The Rape Culture of Politics by Investigation

Former Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo condemned the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday following his closed-door testimony. His words, no doubt, resonated with every Trump aide, associate, and family member ensnared in the bogus Trump-Russia election collusion scam.

“God damn you to Hell,” Caputo told the committee—an impassioned conclusion to an emotional statement explaining the personal and financial strain the investigations have caused his family.

Caputo called out a former staffer to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is orchestrating the ongoing smear campaign against anyone in Trump’s orbit thanks to deep-pocketed Democratic activists in New York and California. And he implored the committee to “investigate the investigators.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team interviewed Caputo the following day, nearly one year after Mueller got his marching orders from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. So, why has Caputo now been interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the special counsel? What makes this longtime GOP consultant who worked on the Trump campaign for less than a year (and not in any central role) possibly complicit in, or a witness to, the yet-unproven crime that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election?

Caputo made the egregious error of having once worked for the Russians. In the 1990s. He told New York magazine in an interview this week that he “studied Russia in college and became a big admirer of Russian literature and ballet. I worked hard in the Cold War to defeat Russia, and after the Wall fell I grew curious about the Russian people. I wanted to see the results.” Of course, this all sounds very fishy now. It’s obvious that Caputo developed an interest in Russia in the 1980s so he could earn the coveted post of Donald Trump’s New York primary election coordinator in 2015 and then work with the Rooskies to strip Hillary Clinton of enough votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan to cost her the election in November 2016 (even though he left the campaign in June 2016.)

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

While it’s tempting to joke about the ridiculousness of federal investigators and lawmakers continuing to sniff out a crime that did not happen, it’s no laughing matter. Caputo said he has incurred about $125,000 in legal fees and he’s not done yet. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) brought up Caputo’s Ukrainian-born wife during a House hearing with former FBI Director James Comey last year. Caputo claims he and his family have been the target of death threats, all due to a “fishing expedition” into his alleged role in Trump-Russia election collusion. “If you drink vodka, you have Russian dressing in your refrigerator, you’re game for these people,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson....

“This is a punishment strategy. I think they want to destroy the president, they want to destroy his family, they want to destroy his businesses, they want to destroy his friends,” Caputo told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night. “Clearly these lawsuits after the fact are the new Democratic strategy. When you lose, you still win. I don’t think anyone should work on a Republican campaign again unless you’re legally indemnified. If you do, you’re crazy.”

530 Sure Looks Like Facebook’s Lead Attorney Colin Stretch Lied to Congress While Under Oath

Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch may have not been completely truthful while under oath when taking questions in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2017.

Stretch was being grilled by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) about the extent of Facebook’s ability to profile users on the social media website. Stretch told Kennedy that Facebook had done away with the ability of employees to compile or access profiles on individual users. Here’s a transcript of their relevant remarks:

Sen. Kennedy: Do you have a profile on me?

Stretch: Senator, if you’re a Facebook user, we would permit you to be targeted with an advertisement based on your characteristics and your likes along with other people who share similar characteristics and your likes along with other people who share–

Sen. Kennedy: Well, let’s do another one. Let’s suppose your CEO came to you, or not you, somebody who could do it in your company, maybe you could, and said, “I want to know everything we can know about Senator Graham. I want to know the movies he likes. I want to know the bars he goes to. I want to know who his friends are. I want to know what schools he went to.” You could do that, couldn’t you?

Stretch: So, I want to be—it is a very good question—the answer is absolutely not. We have limitations in place on our ability to review the person’s—

Sen. Kennedy: I’m not asking about your rules. I’m saying, you have the ability to do that, don’t you?

Stretch: Again, Senator, the answer is no. We’re not able—

Sen. Kennedy: You can’t put a name to a face to a piece of data? You’re telling me that?

Stretch: So we have designed our systems to prevent exactly that, to protect the privacy of our users.

Sen. Kennedy: I understand, but you can get around that to find that identity, can’t you?

Stretch: No senator, I cannot.

Sen. Kennedy: That’s your testimony under oath?

Stretch: Yes, it is.

Here's why his testimony is a lie (from the WSJ):

A small group of Facebook Inc. FB 1.49% employees have permission to access users’ profiles without the users finding out.

Yet any time a Facebook employee accesses a colleague’s personal profile, the colleague is notified through what is often referred to within the company as a Sauron alert—a reference to the all-seeing eye in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, people familiar with the matter say.

Similar protections don’t exist for the two billion-plus Facebook users who don’t work for the company, the people said.

The dual standard for employees versus regular users is a window on Facebook’s struggle over how much to disclose to users about how their data is handled—an issue Facebook has recently tried to address with a raft of changes to the platform.

Kennedy specifically asked about the ablity to access user data, not the rules governing it.

Berkeley task force blames conservatives for leftist violence.

Kanye West interviewed by Charlemagne

If you're like me you may have vaguely heard of Kanye West but didn't really know much about him. He's all over then "culture" today because he came out in support of Donald Trump. And he apparently has huge influence in the Black community.

So here he is for roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes

The process is the punishment. (Mark Steyn)

An addendum to my recent post here: this deserves more everyone's attention.

In 2009, my wife and I moved to my hometown of East Aurora, New York to have a family. Making far less money back home, we had a far better quality of life. That is, until the Trump-Russia narrative took off. Today, I can't possibly pay the attendant legal costs and live near my aging father, raising my kids where I grew up.

Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money – more than $125,000 – and making a visceral impact on my children.

How many of you know Daniel Jones, former Senate Intelligence staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein? Great guy, right? Most of you worked with him. One of you probably just talked to him this morning.

Of course, very few of us in flyover country knew Daniel until recently. Now we know that he quit his job with your Senate committee not long ago to raise $50 million from ten rich Democrats to finance more work on the FusionGPS Russian dossier. The one the FBI used to get a FISA warrant and intimidate President Donald Trump, without anyone admitting — until months after it was deployed — that it was paid for by Hillary Clinton.

In fact, good old Dan has been raising and spending millions to confirm the unconfirmable – and, of course, to keep all his old intel colleagues up-to-speed on what FusionGPS and British and Russian spies have found...

We know from the news that he's been briefing Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of this committee. Which one of you works for Senator Warner? Please give Danny my best.

I saw some of his handiwork just last month. Remember this lede paragraph, from McClatchy on April 13?

