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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: New Age Jacobins and the fumes of fanaticism

schiff impeachment
© Reuters / Erin ScottHouse Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Schiff speaks to media during impeachment inquiry deposition on Capitol Hill in Washington on October 28, 2019.
Judging by the volume of intemperate emails and angry social media blasts that come my way, the party of impeachment seems to be inhaling way too much gas from the smoking guns it keeps finding in the various star chambers of its inquisition against you-know-who. You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little โ€” a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump โ€” except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence.

When you state just that, these frothing hysterics reply that many background figures โ€” if not the Golden Golem of Greatness himself โ€” were indicted and convicted of crimes by Mr. Mueller's crew. Oh yes! The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency was indicted for spending $400,000 on Facebook ads (and never extradited or tried in a court-of-law). Pretty impressive victory there! The hacking of Hillary Clinton's emails by "Russia"? Still just alleged, never proven, with plenty of shady business around the search for evidence. Paul Manafort, on tax evasion of money earned in Ukraine, 2014? We'll see about that as the whole filthy business of the 2014 Ukraine regime change op under Mr. Obama gets reviewed in the months ahead. George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI? Stand by on that one, too; still a developing story. General Michael Flynn, for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about).

To set the record straight I'm forced to repeat something that these New Age Jacobins seem unable to process: you don't have to be a Trump cheerleader to be revolted by the behavior of his antagonists, which is a stunning spectacle of bad faith, dishonesty, incompetence, and malice โ€” and is surely way more toxic to the American project than anything the president has done. Every time I entertain the complaints of these angry auditors, I'm forced to remind myself that these are the same people who think that "inclusion" means shutting down free speech, who believe that the US should not have borders, who promote transsexual reading hours in the grammar schools, and who fiercely desire to start a war with Russia.

Comment: Get your popcorn ready!


Arrow Up

Best of the Web: US national debt passes $23 trillion, historic high

American Debt
© YouTube
Republicans who once criticized former President Barack Obama's handling of U.S. debt quietly watched as the federal government debt hit $23 trillion for the first time in history.

Treasury Department data show the national debt rose past $23 trillion Thursday, and almost $17 trillion out of this number is debt held by the public. The remaining $6 trillion comes from loans within government entities, The Hill reported.

The national debt stood at $19.9 trillion when President Donald Trump took office, after expanding by just under $9 trillion under the Obama administration. The debt has risen 16% since Trump took office, according to the Hill, hitting $22 trillion in February.

Trump warned during his 2016 presidential campaign that the national debt was dangerous, blaming Obama for the "mountain of debt" that the former president left behind him.

Though the total national debt has continued to grow under the Trump administration, Republicans have remained quiet over an issue they once championed.

Comment: From the balance, 26/8/2019: US Debt by President
Barack Obama: Added $8.588 trillion, a 74% increase from the $11.657 trillion debt at the end of Bush's last budget, FY 2009.

In addition: The president doesn't have much control over the debt added during his first year in office. The budget for that fiscal year was already set by the previous president. President Trump took office in January 2017. He submitted his first budget in May, but that covered Fiscal Year 2018. It didn't begin until October 1. For the first nine months of his new term, Trump had to live with President Barack Obama's last budget.
Twitter responses:
$23,008,409,564,494.99 (+) #NationalDebt
National Debt Tweets (@NationalDebt) November 1, 2019





Marijuana

Best of the Web: Trump impeachment: A tragedy for the U.S. - and democracy

pelosi
Another day, another ยญgiant step on the road to ruin. Either Nancy Pelosi has lost her mind or she really wants to dig America's grave.

The vote to formalize the impeachment jihad is a great day for Trump haters and a tragedy for democracy and common sense. Coming a year before an election and without a compelling claim that the president committed anything remotely resembling "high crimes and misdemeanors," the action is an abuse of power for purely partisan purposes.

The timing is also exquisite. Voting on Halloween, and on the same day when Democratic Rep. Katie Hill took to the House floor to declare herself a victim of a double standard after she was caught engaging in threesomes with her husband and a campaign aide, the picture of a party seized by shamelessness is complete.

This was the Dems' Crazy Day โ€” and like Hill, they don't have the decency to be embarrassed. Some are even rallying around her. Throuple cheers for Katie!

Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: Record low temps across much of U.S. threaten to wreck the rest of harvest season

snow
It isn't supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week. Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested.

Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.

Attention

Best of the Web: Tulsi Gabbard: US government 'is hiding the truth' on 9/11 terror attacks

Tulsi Gabbard
Tulsi Gabbard
Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, reacted to the difficulties Chris Ganci and Brett Eagleson, two relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were having in their quest to obtain more information about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11.

Gabbard accused the federal government of undermining efforts of achieving more transparency, which she said was being done at the behest of Saudi Arabia.

Comment: From Tulsi's Twitter:




Cloud Lightning

Best of the Web: Whoa! Lightning strike leaves 15-FOOT HOLE at gas station in Fort Worth, Texas


Comment: Until this happened in Texas yesterday, this wasn't known to have been physically possible...


lightning hole
A powerful lightning strike left a huge hole in a Fort Worth parking lot just after 6 a.m. on Shadydell Drive and Boat Club Road on October 30, 2019.

The parking lot, shared by a Chevron gas station and a strip center now has a 15 feet wide and 3 feet deep hole. I have never heard of such events. Pretty powerful lightning, isn't it?

Card - VISA

Best of the Web: 'Blade Runner' was set in November 2019: Instead of seeing it as a warning, we used it as an instruction manual

blade runner
© Global Look / filmstills
The real world has caught up to the dystopian sci-fi classic Blade Runner, set in November 2019. While robots aren't quite passing for humans, they're silently taking over human jobs and roles.

