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.BLOGSPOT.COM Thursday, Jan. 4, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
Report: Scientists Find Alzheimer’s Treatment While Trying To Cure Diabetes
(CBS Local) — Although their goal was to cure diabetes, scientists may have stumbled onto a new medication to help treat the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
According to a press release from researchers at Lancaster University, a new drug being tested for diabetes patients was found to have “significantly reversed memory loss” in test subjects and is now being examined as possible treatment for neurodegenerative disorders.
The medication, known as a triple receptor drug — or “triple agonist” — reportedly works in multiple ways to protect the brain against degeneration and promote growth. Researchers say that a study of mice being given the drug found that the animals had an increased ability to learn and retain memories.
“These very promising outcomes demonstrate the efficacy of these novel multiple receptor drugs that originally were developed to treat type 2 diabetes,” Professor Christian Holscher said in the release.
The scientists added that the mice showed a decrease in chronic inflammation and amyloid plaques in the brain, which have been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s in people.
“With no new treatments in nearly 15 years, we need to find new ways of tackling Alzheimer’s,” Dr. Doug Brown of the Alzheimer’s Society said. “It’s imperative that we explore whether drugs developed to treat other conditions can benefit people with Alzheimer’s.”
The discovery of the diabetes drug’s side-effect is not a complete coincidence to the researchers. The findings, published in the journal Brain Research, point to the link between some of the symptoms of diabetes and their link to Alzheimer’s. Insulin desensitisation is not only one of the key effects suffered by diabetes patients, the hormone’s lack of production has also reportedly been observed in the brains of people affected by the memory-stealing disorder.
According to a press release from researchers at Lancaster University, a new drug being tested for diabetes patients was found to have “significantly reversed memory loss” in test subjects and is now being examined as possible treatment for neurodegenerative disorders.
The medication, known as a triple receptor drug — or “triple agonist” — reportedly works in multiple ways to protect the brain against degeneration and promote growth. Researchers say that a study of mice being given the drug found that the animals had an increased ability to learn and retain memories.
“These very promising outcomes demonstrate the efficacy of these novel multiple receptor drugs that originally were developed to treat type 2 diabetes,” Professor Christian Holscher said in the release.
The scientists added that the mice showed a decrease in chronic inflammation and amyloid plaques in the brain, which have been linked to the development of Alzheimer’s in people.
“With no new treatments in nearly 15 years, we need to find new ways of tackling Alzheimer’s,” Dr. Doug Brown of the Alzheimer’s Society said. “It’s imperative that we explore whether drugs developed to treat other conditions can benefit people with Alzheimer’s.”
The discovery of the diabetes drug’s side-effect is not a complete coincidence to the researchers. The findings, published in the journal Brain Research, point to the link between some of the symptoms of diabetes and their link to Alzheimer’s. Insulin desensitisation is not only one of the key effects suffered by diabetes patients, the hormone’s lack of production has also reportedly been observed in the brains of people affected by the memory-stealing disorder.
Dear GOPUSA Reader:
Can a homemade "beverage" permanently end Alzheimer's disease?
That's what experts are now claiming after seeing THIS drink in action. Here's why…
Recently, a Tufts University educator unveiled an Alzheimer's-Reversing "Cocktail" recipe and, after watching dramatic transformations of the patients who used it…
Some researchers are finally admitting it's a cure.
(I've found a link to his private video here.)
If you ever worry that your memory is getting worse, or have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia... this "cocktail" could be life-changing.
Don't wait another second to start reversing your memory loss. Get the incredible recipe here.
Sincerely,
Christine O'Brien
Nutrition & Healing
P.S. This isn't something you'll find at a grocery store -- or even your doctor's office. But it's perfectly simple to make yourself... in the comfort of your own home.Click here now to play the private video.
++ Subscribe to GOPUSA! -- Was this message forwarded to you? If so, you are missing out on the best conservative news, information, commentary, and discussions in the country.
Can a homemade "beverage" permanently end Alzheimer's disease?
That's what experts are now claiming after seeing THIS drink in action. Here's why…
Recently, a Tufts University educator unveiled an Alzheimer's-Reversing "Cocktail" recipe and, after watching dramatic transformations of the patients who used it…
Some researchers are finally admitting it's a cure.
(I've found a link to his private video here.)
If you ever worry that your memory is getting worse, or have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia... this "cocktail" could be life-changing.
Don't wait another second to start reversing your memory loss. Get the incredible recipe here.
Sincerely,
Christine O'Brien
Nutrition & Healing
P.S. This isn't something you'll find at a grocery store -- or even your doctor's office. But it's perfectly simple to make yourself... in the comfort of your own home.Click here now to play the private video.
++ Subscribe to GOPUSA! -- Was this message forwarded to you? If so, you are missing out on the best conservative news, information, commentary, and discussions in the country.
Trump to Border Patrol Prez: Bringing in More Agents, Building the Wall
By Sandy Fitzgerald
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at the Mexico border wall Wednesday, Dec 13, 2017, in Hidalgo, Texas. (AP)
President Donald Trump Tuesday tweeted there will be more agents brought on to secure the nation's border with Mexico, after National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd praised the president for his work and noted that hiring practices are keeping his ranks short-staffed.