'The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump's personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.'

That's your pal Dan, isn't it?

I mean, you're all in this together. You're the swamp.

What America needs is an investigation of the investigators. I want to know who is paying for the spies' work and coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump? I want to know who Dan Jones is talking to across the investigations – from the FBI, to the Southern District of New York, to the OSC, to the Department of Justice, to Congress.

Forget about all the death threats against my family. I want to know who cost us so much money, who crushed our kids, who forced us out of our home, all because you lost an election.

I want to know because God damn you to Hell.

STEYN:

To reprise my old line: The process is the punishment. That's particularly true at the federal level, where as a matter of policy they first wipe you out - drain your savings, empty your retirement account, nuke the kids' college fund ...and then dangle a deal in front of you in exchange for you pleading guilty "only" to a process crime, like lying to the lyin' liars who run the FBI. It is an awesome thing to behold - particularly by comparison with, say, military justice, where the US has been holding 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for almost four times as long as the First World War and still can't manage to bring him to trial....

Thus American justice in the 21st century: It can ruin a no-name Trump campaign volunteer in nothing flat. But it can't try a guy who murdered three thousand innocents in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, another two hundred in the Bali nightclub bombing, plus Daniel Pearl in Pakistan ...and has confessed to all this and more.

It's all a joke: civilian, military; federal, state; criminal, civil; family, probate. As my old boss Conrad Black likes to point out, the United States has as many lawyers as the rest of the world combined. One entirely inevitable consequence of that malign distortion in the labor market is that far more aspects of life are litigated, and, when they are, the natural tendency of the system is for everything to take far longer than it would anywhere else. So what counts is not plaintiff or defendant, but which party is in the position to inflict the most pain on the other ...

And yet despite this being the most litigious society on earth huge numbers of Americans remain oblivious to the vast amount of human wreckage piled up: Every day on cable news, I hear some Democrat telling the host that, if these former minor Trump aides have nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear from investigation-without-end: We need to let the law do its job, and let the process play itself out.

I heard the same thing six years ago, when Michael Mann, the hockey-stick huckster and climate mullah, sued me for defamation: "Well, if Steyn's innocent, he'll get his day in court and the process will play itself out." That was 2012, and my day in court is no nearer than it was, and a First Amendment that protects my right to a 270-word blog post only after a decade of my life and an eight-figure sum isn't, as a practical matter, in terribly good health, is it?

When the process plays itself out as lethargically and ruinously as this, the process itself is the problem - as Michael Caputo has discovered.

I wish him well, and I wish those toying with him as they've toyed with Carter Page and others are indeed damned to Hell.

Bill Whittle: Kaynes West ... racist ....

'God damn you to hell!': Former Trump campaign consultant explodes at Democratic Senate aides after he loses his house to legal fees in 'witch hunt' congressional Russia probe

The Real Criminals

A former campaign communications adviser to Donald Trump blew up at Democratic U.S. Senate aides on Tuesday at the end of a behind-the-scenes grilling connected to their wide-ranging Russia investigation.

New York-based political consultant Michael Caputo said he has spent $125,000 on attorneys to help him navigate the committee's demands for documents and testimony, ruining his children's economic future and forcing him to sell his family home.

Calling the probe a 'witch hunt,' Caputo demanded to know who is funding a secretive effort to continue digging into unsubstantiated allegations that Trump has ties with the Kremlin.

'What America needs is an investigation of the investigators,' he said. 'I want to know: Who is paying for the spies’ work and coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump?'

'I want to know who cost us so much money, who crushed our kids, who forced us out of our home, all because you lost an election. I want to know because God Damn you to Hell.'

Worth a read. In today's American judicial system thye process is the punishment.

Is Trump right about judges' leanings? Maybe, review shows

That's the AP headline.  The real answer is YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY ARE!

Dear Liberal Media FYI We Hate You Too

As everyone in the known Universe is well aware, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held on Saturday night in Washington, D.C.. The President of the United States elected not to attend. Proving, once again, that he is smarter than the formerly “ink stained wretches” that cover him. The White House Correspondents’ Association proved, once again, that they hate the average American. That’s okey dokey because we hate them too.

I will not rehash the unholy mess that the alleged journalists presented to the world. Nina Bookout covered the dumpster fire aspect here and Lisa Carr covered the Nasty Women performance art here.

No, I am going to focus on the reciprocal hatred between the “Average American” and the “Elite Journalist”. When it comes to elite, it doesn’t get any more elite than the White House beat. These reporters of all things newsworthy call their dinner the “Nerd Prom”, which just goes to show how smart they think they are. If I were to think of a “Nerd Prom”, I would think of programmers, aerospace engineers or biochemical researchers. Journalists? It makes one laugh that they think they are that smart. So, um, climb down from your high horse, people.

Read the whole thing.

THE OBAMA DISASTER, AND THE TWEET OF THE DAY

Bill Burr on Feminism

Bill Burr: I'm sick of Michelle Obama

Thanks to Michelle Wolf this can now be played.

It's the Russians, isn't it?

14 states hit record-low unemployment

Bad news for Democrats.

10 dead after van strikes pedestrians in Toronto, suspect identified

Is it time to ban vans yet?

Ten people were killed and 15 others were injured after a white rental van mowed down pedestrians along a busy street in Toronto on Monday.

The incident happened at around 1:30 p.m. on Yonge Street, starting at Finch Avenue and ending near Sheppard Avenue, about two kilometres away, where a police officer arrested a male suspect without firing a single shot.

Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders identified the suspect as Alek Minassian, 25, of Richmond Hill, Ont.

Obama Justice Dept.’s attempts to influence investigations exposed in McCabe probe

Come on now, if you are surprised by this you have not been payiong attention.

Tucked inside the inspector general’s report on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was the story of an August 2016 phone call from a high-ranking Justice Department official who Mr. McCabe thought was trying to shut down the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was running for president.

The official was “very pissed off” at the FBI, the report says, and demanded to know why the FBI was still pursuing the Clinton Foundation when the Justice Department considered the case dormant.

Former FBI officials said the fact that a call was made is even more stunning than its content....Although the inspector general’s report did not identify the caller, former FBI and Justice Department officials said it was Matthew Axelrod, who was the principal associate deputy attorney general — the title the IG report did use.

