also voluminous. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com, a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com indicates. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username stonetear. And, perhaps most damningly, there are the dates. On July 24, 2014, stonetear posted to reddit: Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out. I am not sure if something like this is possible with PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort. Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished? On July 23, 2014, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of records, according to an FBI reportreleased earlier this month on the bureau's probe of her email use. Stonetear posted to reddit on Dec. 10, 2014: Hello- I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder list where the users can drop items that they want to hang onto longer than the 60 day window. All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days (should not apply to calendar or contact items of course). How would I go about this? Some combination of retention and managed folder policy? The FBI report says that Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide and attorney, requested in December 2014 that the email retention policy be shortened to 60 days. The FBI report says Mills "instructed [redacted] to modify the email retention policy on Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail account" but that "according to [redacted] he did not make these changes to Clinton's clintonemail.com account until March 2015." The report says the person, essentiallyidentified as Combetta by The New York Times, realized in late March 2015 -- after Clinton's use of a private email account wasfirst reported that month by the Times -- that he had not made the retention change and "had an 'oh sh--' moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015, deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the [Platte River Networks] server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton's emails." An email requesting comment sent to stonetear@gmail.com was not immediately returned, nor was a reddit message sent to stonetear, who also posted apparently nonbusiness content to reddit, including a photo of a small plant growing on filthy car-floor carpet and a comment about an aunt who taught middle school math in Detroit. Last week, Combetta invoked the right not to testify before the House oversight committee, which is probing Clinton's email practices. A voicemail left with Platte River Networks, Combetta's employer, was not immediately returned. A staffer indicated there had been a significant number of inquiries on the topic. Ken Eichner, an attorney for the company, tells U.S. News he is acting as a spokesman addressing the matter, and that he would not be able to comment. He did not deny the apparent connection. "Right now we are respectfully declining all media inquiries," Eichner said. He said there would be no company statement, before hanging up the phone and ignoring a subsequent ca

Fighting for women every day. Brown's personal life was marred by several brushes with the law. At the age of 16, he was convicted of theft and served three years in juvenile prison. On July 16, 1978, after performing at the Apollo, Brown was arrested for reportedly failing to turn in records from one of his radio stations after the station was forced to file for bankruptcy.[54][134] Brown was arrested in May 1988 on drug and weapons charges, and again on September 24, 1988, following a high-speed car chase on Interstate 20 near the Georgia–South Carolinastate border. He was convicted of carrying an unlicensed pistol and assaulting a police officer, along with various drug-related and driving offenses. Although he was sentenced to six years in prison, he was eventually released on parole on February 27, 1991 after serving two years of his sentence. Brown's FBI file, released to The Washington Post in 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act,[135] related Brown's claim that the high-speed chase did not occur as claimed by the police, and that local police shot at his car several times during an incident of police harassment and assaulted him after his arrest.[136] Local authorities found no merit to Brown's accusations. In another incident, the police were summoned to Brown's residence on July 3, 2000 after he was accused of charging at an electric company repairman with a steak knife when the repairman visited Brown's house to investigate a complaint about having no lights at the residence.[137] In 2003 Brown was pardoned by the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services for past crimes that he was convicted of committing in South Carolina.[138] For the remainder of his life, Brown was repeatedly arrested for domestic violence. Adrienne Rodriguez, his third wife, had him arrested four times between 1987 and 1995 on charges of assault. In January 2004, Brown was arrested in South Carolina on a domestic violence charge after Tomi Rae Hynie accused him of pushing her to the floor during an argument at their home, where she suffered scratches and bruises to her right arm and hip. Later that year in June 2004, Brown pleaded no contest to the domestic violence incident, but served no jail time. Instead, Brown was required to forfeit a US$1,087 bond as punishment.[139] In January 2005 a woman named Jacque Hollander filed a lawsuit against James Brown, which stemmed from an alleged 1988 rape. When the case was initially heard before a judge in 2002, Hollander's claims against Brown were dismissed by the court as thelimitations period for filing the suit had expired. Hollander claimed that stress from the alleged assault later caused her to contract Graves' disease, a thyroid condition. Hollander claimed that the incident took place in South Carolina while she was employed by Brown as a publicist. Hollander alleged that, during her ride in a van with Brown, Brown pulled over to the side of the road and sexually assaulted her while he threatened her with a shotgun. In her case against Brown, Hollander entered as evidence a DNA sample and a polygraph result, but the evidence was not considered due to the limitations defense. Hollander later attempted to bring her case before the Supreme Court, but nothing came of her complaint