The president tweeted:
Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends
8:44 AM - Jan 2, 2018
Shortly before the tweet, Judd told Fox News' "Fox and Friends," "The problem is, we have such a high attrition rate that we have a hard time keeping up with hiring . . . The main reason we have had a hard time keeping up with hiring is we haven't done the hiring correctly."
But, he added, 2018 already is shaping up as a good year, because "we had a businessman elected as president who came in and did something in one year that most people thought was going to take two to three years."
Judd noted that it can take up to nine months to hire a Border Patrol agent, partly because the agency's polygraph system has not been operating correctly.
"If you look at a normal polygraph system with any law enforcement agency, local, state, you have about a 26 percent, 27 percent failure rate," said Judd. "In the Border Patrol, we're having up to a 67 percent, 70 percent failure rate, which tells you we're just not administering the polygraph correctly, and that's one of the main problems that we're having."
Judd said his advice to Trump would be to build the wall "in many different" locations, and hire new guards.
"If you look right now, we have a sector in Texas called Big Ben, that there's no infrastructure whatever," he said. "So there's a lot of different places. Rio Grande Valley is the focus area right now. But criminals take the path of least resistance. And when you beef up one area, and you leave another area open, you're susceptible to the crime going to that area. So we have to take a holistic approach to border security."
Judd added that he has worked in areas where there was no fence, but when one was added, "it dropped the number of apprehensions exponentially."
Further, it's not only Mexicans coming over the border, he said.
"We have them coming from all over the place," Judd said. "I personally have arrested people from Russia, Poland, China. We arrest people from all over the world...they're coming through Mexico, but we're arresting them from everywhere."
Do you think it’s cold now??? Tales from the cold: Ice Bowl still chills 50 years later...
BY TIM DAHLBERG, AP SPORTS WRITER
FILE - In this Dec. 31, 1967, file photo, Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr calls signals in bitter cold as he led the Packers to a win over the Dallas Cowboys in Green Bay, Wisc. Fifty years later, players from the Packers and Cowboys still shiver from memories of the bitter cold of a game that would become known as the Ice Bowl. (AP Photo/File)The penultimate day of 1967 was as beautiful as it gets in Green Bay in late December. Chilly, yes, but the Dallas Cowboys enjoyed the sunshine as they practiced at Lambeau Field for their New Year's Eve game against the Green Bay Packers. "You could work up a sweat," said Dan Reeves, then a running back for Dallas. "You just knew the next day was going to be a great day for football."
It was sure looking that way for everyone who loved the NFL. Bart Starr was under center for the Packers, and the Cowboys countered with Don Meredith and Bob Hayes, the 1964 Olympic 100-meter gold medalist. The Cowboys and Packers were meeting for the second straight year for the NFL championship, with the winner going to Super Bowl No. 2 (the NFL had yet to get around to Roman numerals) against the champions of the American Football League.
That night, opposing coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry got together with NFL officials and other team members at the Oneida Country Club for a dinner. The mood was upbeat for a league still trying to digest the merger with the AFL and turn the Super Bowl into a must-see game.
Things were not so cheerful the next morning, when the wakeup call at the Holiday Inn sent startled players to their windows to see what it was all about.
Things were not so cheerful the next morning, when the wakeup call at the Holiday Inn sent startled players to their windows to see what it was all about.
"Good morning," the operator said. "It's 7:30 a.m. and 17 below zero."
It's one of the defining games of the NFL, a contest played on tundra that truly was frozen by men who really weren't prepared for the conditions. The game that became known as the Ice Bowl joined the 1958 NFL championship game and the 1969 Super Bowl as one of a trio of iconic contests in the space of a decade that cemented the league into the consciousness of America's sports fans.
Cowboys executive Gil Brandt wasn't thinking of history that morning as he stood in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Appleton. He just wanted something to keep his feet warm as the Cowboys waited for the buses to take them to Lambeau Field.
He found them on the feet of one of the bus drivers.
"I asked if somebody would rent me their boots for $20," Brandt said. "They said they weren't boots but galoshes. But one guy rented me his."
Players were just as ill prepared. They had long underwear and heaters on the sidelines but little else. For the Cowboys, that meant no gloves for their hands.
"Our (defensive) coach, Ernie Stautner, told our defense that we weren't going to wear gloves. Said, 'Gloves are for sissies,'" Cowboys lineman Bob Lilly said. "Well, we go out to warm up and all the Packers had gloves on."
It was, as Sports Illustrated would write the next week, the coldest New Year's Eve in the cold history of Green Bay.
"It should have been canceled, but I think the commissioner was watching the West Coast game in Oakland," Dallas linebacker Lee Roy Jordan said. "He probably had a nice comfortable day out there."
How cold was it? The reading at game time was 15 below, with wind chill in today's calculations at minus-48.
It was so cold that when referee Norm Shachter blew the metal whistle to start play, it froze to lips. When he tried to pry it off, it tore a chunk of his lip off with it.
"He bled most of the game," Jordan said. "After that, the NFL went to plastic whistles so it wouldn't freeze to lips."
Lambeau Field had heating coils underneath, but they were no match for cold this extreme. Compounding the mistake was putting a tarp over the field overnight, which kept moisture in that would later freeze when it was pulled off.
