COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, July 24, 2017

Robots to Replace Most Workers and We Are Doomed (but) We desperately Need More Immigrants from Third World Countries to Expand Our Work Force

REPORT
A key player in the Australian jobs market has warned that the rate at which robots replace humans in the workplace will spark an employment crisis and has urged companies and governments to urgently confront the issue. 
Seek chief executive Andrew Bassat, whose company is one of the world’s largest global online employment marketplaces, said Australian companies were shaping up to be the “losers’’ in an age when threats and opportunities from disruption were challenging every industry.
“My view is that we have enough warning to know that we need to act with urgency to­ ­address this issue and can no longer afford to wait,” Mr Bassat told The Australian.
“Job losses will only accelerate as machines start to be smarter than people, given our brains were seen as the last line of defence. I can’t see new jobs being created in anywhere near the volumes that will make up for the jobs lost. The same examples of new jobs keep being used, like data ­analysts and engineers etc, but I can’t see them being created with anywhere near the volume needed.’’

REPORT

To Be Great Again, America Needs Immigrants


What makes America great?

The standard answers point to qualities that the United States is said to have in greater abundance than its peers in Europe and Japan. There are the innovations that pour out of Silicon Valley companies and elite universities, the flexibility of a work force relatively unconstrained by union rules, the dynamism of entrepreneurs less hamstrung by an oversize welfare state and of a more mobile population willing to move to where the cutting-edge jobs are mushrooming.
In short, the standard innovation theory of American exceptionalism is all about qualities that make each worker more productive. Today, nearly all the economic discussion about how to make America great again focuses on ways — like cutting red tape and taxes — to revive flagging productivity growth.

Though this discussion remains critically important, it plays down a big shift in the story. The underlying growth potential of any economy is shaped not only by productivity, or output per worker, but also by the number of workers entering the labor force. The growth of the labor force is in turn determined mainly by the number of native-born and immigrant working-age people. Over the last two decades, the United States’ advantage in productivity growth has narrowed sharply, while its population advantages, compared with both Europe and Japan, have essentially held steady.

What makes America great is, therefore, less about productivity than about population, less about Google and Stanford than about babies and immigrants.
The growing importance of the population race will be very hard for any political leader to fully digest. Every nation prefers to think of itself as productive in the sense of hard-working and smart, not just fertile. But population is where the real action is.

Comparing six of the leading developed countries — the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia and Britain — I found that not only has productivity growth been slowing across the board in recent decades, but also that the gaps in productivity growth among these rich nations are narrowing sharply. For example, in the 1990s and 2000s, productivity was growing much faster in the United States than in Germany or Japan, but that advantage has largely disappeared in this decade.

The reasons for this convergence are complex, possibly having to do with the way production technology now spreads quickly across borders. But this trend spans the developed world, and it basically holds regardless of which two countries you compare, which should raise doubts about how any one country, including the United States, can regain a distinct economic advantage by focusing only on reviving productivity.

Which brings us back to babies and immigrants. Like productivity, population growth has been slowing worldwide in recent decades, the big difference being that the gaps among the rich nations are increasingly significant. In the 1960s the United States population growth rate averaged 1.2 percent, or 50 percent higher than Europe’s and about the same as Japan’s. By the late 1960s, population growth peaked worldwide because of the spread of birth control and other cultural shifts, but it has slowed much more gradually in the United States than in its rivals.

48 comments:

  1. We need more immigrants about as badly as we need more people to put on weight.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Industry 4.0

    This era of “Industry 4.0” is being driven by the same technological advances that enable the capabilities of the smartphones in our pockets. It is a mix of low-cost and high-power computers, high-speed communication and artificial intelligence. This will produce smarter robots with better sensing and communication abilities that can adapt to different tasks, and even coordinate their work to meet demand without the input of humans.

    In the manufacturing industry, where robots have arguably made the most headway of any sector, this will mean a dramatic shift from centralised to decentralised collaborative production. Traditional robots focused on single, fixed, high-speed operations and required a highly skilled human workforce to operate and maintain them. Industry 4.0 machines are flexible, collaborative and can operate more independently, which ultimately removes the need for a highly skilled workforce.

