Sharyl Attkisson explains what we are up against

It looks like Obama did spy on Trump, just as he apparently did to me

Thomas Lifson  "This is easily the read of the day.  Sharyl Attkisson is the bravest reporter of her generation, so much of a threat to people with access to the capabilities of our intel agencies that she was spied upon and worse. Today she faces the ugly truth about what recent reports (if true) reveal:

Nobody wants our intel agencies to be used like the Stasi in East Germany; the secret police spying on its own citizens for political purposes. The prospect of our own NSA, CIA and FBI becoming politically weaponized has been shrouded by untruths, accusations and justifications.

"She goes on to review a number of instances of us being lied to about spying, about spying on journalists, and then gets to her personal experience in fighting back against an actual hack she experienced while at CBS News: . . .
. . . 

"Sharyl is fighting back, and is not shying away from what she sees, though she wisely avoids terms like deep state or establishment. She is reporting:

It’s difficult not to see patterns in the government’s behavior, unless you’re wearing blinders.

·       The intelligence community secretly expanded its authority in 2011 so it can monitor innocent U.S. citizens like you and me for doing nothing more than mentioning a target’s name a single time.

·       In January 2016, a top secret inspector general report found the NSA violated the very laws designed to prevent abuse.

·       In 2016, Obama officials searched through intelligence on U.S. citizens a record 30,000 times, up from 9,500 in 2013.

·       Two weeks before the election, at a secret hearing before the FISA court overseeing government surveillance, NSA officials confessed they’d violated privacy safeguards “with much greater frequency” than they’d admitted. The judge accused them of “institutional lack of candor” and said, “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

"Read the whole thing, I mean it."

"Don’t Read Into John Kelly’s Facepalm During Trump’s UN Speech"

Independent Sentinal  "Was Chief of Staff John Kelly demonstrating his lack of support for the President as he spoke before the UN on Tuesday? The retired general is said to be a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton.

"Photos seem to suggest he was exasperated and it isn’t the first time he’s done this, it’s the third, but spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said not so fast."

. . . "Sanders told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning that Kelly, who she said has “a great chemistry” with Trump, was likely just tired from the demands of the job.

“ 'The president has an abundance of energy, I don’t know where it comes from, all of us on the staff are tired trying to keep up with him,” Sanders said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s part of it.”

“ 'It doesn’t mean he’s upset by the speech?” host Brian Kilmeade asked.

Sanders replied that Kelly has been “part of the speech-writing process” and “very engaged.”

“ 'So he read the speech ahead of time, so any reaction it might be because he’s tired, or he’s just got his hand on his forehead and the media wants to run with it,” host Ainsley Earhardt said." . . .

They Don't Call It "The Great Tweet of China"

Ann Coulter  . . . "For most of the nation's history, the primary job of the military -- of which President Trump is the commander in chief -- was building walls and fortresses on our borders. That's why we have an Army Corps of Engineers. It may not seem like it from recent history, but the job of our military is to protect America's borders -- not Ukraine's borders, not Jordan's borders. 

"This is our one and only chance to get this done, and we're losing the fight. While Trump dallies, last week California became a sanctuary state. Sixteen-year-old girls are taking lessons to learn to be safe drivers, but when they're smashed into by drunk-driving illegal aliens, the state won't tell ICE, and taxpayers will spend $40 million to pay for their defense. 

"The wall has to get built, and nothing else matters. 

"Trump will not be able to tweet his way out of not building the wall. He will not be able to change the subject by attacking the media or Crooked Hillary. He will not be able to get away with blaming Republicans in Congress. 

"Obviously, it suits the rest of the traitorous GOP -- which ferociously opposed him -- to pretend that Trump's election had nothing to do with immigration. " . . .

Unleashing the Power of Mockery on Annoying Social Justice Warriors

Kurt Schlichter

"In a culture where humorless leftists scolds seek to impose their rule upon us normals by sucking every drop of joy out of life, it is the conservative smartass who is the true subversive. Don’t look to Hollywood’s allegedly edgy comics to zing the zeitgeist – hacky proggy stand-ups and interchangeable liberal late-night hosts are the opposite of rebels, with their dreadfully generic opinions and lockstep jokes designed to get the herd of trained seals that makes up their fishbreathed audience beating their flippers. No, if you want someone who snarks truth to power instead of speaking consensus coastal truth to the powerless, you gotta step to the right. 

. . . 

"Lisa is having none of their nonsense. A long-time veteran of the conservative movement (for years she organized and ran CPAC, the Woodstock for people who yearn to see Mike Pence up close or watch Ted Cruz do an acoustic set), Lisa gets it. But she also gets life – her book Finding Mr. Righteous was an eye-opening and, at times, agonizingly honest look at a young woman's journey in modern America, specifically the conservative world. She knows how to write about people with a particular identity without making it about that identity, so she's the perfect choice to go after nimrods who are nothing but their chosen identity. " . . .

Trump says he's decided what to do with Iran nuclear agreement - but won't say what he decided . . .

