Saturday, December 10, 2016

The Russians did not create and lie about Hillary’s server (Larry Johnson)

Larry Johnson's website is NO QUARTER.  Besides appearing on television as a national security expert, he was also with the CIA.  This is from his "Unraveling the Russian Hack Conspiracy Propaganda -- DOUBLE UPDATE:"


Blaming Russia for Hillary’s flame out is absurd. The Russians did not create and lie about Hillary’s server. They did not force her to back the multilateral trade agreements, such as NAFTA and TPP. They didn’t set up the Clinton Foundation as a cash cow for the Clinton family. They did not force her to advocate imposing a No Fly Zone in Syria and having been a cheerleader for past wars, including Iraq and Libya. Vladimir Putin did not slip her a mickey and cause her to pass out at the 9-11 memorial, which fueled concerns about her health. And they did not infect her lungs and cause her to have extended coughing jags. They did not cause her to call Americans deplorables. They did not make her say that the coal industry should be shutdown. With that kind of record, coupled with her shrieking, screechy voice, why are folks surprised that she did not win? 
So now Democrats and several Republicans are in a lather over the Russians stealing the election for Trump. The list of conspiracy theorists pushing this nonsense include John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Angus King of Maine, Brent Budowsky and Adam Schiff. I defy anyone, to explain to me how Russian meddling gave Trump the win. 
 The realities are this. First, as noted in the Budowsky email, the Clinton campaign came up with the idea of accusing Trump of being a stooge of Russia. They thought they’d get political bang out of that. They didn’t. 
 Second, the hack of the DNC emails confirmed that the suspicions of many that the DNC and Hillary were collaborating to screw over Bernie and rig the election. That was not fake news. Cold, unwelcomed truth. That’s when this drum beat about the big, bad Russians started meddling in our election started. Why? To distract attention away from the ugly reality that the DNC and Hillary were cheating.










Hillary's Love Slaves are out in full force again


Can we let go of the election already?

They're one day events and life is supposed to go on.

But the Hillary cry babies will not let it go.

I was shocked in 1980 when Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter.

Shocked, appalled, angry.

I was furious over 2000.

But let's not relive the election every damn day.

It's over.

Because the media got it so wrong they're indulging the conspiracy theories of Hillary's Love Cult and the latest is that the hacking took place.

There is no evidence that Russia hacked the election.


CIA whispers are saying they have evidence.


Some of the pushback on that nonsense?



Beggars belief that anyone would take CIA claims seriously. The job of the is to tell lies- as we saw from the Iraqi WMDs scam.




And:


Hard to believe this needs to be said to people who lived thru the Iraq War. Partisanship is a hell of a drug.




For every bit of logic there's the idiot Nancy Pelosi.



The intel didn't state that Iraq had WMDs. The Bush-Cheney WH made that misrepresentation.




Did they make that representation, Nance?

Where's your Committee hearing on that?

You became Speaker of the House in January 2007.

You held that post until January 2011.

Where's your Committee hearing on that?

Oh, right.  You didn't care enough to hold a hearing.

You're just an aged gas bag whose tired ass shouldn't be in leadership -- or, for that matter, even in Congress.

You took impeachment off the table.

Despite the fact that we, in your district, wanted it.

You took impeachment off the table.

Despite the fact that you say the intel didn't state what Bush & Cheney said it did.

Exactly what qualifies as a high crime to you, Nancy?

At any rate, you may remember CIA Directer George Tenet called it a slam dunk.

What you may not remember, reported by Bob Woodward in 2004 and below repeated by CNN:


The book also reports that in the summer of 2002, $700 million was diverted from a congressional appropriation for the war in Afghanistan to develop a war plan for Iraq.
Woodward suggests the diversion may have been illegal, and that Congress was deliberately kept in the dark about what had been done.


When you became House Speaker, what did you do about that, Nance?

Right.

You did nothing.

So sit your tired and worthless ass down.

Nobody needs to hear from you.


From CRAPAPEDIA:

On October 1, 2002, the CIA delivered a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessing the threat represented by Iraq's WMD activities. Three days later, CIA Director George Tenet published an unclassified white paper on the subject of Iraq's WMD capabilities. Over the next two weeks, a joint resolution authorizing the use of force was passed by both houses of Congress.