Wide receiver Carroll Dale's toenails froze and turned black. His frostbit ears are still sensitive today, 50 years later.
Every time Reeves shaves he sees the scar from a tooth that went through his upper lip when he slipped and fell on the frozen field, while Jordan still gets the shivers.
"For years, every time I got in chilly weather I thought I was going to have a relapse," Jordan said. "A lot of us had frostbite on our hands. If we had checked back then, probably a lot of us had frostbite on our lungs. But back then we didn't check much of anything."
The Packers scored the first time they got the ball, with Starr mixing the running and passing game beautifully. The lead soon became 14-0, and the Cowboys looked like a team that wanted to be anywhere on Dec. 31 than in frigid Green Bay.
Hayes, the star Cowboys receiver, was so cold he kept his hands in his pants when his number wasn't called, something Green Bay defenders quickly picked up on.
"The first mistake of the day was made by Bob Hayes when he came out of the huddle with his hands in his pants," Packers offensive lineman Jerry Kramer said. "When he was in the pattern he took his hands out."
The Cowboys managed to cut the lead to 14-10 at halftime thanks to a fumble recovery for a touchdown and a field goal. But the Packers still seemed in control until Dallas made adjustments at halftime and shut down the Packers' offense for most of the second half.
Starr would be sacked a total of eight times, and when Reeves hit Lance Rentzel for a 50-yard touchdown pass on a halfback option in the fourth quarter to take the lead, the Cowboys seemed on their way to the Super Bowl in toasty Miami Beach.
"They were playing lights-out defense in the second half and we were getting our fannies kicked," Dale said. "It wasn't looking good."
If it was cold on the field, it seemed even colder in the stands.
There, people fiddled with their kerosene hand warmers, trying to keep them lit. Fans layered in clothing jammed together on aluminum benches, the condensation from their breaths forming an eerie cloud of fog over the stands.
"The people were too cold to complain," said John Des Jardins, who was 15 at the time and would later become a county judge. "We were all in our own little agony."
Patrick Webb, now executive director of the Green Bay/Brown County Professional Football Stadium District, was 16 and worked parking cars down the street from the stadium. He later joined his father in the top row of Section 130, where he had a view down the goal line in the final moments of the game.
"My biggest reaction to how cold it was is when Bart went over (for the go-ahead touchdown), I jumped up and down and didn't feel anything from my knees down," Webb said. "I really felt like I was jumping on my knees at the time."
Ten minutes before kickoff, Brandt looked around and saw no one in the stands. By kickoff, there were 50,861 people in the stadium.
"We didn't have any choice, but we're saying what are these people doing there?" Reeves said. "You were scratching your head and saying, good gracious what are they doing there? It shows you how tough those people are."
On the sideline late in the game there was a three-inch frozen gob of snot sticking out of the nose of Landry, who was too engrossed in the game to notice.
On the field, players were just hoping the game would get over — and soon.
"Minus-15 and minus-55 chill factor — the only time I've ever been exposed to that, and I don't care that if it's the last time," Dale said.
Late in the fourth quarter the field was a sheet of ice, looking more like an outdoor Wisconsin hockey rink than a place to play football. There seemed no way the Packers could mount a drive when they got ball back with 4:50 left in the game and 68 yards to the end zone.
"In the previous 31 plays we had a minus-9 yards," Kramer said. "We had 10 possessions in that 31-play period — 10 possessions, minus-9 yards. It's now 57-below zero (with) the wind chill. ... We're about out of energy, we're about out of time, we're about out of everything."
But this was a championship team already, and Starr was the quarterback. The Super Bowl was at stake, along with a possible $27,500 for each player — more than some earned in the season.
"We went out for the huddle," Starr said after the game, "and decided that if we were going to do it, it had to be now."
A short pass to halfback Donny Anderson started the drive with some promise. As the clock wound down inside a minute, the Packers had made it to the 11-yard line.
A misdirection play fooled the Dallas defenders and got the ball to the 3. Two runs later it was at the 1 with 16 seconds left. The Packers took their final timeout.
Everyone in the stadium, including the players defending the goal line, thought Starr would try to throw for the winning touchdown, most likely on a rollout to get away from the fearsome Dallas defensive line, and the Packers would kick the tying field goal if the pass was incomplete. But Starr knew the Cowboys were having trouble getting their footing on the ice, so much so that Lilly said they discussed calling a timeout of their own to have someone come out with a screwdriver to punch some holes in the ice to get their footing.
The Packers rolled the dice. Starr called a "wedge" play normally designed for the halfback, and Kramer pounded his cleats into the frozen ground trying to get some traction for a block.
Starr took the snap, Kramer got underneath Jethro Pugh with one of the most celebrated blocks in NFL history, and Starr tumbled into the end zone for the winning score.
"Jethro was high consistently the three weeks before our game," Kramer said. "I watched three films of him high at the goal line. Lilly stayed down, but Jethro's first move was up. Obviously a mistake on the goal line. A wonderful football team, but a young football team. They made a couple mistakes and it cost them the ballgame."
"It was a great call," Jordan said. "I just wish Bart had slipped or something."
———
The old 8 millimeter footage taken in the end zone shows fans half-delirious from the cold and the dramatic finish storming the field and tearing down the metal goal posts. Green Bay would go on to beat Oakland 33-14 in the second Super Bowl, but at the time, the NFL championship seemed like a bigger win.
