Obama's FBI brass hollowed out, after latest resignation of key official

Another top FBI official who helped oversee the Trump-Russia and Clinton email investigations is retiring, as the last traces of the bureau's embattled leadership team that once stood under Barack Obama's presidency disappear.

The official, Bill Priestap, will retire from his post as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division by the end of the year.

“Assistant Director Bill Priestap became eligible to retire and has chosen to do so after 20 years of service,” an FBI spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday.

Priestap, who participated in the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the FBI’s initial probe into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 presidential election, has testified before Congress on multiple occasions regarding the bureau’s handling of both investigations.

More

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obamas-fbi-brass-hollowed-out-after-latest-resignation-of-key-official

D'Souza DESTROYS "proud Democrat" in heated Q&A ( A MUST WATCH)

Atheists target Christmas, Hanukkah displays: 'All we do in December is this kind of thing'

For as long as anyone can remember, a Nativity scene has been displayed during the Christmas season in front of the public library in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, but not this year.

After Americans United for Separation of Church and State dangled the threat of a lawsuit, the borough agreed reluctantly to end the tradition this year. The scene has since found a new home on Main Street outside the Emmaus Moravian Church.

Not everyone was happy about it. Some argued that the display honored the borough’s distinctly Christian roots: Emmaus was founded by the Moravians and named after the biblical town where Jesus was seen by two of his disciples after his crucifixion and resurrection.

“There were a couple of members of the council who felt strongly,” said borough manager Shane Pepe. “Their emotional response was, ‘Why should we bow down once again to an overly sensitive organization that is looking to sue people?’ But we’re not fighting a legal battle over this.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said her organization has handled hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases over its 40-year history. The foundation now has nine attorneys and two legal assistants on staff.

“All we do in December is this kind of thing,” said Ms. Gaylor. “People will be driving past their city hall on Christmas Eve and send us an email with a picture because they’re offended. It goes on all through December and into January.”

More

Mueller-referred probe into Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig, Clinton-linked Tony Podesta heats up

An investigation referred to Justice Department prosecutors by Special Counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year into possible criminal activity by Clinton-linked Washington insider Tony Podesta and former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig is heating up, according to a new report that underscores federal authorities' increasing enforcement of laws governing foreign business relationships.

The inquiries center not only on Craig and Podesta -- a Democratic lobbyist and co-founder of the onetime lobbying powerhouse known as the Podesta Group -- but also on Vin Weber, a former GOP congressman from Minnesota.

The probes had been quiet for months since Mueller referred them to authorities in New York City because they fell outside his mandate of determining whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia.

But in a flurry of new activity, Justice Department prosecutors in the last several weeks have begun interviewing witnesses and contacting lawyers to schedule additional questioning related to the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs, people familiar with the inquiry anonymously told the Associated Press.

The apparent wind-up comes as multiple reports and indications suggest that the Mueller probe into possible collusion in 2016 between the Russian government and President Trump's campaign is wrapping up.

More

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mueller-referred-probe-into-clinton-linked-podesta-group-reportedly-kicks-into-high-gear

Cold Weather Precautions

Subfreezing temperatures and wind chills can be dangerous and even life-threatening for people who don't take the proper precautions. It is important for everyone to monitor their local weather reports and take steps now to stay safe, whether traveling or at home, during times of extreme cold temperatures. During cold weather, you should take the following precautions: 

 Stay indoors as much as possible and limit your exposure to the cold; 

 Dress in layers and keep dry; 

 Check on family, friends, and neighbors who are at risk and may need additional assistance; 

 Know the symptoms of cold-related health issues such as frostbite and hypothermia and seek medical attention if health conditions are severe. 

 Bring your pets indoors or ensure they have a warm shelter area with unfrozen water. 

 Make sure your vehicle has an emergency kit that includes an ice scraper, blanket and flashlight – and keep the fuel tank above half full. 

 If you are told to stay off the roads, stay home. If you must drive, don’t travel alone; keep others informed of your schedule and stay on main roads. 

You can find more information and tips on being ready for winter weather and extreme cold temperatures at www.wicomicocounty.org/ES or http://www.ready.gov/winter-weather.

O.M.G.

Paris Tax Revolts

The world appears to be slowly awakening to the disaster that governments have caused and funded by theft over the course of human history. The French revolts, which began over an increase in the petrol tax, left 133 people injured and over 400 arrested after the people rose up finally realizing that all taxation is theft.

As governments across the globe increasingly enslave the tax cattle, more and more are waking up to the violence and horrific atrocities committed in the name of government with funds stolen from innocent people. Paris was only the latest example of people beginning to realize they are enslaved to the political elites and are finally demanding their freedom and refusing to be stolen from any longer.

French President Emmanuel Macron was chairing an urgent security meeting today following the violence by anti-government protesters in the streets of the French capital, according to a report by The Evening Standard. The protest against rising taxes and the high cost of living forced by government regulations turned into a riot in the French capital, as activists wearing yellow jackets torched cars, smashed windows, looted shops, and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti. The violence is certainly unacceptable, however, people seem to be at the beginning stages of the realization that government is not a solution, and is actually a problem.

More

Trump's apathy doesn't make our debt crisis any less terrifying

President Trump never claimed to be an actual fiscal conservative on the campaign trail. But his casual shrug-off of the nation's debt problem doesn't make the impending debt crisis any less terrifying.

The Daily Beast reports that when pressed by aides about tackling the national debt, Trump says the quiet part out loud, admitting that he's just trying to kick the debt can down the road for a future president — which, in fairness, is exactly what his predecessors did to him.

Trump, a 72-year-old billionaire who's never really cared about fiscal conservatism, can blow off the national debt, but it's bound to blow up within decades if not sooner. If Republicans continue to fail to address it after multiple presidencies promising to tackle fiscal responsibility, they ought to stop pretending to be conservative. Someone needs to take charge on spending because the math is getting too frightening to ignore.

More

Bill And Hillary Clinton Are About To Go Away Forever

Yes, people, the day is coming, and it’s coming fast: We’re almost done for good with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

How can we be sure, you ask? Here’s how: Tickets to see them live and hear them blab about their lives are selling for the cost of a Big Mac meal at McDonald’s.

Not enough proof? Well, there’s this, too: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is finally sick of them.

The former first couple opened a 13-city speaking tour late last month with a premiere event in Toronto (why they think anyone in Canada wants to hear them whine about Hillary’s crushing defeat in the 2016 presidential election is anybody’s guess). They pulled just 3,000 people to an arena that seats 19,000.

More

OSU Coach Snowflake ❄️ Generation Comment - Retire Or suffer Tim Allen Last Man Standing Backlash!

Image Of The Year 2018

'VeggieTales' is 'racist' and 'dangerous' for children, California students claim

A group of students at a California college’s “Annual Whiteness Forum” labeled the Christian children’s cartoon “VeggieTales” as “dangerous” and promoting racial stereotypes for making the villains colored.

The forum at Cal State San Marcos is a project from Professor Dreama Moon’s class titled “The Communication of Whiteness.” Students called various things racist, including the NFL, women who support President Trump, and the popular animated cartoon that started in 1993 and always ended with Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber’s tagline, “Remember kids, God made you special and he loves you very much,” the College Fix reported.

