FAKE NEWS: CNN Reporter Tweets Fake News About Trump Getting Booed During ‘Celebration of America.’
I do think of them as Democratic operatives with Chyrons and it does all make sense.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
June 6, 2018
WHY ARE DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM AND BIAS? California Democratic Candidate Says Party Officials Told Him He Was “Too Brown” to Win.
OF COURSE THEY DID: GOP Senate report says Obama officials gave Iran access to US financial system.
A new Senate GOP-authored report alleges that top officials in the Obama administration secretly authorized Iran to convert assets to the U.S. dollar, even after the officials repeatedly assured Congress that no such financial transactions would take place under the 2015 nuclear deal.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), unveiled the new report on Wednesday, claiming top government officials granted a “license” that would allow the conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars through the U.S. financial system.
“Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” the report reads.
“Despite these claims, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, at the direction of the U.S. State Department, granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system,” it continues.
It might be time to start saying: “Just think of them as Iranian intelligence officers with American security credentials, and it all makes sense.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Oconus Lures, McCabe’s Immunity and Much, Much More. “Recently released text messages between the FBI’s former ‘it’ couple Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, suggest there were some overseas spies involved in an FBI operation back in December of 2015. We don’t know exactly what the “oconus lures” were doing but we were told the Trump counterintelligence investigation didn’t begin until July 2016. I wonder what might be going on here?”
LET’S GET FRACKING: Venezuela’s PDVSA Fails To Meet Oil Supply Obligations.
Related: Oil prices move higher as Venezuela supply crisis intensifies.
EVEN MORE FROM NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATTHEW YGLESIAS: There’s no evidence that sex robots provide health benefits. “We need more research.”
No shortage of volunteers, I’m sure.
GREEN ON GREEN: Imam banned from Facebook for mocking Hamas and “peaceful Palestinian protests.” “It isn’t the first time that Tawhidi has had his Facebook account shut down. Last year, the same thing happened after complaints from Muslims about his posts. Particularly as an imam, Tawhidi has offended many by calling for ‘a review of Islam in Australia and demanded Muslims respect freedom of speech and democracy.’ During a Muslims Facing Tomorrow Iftar dinner in Mississauga, Ontario, at which I was also present, Tawhidi delivered a speech that would certainly be labeled ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘far right’ by the usual mainstream Muslim groups with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as by their leftist water carriers.”
Much more at the Jihad Watch link.
CYBERSECURITY: iOS 12 users must unlock their iPhones every hour to maintain USB connections.
The change to a one-hour limit means there is an extremely small window of opportunity for government agencies and law enforcement to use unlocking services and tools to acquire data from a device.
Firms like Cellebrite, a forensic security firm allegedly tapped to unlock an iPhone following the San Bernardino shooting, and Grayshift’s GrayKey tool typically rely on having physical access to the device. As law enforcement needs to make sure the device has been unlocked within the window, it is now significantly harder to keep the iPhone in a usable state until such forensic tools can be used.
“That pretty much kills GrayKey and Cellebrite, Point3 Security director Ryan Duff advises. “If it actually does what it says and doesn’t let any type of data connection happen until it’s unlocked, then yes. You can’t exploit the device if you can’t communicate with it.”
Smart. iOS 12 is due out this autumn.
COMMANDER SALAMANDER: Japan Steps Out from History’s Shadow.
As I said almost a half-decade ago, say hello to the return of the Japanese flattop;
The ruling party endorsed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s call to remove a 1 percent psychological cap on defense spending against gross domestic product that has been in place since the 1970s.
In line with the more ambitious spending policy, Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party on May 25 also gave its blessing to refit the helicopter carrier Izumo into a full-fledged aircraft carrier.
All smart-thinking navalists should welcome this move by Japan. Though their own distinct culture, the Japanese are firmly in the Western camp and are a good and just people. WWII notwithstanding, they have never been a natural enemy of the United States.
As China rises, a strong Japan will with each year be an important part of keeping her in check – or at least looking over her shoulder.
Welcome to the end of the end of history.
SUSTAINABILITY: In 16 years, Social Security will have to cut benefits by 21% if lawmakers do nothing to cure the program’s long-term funding shortfall.
That’s what the Social Security and Medicare trustees projected in their 2018 annual report released Tuesday.