The Packers went off to celebrate their 21-17 win, partying at Fuzzy's, a bar near Lambeau Field owned by lineman Fuzzy Thurston.
"The celebration went on for most of the night," Kramer said. "All of Green Bay and all of Wisconsin was having a good time. But Fuzzy's heating system in the room he had reserved for us didn't work, and it was so cold inside we could see our breath in the party room."
The Cowboys wasted no time heading for the airport. On the team plane, players scavenged for blankets and drinks to keep warm.
"They heated the plane up pretty good. We got warmed up," Lilly said. "But for years, when it would get cold, my hands would hurt so bad. And it affected our lungs, too. We had about half the team that smoked back then. As far as I can remember, about half of them quit."
Barely a word was spoken the entire flight home.
"The happiest part of the whole deal was when we got on the airplane and took off and the red afterglow wasn't quite dark, it was still glowing red," Lilly said. "And we were alive and we were frozen, trying to thaw out."
"And we were looking out and saying — all of us, I think — we were being thankful that we got out of there alive."
This story has been corrected to show that the last name of the Cowboys wide receiver is Lance Rentzel, not Renfro.
Excerpt from Burt Prelutsky column
Joseph Stockwell let me know that there were 15 amendments to Murphy’s Law. As someone who, left to his own devices, would edit the 10 Commandments down to five or six, it figures that I would pare Stockwell’s list down to eight. (?-5)
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Those who live by the sword are shot by those who don’t.
Nothing is foolproof to a well-motivated fool.
Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
Left Marooned By Trump Tax Cut
By Dick Morris
Democrats and liberals have bet the house that the Trump tax cut would either not pass or not work. Now that the first has happened and the second is happening, they have no good place to position themselves.
They complain that it gives too much to the rich and does nothing for the poor, an accusation that rings more and more flat as black unemployment reaches a twenty year low.
They can argue that it is a giveaway to rich corporations, even as its job creating impact among smaller companies becomes more and more evident.
The impact of this tax cut is too wide and too broad for even Democrats to miss it in their daily economic lives.
The left will, doubtless attribute the economic growth to Obama — just as it blamed the bad economic times on Bush. But, after a year of radical Trump regulatory and economic changes — and the passage of a tax cut bill all agree is a radical departure –the blame or credit for economic change would seem to be fairly affixed to the Trump policies, not to any residual Obama hangover.
Democrats can argue that the substantial increase in the deficit constitutes the real cost of the tax cut and that its economic harm will be felt for years. But they had better hasten to make that argument. The Treasury Department estimates that, at a growth rate of over 3%, the deficit won’t go up.
(In the last two quarters, the growth rate was 3.1% and 3.2% respectively).
Democrats have painted themselves into a corner by their violent opposition to the tax cut and their partisan refusal to cooperate in shaping it.
Of course, they can switch gears and attack Trump over the phony Russian collusion story or await his next tasteless tweet. They can call all those who back Trump “deplorable” and ask how such a monster can ever be president. But they are too late with their recycled rhetoric.
The fact is that the left is out of options.
Watchdog group says Huma Abedin’s emails contain smoking gun – time to investigate
lev radin / Shutterstock.comHillary Clinton’s top aide and BFF Huma Abedin just got some bad news, and it could get worse.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that it is time to launch a new, “serious investigation,” into the former secretary of state’s aide after the discovery of more classified emails on the laptop of her estranged, and disgraced, husband, former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that it is time to launch a new, “serious investigation,” into the former secretary of state’s aide after the discovery of more classified emails on the laptop of her estranged, and disgraced, husband, former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner.
Years of persistence paid off
It could be the beginning of real legal jeopardy for Abedin. Lifezette reported:
The emails were made public Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in March 2015. The 2,800 emails were among thousands found by the FBI that spurred the bureau to reopen its investigation in October 2016 and raise new questions about the Clinton team’s mishandling of classified information on the private server.
Fitton called it “a major victory.”
“That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law,” he said, adding, “After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials.”
Weiner is currently serving a 21-month sentence for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Abedin has since filed for divorce.
The emails discovered on Weiner’s laptop were heavily redacted and contained sensitive information about Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, United Arab Emirates officials and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also discussed her boss, Hillary Clinton, and her lust for politics, even as Clinton served as secretary of state.
A spokesman for the State Department said that it “carefully reviews the content of records requested through FOIA to determine whether any information is sensitive or classified” and admitted that the emails found on Weiner’s laptop contained “classified information that has been redacted.”
The Chicago Tribune reported:
The FBI found thousands of emails exchanged between Clinton and Abedin while searching Weiner’s laptop as part of a criminal investigation into his sexting with a high school student. The discovery led then-FBI Director James Comey to announce in late October 2016, as Clinton’s run for the White House was in its final stage, that he was reopening the probe of her use of a private computer server.
The emails were made public Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Judicial Watch filed in March 2015. The 2,800 emails were among thousands found by the FBI that spurred the bureau to reopen its investigation in October 2016 and raise new questions about the Clinton team’s mishandling of classified information on the private server.
Fitton called it “a major victory.”
“That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law,” he said, adding, “After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents. It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials.”