    ReplyDelete
  3. WE need less workers, more automation and a tax system that shifts some of the costs of human social needs.

    Under current law, an employer cannot hire a worker for cash and has an obligation to take 25% (minimum) from him and send it the the government. Fair enough. Now let's put a tax on robotics and job replacing technologies at a rate of one fifth of the costs on a human being.

    That will not take away any incentives, in fact it will increase them. It will essentially raise wages for workers.

    We do not need an endless expansion of immigration with all the social costs that come with them.

    Does anyone think the US would be a more pleasant place with 500 million, 750 million, one billion or three billion people?

    Does anyone think that Africa need more people? Has it improved as population has exploded? Does it help for them to breed themselves into endless poverty and export their surplus to the and EU?

    ReplyDelete
  4. What happens to the US when 75% of the population is from Africa, the Middle East, the slums of Latin America, Bangladesh ?

    If you think it is a good idea, I think you should visit Honduras, Guatemala, Congo, South Africa, any Chinese city. Frankfurt Germany, Brussels, downtown Stockholm, most of Los Angeles and anywhere in East London. It is enlightening.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Schumer: Dems, not Russia, are to blame for loss to Trump

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says that Democrats, not Russia, are to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Trump.

    “When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things — [James] Comey, Russia — you blame yourself,” Schumer said in an interview Saturday with The Washington Post.

    “So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”

    Last year, much of the Democrats’ strategy hinged on criticism of Trump in hopes that the many controversies swirling around the GOP presidential candidate would damage down-ballot Republicans, a plan which largely failed.
    In May, Clinton blamed former FBI Director Comey and Wikileaks for her election loss.

    “I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” Clinton said.

    “And the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling, persuasive. And so we overcame a lot. We overcame an enormous barrage of negativity, of false equivalency, and so much else.”

    The Democratic Party is planning to unveil a new agenda which includes the slogan, “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future,” and Schumer vows that it’s an expression “that everyone will use — a better deal for workers, a better deal for women, a better deal for prescription-drug buyers.”


    That is interesting. The why are the idiotic Republicans playing into the Democrats hand and supporting sanctions on Russia?

    Schumer just told them Clinton's claim about Russia is horse shit.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The left doesn't want immigrants for jobs, they want to coddle them, get them registered, and tell them how to vote. Second biggest scam going next to global warming.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The noose is tightening on Deuce's man Trump!

    "Jared Kushner sealed real estate deal with oligarch's firm cited in money-laundering case

    Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, who acts as his senior White House adviser, secured a multimillion-dollar Manhattan real estate deal with a Soviet-born oligarch whose company was cited in a major New York money laundering case now being probed by members of Congress.

    A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle. They include a 2015 sale of part of the old New York Times building in Manhattan involving Kushner and a billionaire real estate tycoon and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.

    The ties between Trump family real estate deals and Russian money interests are attracting growing interest from the justice department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller, as he seeks to determine whether the Trump campaign collaborated with Russia to distort the outcome of the 2016 race. Mueller has reportedly expanded his inquiry to look at real estate deals involving the Trump Organization, as well as Kushner’s financing.

    Kushner will go before the US Senate intelligence committee on Monday in a closed session of the panel’s inquiry into Russian interference in the election in what could be a pivotal hearing into the affair.

    Leviev, a global tycoon known as the “king of diamonds”, was a business partner of the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings that was at the center of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit launched in New York. Under the leadership of US attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump in March, prosecutors pursued Prevezon for allegedly attempting to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury.

    The scam had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant who died in 2009 in a Moscow jail in suspicious circumstances. US sanctions against Russia imposed after Magnitsky’s death were a central topic of conversation at the notorious Trump Tower meeting last June between Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.

    Donald Jr and Manafort have been called to testify before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, at which they are certain to face questions about the Trump Tower encounter.