Those familiar with Justice Department operations said they don’t believe the principal associate deputy attorney general would have made the McCabe call without consulting with his supervisor, which would have been Ms. Yates.

“In my experience these calls are rarely made in a vacuum,” said Bradley Schlozman, who worked as counsel to the PADAG during the Bush administration. “The notion that the principle deputy would have made such a decision and issued a directive without the knowledge and consent of the deputy attorney general is highly unlikely.”

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who is now a legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the proper chain of command for the Justice Department to follow up on an investigation would involve the head of the Criminal Division, not the PADAG, calling the FBI.

“There is no way I would have ever called the FBI on my own unless I raised concerns with my boss or my boss told me to do so,” he said. “I have a hard time believing this guy did this without consulting with Sally Yates unless he was a complete lone ranger and off the reservation.”

The inspector general is examining the way the FBI and Justice Department handled investigations into Mrs. Clinton during the election.

The "not the slightest hint of corruption" was always a laugh line from the lick spittle media as they fawned over their Messiah Obama.

Normalized

What’s actually been “normalized” since November 2016:

— Politicized resistance by bureaucrats

— Politicized lawfare and investigations

— Political denial of the legitimacy of elections

Curious to see how all this works after the next change of party control.

— Adrian Vermeule (@avermeule) April 21, 2018

Candace Owens Comes Out

(Candace Owens on Her Journey From Left to Right)

Dear Abbey meets Car Talk

Saturday Night Joke

Last Saturday afternoon in Washington, D.C. an aide to Nancy Pelosi visited the Bishop of the Catholic Cathedral in D.C. He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending the next day's Mass, and asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Pelosi a saint.

The Cardinal replied, "No. I don't really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over some of Pelosi's views." Pelosi's aide then said, "Look, I'll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to you if you'll just tell the congregation you see Pelosi as a saint."

The Cardinal thought about it and said, "Well, the Church can use the money, so I'll work your request into tomorrow's sermon." As Pelosi's aide promised, Nancy Pelosi appeared for the Sunday worship and seated herself prominently at the forward left side of the center aisle. As promised, at the start of his sermon, the Cardinal pointed out that Ms. Pelosi was present.

The Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation, "While Ms. Pelosi's presence is probably an honor to some, the woman is not numbered among my personal favorite personages. Some of her most egregious views are contrary to tenets of the Church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other issues. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief. I must say, Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed. She married for money and is using her wealth to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both in Washington and in California . The woman is simply not to be trusted."

The Cardinal concluded. “But, when compared with Hillary Clinton, Ms. Pelosi is a saint."

What the well dressed feminist wears ... besides pussy hats.

Hannity: Evidence is coming that will rock DC

Larry Correa fisks the New Yorker

I could see that the line to get inside stretched almost to the end of the block. An employee took orders on a touch screen and corralled people through the doors.

Corralled? Here, let me bash you in the teeth with my +3 Bat of Subtlety.

The air smelled fried.

I’m betting that line sounded way cooler in your head, but they don’t FRY AIR, Dan.

New York has taken to Chick-fil-A.

HOW DARE THEY?!?

One of the Manhattan locations estimates that it sells a sandwich every six seconds, and the company has announced plans to open as many as a dozen more storefronts in the city.

Keep in mind, New York City has 26,000 restaurants in it. If you ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a different place every single day, you’d never be able to try them all because by the time you cycled through, there would be a bunch of new ones in business. Plus you’d weigh 800 pounds and need a livestock hoist to get out of bed. (but that’s what delivery is for, quitter!)

I have to travel to New York a lot for my job. The food is the best part of those trips. For my fellow red state hillbilly vagabonds who’ve not been to the food capitol of the world, there are restaurants everywhere. There are restaurants within restaurants. There are secret burger places literally hidden inside hotel lobbies (behind curtains!). And that’s not even getting into the 8000(!) food trucks and carts. So they have sidewalk food in front of their food.

And it’s all pretty damned good, because there’s so much competition that if one sucks and goes out of business, there’s a hundred others lined up to take their place.

I’m just throwing those numbers out there to put into perspective what a whiny little bitch Dan really is to freak out over a few chicken places.

And yet the brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism.

Dan thinks Neil DeGrasse Tyson is too religious.

Read the whole thing.

Would A Prosecutor Ever Misuse His Powers To Remove A Political Opponent?

In light of the Mueller prosecution of anyone and everyone who ever had contact or knew Donald Trump let's recall that Democrats have along history of using prosecution to usurp political power. 

Francis Menton makes a list and it isn't pretty.

• Governor Eric Greitens 
• Tom DeLay 
• Ted Stevens 
• Joe Bruno 
• Rick Perry 
• Bob McDonnell 
• Dean Skelos

Here's a summary of the above: Seven indictments, all by Democrat prosecutors against high-ranking Republican office-holders, and all with a potential to influence political control of some important government body. Of the seven prosecutions, one (Greitens) has not yet gone to trial (and may never), one (Perry) was dismissed on motion before ever going to trial; but the other five all resulted in convictions -- all of which were subsequently reversed. Of the five convictions, three were then undone by the trial (Stevens) or appeal (DeLay, McDonnell) courts in ways that precluded retrial, and one (Bruno) resulted in an acquittal on retrial. Skelos awaits retrial. The number of convictions that have stuck: zero. Meanwhile, the Congress flipped from Republican to Democrat control after indictment of the Republican Majority Leader, the Senate got its 60th Democrat Senator just in time for the Obamacare vote, the governorship of Virginia flipped from Republican to Democrat just prior to the indictment of the outgoing Republican governor, and the New York State Senate flipped from Republican to Democrat majority after conviction of the Majority Leader.

By the way, can you think of a single example of a Republican prosecutor prosecuting a Democrat officeholder on a dubious charge in a similar swing situation with the potential to change political control of some important body? I cannot.

Mark Steyn: Long Night of the Knives

Welcome to a brand new SteynPost in which Mark addresses the British state's new war on cutlery - and household tools, and garden implements.

Click on the headline to see the video of Steyn talking about this.  "In Britain everything is policed except crime."

So we’re just going to ignore that an ex-Clinton staffer interviewed Comey on the Clinton email scandal?

Why does ABC News entrust its coverage of Hillary Clinton stories to one of the former first family’s longtime capos?