Weiner is currently serving a 21-month sentence for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Abedin has since filed for divorce.
The emails discovered on Weiner’s laptop were heavily redacted and contained sensitive information about Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, United Arab Emirates officials and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also discussed her boss, Hillary Clinton, and her lust for politics, even as Clinton served as secretary of state.
A spokesman for the State Department said that it “carefully reviews the content of records requested through FOIA to determine whether any information is sensitive or classified” and admitted that the emails found on Weiner’s laptop contained “classified information that has been redacted.”
The Chicago Tribune reported:
The FBI found thousands of emails exchanged between Clinton and Abedin while searching Weiner’s laptop as part of a criminal investigation into his sexting with a high school student. The discovery led then-FBI Director James Comey to announce in late October 2016, as Clinton’s run for the White House was in its final stage, that he was reopening the probe of her use of a private computer server.
Then two days before Election Day, the FBI declared there was nothing new in the emails. Clinton has called Comey’s intervention “the determining factor” in her defeat.
Abedin and her boss were able to skate by during the administration of former President Obama, but it won’t be that simple with President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the helm.
And it could mean that someone associated with the Clintons will finally be held accountable.
Now wouldn’t that be a refreshing change?
California Expertly Trolled by Patriots Installing “Sanctuary State” Signage
By Andrew West
California’s strange obsession with becoming the most liberal locale on the planet has been ruthlessly mocked for decades in American society.
The west coast state has long been a haven for incredibly disturbing left wing ideologies, harkening back to at least the 1960’s, when “free love” and the hippy movement were all the rage in The Bay Area. This incredibly short sighted belief in progressivism has undergone its fair share of transformation over the course of the last 5 decades as well, with the democratic party weaponizing their policies within the Bear Republic.
Today’s California is a terrifying amalgam of leftist doctrines that has been heavily peppered with the tenets of neo-Fascism and the movement to abolish free speech in America, with students at the University of California at Berkeley leading the charge with their destructive and violent riots aimed at canceling speaking engagements by conservative hosts.
Furthermore, California has proudly allowed illegal aliens and undocumented workers to invade the area, oddly touting their status as a “sanctuary state” as one of their qualities. This indifference to the federal laws surrounding immigration has not only put California at odds with the U.S. government, but has also allowed an abhorrent level of crime to blossom.
Now, a secret patriot, or patriots, is letting the state know how they feel about the nonsensical and nonchalant shrug that their leaders are giving to the federal government with some scathing signage.
“Drivers entering California are being greeted with signs proclaiming the liberal bastion an ‘OFFICIAL SANCTUARY STATE,’ according to photos and videos circulating on social media appearing to show a prankster attached the official-looking blue signs just below legitimate ‘Welcome to California’ markers>
“The sanctuary state sign, which adds ‘Felons, Illegals and MS13 [gang members] welcome,’ is similar to one hung up by a Malibu activist last year.
“’Democrats Need The Votes!’ reads a message on the signs, which are plastered with the Great Seal of California and a donkey, one of the symbols of the Democratic Party.”
Another sign in the affluent Malibu area claims that “cheap gardeners and nannies” are what makes the city an excellent place to live.
The snarky attitude of the message may not be for everyone, but the tongue-in-cheek dig at west coast politics will certainly have a great many U.S. citizens thinking long and hard about how California fits into a nation that is overtly conservative and disapproving of such progressive nonsense.
“The sanctuary state sign, which adds ‘Felons, Illegals and MS13 [gang members] welcome,’ is similar to one hung up by a Malibu activist last year.
“’Democrats Need The Votes!’ reads a message on the signs, which are plastered with the Great Seal of California and a donkey, one of the symbols of the Democratic Party.”
Another sign in the affluent Malibu area claims that “cheap gardeners and nannies” are what makes the city an excellent place to live.
The snarky attitude of the message may not be for everyone, but the tongue-in-cheek dig at west coast politics will certainly have a great many U.S. citizens thinking long and hard about how California fits into a nation that is overtly conservative and disapproving of such progressive nonsense.
Secret Doc Shows China Promising to Give Nukes to North Korea
Saying one thing publicly while assuring and supplying Pyongyang exposes Beijing's duplicity in dealing with the U.S.
Chinese officials continue to supply North Korea with needed supplies such as oil and promise to give the dictatorial regime on its northeast border more nuclear missiles, according to a secret government document obtained by an American journalist and published Tuesday by the Washington Free Beacon.
“The document, labeled ‘top secret’ and dated September 15 — 12 days after North Korea’s latest underground nuclear blast — outlines China’s plan for dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue,” according to WFB’s national security reporter, Bill Gertz.
“It states China will allow North Korea to keep its current arsenal of nuclear weapons, contrary to Beijing’s public stance that it seeks a denuclearized Korean peninsula. Chinese leaders also agreed to offer new assurances that the North Korean government will not be allowed to collapse, and that Beijing plans to apply sanctions ‘symbolically’ to avoid punishing the regime of leader Kim Jong-un under a recent U.N. resolution requiring a halt to oil and gas shipments into North Korea.”
In return, China only asked North Korea to halt its current nuclear testing program, while waiting for times to become “ripe” to make genuine moves toward “denuclearization.” In the context of Beijing’s assurance that it will not allow the North Korean regime to collapse, such denuclearization might mean nothing more than China promising massive retaliation in the event the regime is attacked.
