Seven sailors are missing and feared dead after the US Navy Destroyer USS Fitzgerald was involved in a collision with a 29,000 ton Philippine merchant ship ACX Crystal off the coast of Japan yesterday. The cause of the collision is unclear.
Photo courtesy Daily Mail
In addition to the seven missing sailors, Captain Bryce Benson and two other crewmembers of the Fitzgerald were airlifted to the hospital
‘It was a was real fight by crew to keep the ship afloat. Our concerns now are with ship mates; seven sailors missing and 2 evacuees. When the news came we were all focused on the safety of or ship and the crew,’ a naval spokesman in Yokosuka told DailyMail.com. ‘We at the base are still reeling from the events.’ –Daily Mail
President Trump has sent his thoughts and condolences to those affected:
Thoughts and prayers with the sailors of USS Fitzgerald and their families. Thank you to our Japanese allies for their assistance. https://t.co/d1l5ctjNyB
After NBC’s Megyn Kelly lied to Alex Jones about the scope and purpose of an upcoming Father’s Day airing of his sit-down interview for Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly, the Infowars host set the record straight on Thursday night – preempting Kelly’s segment with ‘leaked’ recordings of their conversations before she could smear Jones on Sunday.
The Setup
As Jones and Kelly began to discuss the details of the interview, Kelly played the part of earnest lawyer turned plucky journalist – batting her eyelashes and insisting her new show was about profiling ‘interesting people’ so the public can get to know them better.
I’m trying to create a different kind of program. I’ll ask you about some of the controversies, of course, and you’ll say what you want to say. But it’s not going to be some ‘gotcha’ hit-piece, I promise you that.
I just want to talk about you. I want people to know you.
Of course I’m going to do a fair interview – I’m going to be me, you know, I’m not going to go out there and be a Barbara Walters… you just trust me.
-Megyn Kelly
Lies!
In a highly edited promo released ahead of Sunday’s airing, Kelly made it clear that she was gunning for Jones, and was about to twist the Infowars host’s coverage of the Sandy Hook massacre into the centerpiece of an attempt at character assassination. In response to Kelly’s promo, both Alex Jones and the families of Sandy Hook victims urged Kelly to scrap the interview, while JP Morgan and other advertisers pulled spots scheduled to air during the segment.
Kelly has defended the interview, issuing an inflammatory statement that Jones’ ‘Sandy Hook hoax claim’ is ‘revolting.’ In fact, the New York Post reports that Kelly has doubled down and ‘completely overhauled’ the interview, re-editing it to be ‘tougher’ on Jones and inviting Sandy Hook families on the program.
Preemptive Strike
When Jones suspected the interview might be a hit-job, he began recording conversations with Kelly – and to that end, released a 30 minute video on Thursday night featuring a behind the scenes look at their pre-interview encounter and provides context to Jones’ claims.
Megyn Kelly waltzed in here in Austin, Texas, and told me that she wasn’t going to talk about Sandy Hook, she wasn’t going to talk about Pizzagate, she wasn’t going to talk about Chobani, she wasn’t going to talk about Islamic terror attacks – that she wanted to do a softball profile of Alex Jones. And when she got here with her crew of intelligence operatives, she did the opposite of what she said. And so I was recording the whole time.
Jones proceeds to set the record straight on a number of issues…
Sandy Hook
“She didn’t show in her promo video that I said I believe Sandy Hook happened and that I had war gamed the three views – that criminal groups went in and killed the kids, or it happened as they officially said, or they use actors.”
Iraq War Lies
“We saw in 1990 our congress being lied to by the daughter of the head of a PR firm about Saddam Hussein’s soldiers killing hundreds of babies – bashing their brains out. It’s not that Saddam was a good guy…. We were lied to with propaganda that they admittedly came out and told us was a fraud later.”
Misquoting Jones on Pizzagate
Alex lays out how the MSM edited and ran with an incomplete statement of his that Hillary Clinton “personally murdered and chopped up and raped” children. The MSM twisted this into an accusation of Clinton’s involvement in the pizzagate controversy, however what the MSM left out was second part of that statement in which the Infowars host makes clear he’s talking about Clinton’s foreign policy decisions as Secretary of State resulting in the massacre of Christians at the hands of terrorists.