A female student made the claim that by humanizing vegetables, the creators of VeggieTales were using the children’s programming to promote racial stereotypes by making the villains racial minorities.

More
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/veggietales-is-racist-and-dangerous-for-children-california-students-claim

Dad Makes Girl Walk Five Miles To School For Bullying On School Bus

SWANTON, Ohio (CBS Local) — An Ohio father is teaching his 10-year-old daughter a lesson about bullying that she’ll probably never forget.

Matt Cox made his daughter, Kristen, walk five miles to school in 36-degree weather after she was suspended from riding the school bus on Nov. 30. It was the second time she had gotten into trouble for bullying.

More/Video

A Viewer Writes: Proof of what CAN be done!

Here is just another great example how Alaskans are responding after last Friday’s earthquake! The off-ramp at International Airport Road and Minnesota Boulevard in Anchorage was reopened early this morning, complete with new asphalt.

And Nanticoke Road is STILL messed up!

Richard Sherman has a theory for why the Redskins won't sign Colin Kaepernick

Kaepernick hasn't thrown a pass in an NFL game since Jan. 1, 2017

The Redskins have lost two quarterbacks to leg fractures and a once-promising season appears to be in ruins. Mark Sanchez, signed 2.5 weeks ago, is now the starter and Josh Johnson has reportedly been signed as his backup. That's the same Josh Johnson who was in Tampa Bay when Jay Gruden was an offensive assistant. He's also the same Josh Johnson who hasn't thrown an NFL pass since 2011 and just last week was the first-overall protected pick in the Alliance of American Football draft.

As always happens whenever a team needs a quarterback, Colin Kaepernick's name came up. Gruden said the former 49ers starter had been "discussed, for sure," but added:

"It's just going to be a matter of which way do we want to go?" he said, via theWashington Post. "Do we want to go with a guy that's familiar with my terminology who we worked out last week ... or go with a guy and teach, basically, a whole new kind of offense with new offensive linemen with a lot of the zone reads and all that stuff. Not a lot of time to really get a brand new quarterback, a new system installed and taught in a couple days of practice."

More

Thank God Its Friday 12-7-18

What will you be doing this weekend?

Jimmy's Bridgeville shut down by health dept. for roaches, unsanitary conditions

The Delaware Division of Public Health's Office of Food Protection ordered Jimmy's Bridgeville restaurant to cease and desist operations due to a roach infestation and gross unsanitary conditions identified during a routine inspection.

The restaurant was closed on Tuesday, December 4th, following a routine inspection where inspectors observed employees not washing their hands and then mixing coleslaw with their hands, according to the report, as well as heavy mold and mildew inside the establishment's ice machine.

Various other violations were also observed during the inspection, including raw eggs being placed over ready to eat foods in the refrigerator, several items that were not properly labeled and dated appropriately, food stored directly on the floor, and other health hazards that the report identified.

More

Libs Picked On Sarah Palin...

Maryland Fishing Report

As Chesapeake Bay water temperatures continue their downward trend into the 45-degree range, striped bass are becoming sluggish and difficult to entice into feeding. The 2018 striped bass season closes Dec. 15.

Yellow perch have been moving into the tidal rivers of the upper bay and are providing some fun and rewarding fishing from shore, kayaks or small boats.

Chain pickerel fishing always improves with the disappearance of heavy aquatic vegetation during the winter months and the pickerel become more active. 

Read more.

Congressman Harris Announces Grant to Salisbury to Study Wicomico Port

WASHINGTON, DC: On Tuesday, December 4, the Economic Development Administration (EDA) awarded the City of Salisbury a $37,500 grant to help fund an assessment of a multi-user port along the Wicomico River. The EDA is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce, and this investment funds a port feasibility study to assess the physical and economic viability of a multi-user port along the Wicomico River. EDA grants are awarded through a competitive process based upon the application’s merit, the applicant’s eligibility, and the availability of funds.

Congressman Andy Harris made the following statement regarding the EDA grant:

“I support the federal grant awarded to the City of Salisbury that will go toward an assessment of a multi-user port along the Wicomico River. This port will provide jobs along the Wicomico River and enhance commerce as offload services and local industry exporters will be able to use the port for local business in Maryland’s First District.”

Stanford Frat Told Their American Flag Was ‘Offensive’ By Admin, Hangs Much Bigger Flag

Stanford University fraternity Sigma Chi had a unique response to an administration official who said their American flag was “offensive, intimidating, aggressive or alienating.”

After receiving said criticism, the fraternity decided to hang a much bigger flag outside their house.

The story emerged from student newspaper “The Stanford Review,” which detailed an administration official — called “Mr. Z” in the report — advising a troubled fraternity last year on how to comply better with university policies.

More

Denmark To Send ‘Unwanted’ Immigrants To Remote Island Known For Disease Research

Denmark announced a policy for rejected immigrants who are not able to return to their home countries: banishment on a remote island.

The Danish government — which is currently led a center-right party — announced it will send as many as 100 immigrants to Lindholm Island, a small, 17-acre island in the Baltic Sea. The arrangements are intended for rejected asylum seekers who can’t be sent back — foreigners with a criminal background and whose home countries won’t accept them, according to The New York Times.

The choice of Lindolm Island is notable in that it is a sparsely populated area that has been historically used for laboratories and animal disease research. In fact, one of the two ferries that will be shipping the migrants is named “the Virus.”

“They are unwanted in Denmark, and they will feel that,” Inger Stojberg, the country’s immigration minister, wrote in a Facebook post Friday.

More

Tough Neighborhood!

Figures

'A Political Report Masquerading as Science': The Truth About the New Climate Report

Each time an end-of-the-world prophecy is delivered—whether by a self-deluded preacher, a group of politicians, or scientists—we are told that we must believe. Never mind how many of their prophecies have been wrong in the past, this time they mean it.

The latest prophecy of doom and planetary extinction comes from a government report authored by people appointed during the Obama administration. This report, and others before it, concluded that Earth is warming, humans are responsible, and that we have only 10 years to fix it.

But wait, haven’t there been earlier deadlines, which have passed, and aren’t we still here with weather patterns behaving much as they have before, to wit, hot summers, cold winters, fires, floods, and earthquakes?

Paul Krugman, the notoriously wrong columnist for The New York Times (he predicted “a global recession, with no end in sight,” if Donald Trump became president), has gone beyond science, labeling those who disagree with global warmists “depraved.”

When you resort to name-calling, you have lost the argument.

More

A Middle-Aged Career Woman on the Lies of Feminism She Learned Too Late

Every Wednesday, the second hour of my national radio show is the “Male/Female Hour.” A few weeks ago, a woman named Jennifer called in.

For reasons of space, I have somewhat shortened her comments. Every young woman should read them. This is precisely what she said:

“Dennis, I want to get right to it. I’m 50 years old with four college degrees. I was raised by a feminist mother with no father in the home. My mother told me get an education to the maximum level so that you can get out in the world, make a lot of money. And that’s the path I followed. I make adequate money. I don’t make a ton of money. But I do make enough to support my own household.

