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Showing posts with label Rogers. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Is Trump Correct By Supporting HIs Campaign Manager? Is This All In An Effort To Damage Trump Or Is Lewandowski Wrong?

Leading Conservative Female Media Ask Trump to Fire Campaign Manager

Donald Trump (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)

By Bill Hoffmann | Wednesday, 30 Mar 2016 01:11 PM

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Donald Trump should immediately fire Corey Lewandowski following the battery charge lodged against his campaign manager for allegedly roughhousing journalist Michelle Fields, a group of 15 conservative female writers are urging.

In an explosive letter delivered to the Republican presidential front-runner on Wednesday, 16 women, considered key members of the right-leaning female media elite, write:

"The press is to have an adversarial, yet civil approach to those in, or running, for elected office. Never in this line of work is it acceptable to respond to reasonable and legitimate questioning with use of physical force.

"The photographs, audio, videos, and witness accounts documenting the treatment of Michelle Fields by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's campaign manager, are inexcusable and unprofessional. Donald Trump should immediately remove Lewandowski from his campaign."

The letter goes onto say that the Trump campaign has stated Lewandowski will not be fired even if he is convicted.

"However unlike the Trump campaign, we believe in making a statement on the record to clearly highlight the difference between right and wrong," it concludes.

The note is signed by:

Dana Loesch (Radio America, Blaze TV); Katie Pavlich, (Townhall, Fox News); Meghan McCain, (America Now Radio, Cosmopolitan, Fox News); S.E. Cupp, ( New York Daily News, Glamour, CNN); Mary Katharine Ham, (CNN, The Federalist); Christine Rosen, (New Atlantis, Commentary); Christina Hoff Sommers, (American Enterprise Institute).

Bethany Mandel, (The Federalist, Acculturated); Emily Zanotti, (American Spectator); Elisha Krauss, (AM 870 The Answer); Karol Markowicz, (New York Post); Kristen Soltis Anderson, (Washington Examiner); Mona Charen, (Ethics and Public Policy Center, Creators Syndicate); Sarah Rumpf, (freelance); Brooke Rogers, (National Review); and Mary Chastain, (Breitbart).

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Government Sleaze. Benghazi Could Be The Door Where We Find Billions Siphoned Off To Our "Leaders."

The Benghazi Bonanza: A Bi-Partisan Scandal

JUNE 09, 2015

The Benghazi affair is beginning to shape up as a bi-partisan scandal — making Trey Gowdy’s life doubly difficult, of course. But the former prosecutor has been doing a bang-up job with his select committee, demolishing the mantra that there is “nothing new” to be learned about Benghazi and building a sober, far-reaching inquiry. Without Gowdy, recall, there would be no Clinton secret server, no Sidney Blumenthal trail, no new emails, and no upcoming testimony from Mrs. Clinton and her inner circle .
On the latter, Gowdy is holding firm, saying he will not schedule testimony until all relevant emails and documents have been turned over. This week, the House turned up the pressure on the State Department by threatening to withhold funding until the material is produced. Later, the full House could move to subpoena Mrs. Clinton’s server. Game on.
Gowdy correctly notes that the first Clinton email release is “self-selected” and self-serving — but still, quite revealing. Mr. Blumenthal — a man actually barred from a State Department position by the Obama team — is revealed as a key Clinton advisor, up to his neck in murky and dubious Libyan schemes. Mrs. Clinton herself is shown to be contemptuous of the president — Obama be damned, she’ll take Sid — and deeply involved in Libya policy. Key aides closely follow the media and political fallout over the Benghazi attack. Gems are buried, but you need to know the map and where to dig.
Perhaps most intriguing in the recent email batch is a one-line note to Mrs. Clinton from a top advisor, Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan. The subject of the September 10, 2011 email is simply “Rogers.” The note in its entirety reads: “Apparently wants to see you to talk Libya/weapons.”

“Rogers” is then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican. The email was unearthed at the deep end of the document dump and first noted in a piece by Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne of Fox News.

