“Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

1.) First, please READ THIS ENTIRE THREAD – and the full context of any discussion thread you wish to participate in. Skipping to the comments to express an opinion without reading the content of the discussion is not helpful.
Often, unfortunately very often, we find many of the points injected into comments are already outlined in the construct of the thread itself. -or- Questions asked while the answers are in the primary post.
2.) STAY ON TOPIC – please do not post something unrelated to the specific matter and content of the thread subject. There is a ALWAYS a daily open thread available for any subject you feel should get attention. Never place unrelated, “O/T”, or “Off Topic” comments on a thread unrelated to the topic. It is not ok to say: “sorry, O/T but”… or any iteration therein.
(more…)

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Back on July 22nd, the day after the July 21st surprise release of the Carter Page FISA Title-1 surveillance application, I wrote: “Oh My, This is Either A Sting -OR- The Most Corrupt U.S. Dept of Justice in History” (link).  The issue surrounded the seemingly transparent connection between the James Wolfe indictment and the FISA application.
Three months later, when James Wolfe accepted a single-count guilty plea offer around lying to federal investigators, the answer seemed obvious, at least to me.  Despite the evidence of leaking “top secret” classified documents within the Wolfe indictment DAG Rosenstein initially charged 3 counts of lying; and offered a lower guilty plea on one count.

Along with tenuous congressional testimony; a refusal to comply with document production; and a never-ending defense of the Mueller investigation; Rosenstein gives all appearances of an administrative state weasel.   However, there are solid and reasonable people who genuinely believe both Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller are doing a good, and fair, job for President Trump.
Jeff Carlson over at Marketswork does solid research and analysis.  His position on Rosenstein is far more favorable than mine; and in the interests of intellectual honesty, he could be correct [Here] and [here] and especially [Here], and  I could be entirely wrong.
(more…)

Well, this certainly adds context to the charges of purposeful incompetence applied toward notoriously corrupt Broward County Supervisor of Elections, Brenda Snipes.

According to a recent report from the Miami Herald, Miami-Dade County is halfway through the constitutionally required recount of votes.  Meanwhile, Broward County has not started; and there’s almost no-way for them to meet the court-ordered deadline of Thursday afternoon.

(Miami Herald) By noon on Monday, Miami-Dade managed to recount about half of the more than 800,000 votes cast in the 2018 election. Broward County had not yet started its state-mandated recount.
The stark contrast in pace from Florida’s two largest sources of ballots highlights the pressure facing Broward as it tries to meet a Thursday afternoon deadline to recount the more than 700,000 votes cast in the largely Democratic county.
As of noon Monday, Broward still had to calibrate its ballot-scanning machines and sort out the ballots needed to be counted, suggesting the actual recount may not start until later in the day or even Tuesday morning.  (read more)

Mark Levin discusses the midterm election result with Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, and Texas Representative-elect Chip Roy.  Both discuss why the party failed to hold onto the House while gains were made in the Senate on ‘Life, Liberty and Levin.’

There are ongoing consequential election battles taking place in multiple states that are far more urgent than my meager outlines; and it is not my intent to distract from the more pressing matters of our political surrounding.  However, there is a strong possibility the current election events are symptoms of a larger battle within government.

An enigma:

You see, there’s a bunch of ‘unofficial’ evidence, or data-points, that no-one can explain how or why they came to be visible.  The data did not surface sequentially; but it surely surfaced purposefully from within the apparatus of government. Putting the evidence into a sequence that clarifies the picture is not easy. As a respected person recently shared:

“It’s almost like a separate discipline, sort of like textual forensics or document historiography; I don’t know how to describe it yet.”

In an earlier outline I shared the following questions:

• How do we find out about the Mark Warner text messages?
• Who publicly released the Carter Page FISA application?
• Where did the four day flood of information (Dec 1st – 4th, 2017) about Lisa Page and Peter Strzok come from?
• Who released that Page/Strzok information to the media?  Why?
• Who made the decision not to indict James Wolfe for leaking classified information?
• Why be so specific details within the Wolfe indictment; then dismiss them?
• Who made the decision NOT TO redact the key FISC clerk stamp?
• Where is all of this “unofficial” evidence coming from?

Well, here’s my answers.
(more…)

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Robert Mueller (the entire team) was put into place by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017.  The specific selection of Robert Mueller was an outcome of recommendations and advice from FBI Chief Legal Counsel, James Baker, and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
In hindsight; and specifically against the backdrop of known illegal activity [remember, McCabe is under criminal referral] there was a motive of self-interest within Baker and McCabe, specifically to cover for the 2015/2016/2017 DOJ and FBI activity that preceded the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
From the initial perspective of self-interest, Mueller’s role had/has three essential aspects:

♦(1) Create an investigation – Just by creating the investigation it is then used as a shield by any corrupt FBI/DOJ official who would find himself/herself under downstream congressional investigation.  Former officials being deposed/questioned by IG Horowitz or Congress could then say they are unable to answer those questions due to the ongoing special counsel investigation.  In this way Mueller provides cover for officials.
♦(2)  Use the investigation to keep any and all inquiry focused away from the corrupt DOJ and FBI activity that took place in 2016, 2016, 2017.  Keep the media narrative looking somewhere, anywhere, other than directly at the epicenter of the issues. In this way, Mueller provides distraction and talking points against the Trump administration.
♦(3) Use the investigation to suck-up, absorb, any damaging investigative material that might surface as a result of tangentially related inquiry.  Example: control the exposure of evidence against classified leak participants like SSCI Director of Security, James Wolfe. In this way Mueller provides cover for the institutions and the administrative state.
In all of these objectives the Mueller special counsel has been stunningly effective.
(more…)