“I want to tell women in their 20s: Do not follow the path that I followed. You are leading yourself to a life of loneliness. All of your friends will be getting married and having children, and you’re working to compete in the world, and what you’re doing is competing with men. Men don’t like competitors. Men want a partner. It took me until my late 40s to realize this.

More

Homeowner Shoots, Kills Intruder Five Years After Shooting Intruder at Same Address

A homeowner in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shot and killed an intruder Tuesday just over five years after he shot another intruder at the same address.

On November 27, 2018, Breitbart News reported that the homeowner, Charles Sweeney, shot and killed an intruder in the bathroom of his home. Fox 23 reports that the deceased intruder’s name was Donald Stovall.

Tulsa World quoted Capt. Karen Tipler, who said, “If they (residents) feel that there is a danger to themselves or someone else who may be in the home from an intruder, then, yes, they are within their legal rights to defend themselves within their home.”

More

Don't Get Distracted By The Trump/Fed Soap Opera - The Crash Will Continue

At the beginning of 2018 I wrote extensively on what was likely to happen under the administration of Jerome Powell, the new Federal Reserve Chairman. In my article ‘New Fed Chairman Will Trigger A Historic Stock Market Crash In 2018‘, published in February, I predicted that the Fed would continue interest rate increases and balance sheet cuts throughout the year and they would knowingly initiate a crash in equities.

To be clear, this was not a very popular sentiment at the time, just as it wasn’t popular when I predicted in 2015 that the Fed would launch interest rate hikes instead of going to negative rates in order to start a catalyst for economic crisis. The problem some people have with this concept is that they just can’t fathom that the central bank would deliberately crash the system. They desperately cling to the notion that the Fed and other central banks want to keep the machine rolling forward at any cost. This is simply not true.

More

Back To The Future

Senators Seeking To Shoot Down Yemen Bill Were Paid By Saudi Lobbyists

Prior to the Oct. 2 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of a Saudi assassination squad — which the CIA believes was on direct orders of crown prince MbS himself — a tiny segment of the American public had likely never heard of the deep Pentagon role in executing the Saudi war on Yemen, which has raged since 2015.

But after Khashoggi's brutal slaying, the mainstream media suddenly "discovered" what the U.N. has called the "world's worst humanitarian crisis". The handful of Senators who've long fought to end the U.S. role in the war, however, might now be thinking better late than never as on Wednesday in a hugely important 63-37 victory, the Senate agreed to finally move forward with a full floor debate over the legality of America's involvement in the conflict.

More

CNN Contributor Marc Lamont Hill Calls for Destruction of Israel, Endorses Palestinian Violence

Hill was speaking at the “U.N. International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” which provides an annual platform for extremist rhetoric against Israel

CNN Contributor Marc Lamont Hill told the United Nations on Wednesday that Israel should be replaced by a Palestinian state, and defended the Palestinian use of violence against Israel.

Hill was speaking at the “U.N. International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” which provides an annual platform for extremist rhetoric against Israel. He was present to express his views as an “invited representative of civil society.”

More

Sweden: 70-Year-Old Woman Interrogated, Convicted For Anti-Muslim Facebook Post

Pensioner expressed concern about Islamic takeover

A 70-year-old woman in Sweden was interrogated by police and later convicted for an anti-Muslim Facebook post in which she expressed fear that Islam was taking over the country.

The post, made in May 2018 on the Facebook group Stand Up For Sweden, appeared as a comment underneath an article about violence towards women.

“Is this not Sweden or have we turned over the country to some Muslim damned vermin?,” the woman wrote.

The post was flagged by taxpayer funded hate speech watchdog group Näthats-inspector and the woman was subsequently interrogated by police in Hudiksvall.

She admitted that she could have framed the post better but asserted that she was merely upset after reading material about the mistreatment of women in Islamic countries.

“I am against the fact that they are bad to women. We have so many Muslims coming. I must have meant that they are battering women. I’m afraid of that,” she told police, adding that she had been “provoked” by news headlines about the issue.

The woman as later convicted and ordered to pay 40 daily fines of 120 kronor.

More

NJ Mulls Giving Illegals Driver’s Licenses, Not Long After Expanding Voter Registration

No surprise there

New Jersey lawmakers are considering giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses, not long after the state enacted a law to expand voter registration rolls.

State legislators announced a bill that would allow illegals to apply for a license because, according to Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), they are “doing the routine activities that all families do.”

“If they don’t have a driver’s license, don’t have insurance and are driving a vehicle that isn’t registered, it creates a hazard on the road,” he added. “If you get in an accident with them, the damage may not be covered.”

More

Trump: "Michael Cohen Is Lying"

Update: Mere minutes after President Trump boarded his flight to Argentina, his attorney Rudy Giuliani released a statement defending the president and undermining Cohen.

In the statement, Giuliani claimed it isn't a coincidence that Mueller has taken another action on the same day that President Trump was leaving for an important meeting with world leaders. He previously unsealed indictments against 12 alleged Russian Intel officers just as Trump was leaving for Helsinki to meet with Putin.

Just hours before President Trump was slated to board Air Force One for a 10-hour flight to Argentina for this weekend's G-20 conference, the president has decided to address the guilty plea entered by his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, at a federal court house in Manhattan this morning.

In response to questions from reporters on the south lawn of the White House, Trump accused Cohen of lying to avoid jail time and said he doesn't know when he decided to drop the Trump Tower Moscow project that is at the center of the allegations in Cohen's guilty plea.
*TRUMP SAYS EVERYBODY KNEW ABOUT RUSSIA PROJECT
*TRUMP SAYS HE DECIDED NOT TO PURSUE RUSSIA PROJECT
*TRUMP CALLS FORMER ATTORNEY COHEN `WEAK PERSON'
*TRUMP SAYS COHEN IS LYING ABOUT MOSCOW PROJECT TO GET REDUCED SENTENCE
*TRUMP SAYS DOES NOT KNOW WHEN HE DECIDED TO DROP MOSCOW PROJECT

Trump also accused his former fixer of being a "weak person."

Cohen's guilty plea raises questions about Trump's statements regarding his business dealings in Russia during the campaign. In the days leading up to the plea, Trump has stepped up his attacks on the Mueller probe, accusing it of being a McCarthyist witch hunt that's wasting taxpayer money.

More

Overdoses, suicides push down US life expectancy

Suicides and drug overdoses pushed up U.S. deaths last year, and drove a continuing decline in how long Americans are expected to live.

Overall, there were more than 2.8 million U.S. deaths in 2017, or nearly 70,000 more than the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government began counting more than a century ago.

The increase partly reflects the nation's growing and aging population. But it's deaths in younger age groups — particularly middle-aged people — that have had the largest impact on calculations of life expectancy, experts said.

"These sobering statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable," Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC's director, said in a statement.

The suicide death rate last year was the highest it's been in at least 50 years, according to U.S. government records. There were more than 47,000 suicides, up from a little under 45,000 the year before.

A GENERAL DECLINE

More

https://www.foxnews.com/health/overdoses-suicides-push-down-us-life-expectancy

Democrats went $18 million into debt to win control of the House

Democrats paid a heavy price to win control of the House of Representatives, going $18 million into debt for the election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee went into the red despite raising $272 million for the 2018 election, in which its heavy spending helped flip at least 39 House seats to Democrats.