Also discussed are Alex’s Custody Battle, Kelly’s overt schmoozing, and the total media circus that’s erupted out of the entire affair.
In the aftermath of a politically charged Bernie Sanders supporter targeting and gunning down members of the GOP during a baseball practice session, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement Thursday warning people not to blindly accept news “attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country – let alone the branch or agency of government – with which the alleged sources are supposedly affiliated.”
Rosenstein was involved in anonymously sourced story last month in the Washington Post, which claimed the Deputy AG had threatened to resign based on the word of a “person close to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Except that this was fake news which Rosenstein flat out denied.
The dangers of Fake News
This week’s shooting at a GOP baseball practice session by a crazed liberal proves that fake news hysteria has real world consequences. As David French of National Review brilliantly laid out in a prescient February letter written to anonymous sources:
“You’ve led us astray more than once. You’ve offered competing and incompatible stories about the allegedly “botched” special-forces raid in Yemen. A Washington Post blow-by-blow detailing an alleged confrontation between the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, John Kelly, and Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon had to be significantly revised. And let’s not forget that one or more of you leaked an “excerpt” of a transcript of Trump’s call with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto that made it appear that Trump had threatened to invade Mexico, after which American and Mexican officials alike denied that any such threats were made.
You’re helping build and sustain an atmosphere of national anxiety and even (in some quarters) outright hysteria. You’re leading us to believe that the nation is in the very worst of hands, with incompetent and malicious people at the helm, ready or even eager to plunge the nation into new wars and completely unable to handle new crises as they emerge.”
Instead of owning up, the left doubles down…
In the aftermath of this week’s GOP shooting, the left has once again refused to consider introspection – going so far as to blame Trump for the incident.
The New York Times came out after the shooting and attempted to remind everyone how ‘crazed conservative’ Jared Loughner targeted Democrat Gabby Giffords due to a map published by Sarah Palin with Giffords in stylized cross hairs. Except the story was a flat out lie and the NYT was forced to retract.
Next, look at how Politico writer Darren Samuelsohn’s responds to Rosenstein’s statement – failing to address the entire point of the memo and instead complaining that it was “so generic and didn’t actually specify which news reports it was addressing” that it “caught many in Washington off guard.”
Really Darren? You think that after 18 months of anonymously sourced MSM lie after anyone was caught off guard?
Heaven forbid the media discover integrity and report how violent social conditioning, anonymously sourced Fake News articles, and a MSM which promotes and defends the destruction of democracy amounts to sedition.
After striking out on collusion and proffering another weak obstruction case, the deep state (via the Washington Post) reports that Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is trying to justify his existence by digging into the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner – President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor.
Speculation that Kushner had become a focus of the probe surfaced nearly a month ago when the Washington Post reported that a senior advisor to the President was under suspicion. Contributor to New York magazine, GQ, and HuffPo – Yashar Ali, dropped a bit of insider info (someone keep an eye on this guy):
It's jared Kushner have confirmed this with four people. I'm not speculating
Kushner may be in a sticky situation over meetings with Russian government and banking officials at a time when the Kushner family sought financing for a $1.8 billion office building on Fifth Avenue in New York.
The White House has said that the subsequent meeting with the banker was a pre-inauguration diplomatic encounter, unrelated to business matters. The Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, has said the session was held for business reasons because of Kushner’s role as head of his family’s real estate company. -WaPo
More recently, Kushner came under fire for reportedly trying to establish a diplomatic ‘back channel’ with Russia (which suggests there was none to begin with, libtards.)
Is this it for the Kush? Is his career as Israel’s most important asset in the White House up in smoke? This, and more, on the next episode of DC Witch Hunt.
Now we know why Jared Kushner insisted that James Comey be fired. Kushner was a focus of the FBI investigation. Who's the "nut job" now?
President Trump has been dropping MOABs over Twitter, blasting his enemies for what he called the “single greatest WITCH HUNT In American political history” while nothing is being done about the fact that “Crooked H destroyed phones w/ hammer, ‘bleached’ emails, & had husband meet w/AG days before she was cleared – & they talk about obstruction?”