“Your department should at the same time seriously warn the Korean authority not to overdo things on the nuclear issue,” the document said. “Currently, there is no issue for our country to forcefully ask Korea to immediately and completely give up its nuclear weapons.
“Instead, we ask Korea to maintain restraint and after some years when the conditions are ripe, to apply gradual reforms and eventually meet the requirement of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.”
Gertz said he obtained the Chinese government document “from a person who once had ties to the Chinese intelligence and security communities. An English translation can be found here.”
Public exposure of the document will almost certainly draw an angry response from President Donald Trump.
Gertz was unable to secure comment from either the U.S. CIA or the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Public exposure of the document will almost certainly draw an angry response from President Donald Trump, who has previously touted his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump said last year that he had been “going easy” on China.
Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at mark.tapscott@lifezette.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Public exposure of the document will almost certainly draw an angry response from President Donald Trump, who has previously touted his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump said last year that he had been “going easy” on China.
Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at mark.tapscott@lifezette.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Congressional investigators find irregularities in FBI's handling of Clinton email case
BY JOHN SOLOMON
Congressional investigators find irregularities in FBI's handling of Clinton email case
Republicans on key congressional committees say they have uncovered new irregularities and contradictions inside the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.
For the first time, investigators say they have secured written evidence that the FBI believed there was evidence that some laws were broken when the former secretary of State and her top aides transmitted classified information through her insecure private email server, lawmakers and investigators told The Hill.
That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the “sheer volume” of classified information that flowed through Clinton’s insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.
The name of the witness is redacted from the FBI documents but lawmakers said he was an employee of a computer firm that helped maintain her personal server after she left office as America’s top diplomat and who belatedly admitted he had permanently erased an archive of her messages in 2015 after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.
Those witnesses included Clinton and the computer firm employee who permanently erased her email archives just days after the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, the investigators said.
Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who attended a Dec. 21 closed-door briefing by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe say the bureau official confirmed that the investigation and charging decisions were controlled by a small group in Washington headquarters rather the normal process of allowing field offices to investigate possible criminality in their localities. The Clinton email server in question was based in New York.
In normal FBI cases, field offices where crimes are believed to have been committed investigate the evidence and then recommend to bureau hierarchy whether to pursue charges with prosecutors. In this case, the bureau hierarchy controlled both the investigation and the charging decision from Washington, a scenario known in FBI parlance as a “special,” the lawmakers said.
The FBI declined comment on McCabe’s closed-door testimony and the evidence being shared with Congress.
Some Republicans on the committee say the findings and revelations have left them more convinced than ever that FBI leadership rigged the outcome to clear Clinton.
“This was an effort to pre-bake the cake, pre-bake the outcome,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a House Judiciary Committee member who attended the McCabe briefing before the holidays. “Hillary Clinton obviously benefited from people taking actions to ensure she wasn’t held accountable.”
Gaetz said he could not divulge the specifics of what McCabe told lawmakers, but that he left the Dec. 21 session believing the FBI had deviated from its “normal objective practices” while investigating Clinton.
The top Democrat on the panel acknowledged the FBI’s handling of the case was unique, but argued Republicans are politicizing their own panel’s work.
“To the extent that the Assistant Director of the FBI was involved in that investigation, and recognizing that the investigation itself presented a unique set of circumstances, his testimony did not raise any concerns that would justify the Republicans’ outsized obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails two years after the fact,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) who recently took over as the top Democrat on House Judiciary after former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) stepped aside after sexual misconduct allegations were made against him.
Gaetz said he has growing questions about the role the Obama Justice Department played in the case.
Former FBI Director James Comey has testified he made the decision not to seek criminal charges against Clinton — with no Justice Department input — because he feared any involvement from the department might taint the findings after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton on a tarmac during the closing days of the probe in June 2016.
He also argued in an initial July 5, 2016, press conference announcing the decision that he did not believe he could show that Clinton intended to send classified information over her server.
But Gaetz said his panel has evidence the FBI took actions while writing the exoneration statement that required Justice input, such as immunizing witnesses in June 2016. He said he would like to learn more about what instructions, sentiments and communications were conveyed between the department and the FBI.
“I think we have more questions than answers based on what we’ve learned,” Gaetz said.
Both parties are likely to learn more in the first quarter of 2018 when the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release initial findings in what has become a wide-ranging probe into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email case as well as whether agents and supervisors had political connections, ethical conflicts or biases that affected their work.
In the meantime, Republicans on three House committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have pieced together new evidence from recent interviews and document productions.
That information wasn’t available to them when Comey announced in July 2016 that he would not seek charges against Clinton even though she and her aides had transmitted more than 110 pieces of classified information through her insecure email server, some of it at the “top secret” and “secret” levels.
One storyline that has emerged is that the FBI’s own documents stated there was evidence some laws had been broken, but bureau leaders declined to pursue charges on the grounds they could not prove Clinton and her aides intended to violate the law.
Those concerns were reflected in the initial draft statements Comey and his leadership team began writing in spring 2016. The Hill first reported in November that Comey’s original May 2, 2016, draft included the words “grossly negligent” — the language supporting a criminal charge for mishandling classified information — but it was later changed to the softer “extremely careless.”