Same CRAPAPEDIA on the Senate Intelligence Committee's inquiry:


Phase I conclusions

The 511-page report focuses much of its attention on the October, 2002, classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) titled Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. The report includes 117 formal conclusions, as well as supporting discussion and background information.

General conclusions on intelligence relating to Iraq's WMD and ties to terrorism

The report's first conclusion points to widespread flaws in the October 2002 NIE, and attributes those flaws to failure by analysts in the intelligence community:
Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

Subsequent conclusions fault the intelligence community for failing to adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties that underlay the NIE's conclusions, and for succumbing to "group think," in which the intelligence community adopted untested (and, in hindsight, unwarranted) assumptions about the extent of Iraq's WMD stockpiles and programs. The committee identified a failure to adequately supervise analysts and collectors, and a failure to develop human sources of intelligence (HUMINT) inside Iraq after the departure of international weapons inspectors in 1998. It also cited the post-9/11 environment as having led to an increase in the intensity with which policymakers review and question threat information.


The general conclusions were supported by both Dems and Repubs on the Committee.

Nancy wants to rewrite history because she's a hustler -- an elderly one with a bad hip and a lousy wig -- who wants to harness the CIA now for her own partisan goals.

There are people dying in Iraq.

Can Hillary's Love Slaves please find something better to do with all of our time.

Your bulls**t pretense of caring about anything other than Hillary isn't not working.

Your whores and loves slaves -- go work in your temple and leave the rest of us alone.

While garbage takes up attention, this is what many in the Arab world are discussing.

BREAKING: 90 Iraqi soldiers killed in from US airstrikes



Hearts and minds?


Not a chance.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.




















Isakson, Blumenthal Hail Senate Passage of Bipartisan Veterans Reform Package


isakson




Senator Johnny Isakson (above) is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  His office issued the following today:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2016

Contact: Amanda Maddox, 202-224-7777

Isakson, Blumenthal Hail Senate Passage of Bipartisan Veterans Reform Package
Legislation to improve veterans’ access to health care, benefits now heads to president’s desk
 
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, today applauded unanimous Senate passage of legislation to improve veterans’ access to health care, disability benefits, education and homelessness assistance, among other important benefits for our nation’s veterans.
 
“I am proud that the Senate has acted on this legislation to help our veterans,” said Isakson. “Regardless of political party, we are showing our veterans that we are on the same team when it comes to getting things right for them. With today’s vote, we are demonstrating our commitment to ensuring that our veterans receive what was promised to them and their families. This legislation will improve veterans’ access to health care and benefits and is an important down payment on the debt that we owe to the veterans of the United States of America.”
 
“This bipartisan, comprehensive legislation continues our progress toward leaving no veteran behind,” Blumenthal said. “With 76 separate provisions, it is broad in scope and scale. Hiring more mental health counselors and emergency room doctors will mean more veterans receive quality healthcare. Expanding eligibility for homelessness prevention programs will provide critical support to veterans at risk of homelessness. Extending critical education benefits to surviving family members will further our promise of education. Beginning work to help descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances will help heal the residual wounds of war. But on these issues and so many more, we are only taking another step in what must be a journey toward ensuring our veterans receive the benefits they need and deserve.”
 
The Jeff Miller and Richard Blumenthal Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2016 (H.R.6416) includes 76 bipartisan provisions that address a variety of areas in veterans’ services that are in need of reforms or improvements. It incorporates language from a number of previously introduced House and Senate bills, including several provisions from the Veterans First Act, which unanimously passed the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs in May 2016.
 
The measure is named after retiring chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., as well as outgoing Senate VA committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in tribute to their years-long commitment to serving veterans in Congress.
 
Earlier this week, Isakson delivered remarks on the Senate floor imploring “members of the United States Senate to help us pass this down payment on the promise and the debt that we owe to the veterans of the United States of America.”
 
Following today’s early morning Senate vote and a strong vote of 419-0 by the U.S. House on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, the Jeff Miller and Richard Blumenthal Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act of 2016 now heads to the president’s desk for his signature.
 
