Want to look like Trump?

http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/how...?cat_orig=diversions

http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...left-wing-activists/

This week, Congress turned attention toward a continuing Obama Administration policy wherein the Justice Department (DOJ) incentivizes corporate payments to left-wing activist groups like La Raza.

As President Donald Trump wages war against federal bureaucrats left over from the Obama Administration, lawmakers are taking aim at this practice — instituted by former Attorney General Eric Holder — which effectively funds progressive get-out-the-vote operations by shaking down financial institutions.

On Wednesday, Fox News named two Republicans who have submitted bills to eliminate this “shadowy DOJ slush fund” in both houses of Congress. Reporter Melissa Jacobs writes that “investigators have accounted for $3 billion paid” out through the practice

From October, Peter Schweizer:

What’s really happening here is simple. You’ve got large financial institutions on Wall Street, you’ve got banks like Bank of America, who have in some cases committed financial crimes. I think some of them are real, some of them may not be, but set that aside for a minute. The Department of Justice has gone after them and basically said, ‘You committed these offenses, you’ve got to pay restitution in the form of billions of dollars.’ Okay, they committed the crime, they ought to pay that.

Now, ostensibly that money, those billions of dollars, are supposed to go to the victims of their financial crimes. If your Wall Street broker committed fraud, you’re supposed to be made whole with this money, and the rest of it is supposed to go to taxpayers.

The problem is the Obama Justice Department has been diverting literally more than $650 million to left-wing groups. They do it under the guise of, “Well, you know, if this bank discriminated against lenders racially, we’re going to give this money to these left-wing quote-unquote housing groups to help deal with the problem.”

But that’s not what’s going on. These housing groups are advocacy groups. They’re left-wing organizations. They are registering voters and getting voters out to the voting booth. And they specifically target what they call quote-unquote progressive voters.

So this is taking the Department of Justice, which we’ve experienced so much in recent years has been politicized by this Administration, even further to where now the Department of Justice is transferring money to left-wing groups — in an effort, frankly I think, to influence this election.

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:
There is nothing Trump can't do.
He is making Babs Streisand gain weight.
Trump is amazing.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-h...-making-gain-weight/

Best from the comments section

"Does this @POTUS make my ass look fat?"

This is how the NYT article begins:

"WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday."

...senior American officials said on Sunday.

It's The New York Times, for cripe's sake.

Not Comey, but unnamed "senior officials."

Let's wait and see how this pans out.

From the Breitbart article above: "As President Donald Trump wages war against federal bureaucrats...."

It is war. It's not only against the bureaucrats. It's all the reptiles in The Swamp. And it's going to get uglier. Settle down and be ready for it.

Regarding the current news about wiretaps, I found this story dated 1/5/2015.


http://gizmodo.com/fbi-says-it...-on-phone-1677609130



If you're in a public place, don't expect your phone calls and texts to stay private. At least not if the FBI flies a Cessna over your head or drives a car around your neighborhood while you're out for a walk.

If you're in a public place, don't expect your phone calls and texts to stay private. At least not if the FBI flies a Cessna over your head or drives a car around your neighborhood while you're out for a walk.

The FBI won't bother to obtain search warrants before it uses interception devices on people in public, according to a letter written by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and staffer Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). These devices include Stingrays, the cell-tower decoy interception devices used to scoop up data from devices around it. The FBI puts Stingrays and similar devices known as dirtboxes in cars and small airplanes as a way to quickly dragnet data from a large number of devices while it is hunting for a device that belongs to a suspect.

Stingrays, dirtboxes, and other surveillance tools help law enforcement catch criminals. That's true. To do so, the decoys grab information from lots of innocent people by tricking their phones into sending data to the FBI before they can pinpoint a suspect. This is a substantial and wide-ranging intrusion, which is why the policy to forgo warrants is raising concerns.



Leahy and Grassley learned about this "What, me warrant?!" policy at private briefings.

Leahy and Grassley wanted to learn more about the FBI's position after reading disturbing reports from the Wall Street Journal about the spy planes equipped with dirtboxes.

The congressmen wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson to explain and critique the FBI's new position:

According to this new policy, the FBI now obtains a search warrant before deploying a cell-site simulator, although the policy contains a number of potentially broad exceptions and we continue to have questions about how it is being implemented in practice. Furthermore, it remains unclear how other agencies within the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security make use of cell-site simulators and what policies are in place to govern their use of that technology.