GOP congressional investigators told The Hill multiple drafts of the statement also included specific language acknowledging there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.”
Furthermore, the May 2, 2016, draft included a second passage that suggested the large amount of highly classified information — eight top secret passages and 37 secret passages — that passed through Clinton’s private server suggested criminality.
“The sheer volume of information that was properly classified as Secret at the time it was discussed on email (that is, excluding the “up classified” emails) supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information,” the FBI’s original draft read, according to a source who has seen it.
Comey used some of the language the agents had put in the initial drafts of the memo when he made his announcement of no charges.
“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said.
The FBI also confirmed that a key witness, a computer technician who deleted Clinton emails from her server in March 2015 after a congressional subpoena had been issued for them, originally lied to the FBI during his interviews, memos show. The witness's name was redacted from documents released by the FBI but he was identified as an employee of a computer firm that helped maintained Clinton’s email server.
His admission of false statements came one day after the Comey statement was already being drafted, investigators told The Hill.
The computer employee originally told the FBI in a February 2016 interview that he did not recall making any deletions from Clinton’s server in March 2015, FBI records show.
But then on May 3, 2016, the same employee in a subsequent FBI interview told agents he had an “oh shit moment” and in late March 2015 deleted Clinton’s email archive from the server, according to FBI documents reviewed by The Hill.
Lying to the FBI is a federal felony, a crime that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn recently pleaded guilty to. But the FBI decided not to pursue criminal charges against the witness, and instead gave the technician an immunity deal so he could correct his story, congressional investigators said.
Republican investigators say the most glaring irregularity they have found is the decision to begin drafting a statement exonerating Clinton before much of the investigative interviewing and evidence gathering was even done.
While the first draft of the statement was dated May 2, 2016, FBI records gathered by congressional investigators show agents were still receiving evidence responsive to grand jury subpoenas well after that, including documents and other evidentiary items logged on May 13, May 19 and May 26.
A House GOP lawmaker told The Hill his staff also has identified at least a dozen interviews that were conducted after the drafting effort began, including of some figures who would have key information about intent or possible destruction of evidence.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley's (R-Iowa) staff has a higher number: 17 witnesses including Clinton were interviewed after the decision was already made.
“Making a conclusion before you interview key fact witnesses and the subject herself violates the very premise of good investigation. You don't lock into a theory until you have the facts. Here the evidence that isn't public yet shows they locked into the theory and then edited out the facts that contradicted it,” the GOP lawmaker said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the documents are not yet authorized for release.
A senior law enforcement official directly familiar with the investigation, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, told The Hill that the FBI “did have evidence of statutory violations” but the decision not to prosecute was driven by a belief that there wasn’t enough proof Clinton and aides intended to violate those laws or even knew they were violating them.
The official also acknowledged evidence gathering continued even as Comey began drafting the public statement, including the execution of an immunity deal on June 10, 2016, with Clinton advisers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson that resulted in laptops with evidence being turned over to agents late in the probe.
“The leadership had a sense of where the evidence was likely headed and the idea was they would begin drafting their conclusions and if we found anything that changed that sense we’d alert them,” the official said.
Republicans on key congressional committees say they have uncovered new irregularities and contradictions inside the FBI’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s email server.
For the first time, investigators say they have secured written evidence that the FBI believed there was evidence that some laws were broken when the former secretary of State and her top aides transmitted classified information through her insecure private email server, lawmakers and investigators told The Hill.
That evidence includes passages in FBI documents stating the “sheer volume” of classified information that flowed through Clinton’s insecure emails was proof of criminality as well as an admission of false statements by one key witness in the case, the investigators said.
The name of the witness is redacted from the FBI documents but lawmakers said he was an employee of a computer firm that helped maintain her personal server after she left office as America’s top diplomat and who belatedly admitted he had permanently erased an archive of her messages in 2015 after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.
Those witnesses included Clinton and the computer firm employee who permanently erased her email archives just days after the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, the investigators said.
Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who attended a Dec. 21 closed-door briefing by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe say the bureau official confirmed that the investigation and charging decisions were controlled by a small group in Washington headquarters rather the normal process of allowing field offices to investigate possible criminality in their localities. The Clinton email server in question was based in New York.
In normal FBI cases, field offices where crimes are believed to have been committed investigate the evidence and then recommend to bureau hierarchy whether to pursue charges with prosecutors. In this case, the bureau hierarchy controlled both the investigation and the charging decision from Washington, a scenario known in FBI parlance as a “special,” the lawmakers said.
The FBI declined comment on McCabe’s closed-door testimony and the evidence being shared with Congress.
Some Republicans on the committee say the findings and revelations have left them more convinced than ever that FBI leadership rigged the outcome to clear Clinton.
“This was an effort to pre-bake the cake, pre-bake the outcome,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a House Judiciary Committee member who attended the McCabe briefing before the holidays. “Hillary Clinton obviously benefited from people taking actions to ensure she wasn’t held accountable.”
Gaetz said he could not divulge the specifics of what McCabe told lawmakers, but that he left the Dec. 21 session believing the FBI had deviated from its “normal objective practices” while investigating Clinton.