    Two days before it was due to open in court in May, the Prevezon case was settled for $6m with no admission of guilt on the part of the defendants. But since details of the Trump Tower meeting emerged, the abrupt settlement of the Prevezon case has come under renewed scrutiny from congressional investigators.

    ..."

    http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/jared-kushner-sealed-real-estate-deal-with-oligarchs-firm-cited-in-money-laundering-case/ar-AAoKQfZ?ocid=spartanntp

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jared 'The Red' Kushner seems to have given the committee all he has on meetings with Russians and it is sounding like a nothing burger -

    Kushner Empties The Bag On Russia
    JAZZ SHAWPosted at 8:01 am on July 24, 2017

    ....
    So what do we make of this massive dump of information right before Kushner’s testimony before the committee? Since the event will be closed to the public and not under oath, it sounds like he’s trying to tamp down the rumor mill before the circus of anonymous sources can begin making up their own story. If so, that’s a pretty smart move. If there are any bombshells in the testimony which are either missing from this account or contradict it in any significant way, I have no doubt that the leakers will have it out to either CNN or the Washington Post before the meeting is even over. I’m guessing that Kushner and his legal team are aware of that, so I’d bet that this is either a completely accurate account or at least one which nobody will be able to challenge with any hard evidence.


    http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/24/kushner-empties-bag-russia/

    I've been wanting to have a brief meeting too with the Russian Ambassador what's his name, the guy with the double chin, but can't ever seem fit it into my busy schedule.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Chuckie Schumer seems to be giving up on the Russian business, saying Hillary lost to a candidate with only about 40% support and it's her own fault.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She called half the country irredeemable and deplorable and it didn't go over well for her.

      Plus she had been selling USA foreign policy to the highest bidders through her position as Secretary of State and most people took a dim view of that, too.

      In a redeemed world she would be in prison.

      Here in this fallen one she seems to have gotten away with it, at least for now.

      But, she is not President of the USA, thank The Lord.

      Delete
  10. In a surprising move Baby Gard's parents have announced they are giving up on efforts to bring him to USA for treatment saying it's too late, 'time has run out'.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Kid Rock, a Republican (he says) is leading Debbie Stabenow, the incumbent Democratic Michigan senator, in a hypothetical match up in 2018 Michigan Senate, polls say.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In a world made out of comedy, in which Kid Rock were running against Ash for a US Senate seat, Kid Rock would win overwhelmingly.

      In the unlikely event this came to pass here in our current world, the result would be the same.

      Delete
  12. This is what makes America great. Trust Me.

    FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- An 18-year-old Stockton woman is in jail accused of driving under the influence during a deadly crash Friday. The live Instagram recording shows Obdulia Sanchez next to a dead crash victim.

    Authorities say a 14-year-old died in the crash and, in the video, she references the victim as her sister. The CHP says two minors were in the back seat were not wearing seatbelts.

    The CHP says Sanchez was under the influence when she rolled her car over, into a barbed wire fence and then a field. The Merced County Sheriff says 14-year-old Jacqueline Sanchez was killed in the crash near Henry Miller Road and Highway 165.

    "She was in the back seat of the vehicle and allegedly unseatbelted, and upon the vehicle rolling over, it ejected her and killed her," Sheriff Vern Warnke said.

    "I killed my sister, but I don't care," she said in the video. "I killed my sister. I know I'm going to prison, but I don't care. I'm sorry baby. I'm a hold it down."

    Mary Hernandez of Stockton recorded the live stream.

    "At first we didn't even want to believe it was real," she said. "I recorded it and posted it mainly because as someone who uses Snapchat I see a lot of people driving with their Snapchats doing what she was doing so to me it was like an eye opener."

    Family members confirm the video was shot by Obdulia Sanchez. They say the victim, Jacqueline Sanchez of Stockton, was supposed to celebrate her Quinceanera Sunday.

    A 14-year-old girl from Fresno was also in the car and was badly injured.

    Sanchez is now in the Merced County Jail on charges of vehicular manslaughter while under the influence and DUI.