The exceptions include using the spying tools on people in public, meaning the FBI doesn't have to get a warrant to use them on anyone using their phone hanging out in a local park, walking their dog on the street, or doing anything else without the expectation of privacy they'd have at home.

Understandably, Leahy and Grassley are concerned with how lenient the FBI is being with itself:

We have concerns about the scope of the exceptions. Specifically, we are concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests of other individuals who are not the targets of the interception, but whose information is nevertheless being collected when these devices are being used. We understand that the FBI believes that it can address these interests by maintaining that information for a short period of time and purging the information after it has been collected. But there is a question as to whether this sufficiently safeguards privacy interests.
The congressmen posed a list of questions about the surveillance program, asking for specifics about how the FBI is using Stingrays and similar tools. They aren't the only lawmakers asking questions; after the Wall Street Journal report, Senator Edward Markey sent a similarly critical letter to the Attorney General asking for more details about the airplane surveillance program.

As Ars Technica pointed out, the attitude the FBI is taking here is in line with how the Obama Administration has treated privacy in public places: Like it doesn't exist. Though the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, the Obama Administration argued that putting GPS trackers on cars without warrants was OK because people shouldn't have an expectation of privacy while driving their car in public. This wide-ranging phone interception program is an extension of that line of thinking.

Allowing for warrantless surveillance on the phones of anyone in a public place is a mendacious scheme that tramples on any reasonable expectation of privacy. Yes, you can overhear someone's conversation as they're sitting on a patio and that's fair game. People should be able to assume the text messages they silently tap out on their iPhones is safe from eavesdropping. People should be able to assume that the call they're on alone in their car is not game for government interception just because they're in the general vicinity of someone who might have committed a crime. Leahy and Grassley are right to ask questions. Now we need the answers.[Ars Technica]

The next White House Press Briefing is going to be a real humdinger.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...pped-his-phones.html

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president

Once a sleeze ball, always a sleaze ball.

Comey showed his true colors when he gave the hildabeast a pass.

Trump made a very large mistake when he kept Comey on the job.

He should have summarily thrown him the hell out with the rest of the trash.

quote:

Like I said, were I the President and learned of this horseshit, my first action would be to demand the immediate resignation of EVERY political appointee and member of the Senior Executive Service, irrespective of where they worked or cwhen they assumed their office.

In spades!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
This is how the NYT article begins:

"WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department...
....

So a " senior official" claimed Director Comedy asked.

And Director Comey has said... bupkis himself.

So as far as I'm aware, he hasn't made one goddamned peep directly from him all weekend.

Has he taken a vow of silence for Lent?

Laryngitis?

Has his cat got his tongue?

Or is he so scared he is unable to speak?

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
This is how the NYT article begins:

"WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department...
....

So a " senior official" claimed Director Comedy asked.

And Director Comey has said... bupkis himself.

So as far as I'm aware, he hasn't made one goddamned peep directly from him all weekend.

Has he taken a vow of silence for Lent?

Laryngitis?

Has his cat got his tongue?

Or is he so scared he is unable to speak?

I read it as 'Please don't look into this as you will find the truth and that's not good for the FBI or Comey'

Comey knows and I think he's scared.

quote:

Originally posted by Deqlyn:
I believe this to be quite calculated.

It ain't no accident, that's for sure.

Even more brazen than Watergate, not just trying to bug phones and breaking into a Party office, etc, but a sitting President on the way out having the #1 candidate most likely to replace him surveilled by our own government under some FISA deal... over, what, some horseshit allegations about Russia.

This shit combined with overt efforts for Obama to stay nearby and a thorn, much less with supporters of his scattered about the current government, and even if acting independently - still causing problems... That's fucking crazy, is what it is. Barely a step short of Tom Clancy plot lines crazy, but by dumber people/authors.

Now, I think words like Coup and Treason and Sedition ought not be thrown around willy nilly (and they are), I think Obama, et al, aren't that smart or bold, and I'm sure they'll toe the line of generally legal pains in our collective assess, but maybe this surveillance bit will slow down the tomfoolery, maybe it'll be just enough to derail or silence them for a while.

Isn't it amazing how in just a matter of months, really, tweets have become so monumentally important. It is testimony to the widespread distrust of the so-called "main stream media," and their utter failure to do the important job entrusted to them.