Just think of them as Democrat operatives with microphones and cameras and it all makes sense.

After all, Stephanopoulos, whose knee-jerk response to the Clinton email scandal was to say, “we'll also see if her critics overreact on this one,” is a “well-respected” member of the press; he’s “one of the biggest stars” on television.

So it's not like the mean girls are fronting for space aliens or the Majestic-12, they're just marking their territory.

the Deep State

And I dig reading about the Masons and the Bilderberg Group and the Illuminati and shit, but sometimes a conspiracy is pretty much just like the clique of cool girls in a high school. They don't consider themselves in a conspiracy, they just want to make sure the other chicks stay in their place. Like, don't dare sit at that table in the cafeteria, that is our table, you pull that shit and we'll spread nasty shit around about you.

So it's not like the mean girls are fronting for space aliens or the Majestic-12, they're just marking their territory. And that seems pretty much like what a lot of unelected people do in our government: they're marking their territory, and they get all bitchy and underhanded if you try to call them on their shit.

And at least some of the mean girls after high school end up being knocked down a peg or two, because, like, the people in the office don't give a fuck who you were in high school and shit. But in government jobs you never have to graduate, you can stay in high school your entire life where everything's cool and you make the rules, and like, you're a Senior forever.

Like, I didn't like high school in the first place, but this government shit really sucks ass.

Comey’s last stand for the deep state

When even Clinton supporters like Mark Penn, who served as pollster and adviser to President Clinton from 1995 to 2000, begins to speak out about this witch hunt, the witch hunters will soon realize that the game is up.  Everyone who participated, including Mueller, Comey, Brennan and the other members of the Obama gang who participated on this conspiracy to overturn an election are going to need lots of lawyers.  I suspect that there will be trials that will shake the country and re-direct the political landscape.

They were among the most powerful men of the last decade. They commanded armies of armed agents, had the ability to bug and wiretap almost anyone, and had virtually unlimited budgets. They were the leadership of the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence under President Obama. Each day, it becomes clearer that they are the real abusers of power in this drama.

The book by former FBI Director James Comey and the daily hyperbolic John Brennan sound bites are perhaps the final reveal of just how much hubris and vitriol they had. Comey’s book, according to reports, contains nothing new of legal consequence to Trump (while suggesting that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has something to worry about), but it unmasks the hatred that Comey had for Donald Trump from the beginning. It impeaches Comey’s fitness to have ever held high, nonpartisan office.

Whether you are a Democrat who can’t stand Trump, a Hillary Clinton supporter who feels robbed by Comey, or a Trump supporter, any use of wiretapping and vast prosecutorial machinery against our political campaigns and sitting presidents always has to be viewed skeptically and should meet the highest standards of conduct and impartiality. The post-election actions of these former officials makes suspect their actions as officials.

It was, after all, Comey who went to the president during the transition seeking a one-on-one meeting to tell him about the inflammatory dossier, but who critically omitted telling the president that the dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. These facts, he knew, if revealed at that moment in January, would have ended further inquiry. This was no effort to inform the president and douse the fires of unverified and salacious information, but one to inflame the president and spread the stories everywhere.

Unlike a murder or a robbery that has a specific trail of facts that can be investigated, Russia collusion is an allegation that could never be disproved. The accusation allowed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the entirety of the Trump campaign, every aspect of the presidential transition, and even interview 27 White House aides.

When that did not bear fruit, the special counsel could start looking at every business transaction with Russians or foreigners who knew Russians. After all, collusion could be hiding anywhere — in a speech given years ago, a condo bought a decade ago by an oligarch — so he could search for it everywhere.

The Mueller investigation bears all of the hallmarks of prosecutorial overreach: pre-dawn raids, denial of reasonable bail, threats to prosecute family members, investigations of unrelated business matters. He didn’t appropriately subpoena selected transition emails but collected every email in the entire transition without notice, prying them from holdover employees at the General Services Administration.

ANN COULTER: DREAMERS IN THE NEWS!

With all the tender concern President Trump and Nancy Pelosi have been heaping on "Dreamers" of late, you'd think the media would notice and pepper us with stories about these "incredible kids," as Trump calls them. Alas, no. Our tedious media drones refuse to provide us with moving human interest stories about the Dreamers.

Journalists and politicians love to give us archetypes: the DACA soldier, the DACA valedictorian, the DACA grandmother. But there are so many other roles they fill!

To make up for the Fourth Estate's failure, this week, I'll highlight five Dreamers who have done noteworthy things just in the last month.

The Bounceback Child Rapist

A few weeks ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement caught up with Dreamer Anastacio Eugenio Lopez-Fabian, 24, in a courthouse parking lot in Oregon. Police in Seaside, Oregon, had arrested Lopez-Fabian for multiple rapes of a girl "younger than 14," assault and harassment.

Law enforcement then released Lopez-Fabian the day of his arrest, without notifying I.C.E., despite the fact that he had already been deported twice to his native Guatemala, in 2013 and 2014.

Apart from conservative websites -- and Britain's indispensable Daily Mail! -- this story made only the local press.

Read the rest... 

Under the Boat

The thing is under the boat. The crew suspects as much but can’t know for sure exactly where the thing is. They won’t know where the thing is until it rises, inevitable and unstoppable, from the deep state directly beneath them.

Can you feel it lurking just under the surface? I can and I think you can as well. The Greeks knew it as “Nemesis.” Melville’s Ahab knew it as “thou damned whale” and he struck at it from Hell’s heart. Unperturbed it gathered him up and took him down. Then it took the boat and after that the ship. All save one followed.

“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”

The thing beneath the surface of America’s life is still there and all signs point to its breaching soon. Exactly where and exactly how are still unknown, but soon.

I feel the thing beneath the boat, and I think ever growing millions feel it as well. We do not feel good about it and what it augers for the near and far future.

The thing is large and it’s under the boat and it is beginning to rise. The crew is confused and flailing about. It is commonly said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” True enough, but the rising of Leviathan can break the spine of our boat and send it down into the Maelstrom.

And the thing is under the boat.

will the story end differently this time? We hope and pray that it will.

Comey: I Announced The Hillary Investigation Because Polls Showed Her Ahead

The political stink can't get worse than this.