. . . as Iran says it is ready to jump start nuke activities if the deal comes apart

UK Daily Mail  " President Donald Trump said Wednesday he has reached a decision on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama - but not what it is. 

"A day after he called that deal, reached along with Iran and five other countries an 'embarrassment,' Trump faced questions about his intentions following a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah outside the United Nations General Assembly. 

" 'I have decided,' Trump said when asked about his plans for the deal. He repeated the statement three times. 

"Pressed on what his decision was, Trump smiled and said: 'I'll let you know what the decision is.' . . .

Hillary still stewing about her election loss, now questions its legitimacy   "For Hillary Clinton, it's never going to end.  I, I, me, me, mine. It was mine!

"She's never going to get over losing the election to Donald Trump.  And with her foundation's pay-to-play donations drying up, and she herself sinking into irrelevancy – an unwelcome guest at the Democratic Party dinner table – why should she?  She's lost two elections, and now she's too old and in too frail a state of health to try a third time.

"So now, after blaming sexism, Bernie Sanders, James Comey, and anybody but herself many times over in her new memoir, she's returned to the Russians, this time questioning the legitimacy of the election itself, something that has been on the underboil ever since President Trump was sworn in.  Now she's saying it directly.

"From an interview with National Public Radio:" . . Read more.

Hillary's new beef: Putin's manspreading  On late-night talk-weasel Stephen Colbert's show

Note that after her great manspreading charge, Hillary implied that Putin's invitation to Bill Clinton for the rather mundane task of tagging polar bears in Siberia was sexism, too, since he didn't ask her.  Being a great diplomat and all, she just had to relay the story on a talk show.

Hillary, who called Trump supporters a ‘Basket-of-Deplorables’ is upset with President Trump because he said THIS about an undeniably evil person.
 . . . "She was particularly disturbed by President Trump’s new nickname for Kim Jong-Un. 
"She’s fine with calling President Trump’s supporters a ‘Basket of Deplorables’, and those that didn’t vote for her sexist and/or imply that they are ‘sinners’ in need of absolution."

A proud sport is sliding into the dumpster

This Is NOT Good: Entire Pee Wee Football Team Takes A Knee During National Anthem

"The entire Cahokia Quarterback Club football team, which is made up of kids who are eight or even younger, took a knee during the playing of the National Anthem before their game last Sunday at Little Devil’s Field in Belleville, Ill. And they were encouraged to do so by their coach.

“One of the kids asked me if I saw (people) protesting and rioting in St. Louis. I said yes; I said, ‘Do you know why they are doing it?’” said Coach Orlando Gooden.

Coach Gooden said his player responded, “Because black people are getting killed and nobody’s going to jail.”

Gooden, who played football at Mizzou, said the kids knew about the Jason Stockley decision.

“I felt like it was a good teaching moment for me to circle the team and have a meeting,” he said.

 VIDEO: Admiral Fires A Shot Across Colin Kaepernick’s Bow And Gets A Standing Ovation

“You can bet that the men and women we honor today, and those who died that fateful morning 75 years ago, never took a knee and never failed to stand whenever they heard our national anthem being played.”

"The crowd erupted in cheers and applause. Many of the veterans present stood despite visible difficulty."

Why The Latest GOP Health Care Plan Is The Best One Yet

The Federalist

Health-care federalism would give states the chance to reduce the cost of health care with market-based reforms. Not all states would take it, but some would.

 "Contrary to much of the media coverage this week, the push by congressional Republicans to do something about Obamacare isn’t a desperate last-ditch effort or a “health care zombie.” On the contrary, it might be the best health-care reform idea GOP leaders have come up with yet.

"The bill, authored by senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, would address a woeful imbalance in our health-care system by returning much of the authority for regulating health insurance back to the states, where it belongs. In its current form, the legislation keeps most of Obamacare’s funding in place (except for the individual mandate tax penalties and medical-device taxes) but states would be able to apply for grants that allow them to more or less pursue whatever health-care policies they want with those funds and waive some key parts of Obamacare like the individual mandate and coverage for preexisting conditions.

"In short, Graham-Cassidy represents a kind of health-care federalism, in which states like New York and California would end up with very different systems than states like Texas and Florida. Of course, that’s already true to some extent, and it was true even before Obamacare. But where Obamacare sought to make states more uniform according to rules written by bureaucrats in Washington, Graham-Cassidy would allow states to go their own way." . . .

'I'm sorry he doesn't understand': Republican senator called a liar by Jimmy Kimmel over Obamacare replacement plan hits back

Oh, that rotten cotton. Next to go, the Cotton Bowl in Dallas?

Rick Moran: Six degrees of separation from slavery  "The war against the symbols of racism took a surreal and bizarre turn in the last week as social justice warriors took to social media to complain in two separate incidents of a hugely disturbing phenomenon.

"Who would have guessed that cotton was a trigger?

"First, Hobby Lobby made the mistake of offering for sale cotton stalks in a vase as an item to be used in home decor. Innocuous, right? Not for SJW's desperately seeking something - anything - to attack as "racist.' " . . .