A source with knowledge of the group's finances confirmed the debt figure to NBC News.

The GOP's counterpart group also spent heavily on House races, ending the election cycle $12 million in debt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee confirmed.

More

Nate Jackson: Actually, the Tax Cuts ARE Working

Despite the GM debacle, overall business investment is significantly up this year.

When GM announced major layoffs and plant closures earlier this week, Democrats immediately blamed GOP corporate tax cuts. We argued GM’s problem is far more complicated than that; other factors include its bailout 10 years ago, Big Labor, and a poor and unpopular product lineup. Not only that, but Democrats were missing the forest for one tree.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman agrees. Noting yesterday’s updated but largely unrevised report of third-quarter GDP growth of 3.5%, Freeman wrote, “Despite concerns over trade disputes and a slowing global economy, the corporate tax rate cut enacted in December of 2017 continues to encourage the business investment that leads to higher productivity and higher wages for American workers. Today the government reported that such investment was higher than it initially reported for the third quarter of the year.”

In other words, the significant revision to the GDP report was that American companies invested substantially more than initially reported. Freeman explains, “The Commerce Department has reported that non-residential fixed investment rose 2.5% at an annual rate in the three months ending in September, up from 0.8% in the earlier estimate. Within this overall category of business investment, spending on equipment was revised to estimated growth of 3.5%, up sharply from an earlier 0.4% estimate.”

More

Political Editors: White Leftists Dumb Down Language for Minorities

Researchers find a "competence downshift" based upon biased assumptions about minorities.

A recently released study conducted by two researchers from Yale and Princeton Universities found that white Democrat politicians dumb down their speech when addressing minorities — specifically blacks. On the other hand, the study found no language change when white Republicans spoke to minorities. Study authors Cydney Dupree and Susan Fiske were surprised by the results, noting, “It was really surprising to see that for nearly three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been engaging in this predicted behavior.”

The researchers further studied the speech of white liberals and conservatives when addressing minority individuals. Again, the researchers found that white liberals engage in a “competence downshift” in their language, whereas white conservatives did not. Dupree noted the uncomfortable irony, stating, “It was kind of an unpleasant surprise to see this subtle but persistent effect. Even if it’s ultimately well-intentioned, it could be seen as patronizing.” It most certainly could.

Brandon Morse of RedState observed, “We often hear from social justice adherents that we carry an implicit bias toward people of other races, and then immediately point to anyone other than themselves. Now we see why. On average, the white left is guilty of believing minority individuals are of lower intelligence than they are and dumb down their speech in order to feel like they’re being kinder to them by doing so.”

More

A Viewer Writes: Criticize

Comment: The Politically Correct Institute of America has criticized Charlie Brown - classic and Rudolph - classic in which children can learn about friendship, sacrifice, and the importance of never giving up. But it is okay for Walmart to use Rick James song - Give it to baby. Give me that sweet funky stuff. Is he a role model that we would want children to follow or music we would want them to listen to?

Kunstler Exposes The Dire Quandaries Of The Deep State

Watergate had tragic Shakespearean overtones, with Nixon as King Lear, but Russia-Gate - perhaps the last gate America goes through on its giant slalom run to collapse - is but a Chinese Fire Drill writ large.

The reason? In 1973, we were still a serious people. Today, the most lavishly credentialed elite in history believe the most preposterous “stories,” or, surely even worse, pretend to believe them for political advantage.

Now, an epic battle of wills is setting up as Robert Mueller’s investigation concludes its business and its primary target, the Golden Golem of Greatness, girds his loins to push back. Behind the flimsy scrim of Russia collusion accusations stands a bewildering maze of criminal mischief by a matrix of federal agencies that lost control of their own dark operation to meddle in the 2016 election.

More

Thomas Gallatin: Pelosi Will Take the Speaker's Gavel Again, to Trump's Delight

To the surprise of exactly no one, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) won her party’s nomination for speaker of the House Wednesday. Pending a vote, this will be Pelosi’s second stint as House speaker. Recall the last time she was in this position, Americans got saddled with ObamaCare and tax hikes.

Pelosi secured her party’s nomination with a vote of 203-32. So what happened to all those Democrats who had loudly declared their opposition to her leadership? Well, they were essentially given Pelosi’s blessing to register a “no” vote for the sake of their constituents back home, but when the rubber meets the road Pelosi always makes clear there is no room for party disloyalty. She declared, “Our diversity is our strength, but our unity is our power.” In other words, fall in. Pelosi is an old pro at using both the carrot and the stick to ensure party unity.

More

Arnold Ahlert: '1984' — on Steroids

Privacy is dead. It's death is best described as a homicide committed by tech titans.

“Big Brother is Watching You.” —George Orwell, 1984

Privacy is dead. It’s death is best described as a homicide committed by tech titans, whose power and wealth are unprecedented, and millions of American accomplices whose insatiable quest to be noticed and validated — epitomized by the now-ubiquitous “like” button — has overcome any sense of foreboding.

In Orwell’s novel, three main components enabled The Party’s totalitarian control: surveillance, enforcement, and coercion. In 2018, the level of surveillance — exactlythe right word for the terabytes of personal data acquired by Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — makes Orwell’s Big Brother look benign by comparison.

More

Special Counsel Used Cohen To Try To Catch Trump In A "Perjury Trap," Giuliani Says

Michael Cohen's admission that he lied to Congress about the timeline for an aborted Trump Organization deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow (Cohen initially told Congress that the deal fell apart in January 2016, but confessed on Thursday that talks had continued until August of last year) triggered a wave of speculation Thursday morning about whether this was the masterstroke that would finally bring down the president. But amid all of the breathless coverage (as the media did its part in trying to revive the long-dead Russian collusion narrative), one important detail was lost: The fact that Trump - as he told reporters on the White House lawn Thursday - never lied to anyone about the Trump Tower Moscow project.

In fact, the details of Cohen's admission fit with Trump's claims that he didn't have any business in Russia during his time as president (the deal, after all, never materialized). And what's more, when Trump submitted written answers to Mueller last week, he offered a truthful accounting of the deal that comports with the description provided by Cohen, according to White House lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

More

Thomas Gallatin: New Study Proves Myth of Gender 'Wage' Gap

Yet the MSM ignores the fact that personal choice is the leading cause of the gap.

Mainstream media headlines exploded with predictable outrage Thursday, reporting on the findings from another study on the popular gender “wage gap” trope. NBC News declared “Gender pay gap is worse than thought: Study shows women actually earn half the income of men.” Reuters headlined, “U.S. women earn half the income of men, new study finds.” But that far-Left rag known as Jezebel took the cake for the most emotionally unhinged headline: “The Gender Pay Gap Is Way More F—ed Than You Thought.”

The study was released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and entitled “Still a Man’s Labor Market.” Such language is clearly contrived to continue promoting the myth that women are suffering sexist wage discrimination due to a misogynistic economic and western cultural system better known as the “patriarchy.” The study highlights seemingly damning statics such as this: “Women today earn just 49 cents to the typical men’s dollar, much less than the 80 cents usually reported.”