Unreal if this comes out to be true. Whats more disturbing is it may have all been done in cash. The currency of terrorism. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-may-received-much-33-6-billion-cash-gold-payments-u-s/ Iran may have received an additional $33.6 billion in secret cash and gold payments facilitated by the Obama administration between 2014 and 2016, according to testimony provided before Congress by an expert on last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions. A total of $11.9 billion was ultimately paid to Iran, but the details surrounding these payments remain shrouded in mystery, according to Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In total, “Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals,” Dubowitz disclosed. New questions about these payments are emerging following confirmation from top Obama administration officials on Thursday that it was forced to pay Iran $1.7 billion in cash prior to the release of several U.S. hostages earlier this year. The administration insisted that cash had to be used for this payment. Top administration officials were adamant that the cash payments were the best way to ensure that Iran got immediate access to this money due to its ongoing difficulty accessing international funds still sanctioned by the West. Lawmakers and others are now pressing the administration to disclose how a slew of other payments to Iran were made in the years leading up to the final nuclear accord. “In July, the Associated Press cited U.S. officials who estimated that Iran ‘brought home less than $20 billion.’ Were these funds repatriated to Tehran in cash or in gold and precious metals? Through the formal financial system? Or through some combination?” Dubowitz asked in his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “The administration should also clarify if the $20 billion dollars is inclusive of the $11.9 billion in [Joint Plan of Action] funds, or if the $20 billion was in addition to the $11.9 billion,” he said. “Either way, it is important to understand how funds were sent. The worst-case scenario here is that Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals.” At least some of this money was likely sent in cash and other assets, according to Dubowitz. The Obama administration was forced to disclose on Thursday that current sanctions and banking restrictions prohibited it from transferring funds to Iran via electronic methods. The cash payment of $1.7 billion earlier this year was the easiest way to ensure Iran got immediate access to the money, according to these officials. “Iran had to have it in cash,” Paul Ahern, assistant general counsel for enforcement and intelligence at the Treasury Department, told lawmakers. “Iran was very aware of the difficulties it would face in accessing and using the funds if they were in any other form than cash, even after the lifting of sanctions.” A cash delivery “was the most reliable way that they received the funds in a timely manner and it was the manner preferred by the relative foreign banks,” Ahren said. Given the situation, it is likely that the multiple past payments to Iran were conducted in a similar fashion, according to Dubowitz. “If the White House could only send cash to Iran from the start of the JPOA period through the Tribunal payment that could amount to a grant total of 33.6 billion,” he said. “Did any of this money go through the formal financial system? If so, the administration is not being truthful about the 1.7 billion. If many billions arrived in Iran on pallets [of cash] this would be a pretty astounding revelation.” Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and expert on rogue regimes, said that cash payments of this nature are “highly irregular.” “There’s no reason it needed to be paid now. After all, successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have delayed payments so as to avoid funding Iranian terrorism,” Rubin said. “Likewise, if the United States freezes accounts linked to al Qaeda or Hamas, releasing it and saying, ‘It’s their money anyway,’ would not be a tenable explanation. Cash payments are highly irregular.” The Iranians have been clear that they “perceived the payment to be a ransom” despite the administration’s protestations, Rubin explained. “Not only has the delivery of the millions of dollars been perceived as a ransom, provided as an incentive to seize more hostages …. but because the money was delivered in cash the payment bolstered the strength of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and augmented its ability to finance and conduct terrorism,” he said.

Interesting. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/in-major-blow-to-mueller-federal-judge-rebukes-mueller-and-doj-for-falsely-claiming-russian-bot-farm-linked-to-russian-government/ Dabney Friedrich, a Trump-appointed federal judge rebuked Robert Mueller and the DOJ for falsely suggesting the IRA (Internet Research Agency) and Concord Management and Company, the so-called Russian troll farms, were linked to the Russian government. Mueller’s core claim that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US presidential election in a “sweeping and systemic” fashion revolves around his bogus claims that a Russian bot farm was linked to the Kremlin — a core claim that has never even been proven. Defense lawyers for Concord Management, the ‘Russian troll farm’ indicted by Mueller, filed a motion in April demanding the judge hold Robert Mueller and US Attorney General Bill Barr in criminal contempt for releasing the redacted special counsel report. Concord’s lawyers argued that Mueller’s report contained allegations against Concord Management & Co. that were not in the indictment. “The practical effect of the broadside by AG Barr and SC Mueller on Concord was to advise the world (including potential jurors) that the allegations in the indictment are true and that the defendants in this case were operating as part of a Russian-government led interference campaign expressly linked to the allegations in United States v. Netyksho,” Reed Smith partner Eric Dubelier said in the April filing. “This despite the fact that the indictment contains no such allegation.” Judge Friedrich responded to the contempt request last week in a 23-page opinion and rebuked the special counsel and DOJ for falsely suggesting Concord was tied to the Kremlin, a fact that has never been proven, nor was it in Mueller’s indictment — Mueller did however make this claim in his garbage 448-page report. Judge Friedrich called Mueller out… “The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” Judge Friedrich’s July memo said. “But the indictment, which alleges that private Russian entities and individual conducted an “information warfare” campaign designed to sow discord among US voters, Indictment 10, does not link the defendants to the Russian government.” In a major blow to Mueller, judge Friedrich said, “Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several “government contracts” (with no further elaboration), the indictment alleges only private conduct by private actors. Judge Friedrich continued, “In short, the Court concludes that the government violated Rule 57.7 by making or authorizing the release of public statements that linked the defendants’ alleged activities to the Russian government and provided an opinion about the defendants’ guilt and the evidence against them. The Court will therefore proceed to consider the appropriate response to that violation, beginning with the possibility of contempt.”

Its worse than that. What was released was debunked by former NSA technical director as not being hacked but transferred from inside. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51106.htm By William Binney, former Technical Director NSA and Larry Johnson, former State CT and CIA February 15, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - The FBI, CIA and NSA claim that the DNC emails published by WIKILEAKS on July 26, 2016 were obtained via a Russian hack, but more than three years after the alleged “hack” no forensic evidence has been produced to support that claim. In fact, the available forensic evidence contradicts the official account that blames the leak of the DNC emails on a Russian internet “intrusion”. The existing evidence supports an alternative explanation--the files taken from the DNC between 23 and 25May 2016 and were copied onto a file storage device, such as a thumb drive.