The trustees estimate that by 2034 the combined trust funds for Social Security — which help fund the old age and disability programs — will run dry. At that point Social Security will be able to pay only 79% in promised benefits to retirees and disabled beneficiaries.
So if you were expecting to get $2,000 a month, your payout would shrink to $1,580.
Anything which can’t go on forever will stop.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Without fanfare elements of a new cold war are being put into place by the Trump administration, the European Union and China. “Although the disconnected components separately make headlines, the underlying pattern is evident despite the carnival-like distractions of the Mueller investigation and the reluctance to declare the old order dead.”
Read the whole thing.
June 5, 2018
I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT MIGHT: Magnetic helium makes superfluid time crystal.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: What REALLY Happened to Melania Trump? “These guys aren’t brave enough to tell you what they think happened to her, but I am.”
SUSTAINABILITY: Federal Government Set To Borrow $1 Trillion This Year. “The Federal Government will borrow more than $1 trillion this year for the first time in more than a half-decade.”
PRIVACY: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends.
Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.
But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.
Most of the partnerships remain in effect, though Facebook began winding them down in April. The company came under intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators after news reports in March that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users.
Data collection and sharing should be made easy to understand for the user, and with easy-to-understand, granular controls.
More: Apple Requested ‘Zero’ Personal Data In Deals With Facebook, CEO Tim Cook Says.
Perhaps, but even iOS allows app developers to force users to choose between never allowing location tracking or always allowing location tracking. “Allow only when using app” should always be an option.
BRUCE BAWER: Trashing Tommy Robinson.
So I ask: how far is “too far” when you’re sounding the alarm about a nationwide child-rape epidemic that authorities up and down the line have conspired to cover up, that is still going on, that is (although one is not allowed to say so) a byproduct of Islamic theology, and that the mainstream media, even after they’ve finally been forced to face up to the reality of it, prefer to treat as if it were a series of parking violations?
As for Robinson being “detained illegally”: I, for one, certainly wouldn’t say that his detention is illegal. No, it’s entirely legal. That’s precisely the problem.
British law itself — the whole process of deciding what’s legal and what’s illegal — is no longer what it used to be, and hence no longer worth respecting. It’s been twisted into a tool of those who wish to protect Muslim criminals and troublemakers (and their apologists and defenders) and to punish those who blow the whistle on Muslim crime and tell the truth about Islamic ideology.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Did Bill Clinton really think he could dodge #MeToo?
BEN SHAPIRO: Are Democrats Blowing It?
Instead of playing nice with Trump, while stoking the flames of anti-Trump ire with their base, Democrats promised a deus ex machina: Trump would flame out, retire, be impeached, be prosecuted by Robert Mueller for Russian collusion, and all the rest. Trump wasn’t merely a bad guy — he was the worst guy, a buffoonish Hitler clad in the armor of cruel conservatism.
But there’s a problem: Trump hasn’t flamed out. Mueller so far hasn’t come up with credible evidence of Russian collusion, and even the high hopes surrounding porn star Stormy Daniels have gone flaccid. Trump himself seems alternatively irked by his office and trollishly empowered by it, but never willing to walk away. That’s dispiriting to the Democratic base, which spends each morning fuming over the latest Trumpian twitterstorm, thrilling to the extremist musings of kooks such as Maxine Waters (D., Calif.).
Any plan which relies on the ineptitude of your opponent is hardly a plan at all.
More:
All of which means that Democrats have been forced to turn to the second prong of their 2018 attack: policy.
But on policy, the Democratic record looks even worse. Trump’s rhetoric continues to fuel feelings of unmoored chaos, but the markets continue to soar, the job market grows, and we’re not in the middle of any serious foreign-policy crisis. In 2016, CNN Money warned, “A Trump win would sink stocks.” Nope. Pelosi warned that Trump’s tax cuts were mere “crumbs” that would amount to nothing. Nope. Hollywood celebrities warned about the significant possibility of global thermonuclear war. Nope. Democrats promised a dystopian hellscape. Instead, they got an economy so good that the New York Times ran a piece headlined “We Ran Out of Words to Describe How Good the Jobs Numbers Are.”
Don’t get cocky.
HMM: Manafort Accused of Witness Tampering Ahead of Trials. “Mueller team tells court they have ‘little confidence that restrictions short of detention will assure Manafort’s compliance’.”