In his new book “A Higher Loyalty,” former FBI Director James Comey says the reason he announced that the FBI had re-opened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was polling. Yes. Seriously.

Media Research Center Announces 'Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers' Project

About time.

When Democrats and the Press (but I repeat myself) hated on Comey

This commentary on Jonah Goldberg applies to all the NeverTrumpers on the Right

I just don't get it. You're right dude, why don't you act like it?

The Comey Book

From Jon Gabriel



One of the best parodies ever!

Jake Tapper Falsely Claims Scooter Libby "Leaked" Noted Anti-Semite Conspiracy Theorist Valerie Plame's Name to Press; Refuses to Correct

First, I wonder: If Jake Tapper is now so down on leaking, are there any highly-placed former Obama officials, like maybe someone with a last name who rhymes with his own, he'd like to denounce for leaking highly confidential national security information to him...?

Libby was only convicted -- of perjury, not leaking; Fitzpatrick could not even get an indictment for leaking -- because Fitzpatrick misled Judith Miller about the facts of the matter and so elicited from her what she now calls "false" testimony in the prosecution of Libby. She recanted her testimony in 2015.

I'm not surprised leftist Jake Tapper doesn't know this -- his CNN buddies sure didn't devote much coverage. They wanted to keep their treasured memories of "Fitzmas."...
...
All leftists cocksuckers, such as Jake Tapper, have fond, fond memories of Patrick Fitzgerald's political prosecution of Scooter Libby, and they won't clearly state Libby never leaked Plame's name (reporters already knew it) and they sure the hell won't report that the Super Spy they used to White Knight for so damn hard was not only not a Super Spy but an anti-semitic crank who had a pretty good idea of who the real bad guys were in the Middle East. (Hint: The Jews, in her expert analysis.)

Jake Tapper sucks all the cock. Not just some of the cock. Not just this cock or that cock.

No, Jake Tapper sucks all of the cock.

And frankly far too many people on the right give him a pass on his infinite cocksuckery.

Read the whole thing.

The Mass Shooting You’ll Never Hear About

A mass shooting at a school in California was averted.  This is what happens when the government doesn't fail, like the FBI and the police failed at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.

From the LA Times:

Gardena police found several guns and a cache of ammunition at the home of a high school student who threatened campus violence in two social media posts this week, authorities said.

The investigation began Thursday when police received a call regarding a threat to Serra High School, according to the Gardena Police Department. Investigators identified a student who posted a threatening message earlier this week.

The teen posted a more specific threat Thursday, saying that violence would take place on campus. Detectives arrested the teen, who was not named, on suspicion of making criminal threats and possessing a firearm as a juvenile.

It’s a shame, but this case will be forgotten by next week. Meanwhile, we’ll still be debating about AR-15’s and 30-round magazines. We’ll still be arguing over whether someone should be able to buy a long gun at 18 or 21. We’ll still be having these discussions because the system that has nothing to do with gun control actually worked.

That’s probably the biggest shame of all of this. When everything goes like it’s supposed to, such as in this case, it’s quickly forgotten. It takes a Parkland for the discussion to last more than a day or two, and then it goes in the completely wrong direction. Then it becomes about taking away people’s rights.

No. Just no.

Use the system in place. Use it correctly. Making threats is a crime. It’s grounds for investigating further and, if necessary, arresting someone for more than making a threat. Use that to end these horrible tragedies.

Don’t punish people who had nothing to do with it.

LEFTIES ALWAYS WANT TO SILENCE THEIR POLITICAL OPPONENTS: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Want the FCC to Revoke Sinclair’s Broadcast Licenses. For the crime of broadcasting-while-conservative.

FCC Chair Ajit Pai responds to demand for press censorship:

Dear Senator Cantwell:

Thank you for your letter requesting that the Commission investigate a broadcaster based on the content of its news coverage and promotion of that coverage. In light of my commitment to protecting the First Amendment and freedom of the press, I must respectfully decline.

A free media is vital to our democracy. That is why during my time at the Commission I have consistently opposed any effort to infringe upon the freedom of the press and have fought to eliminate regulations that impede the gathering and dissemination of news. Most relevant here, I have repeatedly made clear that the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.

I understand that you disliked or disagreed with the content of particular broadcasts, but I can hardly think of an action more chilling of free speech than the federal government investigating a broadcast station because of disagreement with its news coverage or promotion of that coverage. Instead, I agree with Senator Markey that "[a]ny insinuation that elected officials could use the levers of government to control or sensor [sic] the news media would represent a startling degradation of the freedom of the press." I also take this opportunity to reaffirm the commitment I made to several members of the Senate Commerce Committee last year that the Commission under my leadership would "not act in a manner that violates the First Amendment and stifles or penalizes free speech by electronic media, directly or indirectly."

Thank you for your interest, and let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Ajit V. Pai

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn: "only in America" confuses Zuckerberg

...If you're inventing Facebook in a dorm room, it helps if the dorm room is at Harvard, which most Americans will never get anywhere near. In that sense, Zuckerberg might be more emblematic of a calcifying class system and diminishing social mobility. As the middle class shrinks, we're moving toward a Latin-American social structure, with a rich, corrupt, self-reinforcing elite, and a great dysfunctional mass underneath, and ever less in the middle, and not much by way of a viable path for anyone at the bottom to advance toward the top.

"Only in America"? Why would Zuckerberg see it that way? His company's bigger than most countries, and he's a bigger global player than most presidents or prime ministers. I assume he still travels on a US passport, but, if you fly in and out on a private plane, you don't really have to get your papers out and show them to anyone terribly often: Your jet lands in Paris or London, Moscow or Beijing, and the immigration official boards the plane and your assistant hands over the passports of the handful of passengers and the flunky looks them over and returns them and the assistant tucks yours away and follows you down to the limo at the foot of the steps. I would doubt Zuckerberg has physically held his passport in many a year. In that sense, his citizenship is not a significant data point.

"Only in America"? Zuckerberg's way beyond that. This is the Latin-American class system applied worldwide: an elite beyond borders, and the masses under 24-hour surveillance by the NSAe, or Facebook, or a malign alliance of both. Mark Zuckerberg's territory is the planet; for most law-abiding persons of western nations, the horizons will be ever more circumscribed.

These people are thugs with law degrees.

Advice from an experienced prosecutor for Donald Trump regarding the Mueller gang.