Specifically, H.R.6416 will:
 
·       Streamline portions of the process for veterans, their families and their survivors to obtain disability compensation and benefits through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA);
·       Expand the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims from seven to nine judges to help address the large backlog of veterans’ appeals that may soon arrive at the court;
·       Make changes to the VA’s burial benefits and interment policies, including expanding eligibility for presidential memorial certificates to certain individuals who served in reserve units of the Armed Forces, among others;
·       Provide a much-needed extension of education benefits for surviving spouses who lost a loved one on September 11, 2001, or during the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;
·       Improve how the VA administers and approves education benefits for veterans and allow mobilized reservists to keep their GI Bill eligibility when a deployment interrupts their schooling;
·       Modify ownership requirements for small businesses participating in the VA contract assistance programs and require the Department of Labor to conduct a five-year study of job counseling, training, and placement service for veterans;
·       Make improvements to the VA’s health care services and benefits to include:
o   Ensuring preventative health services for veterans include access to adult immunizations for veterans who wish to receive them;
o   Prioritizing access to care for medal of honor recipients;
o   Ensuring veterans who served in classified missions can access mental health care without disclosing classified information;
o   Requiring the VA to submit an annual report to Congress regarding the provision of hospital care, medical services and nursing home care by the Veterans Health Administration;
o   Expanding the qualification criteria to make it easier to hire qualified mental health care professionals;
o   Enhancing research on the potential health effects from toxic exposures to veterans and their descendants.
·       Increase access to benefits for homeless veterans.
 
A section-by-section summary of the H.R.6416 is available here.
 
###
 
The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in the 114th Congress.

Isakson is a veteran himself – having served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate VA Committee since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing each branch of the military as well as more than 750,000 veterans.






















It's pathetic that The Nation capitulated to Twitter pressure

The latest from Michael Tracey:


  1.  Pinned Tweet
    To test the viability of "crowd-funded" models, I will be writing daily on Medium: Also see:
  2. Writers need to trust that a magazine/outlet will stand by them once an article is published, and not just give in to social media uproars.
  3. If the piece was so offensive, the time to air concerns would've been during the editing process. Not in reaction to Twitter mobs. Truly sad
  4. It's pathetic that The Nation capitulated to Twitter pressure and cajoled its writer into "correcting" her own piece
  5. I keep seeing Dem pundits retweet Evan McMullin, the Bill Kristol-approved CIA spook, because he says what they want to hear re: Trump/Putin
  6. I had a long discussion on this podcast about the current "problematic" media landscape

  7. Note how "hacked John Podesta's gmail account" has become "hacked the election." What does "hacked the election" even mean?
  8. The burden of proof is on those definitively positing a grand Russian conspiracy, not those of us noting that there is no evidence for this.
  9. Yes, stake your opposition to Trump on CIA hearsay, treason accusations, and Russia paranoia. More sound strategic thinking from Democrats.
  10. I'm not a big fan of movies, but "Manchester by the Sea" was pretty good.
  11. The whole Giuliani thing was a fakeout too. Remember, Rudy ran against Mitt in 2008 and accused him of employing illegal immigrants.
  12. Mitt Romney is a groveling fool. Trump played him like a fiddle.
  13. I assumed the crackpot Russia hysteria would subside somewhat after the election. I was wrong. People have truly gone insane.
  14. Please forward this post to the various pundits who have declared Trump a "fascist." Are they willing to take up arms? Time is running out.
  15. And it's prominent liberals (along with neocons) screaming for everyone to dutifully and credulously accept these rumors. Simply disgusting.
  16. Once again, the impulse to uncritically believe unverified CIA rumors is just unreal. Read a history book if you're confused about the CIA.
  17. Why is Nate Silver uncritically endorsing the veracity of CIA claims relayed second-hand by anonymous sources?

  18. Electoral College subversion plots might seem far-fetched, but many angry elites support the tactic. Keep an eye out
  19. Benjamin Netanyahu directly interfered in the 2012 election to help Mitt Romney. I don't remember that causing some huge legitimacy crisis.
  20. John Podesta's gmail account was compromised via phishing link. People are vastly exaggerating the complexity of this supposed "hacking" op
  21. Liberals screaming about Russia must be furious at Obama, who would've had to be complicit in the grand coverup