One other thought, unrelated, but: It doesn't take a great effort of imagination to see what is happening now in America as a battle between the forces of good versus evil. Trump walked away from a life of ease and luxury to wade into the swamp and take on the crawling, slimy, slithering creatures. And increasingly the middle ground is disappearing: you are either on one side or the other.

quote:

According to this new policy, the FBI now obtains a search warrant before deploying a cell-site simulator, although the policy contains a number of potentially broad exceptions and we continue to have questions about how it is being implemented in practice. Furthermore, it remains unclear how other agencies within the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security make use of cell-site simulators and what policies are in place to govern their use of that technology.

The exceptions include using the spying tools on people in public, meaning the FBI doesn't have to get a warrant to use them on anyone using their phone hanging out in a local park, walking their dog on the street, or doing anything else without the expectation of privacy they'd have at home.

Also, with respect to these devices (stingrays / femtocells), post 9/11 many State and Local departments have them, too, and they (State and Local) remain unaffected by whatever Federal rules may clamp down on their use, or not. and that still leaves thousands of the devices out there and potentially in use, with minimal to no Federal oversight.

I read, recently, that now there are apps that can detect the switch/interception and tell you (the user) that something is afoot, as the devices are just mini "towers" and by way of cellular infrastructure design all phones will always connect to the nearest "tower", so if you're nearby your phone *will* switch to it, so now, apparently, these apps just monitor the switch and can discern between a regular tower and a "tower" and notify you. Pretty interesting. It's like the back and forth between radar guns and detectors...

My head is starting to hurt.

All the crap the DEMs have thrown around about Donald Trump and the Russians, and former DNI James Clapper says this today in an interview w Chuck Todd:

TODD: I was just going to say, if the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?

CLAPPER: Yes.

TODD: You would be told this?

CLAPPER: I would know this.

TODD: If there was a FISA court order on something like this

CLAPPER: Something like this, absolutely.

TODD: And at this point you can’t confirm or deny whether that exists?

CLAPPER: I can deny it.

TODD: There is no FISA court order.

CLAPPER: Not to my knowledge.

TODD: Of anything at Trump Tower.

CLAPPER: No.

TODD: Well, that’s an important revelation at this point.

Let me ask you this, does intelligence exist that can definitively answer the following question, whether there were improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia officials?

CLAPPER: We did not include evidence in our report, and I say our, that’s NSA, FBI and CIA with my office, the director of national intelligence that had anything — that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was there no evidence of that including in our report.

TODD: I understand that, but does it exist ?

CLAPPER: Not to my knowledge .

*************

why on earth has this continued on ?

Clapper's hedging. Plus he is saying those tapped are in the clear. That's how I read it.

Trump knows what he is doing.

He's saying there wasn't any FISA Court order? But don't we know that there was definitely a wiretap of some sort at Trump Tower?

Oy, so what's the score here? What's next? Yes indeed, tomorrow's WH press briefing will be a doozy.

It’s Trump’s Party, Now


By Patrick J. Buchanan

Before the largest audience of his political career, save perhaps his inaugural, Donald Trump delivered the speech of his life.

And though Tuesday’s address may be called moderate, even inclusive, Trump’s total mastery of his party was on full display.

Congressional Republicans who once professed “free-trade” as dogmatic truth rose again and again to cheer economic nationalism.

“We’ve lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved,” thundered Trump, “and we’ve lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.”

Yet a Republican party that embraced NAFTA and voted MFN for China every time it came up gave Trump standing ovations.

“(W)e have inherited a series of tragic foreign policy disasters,” said Trump, “America has spent approximately six trillion dollars in the Middle East — all the while our infrastructure at home is crumbling.”

And from Congressional Republicans who backed every Bush-Obama war — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen — not a peep of protest, as their foreign policy legacy was being consigned to the dumpster.

Watching Republicans rise again and again to hail Trump called to mind the Frankish King Clovis who, believing his wife’s Christian God had interceded to give him victory over the Alemanni, saw his army converted by the battalions and baptized by the platoons.

One had thought the free-trade beliefs of Republicans were more deeply rooted than this.

“We have withdrawn the United States from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Trump exulted, having just tossed into the trash that mammoth trade deal beloved of Bush Republicans.

GOP champions of the TPP, if there are any left, sat mute.

Trump cited the first Republican president, Lincoln, as having got it right when he warned, “abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government (will) produce want and ruin among our people.”

Celebrating protectionism, hailing “America First!” in a virtual State of the Union address — it doesn’t get any better than this.