Chairman Rogers and other GOP House committee chairman spent a good deal of time opposing the formation of the Benghazi Select Committee. As Eli Lakereported last year, Rogers “warned his colleagues” about the committee. Lake reported that “the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Armed Services, and Government Reform committees — Reps. Rogers, Buck McKeon, and Darrell Issa, respectively — all opposed the formation of a select committee on Benghazi.”
Rogers abruptly resigned from the House in 2014 and embarked on a career as a radio and TV talking head. Around the same time, his wife, Kristi Rogers, quietly departed from a top position at the private defense contractor Aegis Defense Services, which had interests in Libya. Last year in the DC, Judicial Watchreported on Mike and Kristi Rogers and the Aegis connection.
“Both Rep. Rogers’ committee and Ms. Rogers’ company were focused on the Libyan security and intelligence environment in the months surrounding the Benghazi attack,” the story noted. “Both Rep. Rogers and Aegis pursued Libyan border security issues. And both Rep. Rogers and Ambassador Stevens were linked to efforts to secure Gadhafi’s arsenals … a high-stakes venture that involved both the State Department and the CIA.”
The new emails flash a few signals from Benghazi darkness. We can now add Mr. Blumenthal to the list of those focused on the Libyan security and intelligence environment. And as Herridge and Browne note, the emails also reveal Mrs. Clinton’s interest in arming the Libyan rebels using private security contractors.
The “issue remains so sensitive that the emails recently released by the State Department redacted a key line on the matter,” Herridge and Browne write. “But the unredacted version of the same email, released to the congressional Benghazi Select Committee and first posted by The New York Times … showed Clinton appearing to endorse the idea of using private contractors.”
The Clinton email, sent to Deputy Chief of Staff Sullivan, includes a Libya report from Mr. Blumenthal discussing “clandestine military support to the [Libyan] rebels” and noting that Libyan factions “are considering the possibility of hiring private security firms to help train and organize their forces.”
Mrs. Clinton sends the Blumenthal report on to Mr. Sullivan, noting: “FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered.”
The timeline here is intriguing. Mrs. Clinton’s email was sent in April 2011, as it was becoming clear that Gadhafi could not hang on to power. Christopher Stevens had been named special envoy to the Libyan opposition — the same people Mr. Blumenthal was talking to — and NATO airstrikes had begun. The long knives were out and there were profits to be made in oil-rich Libya.
By August, according to the AP, “State Department and CIA officials” were working “closely” on locating Gadhafi’s weapons of mass destruction and shoulder-fired missiles known as MANPADS — particularly prized by terrorists and insurgents. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, the AP reported, “said the State Department’s envoy to the Libyan opposition, Chris Stevens, was working with officials in Benghazi on how to take control over the yellowcake and chemical facilities and on destroying MANPADS as they are discovered.”
A month later, Chairman Rogers was reaching out to Secretary Clinton “to talk Libya/weapons.”
Mr. Rogers was at the time a central player in global intelligence activities. As a member of the so-called “Gang of Eight” — the eight leaders of Congress and the House and Senate intelligence committees — he would have had a hand in all highly sensitive covert actions. Did Mr. Rogers and Mrs. Clinton eventually meet to talk about Libya and weapons? Was “the idea of using private security experts” in Libya, as Mrs. Clinton wrote to her deputy, discussed? Was Aegis Defense Services — the private security company led by Mr. Rogers’ wife — involved? Was Mr. Blumenthal?

The Clintons, of course, have been much in the news lately for their apparent conviction that the public good and private profit often go hand in hand, usually through the Clinton Foundation and its various satellites. Mr. Blumenthal — a longtime Clinton insider — was on the payrolls of the foundation and associated entities at the time of his Libyan adventures.

As author Peter Schweizer noted in his groundbreaking study, Clinton Cash, the Clintons frequently “operated at the fringes of the developed world, often appearing to assist in facilitating huge resource-extraction deals that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The era of globalization has opened up a Wild West bonanza where profits can be made on a scale not seen since the height of nineteenth-century colonialism. The Clintons’ most lucrative transactions originate not in places like Germany or Great Britain, where business and politics are kept separate by stringent ethical rules and procedures, but in despotic areas on the world where the rules are very different.”

Mr. Gowdy has said he will interview Mr. Blumenthal, among others. He also should interview everyone associated with Mr. Blumenthal’s activities in Libya and scoop up the financial paper trail. As a former prosecutor, he knows the key question in any inquiry often is, cui bono? Who profits?