Also, be aware that you are not involved in some kind of gentlemanly legal contest with reasonable, high-minded adversaries. These people are thugs with law degrees. If they can get a crack at your client in an interrogation, it won’t end well for him.

In the immortal words of “The Godfather’s” “Frankie Five Angels” Pentangelli, “This is a street thing.” You’re in a brawl against experienced prosecutors who will use any artifice they can to take down your client by any means necessary. Team Mueller is out for blood, and they’re not about to let the truth get in the way of destroying your client.

So wake up and quit playing footsie with Mueller and his feral band of Hillary Clinton sycophants. While you’re at it, you may also want to buy some brass knuckles.

Comics Diamond and Silk Branded "Unsafe for the Community" and Banned from FaceBook; Told There Is No Appeal from This Decision

The left has decided that it is the End of History, and that all those who dissent with the identity politics left (with its officially approved and mandated racisms, sexisms, and genderisms) are to be eradicated, at least from the public square.

At least that much -- at first that much.

And meanwhile, the right's ahem intellectual leadership class whines only about their own prospects of working as token conservatives for the leftist machine.

Woman Accusing Missouri Governor of Taking a Racy Picture of Her In Order to Blackmail Her Now Says She Isn't Sure He Took A Picture of Her and May Have Dreamed The Episode

Lesson: don't have sex with a nutcase.

Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward: The Leftwing Media's Idea of a Tolerable Conservative is Me, and I'm Not a Conservative

The only conservatives allowed are the neutered ones.

Oh: FaceBook is Collecting Data on People Who Never Even Signed Up for FaceBook

Fascistbook is the biggest spy agency in the world.

Ace of Spades on the firing of Kevin Williamson

Ace of Spades

People are waking up to the fact that our "leaders," both political and those in media, who we have put into positions of leadership to serve as our advocates and our champions, who maybe might speak up for us with one one-hundredth of the vigor with which they champion their pal Kevin Williamson in his bid to become a respectable writer at an prestigious left-wing magazine, seem to be an insular group of class-conscious, careerist mercenaries primarily interested in advancing their own interests and quite willing to sacrifice those of their fellow conservatives if it gets them just a bit of goodwill from the dominant leftist class.

...

You know how you got Trump, fellas?

You made it too obvious that you were pursuing the interests only of your own small insular class and had decided that the Little People and Filthy Commoners existed primarily to provide you with perks and power.

How many times do we have to hear about the plight of the very well paid Bari Weiss and the well-enough paid and somewhat famous Kevin Williamson while the "leaders" of the right continue to shrug at much-less justifiable acts of corporations to punish their workers for wrongthink?

If you're only going to use the media power which average citizens, who do not have any means of mass communication themselves, have trusted to you with the assumption that you would advocate for their interests once in a while and not exclusively for your own -- why should they let you keep that media power?

Why not turn you all out into the streets and elect a better class of advocates?

I could not agree more.

Grand Jury Witness: Mueller Probe Is a Witch Hunt

Ronn Torossian 

On December 15, 2017, I spent the day testifying in Washington, D.C., in front of the Mueller Commission grand jury at the United States District Court. As Business Insider first reported, in 2012 I was approached by Paul Manafort and Rick Gates to do Public Relations work for the Ukrainian government, and not to report said work to the Department of Justice as required by FARA laws. They also implied they’d pay me off shore.

Kyle R. Freeny, a Special Investigator in Mr. Mueller’s office strongly urged me to do my patriotic duty, drop all my professional and personal responsibilities even and appear immediately in front of the grand jury (about a short meeting held 5+ years ago which I vaguely remembered). I reluctantly wake up for a 6 a.m. shuttle flight and spent the day in court. Prior to that testimony, I shared the limited details during interviews with government investigators. I verified that I spoke with Manafort and Gates a few times in February and March 2012, and shared the handful of emails I was in possession of and testified under oath they were accurate.

After hours of repeating the same thing again and again, questions then veered into Russian names I’d never before heard (including Konstantin Kilimnik), and questions about previous work I have done for Russian oligarchs, confirming that I know Roger Stone, worked for Eric Trump’s Foundation in 2017, and more. (Yes, my NYC born kids understand Russian as my ex-wife is Russian, and yes they attend the same NYC school that Ivanka and Jared’s kids did.)

After being thanked profusely by Ms. Feeny and a series of stern-looking attorneys, alone, I exited the courtroom, ignored questions from the media outside the courthouse, and took the Acela back to my Park Avenue office. Not surprisingly, Manafort and Gates have been indicted, yet nothing has connected this matter to President Trump.

This investigation feels like a witch-hunt, even more so after reading yesterday’s CNN news report that, "Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators have questioned Russian oligarchs travelling in the U.S. about whether they donated to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. One oligarch was questioned and his electronic devices searched when his private jet landed in the U.S., and a second Russian oligarch was also questioned during a recent trip to the U.S. An informal interview request has been made to a third oligarch who has not recently been to the U.S."

This is the U.S. under the thumb of the Deep State and a Prosecutor who is out of control.

Read the whole thing.

The Atlantic Fires Kevin Williamson

Ace of Spades:

Social Justice Warriors have been trying to get Kevin Williamson fired from his just-started job at the meaningless dribble publication The Atlantic -- a magazine much admired by the cucks -- because he has previously tweeted that women who get abortions should maybe be hanged.

The Atlantic just fired him. They said they'd found a podcast appearance where Williamson repeated that tweet, and that they now believed this wasn't just a provocative joke but his "carefully considered" opinion.

It seems it was just yesterday that The Weekly Standard, which you should totally obey because they're smart guys who really "get" the current political environment, were blowing air-kisses to the liberal print media and claiming charges that it was without integrity were "deeply unserious."...

What will they say now? If they now denounce the leftist print media as totalitarian, that would establish two things:

1, They're wrong about everything all the time.

Which we already knew. Worse, it would establish:

2, They don't care about the left's totalitarian attacks on speech and belief until it gets someone in their own class.

I despise these cucks for this reason: Many of these people scoff at the notion that the leftwing is out for scalps. They are out to get people fired. They are out to ruin lives. They stand for the proposition that You shall repeat our cult dogmas or we will work as hard as possible to deny you the ability to even earn a living plying your trade in Current Year America.