    Family members started a GoFundMe page for Jacqueline's funeral expenses.

    http://abc30.com/news/18-year-old-woman-arrested-after-live-streaming-deadly-crash-near-los-banos/2244689/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Other reports include I "F...... Killed my sister."

      Delete
    2. http://nypost.com/2017/07/24/i-f-king-killed-my-sister-teen-live-streams-fatal-car-crash/

      Delete
    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  13. Why are birth rates higher for Latina teens than others? It’s complicated, experts say

    http://www.fresnobee.com/news/special-reports/too-young/article163003693.html#storylink=indep

    What this country needs is more experts.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "I did not have corrupt relations with that country"....Drudge

    Jared 'The Red' Kushner

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. For Ash -

    Opinion: Can Democrats Deliver Like Papa John’s?

    Better ingredients needed, at least something in the box


    Democrats have reportedly come up with a slogan very similar to Papa John’s Pizza, Allen writes. But can they deliver and will there be anything in the box? (CQ Roll Call/Photos by Tom Williams and Bill Clark, Photo Composition by Chris Hale)

    Jonathan Allen
    @Jonathan Allen
    Posted Jul 24, 2017 5:03 AM

    Democrats are so lost they don’t know how lost they are.

    Instead of working feverishly on the substance of a contrast with the imploding Trump administration, they decided it was most important — a year and a half out from the next election — to publicly unveil a new slogan first.


    Not a new plan for boosting the economy, mind you. Not a reform platform that would address the egregious abuses of President Donald Trump and his minions. Not even a navel-gazing proposal to change the rules for picking presidential nominees or party leaders in Congress.

    What Democrats thought they needed most in the midst of the Trump-losion was a slogan — and not even a good one. They should have kept their mouths shut and let voters think they were rudderless rather than announcing their mantra and removing all doubt....

    ....Here, in their infinite political savvy, is what they’ve reportedly come up with: “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages.”

    The Twitterverse took about 10 seconds to compare the mantra to Papa John’s “Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.”

    It borders on blasphemy to place an order for an extra-small, half-Franklin Roosevelt, half-Papa John’s pie.

    But, more astoundingly, the Democrats missed the basic point of the Papa John’s slogan: Better ingredients are the predicate for a better pizza....

    http://www.rollcall.com/news/opinion/democrats-trump-message

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chuck Schumer just threw Hillary Clinton under the bus
      CNN
      By Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
      Updated 2:49 PM ET, Mon July 24, 2017

      (CNN)In the 2016 campaign, there was no one more loyal to Hillary Clinton than her one-time Senate colleague Chuck Schumer. He defended his fellow New Yorker and the race she ran at every turn.

      Which makes what Schumer said about Clinton over the weekend all the more intriguing.


      "When you lose to somebody who has 40% popularity, you don't blame other things -- Comey, Russia -- you blame yourself," Schumer, the top ranking Democrat in the Senate, told The Washington Post over the weekend. "So what did we do wrong? People didn't know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that."

      Gauntlet thrown.

      Remember that Clinton has laid her defeat in the 2016 election directly at the feet of Russia's meddling -- via a series of hacked emails -- and then-FBI Director James Comey's decision to re-open the investigation into Clinton's private email server.

      "I take responsibility for every decision I make -- but that's not why I lost," Clinton told Recode's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg in early June. In a May interview with CNN's Christine Amanpour, Clinton said: "I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey's letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off."

      Schumer's comments to the Post are a direct rebuke of the idea that Clinton has pushed since the election: That she lost because of factors entirely beyond her control, not because of any flaw in her as a candidate or in the message she ran on. (It was "Stronger Together," in case you forgot.)....

      http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/schumer-clinton-2016/index.html

      Delete
  16. Sorry, posted wrong address for local color version of the sister murdering Wise Latina:

    http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article163271738.html

    ReplyDelete
  17. For the first time I'm on Dawkin's side!

    Islamophobic’ Scientist Pulled From Berkeley Radio: ‘We Do Not Support Abusive Speech’

    Richard Dawkins is famous for criticizing religion in books such as The God Delusion, but a progressive radio station canceled the biologist's appearance due to his opinions on Islam.