The real Los Angeles of November 2019 bears more than a passing resemblance to the chilling future depicted in 'Blade Runner', where ultra-realistic androids prowl the streets pretending to be human and corporations have taken on most of the functions of government. While the US doesn't have flying cars - yet - many of the other technologies seen in the 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep have become reality.


Comment: On whether or not we're beset on all sides by robots passing for humans... perhaps not literally, but functionally?


Comment: Then there are the bouts of incessant rain, which most places experience regularly now. Then there's the depravity-as-mass-consumerism. Then there's the police state. All the elements of Blade Runner have come to pass, right on schedule...


MIB

Best of the Web: Manufactured terror: MI5 lifted surveillance of London Bridge terrorist weeks before attack


Comment: And they wonder why most people don't believe them anymore...


attack at London Bridge
© Getty Images / Anadolu Agency / Isabel InfantesPolice officers cordoned off London Bridge following last night terror attack at London Bridge
The suspension of priority MI5 investigations into the ringleader of the London Bridge attacks before the atrocity is a matter of "legitimate public concern", the chief coroner for England and Wales has said.

In his Prevention of Future Deaths report, published on Friday, Mark Lucraft QC also suggested that further measures should be introduced to reduce the risk of rental vehicles being used in terrorist attacks.

Eight people were killed when three terrorists led by Khuram Butt, 27, drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then began stabbing people in a 10-minute rampage on 3 June 2017.

MI5 had been been investigating Butt since 2015 over concerns he wanted to stage an attack. But the investigation was suspended twice, in 2016 and again from 21 March to 4 May 2017, weeks before the attacks.

Comment: That's pretty much as good an admission you'll get from a Western government that 'Islamist terrorists' are directed by state security forces.


Pirates

Best of the Web: Russian Foreign Ministry: US is smuggling $30mn of crude monthly from occupied Syrian oil fields, violating its OWN sanctions


Comment: The silver lining to this outright plunder is that it further exposes the real motivation of Western govts in the ME and elsewhere.


us oil smuggling syra
© AFP / Delil SouleimanA Syrian man walks on as US armoured vehicles patrol the northeastern town of Qahtaniyah at the border with Turkey, on October 31, 2019.
A supposed champion of the rule of law, the US is violating its own anti-Syrian sanctions by smuggling crude from oil fields it seized from Damascus, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said.

Each month the US smuggles crude worth $30 million out of Syria, according to Zakharova. The fuel comes from fields in the northeastern part of the country, where the US maintains a military presence after pulling its troops back from the Syrian-Turkish border.

"A nation that repeats ad nauseam that it sticks to democratic values and rule of law in international relations, is pumping oil... under a pretense of fighting ISIL," the official said, using an outdated name for terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Comment: Pentagon chief Esper has doubled down on the U.S.' intent to steal Syrian oil:
Secretary of Defence Mark Esper has confirmed that the US plans to continue controlling Syria's oil fields, and to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists or "other actors".
"The mission is, as I've spoken to and I've conveyed it to the commander, and that is, we will secure oil fields to deny their access to ISIS* and other actors in the region, and to ensure that the [Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces] has continued access, because those resources are - are important, and so that the SDF -can do its mission, what it needs to do in the region," Esper said, speaking to reporters on Thursday after meeting with Australian Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds.
[...] US efforts to seize control of Syria's oil fields have been criticised by Syria and its allies. Last week, the Russian military presented intelligence materials on a $30 million a month oil smuggling scheme used by the Pentagon and the CIA which Moscow described as nothing short of "international state banditry". According to Russian intelligence, the illegal US-supervised extraction of Syrian oil was being carried out by "leading American corporations" and private military contractors, with US special forces and air power used for protection.

Oil revenues could serve as a much-needed support for rebuilding the war-torn country. Last year, Damascus estimated that rebuilding the country could require up to $400 billion in spending, and take over a decade to complete. The US and its European allies have refused to commit funding toward the reconstruction effort, even as hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have returned home in recent years amid the lull in fighting.

This week, the United Nations called for Syria relief, with a Syrian government representative warning that the future of the Syrian peace process may be threatened by the continued illegal presence of foreign forces on Syrian territory, "the spoliation of the resources of our country and the continuing imposition of unilateral economic sanctions".
In other words, the U.S. intends to hamstring any effort made to rebuild Syria or, failing that, hopes to push the brunt of the cost onto Russia and Iran: A video posted to Twitter allegedly shows a U.S. convoy leaving a Syrian oil field:






MIB

Best of the Web: 'Thank God for the deep state': Once rejected as conspiracy theory, MSM and CIA are now embracing reality of secret govt

Deep State
In just a few short months, the US political establishment has gone from denying the existence of the 'Deep State' and calling it a conspiracy theory, to praising it as the bulwark of the Republic against President Donald Trump.

"Thank God for the 'Deep State,'" declared former CIA director John E. McLaughlin at an event this week, describing the diplomats and intelligence officers testifying before the congressional impeachment inquiry as "people who are doing their duty or responding to a higher call."

Lavishing praise on the 'whistleblower' intelligence officer whose complaint about Trump's phone call launched the impeachment probe, McLaughlin said the intelligence community is "institutionally committed to objectivity and telling the truth."


Comment: In other words, McLaughlin is a liar with no commitment to objectivity or truth. Either that, or he's just a complete idiot - and he doesn't seem to be stupid.


One would think this might be a bit rich, coming from the former deputy director of the CIA at the time of the infamous 'Iraqi WMDs' fiasco - and acting director for a time in 2004 - but McLaughlin's comments were met with applause by the crowd at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government.