Mr. Gowdy also should interview Mr. Rogers. He needs to know what the Gang of Eight — Republicans as well as Democrats — knew about Libya operations and when they knew it. He needs to find out what the CIA was up to with the State Department in Libya and if Aegis Defense Services or other private contractors were involved. Critically, he needs to learn what Mr. Blumenthal was doing in Libya and if his employers at the Clinton Foundation were involved.

According to the spin from Mr. Blumenthal’s side of the story, he was in Libya on some sort of business/humanitarian mission, looking to build floating hospitals and schools. How Clintonian. And what a ridiculous lie.

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. First published at the Daily Caller, June 4, 2015

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Do You Love Your House? Would You Sell It If The Government Offered You Less Than Market Rate For It? The Slippery Slope Of Government Intervention.

When the Kelo Case was being heard by the Supreme Court, our belief, before it ruled, was that no way would the home owners lose. How, in America, could a government entity take land from private individuals to give to another private company? It was not for building a road, a dam or some other benefit for the public at large. It was for a mega new development which only would increase the money coming into the coffers of the city of New London.

Unfortunately, the Supreme's denied the rights of the citizen over a city. Yes, they got some compensation but hardly replacing the damage done and the damage that continues. The development never happened, leaving the former residential area a barren wasteland. Talk about abuse of power and a total lack of understanding of the Constitution!

This tragic event is just another chink in the armor of America, however, that seems small given the events of the past nine years. When citizen's rights are taken away by illegal government confiscation (Kelo case), we all lose. When the IRS can target certain groups (Tea Party), without any penalty paid by those in charge, we all lose. When the Administration and their Democratic supporters lie about the benefits of a program (ObamaCrapCare) they are promoting, we all lose. When an American Ambassador (Chris Stevens in Benghazi) dies and no one makes an attempt to rescue him and others, we all lose. When the government gets into gun running (Fast and Furious) and those guns end up killing Americans, we all lose. When the Patriot Act and legislators from both parties (Rogers, Feinstein) see no problem with monitoring every American's communication (NSA spying), we all lose. When private businesses (banks, GM, Chrysler) are saved from bankruptcy by the government because they "are too large to fail", we all lose.

America has lost its way. The Founders would be calling for a revolution if they came back and saw how the nation they founded was acting and we should be embarrassed and ashamed of how we have let our leaders take us down this path.

If this nation is to survive as a Constitutionally restricted republic, we must change the direction. No longer can government take your home to give to someone; no longer should the IRS be able to target anyone or any group; no longer should our diplomatic personnel feel they will not be rescued; no longer should the government be involved in illegal and immoral activities in the hope of political gain; no longer should we fear the government is eavesdropping on us; and no longer should any private business be bailed out when they fall on hard times.

The 2014 elections are our chance to rectify the situation, to correct some of our ills, and to set us on a new path. Will we take the opportunity or will it be just another election that supports the status quo? Unfortunately, the latter most probably will be the result.

Conservative Tom

Kelo Forever

February 6, 2014 by Ben Crystal

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In 2005, a property-rights case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Entitled Kelo v. City of New London, the case represented the last-ditch attempt by a small group of middle-class Americans to save their middle-class homes from an eminent domain seizure. Led by a nurse and single mother named Suzette Kelo, none of the six plaintiffs was the sort to spend a lot of time in the highest court in the land. And their opponents made the case an almost blatant metaphor for David and Goliath. Standing opposite the everyman plaintiffs was the city of New London, Conn. And standing behind New London was the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Thanks to a sweetheart deal proffered by a city nearly desperate for incoming capital, Pfizer was the incoming tenant of a tract of land just across the water from the Kelo homestead.

In the eternally infamous decision, the court’s liberal wing ruled in favor of the government-industrial complex. At the time, the decision sparked a brushfire of outrage amongst the politically active segment of the population; but the blaze was unable to breach the walls of American indifference. Of course, the Kelo decision hardly marked the first time our government stepped on our fellow citizens’ necks. But Kelo represented a new low. Kelowasn’t a ruling extending freedom. Kelo was a ruling that specifically limited freedom. And it didn’t take place back in the days before 24-hour news channels and 24-second news cycles.Kelo happened against the backdrop of the Internet age. And we ignored it.