    KPFA, a community radio station in Berkeley, Calif., canceled Dawkins' appearance to discuss his book Science in the Soul when Muslim advocates complained, the Guardian reports. The station said that the science-based event would be tainted by Dawkins' "hurtful" opinions on religion and canceled it.

    "We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn't know he had offended and hurt—in his tweets and other comments on Islam—so many people," KPFA stated in an email to ticket-buyers. "KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech."


    http://freebeacon.com/issues/islamophobic-scientist-pulled-berkeley-radio-not-support-abusive-speech/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What follows is more Dawkins BS about Islam which I ignored.

      It's the "ism" in Islamism that's bad, you see...

      Delete
    2. Couldn't resist, and this is pretty good:

      "I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that," he wrote. "Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?"

      Harvard professor and author Steven Pinker also defended Dawkins.

      "He has criticized doctrines of Islam, together with doctrines of other religions, but criticism is not ‘abuse,'" Pinker said. "To criticize tenets of Islam is no more abusive than to criticize tenets of neoliberalism or the Republican Party platform."

      Delete
    3. :) heh

      I agree with all you've said above.

      Delete
  18. We certainly wouldn't want to offend those who wish to chop our heads off by criticizing the muzz in a 'hurtful' way, would we ?

    O Woe Berkeley !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The muzz and the commie totalitarians have been teaming up for some time now.....

      Delete
  19. Trump Needs To Be Smart About How He Fires Mueller
    Kurt Schlichter Kurt Schlichter |Posted: Jul 24, 2017 12:01 AM

    Trump must eventually fire Robert Mueller, a partisan tool carrying water for his Establishment pals as he oversees an utterly corrupt “investigation” where the only person we actually know committed any wrongdoing is his bestest buddy Jim Comey. But Trump can’t just lash out and do it, though it is well within his political and moral right to do so. No, he’s got to do it cleverly, with cunning, in a way that shows the American people exactly why Mueller’s witch hunt is a flaming dumpster fire of conflicts of interest and contempt for the right of normal Americans to have a say in their own governance.

    Trump has to set the stage before he pulls the trigger and puts the coup de grace into the temple of this appalling fiasco. He has to do it so the American people will see and understand why ending this idiocy is so absolutely necessary to preserve our Republic despite the mainstream media’s best effort to hide the truth.

    Trump needs to seize the initiative from Leaky Bob. You know, I keep hearing how Mueller was this squared-away Marine officer, but through these incessant leaks his organization demonstrates a complete lack of both integrity and discipline. Mueller seems unwilling or unable to exercise any kind of leadership over his team of Hillary donors, or to instill a culture of seriousness and impartiality. The continuing misconduct of his out-of-control, ever-expanding fiefdom demonstrates that he must be relieved of command. And here’s the letter the president should send to him to set the stage to do it....

    https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/07/24/trump-needs-to-be-smart-about-how-he-fires-mueller-n2358768

    ReplyDelete
  20. Why ISIS setbacks in Syria, Iraq are devastating to terror group
    BY SIMON COTTEE
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, July 23, 2017, 5:00 AM

    Now that Mosul, the seat of the so-called "caliphate" in Iraq, has fallen, ISIS has a problem: It is a self-avowedly Islamic State without a state. And although the group retains its hold on Raqqa in Syria, where it's currently encircled by U.S.-backed Syrian forces, it's likely that it will relinquish that former stronghold too by the end of the year.

    It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the problem for the group. ISIS's claim to lead the global jihadist movement rested exclusively on its territorial successes in Iraq and Syria.....