Trump raised the question as to why he’s being investigated for what he calls “non-dealings” with Russia, while completely ignoring the cozy relationship between the Clintons, the Podestas, and Russian banking and energy interests.
[Trump] seems to have a point on this one. Last summer, we reported fairly extensively on the Hillary email scandal while it was virtually glossed over by the mainstream media.
And, like many people,we were astonished when FBI Director Comey made the unilateral assessment that, despite Hillary’s “extreme carelessness,” no “reasonable” prosecutor would bring charges against her.
Unlike the current “Russia probe” which has revealed precisely zero tangible evidence, theFBI’s own reports from last summer revealed that Hillary and her staff intentionally destroyed official State Department emails despite confirming they were aware of the existence of a federal subpoena demanding the preservation of those emails(we covered it extensively here: The “Oh Shit” Moment: Hillary Wiped Her Server With BleachBit Despite Subpoena).
Between 2008 – 2010, Uranium One / UrAsia investors donated $8.65 Million to the Clinton Foundation.
June 2009, Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom (through a subsidiary) takes a 17% stake in Uranium One.
June 2010, Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom takes majority ownership of Uranium One, which Hillary Clinton’s State Department signed off on.
June 29th, 2010, Bill Clinton earns $500,000 for a speech in Moscow to a Russian Investment bank that assigned a “buy” rating to Uranium One stock.
January, 2013: Rosatom State Nuclear Agency now owns Uranium one and takes it private.
Wait, you say – that Uranium deal had to go through an adviiiisory committee (Michael Savage voice). Know what? That committee is a joke…
“The committee almost never met, and when it deliberated it was usually at a fairly low bureaucratic level,” Richard Perle said. Perle, who has worked for the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations added, “I think it’s a bit of a joke.” –CBS
Let’s talk transparency:
Clinton failed to disclose the $2.35 Million in donations (made in installments) from Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer to a nebulous slush fund subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, set up by mining executive Frank Guistra (whose company merged with Uranium One). Guistra donated $31 Million to the Clinton Foundation. How charitable! (read more here in the New Yorker)
Let’s not forget – Russia’s largest bank – Sberbank – paid the Podesta group $170,000 over a 6 month period to lobby against 2014 economic sanctions put in place by the Obama administration:
Podesta’s efforts were a key part of under-the-radar lobbying during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign led mainly by veteran Democratic strategists to remove sanctions against Sberbank and VTB Capital, Russia’s second largest bank.
The two Russian banks spent more than $700,000 in 2016 on Washington lobbyists as they sought to end the U.S. sanctions, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms and documents filed with the Department of Justice.
The Podesta Group charged Sberbank $20,000 per month, plus expenses, on a contract from March through September 2016.
What’s more – Podesta forgot to register as a “Foreign Agent” while doing so!
So let’s get this straight; White House regular and creepy art aficionado Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta (who would be Secretary of State today if Hillary had won), took money from the Russians during the US election in exchange for Washington influence.
This is not the first time the Podesta group has taken Russian money:
The Podesta group made $180,000 lobbying for Uranium One (source – you have to add up the years).These donations were made over the same time period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from UrAsia / U1 interests. Tony Podesta also sat on the board (along with senior Russian officials) of a small energy company called Joule. Two months after Podesta joined the board, Joule landed a sweet $35 Million contract from Vladimir Putin’s Rusnano investment fund – which Podesta failed to disclose as required by law. Oh, and before joining the Clinton Campaign, John Podesta transferred 75,000 shares of Joule to his daughter through a shell company with her address. Maybe the optics didn’t look good or something?
Given all that – do you think Hillary and associates would be under congressional investigation right now if she had been elected President?
Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies” have been kneecapped after jumping as much as 30% in June to all time highs. Investors are spooked over recent cyberattacks, uncertainty surrounding a Bitcoin platform upgrade, and proposed legislation which adds cryptocurencies a list of reportable assets under existing anti-money laundering laws.