More

Asian Longhorned Tick Is Invading United States

Americans have unwelcome eight-legged visitors from the East, and they're here to stay.

The Asian longhorned tick -- Haemaphysalis longicornis -- "is a tick indigenous to Asia, where it is an important vector of human and animal disease agents," warned a research team from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The tick species has already turned up in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, where it's been found on domestic animals and wildlife, and at least two people, the researchers said.

More

Man accused of the 1984 murder of a 10-year-old girl claims he is innocent despite a back tattoo

James Leon Jackson is accused of killing 10-year-old Tammy Welch while her family was moving out of their apartment in 1984

A man accused of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl in Florida in the 1980s has protested his innocence in court despite having a back tattoo referring to the crime.

James Jackson, 66, spoke as he took to the stand in the second day of his trial in Jacksonville.  

'It was a little girl. I wouldn't kill no little girl,' Jackson said.  

Prosecutors say Jackson raped and killed Tammy Welch at her apartment complex and then put her body outside his window.

Jackson claimed he never knew the girl or her family who lived next door and said that he was asleep during the time that the girl was murdered. 

A little while later, a detective showed up at his door. 

'I went over there to take a nap on the couch and a few hours later, my friend started knocking on my door and asked to come in because there had been a body discovered outside,' Jackson said.

More

After Getting a Flu Shot, New York State Senator Gets Sick For Two Weeks, Then Dies

On the eve of Thanksgiving, New York State Senator Jose Peralta, 47, died tragically and suddenly of what is being called ‘septic shock’. This New York Post article interviewed Peralta’s wife Evelyn who offered a few details:

“All they said is that he was septic,” Evelyn Peralta said Friday afternoon, after meeting officials with the city Medical Examiner’s office. “And that led to organ failure,” she said of her 47-year-old husband, the state Senate’s first Dominican-American member.

“They need to do additional tests,” she said. “There is no final conclusion yet. They don’t know” what caused the fatal blood infection, she said. “His body was poisoning itself.”

She added, tearfully, “I just came back from viewing the body. The doctor said it’s rare, [given] his age and that it happened so quick … he was healthy. He was a healthy guy.”

More

Trump hints at the scandal about to blow

There is big news ahead, and President Trump teased it yesterday from Argentina via Twitter. Politics has become a game of narratives, something well understood by both President Trump and his enemies in the media-Democrat establishment. For more than two years, the professionals of the cultural and media establishment have worked assiduously to create an objectively false narrative, with no evidence whatsoever, that Vladimir Putin actually changed the count of votes to hand Trump the presidency, making his victory illegitimate. Most Democrats actually believe this now and have in earlier polls as well.

But as I keep reminding our readers, President Trump was the most successful reality television producer in the history of the medium, and he understands a story arc well, as events that can be programmed unfold. That must be kept in mind in understanding this enigmatic tweet that came from the president half a world away, in Argentina for meetings with the leaders of the 20 biggest economies in the world.

More

WSJ: Chinese Govt Now Owns Satellite Manufactured by Boeing

The Chinese government helped a Los Angeles startup pay for an advanced satellite it ordered from Boeing, and now owns the company, meaning it has access to the restricted technology the satellite uses – the same sensitive technology the U.S. military relies on – according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

A subsidiary of China Orient Asset Managament in 2015 gave L.A.-based Global IP $175 million through an intermediary – Bronzelink in the Virgin Islands – and acquired 75 percent interest in the company.

China Orient is owned by China's Ministry of Finance. Bronzelink is owned by a Hong Kong businessman.

Emil Youssefzadeh and Umar Javed, the founders of Global IP, said they realized Bronzelink was not truly independent from the Chinese government and quit. A lawsuit followed in 2017, with Youssefzadeh and Javed alleging the China Orient subsidiary, Don Ying Development, fraudulently took over the satellite project.

More

Money, Support for Migrant ‘Caravans’ Flow Through Chicago

Advocates of open borders quoted in media coverage of the migrant “caravan” moving north through Mexico are part of a network of U.S.-based groups funded in the past by left-leaning foundations, according to tax and financial records.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based nonprofit whose name means People Without Borders, is widely credited with organizing the caravans of migrants that traveled from Central America on trains and buses and on foot this year and last.

Two United Methodist churches in Chicago appear to be bases for People Without Borders, which is led by one of the pastors, documents show.

Information on the website and Facebook page of People Without Borders indicates that the advocacy group played a key role for at least the past decade in forming caravans that typically got started in Honduras or El Salvador before entering Guatemala to the north.

More here

U.S. Confirms: Iran Successfully Fired Nuclear Capable Missiles

Senior U.S. officials confirmed early Monday that Iran has successfully test-fired multiple nuclear-capable missiles in violation of United Nations restrictions on such activity, drawing a fierce reaction from the Trump administration, which will pressure European leaders this week to take immediate action aimed at countering Iran's latest military moves.

Refuting Iranian claims that its illicit missile tests are defensive in nature, Trump administration Iran envoy Brian Hook vowed tough reprisals for Iran's most recent missile tests, which are among the most provocative in recent memory.

"Iran has launched missiles that are capable of carrying multiple warheads, including a nuclear weapon," Hook confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon while talking to reporters aboard Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's airplane en route to Brussels for NATO meetings.

The Iranian ballistic missile test comes on the heels of new evidence unearthed by the United States tying Tehran to the proliferation of advanced weaponry and missiles across the Middle East, including in Yemen, where Iranian-backed rebels continue to attack a Saudi coalition seeking to stem the violence.

More

New Orleans woman is killed by a carjacker who ran her over

A New Orleans mother died after a carjacker threw her out of her own vehicle and ran her over, as her distraught children stood by helplessly.

Jeannot Plessy, 49, died on Tuesday night in Gentilly just moments after going on a date night with her Christian pastor husband David Plessy.

Plessy, who is also a devout Christian, had only just returned from a preaching tour in American Samoa. 

Her distraught family had pleaded for Plessy's killer to come forward before New Orleans Police revealed on Saturday that they had arrested three teenagers over the deadly carjacking.

More

Study warns statins may be overprescribed

The risks of taking cholesterol-busting statins outweigh the benefits for millions of patients, according to a study.

Researchers designed a computer model to compare the likelihood of side effects with that of dying among people taking the cheap daily pills.

Whether patients are eligible for statins, proven to save thousands of lives, depends on their risk of heart attack or stroke.

But the Swiss study found the possible harms of the drug outweigh the benefits until someone's risk is 'considerably higher' than the current threshold.

More

Utah's New Medical Marijuana Law Not the One Approved by Voters

On Monday, the first business day after Utah’s medical cannabis initiative became law, state legislators supplanted it with a more tightly controlled plan for providing marijuana-based treatment.

The Utah Medical Cannabis Act, designed as a replacement for voter-approved Proposition 2, breezed through the Utah House of Representatives and Senate during Monday’s special session. The one-day gathering of state lawmakers has been in the works since October, when Gov. Gary Herbert announced that supporters and opponents of Prop 2 had reached consensus around a legislative solution to their disagreements.

Votes in both chambers largely broke down on party lines, with Democrats arguing that the Legislature should not override voters who endorsed the ballot initiative in last month’s election.