Trigger warning:

She writes: This decor is WRONG on SO many levels.
There is nothing decorative about raw cotton...
A commodity which was gained at the expense
 of African-American slaves. A little sensitivity
goes a long way. PLEASE REMOVE THIS "decor".

. . . "You can see where this is headed.

1. Sugar will be removed from restaurant tables because it is a reminder of the sugar cane harvest by slaves.2. SJW's will accost people smoking or chewing tobacco, berating them for using a product grown by slaves.3. There will be a movement to outlaw rum because of it's involvement in the "Triangle Trade" during the 1800s.

"Could never happen, right? Come back and visit in a few years. What surreal attacks we can imagine will pale in comparison to the reality of how the tragically diseased minds of these snowflakes work. "

Even Hobby Lobby Cotton Is Racist These Days   "Leftists are probably wondering why no one takes claims of racism seriously anymore. After all, isn't being racist the worst thing someone can be? Yet, they scream "racism!" and no one blinks an eye. Why is that?"

"Probably because everything is racist these days. " . . .

Activist in Seminar: All White People Are Racist and Always Will Be

. . . "Please tell me how that's different than telling someone to get to the back of the bus because of the color of their skin.

"Allow me to save you the effort. It's not. Not at its core. In both cases, it's pure, unadulterated racism.

"If I were to write that all blacks were criminals in waiting, how long do you think I'd still have a job? Anywhere. I'd last fifteen minutes after it was published. Maybe."

Netanyahu: Trump's UN Speech Was the Most Courageous in 30 Years

Katie Pavlich   "President Trump is receiving applause for his strong words at the United Nations Tuesday morning from foreign allies and Republicans alike. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met with the president at the UN on Monday afternoon, is praising Trump's speech as the most courageous he's seen in 30 years.

 In over 30 years in my experience with the UN, I never heard a bolder or more courageous speech. — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu)

September 19, 2017 President Trump spoke the truth about the great dangers facing our world — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu)

September 19, 2017 and issued a powerful call to confront them in order to ensure the future of humanity. — "Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) September 19, 2017 

"In addition to meeting with Trump, Netanyahu also met with Egyptian President Abdel el-Sisi and a number of other world leaders. The meeting with el-Sisi was especially notable given the complicated politics of the Middle East. " . . .

Trump Hits Home Run for America in UN Speech   . . . "But the bottom line is that for the first time in years, an American president went before the UN and in plain words spelled out some vital truths about America, the UN, and the world. Whatever the UN General Assembly might make of it, once it recovers from the shock, that's a good thing for the world, and a very good thing for America."

National Review: "‘Holy Sh**’: Trump at the U.N."  . . . "All things considered and given the alternatives, it was a fine speech. It wasn’t really an “America First” speech — it defended the world order and even had warm words for the Marshall Plan — but in its signature lines about North Korea, it was thematically a very Jacksonian speech. What exactly this means in terms of policy remains to be seen. But everyone is paying attention, if they weren’t before."

North Korea defector saw 11 musicians 'blown to bits' by anti-aircraft guns then 'ground into dirt' by tanks

"Hee Yeon Lim, 26, fled the country and risked her own life to lift the lid on dictator's brutal regime"

UK Mirror

"A defector who fled Kim Jong-Un’s inner circle has told how she witnessed first hand the brutality the dictator unleashes on his oppressed people. 

"Hee Yeon Lim risked her own life to lift the lid on the paranoid North Korean leader who casually orders the ­executions of anyone he deems to have crossed him or his party.

"The 26-year-old spoke out as crazed Jong-Un heads on a dangerous nuclear collision course with Donald Trump over his provocative missile testing that could end in all-out war.

"Hee Yeon lived a life of privilege in the capital Pyongyang as she was the daughter of an army colonel– but her closeness to the regime did not protect her from being exposed to the horrors the despot dished out." . . .

Former Agent: Secret Service Lowered Standards In Pursuit Of Diversity

Sensing this would be a sensitive topic, Bongino addresses his apprehension of discussing the subject in the book. He writes he hesitated to include this information in his book “because whenever someone mentions the term ‘diversity’ and discusses the real-world implications of applying such a loosely defined term to a specific job description, he or she runs the severe risk of character assassination by extreme partisan actors who don’t care a bit about the real-world ramifications of their ideological crusades.”

The Daily Caller  "The lowering of standards has been ongoing since at least “the early 2000s,” according to the book.

“ 'Sadly, and for many years, the Secret Service has been sacrificing mission-readiness at the altar of political correctness,” Bongino writes in “Protecting The President: An Inside Account of the Troubled Secret Service in an Era of Evolving Threats,” out Tuesday.

"Bongino worked for the Secret Service from 1999 to 2011. He has since run for the U.S. Senate, and twice for the U.S. House. He was an instructor at a training academy from 2002 until 2006, when he became part of the U.S. Presidential Protection Division.

“ 'The Secret Service’s attachment to quota-based hiring was so intense that they hired applicants for the special agent and Uniformed Division officer positions that could barely meet basic physical fitness standards upon their commission as agents or officers,” the book contends.

"Bongino’s insider account cites recent security breaches at the White House as the fault of the agency’s hiring practices." . . .