Cyber attack
As CNBC reports, major bitcoin exchanges were hit with multiple cyberattacks this week. Bitfinex, the largest U.S. dollar based bitcoin exchange, announced it was under ‘distributed denial-of-service’ attacks (DDOS) which slowed the service down. The attacks come at a time when consumer interest in bitcoins have also led to heavier than normal traffic on the exchanges, compounding the attacks.
We are currently running slow due to a DDoS attack, hang tight while we make some adjustments to speed it up. #bitcoin#localbitcoins
On August 1st, the bitcoin platform will be undergoing a protocol upgrade labeled BIP148, meant to solve the block size debate – an argument over the size of bitcoin’s ‘blocks’ (a record of transactions on the public ledger – the ‘blockchain’). The planned improvements are supposed to help ‘scale’ bitcoin for future growth, lower fees, and speed up transaction times – however the upgrade is not without risks, and the Bitcoin community is divided.
#Bitcoin scaling negotiations / compromises are over. Either we support BIP148 and save Bitcoin from destruction or 8 years gone to waste. ?
Last but not least, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have co-sponsored bill S.1241 (Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act), which adds language to existing anti-money laundering provisions to include digital wallets, prepaid access devices, and other ‘digital currency exchangers’ if they contain over $10,000 of cryptocurrency.
Also included in the bill are cell phones, flash drives, and computers containing information on holdings which will need to be declared and reported upon entry into the U.S.
In other words, the notion of using digital currency to transact anonymously will become much less attractive if this bill is signed into law.
Demand for cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed over the last few months, beginning with Japan recognizing bitcoin as legal currency in April. Other countries including South Korea and Malaysia are reportedly set to follow suit.
Where to from here?
While Bitcoin grapples with technological hurdles and legislation which would reduce the appeal of digital wallets, it’s anyone’s guess where cryptocurrencies are headed in the near term – though some say much lower if it continues to break below key support levels.
That said, if more firms follow Goldman Sachs’ lead and start covering Bitcoin – and perhaps even become involved in the exchanges, digital currencies stand to gain general acceptance as a store of value. If so, it will be interesting to see what happens to digital fiat currencies if we enter into another period of financial shock and awe (Euro edition?).
After almost an entire year of fruitless investigation into whether or not Russia meddled in the US election, the Washington Post is reporting that FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller widened the scope of his Russia investigation shortly after former FBI Director James Comey’s firing on May 9th to determine whether or not President Trump attempted to obstruct justice – according to FIVE (!?) anonymous sources.
Spoiler alert; it’s about Trump allegedly asking two other intelligence officials to drop the Flynn investigation – one of whom said he ‘never felt pressured to intervene.’
Mueller’s team is reportedly set to interview Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, head of the NSA, and Richard Ledgett – Rogers’ departed deputy, about an alleged meeting Trump held which may have been inappropriate.
Coats was attending a briefing at the White House with officials from several other government agencies. When the briefing ended, as The Washington Post previously reported, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
Coats told associates that Trump had asked him whether Coats could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials. Coats later told lawmakers that he never felt pressured to intervene.
A day or two after the March 22 meeting, Trump telephoned Coats and Rogers to separately ask them to issue public statements denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between his campaign and the Russian government. –WaPo
Officials say Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the president’s requests – while Ledgett wrote an internal NSA memo documenting the call between Rogers and Trump.
Striking Out
After nearly a year of investigation, the FBI wasn’t able to find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin – and James Comey testified that President Trump wasn’t personally being investigated. Moreover, Comey, Dan Coats and Mike Rogers – if the WaPo report and it’s 5 anonymous sources is accurate – all said they never felt pressured to end the Flynn investigation. The definition of a nothingburger.
Don’t worry though #NeverTrumpers – once this Mueller story is exhausted the deep state will shift to the recently filed lawsuit over Trump’s business entanglements. Doesn’t it seem like they’re obstructing the President at this point?