More

Following November Snowstorm Chaos, NYC Emergency Management Chief Is Fired

A deputy mayor told the head of the city's Office of Emergency Management he was fired on Friday, a source told the News -- but without hearing from Hizzoner about his fate, the commissioner, Joseph Esposito, showed up for work on Monday.

Deputy Mayor Laura Anglin canned Esposito on Friday, after she had asked for his resignation over the city's botched response to a November snow storm and he refused, a source confirmed to the News. Anglin's actions were first reported by the Wall Street Journal Monday morning.

More

Unions Defy Supreme Court on Mandatory Dues, Suit Says

Labor unions are collecting dues from public employees without their “affirmative consent” in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling that state laws requiring nonunion government workers to make such payments are unconstitutional, a new lawsuit alleges.

The Freedom Foundation, a free market think tank based in Washington state, joined with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to sue on behalf of 10 government employees in Oregon who argue that union dues or fees should not be deducted from their paychecks after they officially resigned from their union.

“This is one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever witnessed from the unions and the government,” Aaron Withe, director of Freedom Foundation’s Oregon chapter, said in a press release. “The union dues they’ve forcibly deducted from people who want out are meant to be designated to the working families of this state, not some special interest group.”

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 20, names as defendants Local 503 of the Service Employees International Union and Council 75 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as several government agencies.

More here

'Stunning': 80% using Obamacare's Medicaid expansion are ineligible

Louisiana’s legislative auditor wanted to know how the state’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare was doing, so he picked 100 people who were deemed eligible under the rules.

He found that 82 of them made so much money that they shouldn’t have qualified for the benefits they received.

Auditor Daryl G. Purpera, who issued his findings last month to little fanfare outside of Louisiana, figured if those statistics hold true for the rest of the expanded Medicaid population in his state, then the losses to ineligible beneficiaries could be as high as $85 million.

More

Fed's increased surveillance identify more food-borne bacteria

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday issued a recall of 5.2 million pounds of ground beef over fears of salmonella contamination, adding tainted meat to a list of nearly two dozen foods caught up in multistate outbreaks of food-borne illness this year.

Health officials said it’s too early to determine whether the number of outbreaks this year is higher than in previous years, but they added that new technologies and increased surveillance are identifying food-borne bacteria quickly and in greater numbers.

“It has been a busy year,” said epidemiologist Laura Gieraltowski, head of the Foodborne Outbreak Response Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Romaine lettuce, raw turkey, beef and even cereal are just some of the 23 foods the federal health agency has warned people away from this year — contaminated with bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria monocytogenes.

More

Grassley Questions Wray About FBI Raid on Clinton Foundation, Uranium One Whistleblower

Outgoing Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray about the raid of the home of a Clinton Foundation, Uranium One whistleblower in a letter this weekend.

Citing the Daily Caller’s report of the FBI raid, Grassley asked Director Wray to answer the following questions by December 12, 2018:

1. Was the FBI aware at the time of the raid that Mr. Cain had made what appeared to be
lawful disclosures to the Inspector General? If so, was the FBI aware that these
disclosures were passed to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, per the
ICWPA process?

2. Does the FBI consider Mr. Cain’s disclosures to be protected? Please explain.

3. On what basis did the FBI decide to carry out the aforementioned raid on November 19,
2018? Please explain and provide a copy of the warrant and all supporting affidavits.

4. Did the materials seized by the FBI during the raid contain any classified information? If
so, was that information classified at the time Mr. Cain brought them to his residence?

More here

The Psychological Bubble That Propped-Up The US Economy Is Starting To Implode

Optimism can be a very powerful thing. For a long time Americans believed that things would get better, and that caused them to take action to make things better, and that actually resulted in things moving in a positive direction. But now things have abruptly shifted.

In late 2018, an increasing number of Americans believe that an economic downturn is coming, and they are taking actions consistent with that belief. As a result, they are actually helping to produce the result that they fear. And without a doubt, any rational person should be able to see that signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down are all around us. So it isn’t as if those that are preparing for the worst are being irrational. It is just that when large numbers of people all start to move in the same direction, it has a very powerful effect. We witnessed this in the stock market in recent years when people just kept buying stocks even though they were massively overvalued. The collective belief that there was money to be made in the stock market became a self-fulfilling prophecy which pushed stock prices up to absurd heights. But now that process is beginning to reverse as well, and ultimately the unwinding of that bubble will be quite painful.

Over the past couple of years the dominant economic narrative that the mainstream media was pushing was that the U.S. economy was “booming”, and this encouraged businesses to expand and consumers to go out and spend money.

More

Buchanan: Will Paris Riots Scuttle Climate Accord?

In Katowice, Poland, all the signers of the 2015 Paris climate accord are gathered to assess how the world’s nations are meeting their goals to cut carbon emissions.

Certainly, the communications strategy in the run-up was impressive.

In October came that apocalyptic U.N. report warning that the world is warming faster than we thought and the disasters coming sooner than we thought.

What disasters? More and worse hurricanes, uncontrollable fires, floods, the erosion of coastlines, typhoons, drought, tsunamis, the sinking of islands into the sea.

In November, a scientific report issued by 13 U.S. agencies warned that if greater measures are not taken to reduce global warming, the damage could knock 10 percent off the size of the U.S. economy by century’s end.

At the G-20 meeting in Buenos Aires, 19 of the attending nations recommitted to the Paris accord. Only President Trump’s America did not.

Yet, though confidence may abound in Katowice that the world will meet the goals set down in Paris in 2015, the global environmentalists seem to be losing momentum and losing ground.

Consider what happened this weekend in France.

Saturday, rage over a fuel tax President Emmanuel Macron has proposed to cut carbon emissions brought mobs into the heart of Paris, where they battled police, burned cars, looted, smashed show windows of elite stores such as Dior and Chanel, and desecrated the Arc de Triomphe.

In solidarity with the Paris rioters, protests in other French cities erupted.

Virulently anti-elite, the protesters say they cannot make ends meet with the present burdens on the working and middle class.

Specifically, what the rioters seem to be saying is this:

We cannot see the benefits you are promising to future generations from cutting carbon emissions. And we cannot survive the taxes you are imposing on us in the here and now.

What is happening in Paris carries a message for all Western countries.

More

Grassley Accuses Fusion GPS Founder Of Giving ‘Extremely Misleading’ Testimony

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is drawing parallels between the false testimony that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen gave to Congress in 2017 and the “extremely misleading” statements made by the founder of the firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier.

“I hope that the Justice Department is handling all these instances of false statements to Congress with the same level of seriousness they treated Mr. Cohen’s,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote Monday in a letter to Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Nov. 29 in the special counsel’s investigation to lying to Congress in 2017 about the extent of his attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen admitted he lied about how long he worked on the project, which was ultimately scuttled in June 2016.

Grassley accused Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, of possibly lying during his Aug. 22, 2017 testimony when he claimed that his firm was not working for a client to investigate President Donald Trump after the 2016 election.

More

California No. 1 ‘Judicial Hellhole,’ national lawsuit payments $429B, 2.3 percent GDP

America is getting crushed by courts that have opened the door to lawsuits by adopting fake law, “junk science,” and even litigation “tourism,” with payments reaching $429 billion, or 2.3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to a remarkable new report.