To open-borders Republicans who backed amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants, Trump had this message, “We will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border.”

And the cheering did not stop.

Have something to say about this column?
Visit Pat's FaceBook page and post your comments….

The president invoked Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System, the greatest public works project of the 20th century, as a model.

Yet Ike was opposed by the Taft wing of his party and Ike’s republicanism gave birth to the modern conservative movement.

Yet, in leading Republicans away from globalism to economic nationalism, Trump is not writing a new gospel. He is leading a lost party away from a modernist heresy — back to the Old-Time Religion.

In restating his commitment to the issues that separated him from the other Republicans and won him Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, however, Trump reaffirmed aspects of conservatism dear to his audience.

He committed himself to regulatory reform, freeing up the private sector, rolling back the administrative state. The Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines are on the way to completion. And Trump is all behind school choice.

While the speech was unifying and aspirational, the president set goals and laid down markers by which his presidency will be judged.

And none will be easy of attainment.

“Dying industries will come roaring back to life. … Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways … Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and, ultimately, stop. … Our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety and opportunity.”

As some of these domestic crises are rooted in the character, or lack of it, of people, they have proven, since Great Society days, to be beyond the capacity of government to solve.

Ronald Reagan was not wrong when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”

And while the president’s speech astonished critics as much as it reassured friends, it leaves large questions unanswered.

How does one leave Social Security and Medicare untouched, grow defense by more than $50 billion, slash taxes, launch a $1 trillion infrastructure program — and not explode the deficit and national debt?

Now that we are ensnared in wars all over the Middle East, how do we extricate ourselves and come home without our enemies filling the vacuum?

How does the GOP repeal and replace Obamacare without cutting the benefits upon which millions of Americans have come to rely?

How do you eliminate an $800 billion merchandise trade deficit without tariffs that raise the price of cheap imports from abroad — on which Trump’s working-class voters have come to depend?

The Republican establishment today bends the knee to Caesar.

But how long before K Street lobbyists for transnational cartels persuade the GOP elite, with campaign contributions, to slow-walk the president’s America First agenda?

Tuesday’s speech established Trump as the man in charge.

But how loyal to him and his program will be the “deep state,” which dominates this city that gave Trump only 4 percent of its votes and, paradoxically, believes him to be an agent of Vladimir Putin?

The Trump-Beltway wars have only just begun.

I'm not so sure that Clapper can be believed. Didn't he lie to congress before?

I agree that Comey should have been let go immediately but all we are hearing now is a story in the NYT that "unnamed Intelligence sources" said that Comey said this or said that.

All of this is making my head hurt. Good grief.

Clapper is the same guy who testified under oath to Congress that phone surveillance and data collection on the American people was not happening; that is, until Snowden showed otherwise. Then Clapper said, "I misspoke."

Once we start relying on people who lie for a living for the truth, we have real problems.

Once a shadow government and a secret police aimed at Americans gets going . . . and under a past President's and a defeated party's secret inner workings, it's a rodeo for sure.

I don't trust so much of what is being said that I long for some integrity - somewhere. The professional liars like hasbeen Clapper deserve absolute no credibility about anything to me.

I guess we are just seeing the throws of what sending light into shadows will produce. At some point, all this is going to go from opposition to un-American to anti-American in middling people's minds.

I guess if phone surveillance was done by cell, or microwave actions or by some other method , the means could be denied without copping to the substance of the truth.

Benjamin Franklin noted that "[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

I sure hope President Trump and his team can help us dig out the cancer eating away at freedom to save us from later years of despotism. This may sound glum but the overgrowth of a dishonest media, a shadow government and a former President's seeming manipulations through embeds is not what our system is supposed to produce.

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:
Isn't it amazing how in just a matter of months, really, tweets have become so monumentally important. It is testimony to the widespread distrust of the so-called "main stream media," and their utter failure to do the important job entrusted to them.

One other thought, unrelated, but: It doesn't take a great effort of imagination to see what is happening now in America as a battle between the forces of good versus evil. Trump walked away from a life of ease and luxury to wade into the swamp and take on the crawling, slimy, slithering creatures. And increasingly the middle ground is disappearing: you are either on one side or the other.

Youtube is the TV of the 1960s, twitter the newspaper of the 1930s, facebook instagram etc. All channels on the TV. As soon as folks realize that, the quicker they will learn theyre in more control than ever of information.