Shortly after this morning’s shooting at a GOP baseball practice session which left five people with gunshot wounds including House Minority Whip Steve Scalise who is in critical condition, GOP Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-NY) received a threatening email with the subject “One down, 216 to go…”
In the body of the email, the sender wrote:
“Did you NOT expect this? When you take away ordinary peoples very lives in order to pay off the wealthiest among us, your own lives are forfeit. Certainly, your souls and morality were lost long before. Good riddance.”
Hannah Andrews, a spokeswoman for Rep. Tenney, said that the timing of the message was “Particularly disheartening following this morning’s tragic events.”
“This morning, our office received a disturbing message referencing the tragic shooting that wounded House Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officers and a Congressional staff member,” Andrews said in a statement. “Although our office receives threats like these regularly, today’s message was particularly disheartening following this morning’s tragic events.”
While gunfire rang out at an Alexandria, VA GOP baseball practice session, chaos erupted in San Francisco as a UPS employee entered one of the company’s delivery facilities on Wednesday and opened fire – killing three co-workers before turning the gun on himself, according to police.
— Conservative Savage (@conservsavage) June 14, 2017
Several workers sought safety on the roof of the facility, while others ran out and tried to warn a bus full of passengers to take off.
“They were banging on the bus and they were screaming, “Go! Go! Go!’” said Jessica Franklin, 30, who was riding the bus to work when it made a regular stop in front of the UPS facility. “As they got on the bus, they were all ducking.” –AP
Aside from the four killed, two employees were wounded in the shooting about two miles from downtown San Francisco according to Assistant Police Chief Toney Chaplin. A neighbor described the scene:
“They were all in rapid succession,” said Deng, a 30-year-old tech worker who lives across the street from the warehouse. “It was like tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat.”
“I saw police officers go up from the ramp and then storm the buildings,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
Tucker Carlson went in with guns blazing after yesterday’s Senate testimony by Attorney General Jeff Sessions – calling elements of the US Intelligence community ‘corrupt’ and ‘politicized’ for illegally leaking information with the intention of damaging President Trump.
In a Democracy we’re in charge – not unelected bureaucrats… Once the beurocracy has shoved asdie an elected government, they can do it again – and at that point it’s over… democracy is dead.
Tucker counts the ways…
For months, conspiratorial propaganda has been making it’s way from the United States surveillance apparatus to mainstream outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post – which was instrumental in seeding the phrase ‘fake news.‘ For more salacious material such as the discredited 35-page ‘pissgate’ dossier (cobbled together in part through a 4chan trolling effort), tabloid outlets such as Buzzfeed are utilized.
Tucker ran through a list of several deep state leaks meant specifically to harm Trump and his administration – beginning with the fact that yesterday’s testimony took place in large part due to former FBI Director James Comey’s previously leaked suggestion that Sessions may have met with the Russian Ambassador last April during a crowded event at the Mayfower Hotel.
In December unnamed intel sources told the Washington Post that Russia helped Donald Trump win the Presidency. A week later, unnamed senior Intel officials told NBC news that Putin personally was involved in helping Trump win.
In February, current and former American officials released the details of a phone call between incoming National Sec Advisor Mike Flynn and ambassador Kislyak of Russia. [Flynn’s] career and reputation were subsequently destroyed by all of that.
Trump’s private phone call with the President of Mexico – surveilled by American Intelligence and then leaked.
How could this possibly have advanced American National Security interests, which is what they’re supposed to be doing? None of it did – it was entirely political.
And then in March as if to prove this point, a half dozen current and former Intel officials told the NYT that they’d sought to spread classified intel information about the Trump campaign as widely as possible throughout government to ensure it would all eventually leak!
[And let’s not forget the time former Obama DoD official Evelyn Farkas slipped up and corroborated the report]
Tucker closes by reminding us exactly why this is so important
In general the public ought to know a lot more about government than it does, but we’re seeing something new here. These are strategic leaks – the release of classified intelligence from people whose job it is to collect and safeguard that intelligence – and in that way it’s an utter perversion of the system. We give enormous power to our intelligence agenices – CIA, NSA, the rest of them. We let them listen to our phone calls, read our email, watch us from satellites. We let them do that so they can keep us safe from foreign threats – not so they can pick our political leaders or devise our policies… (cont.)