California courts top the list from the American Tort Reform Association, and it is expected to get worse as lawyers feast on on a new data privacy law.

“The California motto, ‘Eureka,’ is said to refer to the discovery of gold. Today, plaintiff's lawyers are California’s prospectors, searching for new theories of liability. Some have struck it rich,” said the report, 2018-2019 Judicial Hellholes.

More

A Viewer Asks A Good/Fair Question

Is Joe A ok? Only ask because he hasn't made any comments recently and the flavor of the stories are not norm - meaning there are no LOCAL stories of late. Maybe its just the holiday season???? Signed bourbon in my cup on TGIF guy!

You are absolutely correct, something is/has been up. While I'll not to take the liberty to fully explain just what I'm up to I'll simply beat around the bush and say, IF you knew what I've been up to, (while still maintaining this Website) you'd be absolutely amazed. 

I am on a major project that has to do with ME, for once. I run SBYNews on my own. I get to see and read every comment before moderation and I can comment if I so choose. I just haven't seen anything worth responding to. As for the "local" news, there just hasn't been much of it and after doing this for so many years, this happens all the time. 

In fact, I have something personal happening this weekend in which I will be away. I'll have articles for Saturday but I probably won't post anything on Sunday. 

As for what I've been up to, you will all know soon enough. I make no excuses. I'll simply say, no one I know works harder then I do, seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

French 'Yellow Vests' Reject Macron's Six-Month Tax Delay As Student Protests Intensify

Despite French President Emmanuel Macron letting his people "eat cake" with a six-month suspension of the government's new "climate change" fuel taxes, the so-called "Yellow Vest" movement which has been protesting throughout France for more than three weeks is still spitting mad.

"We didn't want a suspension, we want the past increase in the tax on fuels to be canceled immediately," said Yellow Vest organizer Benjamin Cauchy on BFM TV. "Suspending the tax to re-instate it in six months is taking the French people for a ride. French people aren't sparrows waiting for crumbs from the government."

More

Huber Testimony to House GOP on DOJ's Probe of Clinton Foundation Scheduled For Wednesday POSTPONED!

John Huber, the Special Prosecutor tapped by Sessions was scheduled to testify at a GOP-led Congressional hearing on December 5th on the DOJ’s probe of the Clinton Foundation.

The hearing, originally scheduled for December 5th has been postponed because President Trump designated Wednesday as National Day of Mourning to honor the passing of former President George H.W. Bush.
It is unclear when a new hearing will be scheduled. The Gateway Pundit will update when more information is available.

In October, Congressman Mark Meadows said he wanted Huber to appear before Congress to answer questions and give updates.

More

Comey to Testify Friday in Closed-Door Deposition - Loretta Lynch to Testify 'Later This Month'!

Fired FBI Director James Comey withdrew his motion to quash a House subpoena over the weekend and agreed to a closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee.

Crooked Comey knew he was going to lose his case in court; the Trump-appointed judge assigned to the case already showed he wasn’t buying Comey’s arguments.

More

Oklahoma jail inmate bites off parts of officer's ears

The Danish government announced its new policy to banish criminal aliens to the remote Lindholm Island in the province of Vordingborg.

The new policy was an agreement between Denmark’s conservative coalition government and its anti-immigration ally, the Danish People’s Party (DF).

The DF released a Twitter video celebrating the new policy.

The Telegraph reported:

Foreign criminals sentenced to deportation are to be banished to a remote island off the coast of Denmark, the country’s government has announced.

Finance minister Kristian Jensen said the criminals will be detained at a facility on Lindholm, an uninhabited seven-hectare island in the province of Vordingborg.

The tough scheme was set up as part of an agreement between Denmark’s conservative coalition government and its anti-immigration ally, the Danish People’s Party (DF).

The DF’s official Twitter account celebrated the announcement by publishing an animated cartoon which shows a dark-skinned man being dumped by a ship on a desert island.

A spokesman for the party said: “Foreign criminals have no reason to be in Denmark. Until we can get rid of them, we will move them to the island of Lindholm, where they will be obliged to stay at the new deportation centre at night.

“There will be police there around the clock.”

More

Reminder: Recreational Striped Bass Open Season

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources would like to remind the angling community the recreational striped bass open season in Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries will close at 11:59 p.m. Dec. 15, 2018.

The recreational open striped bass season on the Potomac River will close Dec. 31, 2018.

The Atlantic Ocean, coastal bays and tributaries remains open to recreational striped bass fishing with a two per-day limit year-round.

For more detailed information regarding Maryland's striped bass season, please visit the online guide or interactive map.

James Shott: Hypersensitivity and Victimhood Have Risen to Epidemic Levels

Have you noticed how many of the things that laid quietly beneath our awareness for so long have now risen to crisis proportions? Have you noticed how sensitive, touchy, and judgmental people are today?

Things from the past that have no bearing on what’s happening today send people into spasms. They are demanding relief from things that really have no actual effect on them.

The South in the Civil War, for example, drives people to want to destroy important vestiges of American history because of something that happened more than 150 years ago.

One does not have to be a defender of slavery or the War Between the States to understand the importance of knowing and preserving history, even those parts of it that are not sources of pride or may in fact be sources of shame. As wonderful a place as it is, America has not always been, and is not now, without problems. But why destroy reminders of what actually happened in the past instead of protecting them and using them to learn?

This sensitivity for historical things has expanded to include things that once were mundane. Some of them were indeed negative, but we had learned to rise above them.

More

Let There Be Light: The Documentary The Army Suppressed

At the end of the second World War, filmmaker John Huston got a commission from the US Army to produce a documentary of new treatments for psychiatric casualties of the war. This occurred when experimental treatments such as hypnosis or injections of sodium pentothal were being introduced into psychiatric therapy. The army wanted to produce the film to show off these promising new treatments, rather than to illustrate the psychological trauma of soldiers due to what we now recognize as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Huston titled his film Let There Be Light, and it opened with a statistic that likely would have shocked the American public:

“About 20% of all battle casualties in the American Army during World War II were of a neuropsychiatric nature.”

This statistic is followed by a brief explanation of the film’s intended purpose:

“The special treatment methods shown in this film, such as hypnosis and narco-synthesis, have been particularly successful in acute cases, such as battle neurosis. Equal success is not to be expected when dealing with peacetime neuroses which are usually of a chronic nature.”

Even though the psychiatric profession was still years away from naming PTSD, the idea of “battle neurosis” wasn’t exactly new. In World War I, soldiers called it “shell shock.” In the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the term “gross stress reaction” was defined similarly to what the third edition would refer to, not yet hyphenated, as “posttraumatic stress disorder.” But to the wider public, Huston’s “battle neurosis” did not enjoy the ubiquitous acknowledgement that PTSD receives today.