Yet these cucks continue to engage in apologism for the left, claiming that only "paranoids" believe this about their Very Good Leftist Cocktail Party Friends.

They themselves are immune from the Recite Our Dogmas or Lose Your Job threat, because they are actually paid to write (nominally) conservative twaddle by (nominally) conservative magazines funded by (nominally) conservative billionaires.

Read the whole thing.

Here’s 10 Reasons The Mueller Investigation Is Unconstitutional!

The Mueller investigation is criminal, corrupt and above all unconstitutional. Yet the farce continues on…

Trump’s not shutting down the unconstitutional and corrupt Mueller investigation for political reasons but AG Jeff Sessions has every right and even the duty to reign it in or completely shut it down

Read the whole thing.

Mark Steyn: The Grand Convergence

What happened yesterday is a remarkable convergence of the spirits of the age: mass shootings, immigration, the Big Tech thought-police, the long reach of the Iranian Revolution, the refugee racket, animal rights, vegan music videos... It was the latest mismatched meeting between east and west in the age of the Great Migrations: Nasim Aghdam died two days before her 39th birthday, still living (according to news reports) with either her parents or her grandmother. She came to America at the age of seventeen, and spent two decades in what appears to be a sad and confused search to find something to give her life meaning. But in a cruder sense the horror in San Bruno was also a sudden meeting of two worlds hitherto assumed to be hermetically sealed from each other: the cool, dispassionate, dehumanized, algorithmic hum of High Tech - and the raw, primal, murderous rage breaking through from those on the receiving end.

and then there's thiis truth:

The San Bruno attack also underlines a point I've been making for over a decade, ever since my troubles with Canada's "human rights" commissions: "Hate speech" doesn't lead to violence so much as restraints on so-called "hate speech" do - because, when you tell someone you can't say that, there's nothing left for him to do but open fire or plant his bomb. Restricting speech - or even being perceived to be restricting speech - incentivizes violence as the only alternative. As you'll notice in YouTube comments, I'm often derided as a pansy fag loser by the likes of ShitlordWarrior473 for sitting around talking about immigration policy as opposed to getting out in the street and taking direct action. In a culture ever more inimical to freedom of expression, there'll be more of that: The less you're permitted to say, the more violence there will be.

Sarah Palin was right,and the press never forgave her for it.

.. I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involved.

(APPLAUSE)

I guess -- I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

(APPLAUSE)

I might add that, in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they're listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

(APPLAUSE)

No, we tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

...

... I've learned quickly these last few days that, if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil discoveries and its deliveries of that source, Americans, we need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And...

(APPLAUSE)

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: We've got lots of both.

(APPLAUSE)

Our opponents say again and again that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems, as if we didn't know that already.

(LAUGHTER)

But the fact that drilling, though, won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

(APPLAUSE)...

We need American sources of resources. We need American energy brought to you by American ingenuity and produced by American workers.

(APPLAUSE)

And now, I've noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have, too. We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the State Senate.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory," except when he's talking about his own campaign.

(APPLAUSE)

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot...

(APPLAUSE)

... when that happens, what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?

(APPLAUSE)

The answer -- the answer is to make government bigger, and take more of your money, and give you more orders from Washington, and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights....

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.

(LAUGHTER)

Look at the time.

Is the Pope Catholic is not the question: is he Christian?

Pope Francis: 'There Is No Hell'

From Ace of Spades:

I'm not a Catholic, but seriously folks... Who honestly thought a South American Marxist would make a good religious head?

Christ died for our sins.  His followers through the ages have lived through persecution, even unto death.  It has survived and even thrived through bad leaders, but the faith lives on.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39 NIV)

And all the people said: AMEN.

A Rose Among the Thorns

Compare & Contrast

Sooner or later all commies look the same.

The Morning Rant

"Did you know that Hungary is being run by a bunch of eeevil Christian so-cons? I'll bet you didn't. But it's true. As such, Hungary has refused to assume responsibility to permanently feed and house the muslim thug refugees flocking in from the Mideast who will refuse to assimilate and contribute nothing except an increase in crime rates and the turning of their major cities into no-go hellholes. Naturally, EU globalist bureaucrats in Brussels are unhappy about Hungary for unapologetically trying to preserve their Christian culture (as well as the safety of their wives and daughters). So they've been trying to figure out how to impose sanctions to force Hungary to accept its "fair share" of violent muslim criminal refugees."

“It’s Different When We Do It”

As spotted by Jim Hoft, two Gray Ladies in one!

The news that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s motorcade was pelted with shoes and tomatoes by Egyptian protesters, who also taunted her by chanting “Monica! Monica!” as she left the U.S. consulate in Alexandria on Sunday, delighted conservative bloggers in the United States.

-- The New York Times, yesterday.

A day after an Iraqi television journalist threw his shoes at President Bush at a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday, his act of defiance toward the American commander-in-chief reverberated throughout Iraq and across the Arab world.
(snip)

In Syria, he was hailed as a hero. In Libya, he was given an award for courage.

Across much of the Arab world on Monday, the shoe-throwing incident generated front page headlines and continuing television news coverage. A thinly veiled glee could be discerned in much of the reporting…

-- The New York Times, December 16, 2008.

Mark Steyn on Clinton and the media

To reiterate: Trump became the GOP nominee because the boy scouts like Mitt all got trashed as monsters anyway. So the base grasped something that the donors, throwing their money away on Jeb, didn't - that the playing field is hopelessly tilted. The Democrats were crowning the kleptocrat enabler of a credibly accused rapist running a pay-for-play charity fraud whose only purpose was to enable them to live like heads of state in the interregnum between their first reign and the impending restoration. And the press had not a word to say about this.

The Kidman Doctrine Trumps George Will As John Bolton Rises

Conrad Black takes George Will and Richard Haass to the woodshed.

It is distressing to see my friend of nearly 40 years, George Will, writing such words of frenzied despair about the president and his national-security adviser-designate, John Bolton. It is also worrisome to see my cordial acquaintance of 20 years, Richard Haass, writing as mournfully as he did last week of the end of the Liberal World Order.

One expects, a year into an administration that went to war in the election campaign against the entire political class in both parties and among the national press (such as George Will) and the foreign-policy establishment (and Richard Haass is one of the best of them), that there will be panic below decks. One hears it every day from Joe Scarborough and Wolf Blitzer and their legions of screeching sound-alikes.