The court had not entertained an “eminent domain” case for more than 20 years. With Kelo, for the first time since the dawn of the digital age, the government blatantly abrogated the Bill of Rights — specifically the 5^th Amendment’s Takings Clause — on behalf of the promise of corporate cash; and the people let them get away with it. Moreover, the government-industrial complex conclusively learned that outrage, even over the most egregious crimes the State might commit, has a definitive shelf life.

In the most recent edition of The Weekly Standard, writer Charlotte Allen presented “‘Kelo’ Revisited.” Allen reveals the postscript to the Kelo group’s heartbreaking saga is sadder than Justin Bieber in the county lockup’s general population. After years of legal warfare, crippling financial losses, endless hours of time and effort, the city of New London and its accomplices have turned Kelo, et al.’s homes into… nothing.

There’s nothing there. The land deemed so prime for a conference/condo/recreational/retail/riverwalk/tourist trap/airbrushed T-shirt mega-center remains little more than scrub pine and seagulls. Pfizer ended up canceling its expansion plans and left New London with nary a little blue pill as a parting gift. The construction company hired to develop the seized land failed to secure financing and hightailed it back to Boston. Government wanted Kelo’s land. Government got it. And then government left it sitting there. In the Kelo context, government is a spoiled baby — albeit a spoiled baby whose tantrums can involve drone strikes.

And we’re still paying for it in spades. Kelo was the go code for government to roll heavy across our Constitutional landscape. From Kelo came the unmitigated gall of every fraudulent, crony-capitalist, government abuse of power since. The bank and auto bailouts, the “green” energy scams, the gunrunning disasters, the terrorism cover-ups, the domestic spying, the Internal Revenue Service bullying and Obamacare all got their green lights fromKelo.

I might be overestimating Kelo’s import. Perhaps Allen caught me on a particularly impressionable day. But I can’t help but note the striking rise in unapologetic government intrusion into private life in just less than a decade since. Nine years after Kelo, a simple land-grab seems almost quaint.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Financial Prognosticators Are Not Seeing Bright Spots In The Future. Do You Agree Or Disagree?

Featured Stories World News Commentary Money Watch Multimedia Prison Planet U.S. News Science And Technology

Dent, Faber, Celente, Maloney, Rogers – What Do They Say Is Coming In 2014?

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse Blog
December 12, 2013

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next. But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous. The following are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in 2014 and beyond…

-Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead: “Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at the latest.”

-Marc Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: “I see a bubble in everything that relates to the financial sector.”

-Gerald Celente: “Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get.

And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.

That’s our forecast.

We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out.”

-Mike Maloney, host of Hidden Secrets of Money: “I think the crash of 2008 was just a speed bump on the way to the main event… the consequences are gonna be horrific… the rest of the decade will bring us the greatest financial calamity in history.”

-Jim Rogers: “You saw what happened in 2008-2009, which was worse than the previous economic setback because the debt was so much higher. Well now the debt is staggeringly much higher, and so the next economic problem, whenever it happens and whatever causes it, is going to be worse than in the past, because we have these unbelievable levels of debt, and unbelievable levels of money printing all over the world. Be worried and get prepared. Now it [a collapse] may not happen until 2016 or something, I have no idea when it’s going to happen, but when it comes, be careful.”

-Lindsey Williams: “There is going to be a global currency reset.”

-CLSA’s Russell Napier: “We are on the eve of a deflationary shock which will likely reduce equity valuations from very high to very low levels.”

-Oaktree Capital’s Howard Marks: “Certainly risk tolerance has been increasing of late; high returns on risky assets have encouraged more of the same; and the markets are becoming more heated. The bottom line varies from sector to sector, but I have no doubt that markets are riskier than at any other time since the depths of the crisis in late 2008 (for credit) or early 2009 (for equities), and they are becoming more so.”

-Financial editor Jeff Berwick: “If they allow interest rates to rise, it will effectively make the U.S. government bankrupt and insolvent, and it would make the U.S. government collapse. . . . They are preparing for a major societal collapse. It is obvious and it will happen, and it will be very scary and very dangerous.”

-Michael Pento, founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies: “Disappointingly, it is much more probable that the government has brought us out of the Great Recession, only to set us up for the Greater Depression, which lies just on the other side of interest rate normalization.”