Thus, even though the film was intended to optimistically showcase the new treatments that had not been available to soldiers of previous wars, the initial viewings proved that the audience takeaway was not so positive. Huston unintentionally followed in the footsteps of Upton Sinclair. In writing The Jungle in 1904, Sinclair described the horrid (and fictionalized) conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry, hoping to inform the American public about the worker’s plight. Instead, he only generated concern about the meat readers were eating, prompting him to famously say “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” Huston’s Let There Be Light similarly missed its mark. Instead of documenting the uplifting trend of new treatments for psychiatric casualties of war, he exposed the horrible reality of psychiatric trauma that war imposed on soldiers.

Huston spent two months filming the documentary in the Mason General Hospital. He used “long takes” to film the documentary, making it clear that the soldiers’ recounted experience was not deceptively edited. The soldiers housed at Mason General were, as the documentary’s narrator describes them,

the casualties of the spirit, the troubled in mind. Men who are damaged emotionally. Born and bred in peace, educated to hate war, they were overnight plunged into sudden and terrible situations. Every man has his breaking point. And these, in the fulfillment of their duties as soldiers were forced beyond the limit of human endurance. . . .

Here are men who tremble, men who cannot sleep. Men with pains that are nonetheless real because they are of mental origin. Men who cannot remember. Paralyzed men whose paralysis is dictated by the mind. However different the symptoms, these things they have in common: unceasing fear and apprehension, a sense of impending disaster, a feeling of hopelessness and utter isolation.

More

Martin Armstrong: Global Cooling, Not Warming, Is What We Should Fear Most

It is incredibly important to understand that as the weather turns bitterly cold in the north, people will begin to migrate south. This not merely caused the ancient Greeks to become the Sea Peoples, but during the Year without a Summer in 1816. In the United States when in 1816 six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a hard frost, people began to migrate. The temperatures had dropped to as low as 40 degrees in July and August in New York City during 1816. People also called it ‘Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death’ and the ‘Poverty Year.’

This is what I keep pointing out that cold is what kills society and creates poverty – not warming.

The Year without a Summer sent people fleeing from New England states in search of warmer weather and fertile soils both south and west. It was the weather that began to cause migration in the United States outside of the 13 original states. Thousands of New England families gave up their farms, packed their belongings into wagons and joined the throngs traipsing over rivers and mountains to Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley, which includes Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky.

Indeed, between 1810 and 1820, Maine lost as many as 15,000 people. Sixty Vermont towns lost population during that decade as well. The population of 60 other towns in Vermont stayed the same while the U.S. population grew 32%. When we examine Massachusetts, we can see that this state gained only 50,000 people from 1810-20, while Ohio gained five times as many. The Massachusetts Legislature tried to hold on to its citizens by passing a homestead act that gave settlers 100 acres of land for $5.

More

Pat Caddell: Trump Will Lose 2020 if He Doesn’t Change His WH Team

Veteran pollster Pat Caddell told Breitbart News that President Donald Trump will not be re-elected if he does not change his White House team and “purge” the Republican Party of politicians and consultants “bought” by the “donor class.”

Caddell joined Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight for an interview with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.

Caddell criticized Republicans for not holding accountable Democrats who, while campaigning, expressed opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) speakership bid following the year’s midterm elections.

“A lot of these people were going to end up supporting her,” said Caddell. “They were lying that they weren’t going to support her. Now, the Republicans are responsible, in part, for this, because they don’t hold anybody’s feet to the fire.”

More

Amid California's Housing Shortage, Companies Carve Up Apartments to Pack More People and Lower Rent

When Christopher Cacho is home, the 23-year-old data specialist doesn't do much out of the ordinary. He may run a computer analysis at his desk, play a video game or lie down with a good book.

But when he does, he'll do it from a roughly 11-by-8-foot space that's cordoned off by a foldable tan wall on wheels.

To make the pricey Southern California real estate market work for him, Cacho turned to a company that rented him a partitioned section of a living room. Inside, he's set up his bed and television. In the corner, there's a tiny, square end table and ottoman.

"It works well as a converted desk," the recent college graduate said.

Hard-pressed families have long turned couches into beds, and it's common for recent graduates to bunk with friends in a house. But amid a sharp rise in housing costs in booming U.S. cities, a growing number of companies say the affordability crisis has become so severe that there's significant money to be made in offering, if not solutions, at least some relief.

More

The Left's Election Day Analysis: If We Lost, They Must've Cheated

A disturbing trend is emerging from the political left: When their candidates lose elections, rather than accept lawful defeat, they denounce the election itself.

In 2016, they explained away President Donald Trump’s victory as the product of Russian meddling. Now, they are blaming election losses in Florida and Georgia on “voter suppression” and other sinister acts.

In Florida, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum walked back his election night concession, claiming “tens of thousands of votes have yet to be counted,” and told supporters that a “vote denied is justice denied.”

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, described the Georgia gubernatorial race as biased against Democrat Stacey Abrams, claiming that if Abrams “had a fair election, she already would have won.” Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, announced that Abrams’ apparent defeat was a sure sign that Republicans “stole” her election.

More

How one woman thinks the rise of ‘male bashing’ is destroying Australian men

Psychologist Bettina Arndt has claimed that the global #MeToo feminist movement has granted women a license to 'destroy' men.

The psychologist and author controversially blamed the feminist movement for throwing false accusations of rape and violence at men on Tuesday.

The author went as far as to label feminism as a 'destructive force in our society'.

Ms Arndt discussed her upcoming book '#MenToo', which she claims highlights the problems that confront men today.

She went on tell Sunrise co-hosts Samantha Armytage and Natalie Barr that feminism has 'gone off the rails' and is 'all about rules and regulations to advantage women at the expense of men.'

More/Video

Meet The Ballot-Harvesting Felon At The Center Of A Still-Undecided North Carolina Race

A North Carolina man known for creative "electioneering" and alleged fraud is now at the center of a hotly contested House race in the state's Ninth District separated by just 905 votes, which state regulators have refused to certify, according to the New York Times.

Elections regulators are poised to hold an evidentiary hearing this month. Investigators have already begun questioning witnesses about what Joshua Malcolm, who was named on Monday as the election board’s chairman, described last week as “claims of numerous irregularities and concerted fraudulent activities” with regard to absentee ballots in rural parts of the district. -NYT

At the center of those activities is L. McCrae Dowless Jr. - a felon and politico convicted of perjury and fraud in the early 1990s. Dowless - known for get-out-the-vote campaigns revolving around absentee ballots, was hired by a firm working for Republican candidate Mark Harris against Democrat Dan McCready, and was rumored to be in line for a $40,000 bonus if Harris won the election.

More

George H.W. Bush: A Man of Character

I first met the man who would become America’s 41st president in 1968. He was a Houston congressman and I was a young reporter for a local TV and radio station.

My first impression was how kind he was to this “kid,” who had just moved to Texas from the Washington, D.C., area and was just starting to learn the “language,” like “fixing to go” and “y’all.”

Everyone who worked for George H.W. Bush, or knew him, has a story to tell. I have several.

Bush was a letter writer like none other. I think I have an almost complete collection of his notes and letters, some typed, some handwritten, from every position he held in public life. These include congressman, Republican National Committee chairman, chief liaison officer to the People’s Republic of China, U.N. ambassador, CIA director, vice president, and president.

When he became president, I wrote him a congratulatory note and he responded on White House stationery. I later told him I was keeping the letter “just in case you amount to something.”

He laughed.

More