But George Will and Richard Haass are eminent men, flag officers on this ship. That George Will has a cultural and temperamental problem with Donald Trump is no surprise, and neither is Richard Haass’s concern that the Western Alliance is crumbling (though that, if true, has more to do with the Alliance-deaf previous two administrations and the flabby complacency of most of America’s so-called allies).

Read the whole thing, including the penultimate paragraphs:

This is bunk; Mr. Trump is returning to that policy. Richard also decries that “the U.S. is experiencing unprecedented attacks from its own president on the country’s media, courts, and law-enforcement institutions,” and relates this to the rise of “authoritarianism” in such places as Turkey, Russia, and China, and to Britain’s Brexit vote.

Mr. Trump isn’t the problem, but among the symptoms of the problem are that the director and deputy director of the FBI have been fired for cause as the Bureau virtually became the dirty-tricks arm of the Democratic National Committee, and that, as the Center for Media Studies and Pew Research have both recorded, 90% of national-press comment on Mr. Trump is hostile. Mr. Trump may have aggravated some of the current nastiness, but his chief offense has been breaking ranks with the bipartisan coalition that produced the only period of absolute and relative decline in American history.

Our All Consuming, Incomprehensible News Cycle

Richard Fernandez

Nassim Taleb observed that "the opposite of education isn't ignorance but miseducation." With miseducation your head is stuffed, but stuffed with nonsense. That is equally true of current events as it is of pedagogy. The dangerous opposite of information isn't the absence of a signal, but disinformation. The victims of miseducation and disinformation are both brimming with knowledge, only of the wrong kind....

Perhaps never in human history has the average man been bombarded with so many stories. Yet paradoxically, never has the public been in greater danger of strategic surprise. If it is caught at unawares, the reason for its blindness won't be lack of bandwidth but in all the things it imagined were important that weren't.

Here Are All the Reasons It’s a Bad Idea to Let a Few Tech Companies Monopolize Our Data.

From Glenn  Reynolds:

That influence comes in part from data. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and similar companies are “data-opolies.” By that I mean companies that control a key platform which, like a coral reef, attracts to its ecosystem users, sellers, advertisers, software developers, apps, and accessory makers. Apple and Google, for example, each control a popular mobile phone operating system platform (and key apps on that platform), Amazon controls the largest online merchant platform, and Facebook controls the largest social network platform. Through their leading platforms, a significant volume and variety of personal data flows. The velocity in acquiring and exploiting this personal data can help these companies obtain significant market power.

Is it OK for a few firms to possess so much data and thereby wield so much power? In the U.S., at least, antitrust officials so far seem ambivalent about these data-opolies. They’re free, the thinking goes, so what’s the harm? But that reasoning is misguided. Data-opolies pose tremendous risks, for consumers, workers, competition, and the overall health of our democracy. Here’s why.

And from the article, this is the issue that is the most concern:

Economic power often translates into political power. Unlike earlier monopolies, data-opolies, given how they interact with individuals, possess a more powerful tool: namely, the ability to affect the public debate and our perception of right and wrong.

Many people now receive their news from social media platforms. But the news isn’t just passively transmitted. Data-opolies can affect how we feel and think. Facebook, for example, in an “emotional contagion” study, manipulated 689,003 users’ emotions by altering their news feed. Other risks of this sort include:

Bias. In filtering the information we receive based on our preferences, data-opolies can reduce the viewpoints we receive, thereby leading to “echo chambers” and “filter bubbles.”
Censorship. Data-opolies, through their platform, can control or block content that users receive, and enforce governmental censorship of political or religious information.
Manipulation. Data-opolies can promote stories that further their particular business or political interests, instead of their relevance or quality.

Playboy Latest to Delete Facebook Amid Data Handling Fallout

The beginning of the death spiral of data mining by the tech giants.  The problem is that their entire business model is based on data mining.

Trump hates Amazon, not Facebook

When you take one side in the culture war, expect to get hit.  Facebook is getting the headlines but Google and Amazon are also in the data mining business.

In Venezuela, hungry child gangs use machetes to fight for ‘quality’ garbage

Where socialism always ends.

States scrambling to avert Obamacare sticker shock after Dems balk at stabilization effort

The end of ObamaCare.  It didn't have to be repealed.  It committed suicide.

NBC Tried to Claim There Were 800,000 Gun Control Marchers in DC — Not Even Close

Why you don't go to the MSM for the truth.

Hogg Hitler! The little dictator in the making.

The Republican Masters of the Universe

 Ace Of Spades

At some point, the Establishment decided on a Judge Smails response to the "Hobbits" and "Wacko Birds" of the Tea Party: You'll get nothing and like it!

They considered themselves Masters of the Universe and believed they could just steamroll the non-Establishment part of the party using the same techniques their close cousins, the Liberal Establishment Class, used against conservatives: Denigration, contempt, and delegitmization intended to convince dissenters that it was the Establishment's way or the highway.

The GOP would be refashioned into a much-less conservative party in order to appeal to surburban married women who were swing voters between Democrats and Republicans. The more conservative, more populist elements of the party would simply be denigrated as Obama denigrated them, as backwards backwoods racists who need to be educated and socialized into a more liberal, suburban/urban elite view of the world.

Did you know that Shooting "victim" David Hogg was not at Parkland during the shooting?

From Ace of Spades:

Oh, first of all, as some of you have pointed out (which I didn't hear until Charlie Brown's Implement sent me the tip): David "Camera" Hogg says he wasn't even at the school during the shooting, but "raced" there on his bike to get as much, get this, camera footage as possible when he heard about it on the news.

I previously questioned where he was during the shooting, wondering how close to danger he'd actually been. I wondered this because, despite the media's flood-the-zone coverage, they'd entirely skipped the easy (and important) story about where the spokesmoppets were during the attack. Put up a map of the school, show the spokesmoppets' location compared to the killer's.

Easy content -- and yet they hadn't bothered.

Hmmm. Wonder why.

When the media refrains from running an easy, clickbait story, it's because they're deliberately hiding something from the reader.

Turns out, he wasn't there at all. He has as much moral authority to speak about this as anyone else who viewed it on TV.

Maybe that's why he feels no shame about treating this entirely as a partisan political campaign: no actual emotional skin in the game.