    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/death-caliphate-article-1.3345980

    ReplyDelete
  21. 5 minute VIDEO on how to interact with the cops during a traffic stop, and discuss your concealed weapon and permit -

    https://bearingarms.com/jenn-j/2017/07/24/dos-donts-concealed-carrying-traffic-stop/

    Very good and entertaining by 'Mike The Cop'

    ReplyDelete
  22. WIDENING GYRE
    What I’d Really Like to Hear Explained About Russiagate
    JOHN BATCHELOR
    07.24.17 1:00 AM ET

    Within the last days, two surprising news reports in the sprawling, surging octopus of the Russiagate investigation have reintroduced the probability that we are much closer to the beginning than to the end of the scandal.
    First, on Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein of California demonstrated their impatience with Glenn Simpson, founder of the opposition research company Fusion GPS.
    “Glenn Simpson, through his attorney, has declined to voluntarily attend Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing regarding compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Therefore, a subpoena has been issued to compel his attendance. Simpson’s attorney has asserted that his client will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to the subpoena.”

    What is it that Simpson knows about that he has decided to take the risk of becoming a target of major voices of both the Republican and Democratic parties?


    Second, on Friday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina reawakened interest in the suspicion that the Obama administration abused its authority by using surveillance information in order to unmask and leak the names of Trump campaign members, particularly Gen. Michael Flynn.

    After interviewing Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice in a session closed to the media and public, Burr remarked ambiguously: “The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I’ll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened. But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public, which it’s not supposed to, and our business is to understand that, and explain it.”

    Both these puzzles need to be solved in public before there can be a complete understanding of the threatening allegation that the Trump administration colluded with Russian intelligence operatives in what former Obama administration CIA and NSA directors Michael Hayden has called the “most successful covert influence operation in history.”

    Teasing out these two large-scaled unknowns in order, Fusion GPS looms as a crossroads in the inquiry into Russian meddling by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

    What Republican partisan hired Fusion GPS in 2015 in order to develop what became the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s dossier of alleged conduct by Donald Trump long before the 2016 campaign?
    What Democratic partisan then paid Fusion GPS in order to take over and to exploit the Steele dossier beginning in June 2016?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Then again, Fusion GPS is also involved in the suspect conduct of Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
      In 2013, well-connected Russian citizen Denis Katsyv turned to his attorney, Veselnitskaya, in order to refute money-laundering charges brought by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Veselnitskaya, not licensed in the United States, hired American law firm BakerHostetler. BakerHostetler hired Fusion GPS to develop information to help defend Katsyv and his enterprise, Prevezon Holdings.

      The entanglement also included Fusion GPS investigating information about principals in the Magnitsky Act of 2012.
      The now controversial meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower, including Donald Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya, is said to have turned on a discussion of the Magnitsky Act.

      There is new information that Veselnitskaya has in the past represented the Russian intelligence service FSB.
      All these connections lead back to Fusion GPS, its client list, its sources, its refusal so far to provide Congress with documents of its activity with and for Russian actors since 2013.

      The unanswered questions about the alleged leaking of the unmasking and leaking of Michael Flynn’s name also involves documents that have yet to be seen by the public.

      Senator Burr’s ambiguous remark that Congressman Nunes “created” the “unmasking thing” does not clarify the questions raised these last weeks about how the Obama administration used surveillance during the 2016 campaign.
      For example, in late May, news reports confirmed that the Nunes-chaired House Intelligence Committee had issued subpoenas to three national security agencies, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. The committee was said to be seeking documents related to the improper unmasking allegations and three Obama administration officials, former CIA director John Brennan, former national security adviser Susan Rice, and former UN ambassador Samantha Power.

      At the time, the question was what does Power have to do with the unmasking and leaking of Flynn’s name?
      The questions about Power only darkened when Nunes announced in mid-July that the House Intelligence Committee soon intends to make a “criminal referral” to the Department of Justice about Obama administration officials who leaked names of Trump campaign members that were gathered in U.S. intelligence surveillance.

      Of all the theatrical Russiagate elements that are unlikely to be explained in the near future—Michael Flynn; John Brennan; Susan Rice; James Comey; the cross-purposes of the NSA, CIA, FBI, FSB, GRU; not to mention John Podesta and Julian Assange—it would be a satisfying start just to have clarity about the striking role played by Fusion GPS in the 2016 election.