-Boston University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff:”Eventually somebody recognizes this and starts dumping the bonds, and interest rates go up, and inflation takes off, and were off to the races.”

-Mexican Billionaire Hugo Salinas Price: “I think we are going to see a series of bankruptcies. I think the rise in interest rates is the fatal sign which is going to ignite a derivatives crisis. This is going to bring down the derivatives system (and the financial system).

There are (over) one quadrillion dollars of derivatives and most of them are related to interest rates. The spiking of interest rates in the United States may set that off. What is going to happen in the world is eventually we are going to come to a moment where there is going to be massive bankruptcies around the globe.”

-Robert Shiller, one of the winners of the 2013 Nobel prize for economics: “I’m not sounding the alarm yet. But in many countries the stock price levels are high, and in many real estate markets prices have risen sharply…that could end badly.”

-David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan: “We have a massive bubble everywhere, from Japan, to China, Europe, to the UK. As a result of this, I think world financial markets are extremely dangerous, unstable, and subject to serious trouble and dislocation in the future.”

And certainly there are already signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down as we head into the final weeks of 2013. For example, on Thursday we learned that the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits increased by 68,000 last week to a disturbingly high total of368,000. That was the largest increase that we have seen in more than a year.

In addition, as I wrote about the other day, rail traffic is way down right now. In fact, for the week ending November 30th, U.S. rail traffic was down 16.3 percent from the same week one year earlier. That is a very important indicator that economic activity is getting slower.

And we continue to get more evidence that the middle class is being steadily eroded and that poverty in America is rapidly growing. For example, a survey that was just released found that requests for food assistance and the level of homelessness have both risen significantly in major U.S. cities over the past year…

A survey of 25 American cities, including many of the nation’s largest, showed yearly increases in food aid and homelessness.

The cities, located throughout 18 states, saw requests for emergency food aid rise by an average of seven percent compared with the previous period a year earlier, according to the US Conference of Mayors study, published Wednesday.

All but four cities reported an increase in demand for assistance between the period of September 2012 through August 2013.

Unfortunately, if the economic experts quoted above are correct, this is just the beginning of our problems.

The next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and things are going to get much worse than this.

So what do you think?

Which of the individuals quoted above do you think are right on the money and which ones do you think are way off base?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

This article was posted: Thursday, December 12, 2013 at 7:43 pm

Sunday, December 1, 2013

When Will We Be Attacked Next? Feinstein and Rogers Believe It Could Be Soon.

Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Rogers: Terror Threat Greater Than Before Sept 11

Sunday, 01 Dec 2013 11:19 AM

By Audrey Hudson

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The U.S. is in greater danger of a terrorist attack than it was prior to September 11 and has less ability to prevent such aggression by Islamist radicals, key congressional intelligence leaders said Sunday.

"I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there," Feinstein said.

"I think there is a real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community. That is that the West is responsible for everything that goes wrong and that the only thing that's going to solve this is Islamic sharia law and the concept of the caliphate," Feinstein said.

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee agreed, and said terrorists are now focusing on smaller events, making it more difficult for the intelligence community to detect plots against American targets.

"The threat level has never been more diverse than it is today and that's one of the bigger concerns that we have, and why we both would agree that the threat is higher today and we are probably less safe. The more efforts they try, the more perfect you have to be to stop something. That's a huge challenge," Rogers told CNN.

Citing the recent disclosures about the interworking of U.S. intelligence operations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, Rogers said it has changed the way al-Qaida operates and communicates, making it even more difficult to detect an attack before it becomes operational.
"We're fighting amongst ourselves in this country about the role of the intelligence community. That is having an impact on our ability to stop what is a growing number of threats. And so we've got to shake ourselves out of this pretty soon and understand that our intelligence services are not the bad guys," Rogers said.
The bleak assessment comes as Congress debates whether to curtail the reach of the intelligence community's ability to spy on Americans, as well as terrorist threats overseas.

The Snowden leaks revealed that the NS A has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, as well as the email content of messages going overseas.

The revelation prompted rare bipartisan consensus in Congress to limit NSA activities or to require regular reports to Congress on its activities.

Feinstein is pushing legislation to protect NSA practices but require more congressional reporting.

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