      Of all the alarming Russiagate allegations—collusion, treason, blackmail, money-laundering, obstruction—it would be a satisfying start to learn how the unlikely name of Samantha Power turned up in the widening gyre of blameworthiness.

      http://www.thedailybeast.com/what-id-really-like-to-hear-explained-about-russiagate

      Delete
  23. Scaramucci’s right that Trump probably views this subject wholly through the lens of his own legitimacy. If Russia engaged in hacking and that hacking helped him to victory — which is a big if, unproved even by his fiercest critics — then he didn’t win fair and square and his glorious upset was tainted.

    I can sympathize with that concern up to a point, but when his obsession with it becomes so overweening that he’s giving Putin’s talking points cover at the price of delegitimizing his own intelligence bureau’s universally held opinion, something’s gone badly wrong. It’s another self-defeating measure, like firing Comey was: Even some who aren’t otherwise inclined to believe the sweaty theories about collusion are bound to pause and wonder why Trump is taking sides with Putin against the CIA.

    He’s spraying gasoline on the Russiagate fire, somehow not realizing that he’d do more to shore up his legitimacy as president by being tough on Putin than by futilely trying to convince the public that it was some other shadowy agents who hacked Podesta and the DNC.


    Campaign Hacking

    ReplyDelete
  24. Brain cancer and chemo/radiation therapy isn't going to keep John McCain from doing his duty.

    You got to admire the guy

    MCCAIN BACK IN SENATE FOR HEALTH CARE VOTE TUESDAY....DRUDGE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Being a POW in Vietnam probably toughens you up a bit.

      Delete
    2. He HAS to be one tough dude, I'll give him that.

      Delete
  25. The noose tightens around Deuces and bobs and dougs and Whitt's man, Trump. Now, that's some funny shit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was backing Dr. Ben Carson. Trump wasn't my first, second, or third choice.

      Better than Crooked Hillary by far.

      Doesn't seem there is any noose around Jared Kushner's neck.

      Back in the day, the ChiComs were found to have heavily donated to the Democrat Party.

      There was never any investigation of it.

      I think this is all hypocritical in the highest degree and I don't see anything has come from it so far.



      Delete
    2. Mueller's team is almost all Democratic donating folk.

      This inspires zero confidence.

      Delete
  26. The danger for Kushner - aside from embarrassment - is that he could be contradicted by one or more witnesses or by electronic surveillance. As for failure to complete his security form accurately, one former intelligence operative says, "Perhaps one time [he makes an error or omission] but multiple times is also ludicrous.

    ...

    If not evidence of malicious deception, the story reveals a young man who is in over his head and out of his depth to such a degree that he does not know he is in over his head and out of his depth. The thought of summoning people who actually knew what was going on, checking with the administration as to the background of people with whom he was communicating or showing healthy skepticism about the people who were approaching him never occurred to him?

    Possible, but what a damning alibi.


    Over his Head

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    Replies
    1. Maybe he really didn't do a damn thing wrong.

      Delete
  27. He's one of the most powerful figures in Donald Trump's inner circle. But Jared Kushner assiduously avoids being in the public eye.

    Yet on Monday morning, the spotlight was firmly on the President's son-in-law as he arrived on Capitol Hill.

    ...

    That process of testing the Trump inner circle's version of events has begun.

    This week, Mr Kushner made his first appearance; next week, Donald Trump Jr and Paul Manafort (the former Trump campaign director) are likely to take their turn.

    ...

    And rather than throw the President's son, son-in-law, and former campaign manager directly into the full glare of a Senate hearing, or subject them to the embarrassment of subpoenas, the committee chairs have agreed to begin proceedings by having their investigators interview the men behind closed doors.

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  28. I wonder if Quirk would equate, as many have, Trump's going to The Boy Scout Jamboree to a Hitler Youth Rally ?

    There was talk of 'loyalty', you know.

    ReplyDelete
  29. The Hidden Islamic War Series: Muslim Fighters Slaughtering Europeans In World War II
    By Alexander Shah - on July 24, 2017

    http://pamelageller.com/2017/07/muslim-slaughter-europeans.html/

    ReplyDelete