The top Democrat on the panel acknowledged the FBI’s handling of the case was unique, but argued Republicans are politicizing their own panel’s work.
“To the extent that the Assistant Director of the FBI was involved in that investigation, and recognizing that the investigation itself presented a unique set of circumstances, his testimony did not raise any concerns that would justify the Republicans’ outsized obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails two years after the fact,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) who recently took over as the top Democrat on House Judiciary after former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) stepped aside after sexual misconduct allegations were made against him.
Gaetz said he has growing questions about the role the Obama Justice Department played in the case.
Former FBI Director James Comey has testified he made the decision not to seek criminal charges against Clinton — with no Justice Department input — because he feared any involvement from the department might taint the findings after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton on a tarmac during the closing days of the probe in June 2016.
He also argued in an initial July 5, 2016, press conference announcing the decision that he did not believe he could show that Clinton intended to send classified information over her server.
But Gaetz said his panel has evidence the FBI took actions while writing the exoneration statement that required Justice input, such as immunizing witnesses in June 2016. He said he would like to learn more about what instructions, sentiments and communications were conveyed between the department and the FBI.
“I think we have more questions than answers based on what we’ve learned,” Gaetz said.
Both parties are likely to learn more in the first quarter of 2018 when the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release initial findings in what has become a wide-ranging probe into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email case as well as whether agents and supervisors had political connections, ethical conflicts or biases that affected their work.
In the meantime, Republicans on three House committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have pieced together new evidence from recent interviews and document productions.
That information wasn’t available to them when Comey announced in July 2016 that he would not seek charges against Clinton even though she and her aides had transmitted more than 110 pieces of classified information through her insecure email server, some of it at the “top secret” and “secret” levels.
One storyline that has emerged is that the FBI’s own documents stated there was evidence some laws had been broken, but bureau leaders declined to pursue charges on the grounds they could not prove Clinton and her aides intended to violate the law.
Those concerns were reflected in the initial draft statements Comey and his leadership team began writing in spring 2016. The Hill first reported in November that Comey’s original May 2, 2016, draft included the words “grossly negligent” — the language supporting a criminal charge for mishandling classified information — but it was later changed to the softer “extremely careless.”
GOP congressional investigators told The Hill multiple drafts of the statement also included specific language acknowledging there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.”
Furthermore, the May 2, 2016, draft included a second passage that suggested the large amount of highly classified information — eight top secret passages and 37 secret passages — that passed through Clinton’s private server suggested criminality.
“The sheer volume of information that was properly classified as Secret at the time it was discussed on email (that is, excluding the “up classified” emails) supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information,” the FBI’s original draft read, according to a source who has seen it.
Comey used some of the language the agents had put in the initial drafts of the memo when he made his announcement of no charges.
“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said.
The FBI also confirmed that a key witness, a computer technician who deleted Clinton emails from her server in March 2015 after a congressional subpoena had been issued for them, originally lied to the FBI during his interviews, memos show. The witness's name was redacted from documents released by the FBI but he was identified as an employee of a computer firm that helped maintained Clinton’s email server.
His admission of false statements came one day after the Comey statement was already being drafted, investigators told The Hill.
The computer employee originally told the FBI in a February 2016 interview that he did not recall making any deletions from Clinton’s server in March 2015, FBI records show.
But then on May 3, 2016, the same employee in a subsequent FBI interview told agents he had an “oh shit moment” and in late March 2015 deleted Clinton’s email archive from the server, according to FBI documents reviewed by The Hill.
Lying to the FBI is a federal felony, a crime that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn recently pleaded guilty to. But the FBI decided not to pursue criminal charges against the witness, and instead gave the technician an immunity deal so he could correct his story, congressional investigators said.
Republican investigators say the most glaring irregularity they have found is the decision to begin drafting a statement exonerating Clinton before much of the investigative interviewing and evidence gathering was even done.
While the first draft of the statement was dated May 2, 2016, FBI records gathered by congressional investigators show agents were still receiving evidence responsive to grand jury subpoenas well after that, including documents and other evidentiary items logged on May 13, May 19 and May 26.
A House GOP lawmaker told The Hill his staff also has identified at least a dozen interviews that were conducted after the drafting effort began, including of some figures who would have key information about intent or possible destruction of evidence.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley's (R-Iowa) staff has a higher number: 17 witnesses including Clinton were interviewed after the decision was already made.
“Making a conclusion before you interview key fact witnesses and the subject herself violates the very premise of good investigation. You don't lock into a theory until you have the facts. Here the evidence that isn't public yet shows they locked into the theory and then edited out the facts that contradicted it,” the GOP lawmaker said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the documents are not yet authorized for release.
A senior law enforcement official directly familiar with the investigation, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, told The Hill that the FBI “did have evidence of statutory violations” but the decision not to prosecute was driven by a belief that there wasn’t enough proof Clinton and aides intended to violate those laws or even knew they were violating them.
The official also acknowledged evidence gathering continued even as Comey began drafting the public statement, including the execution of an immunity deal on June 10, 2016, with Clinton advisers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson that resulted in laptops with evidence being turned over to agents late in the probe.
“The leadership had a sense of where the evidence was likely headed and the idea was they would begin drafting their conclusions and if we found anything that changed that sense we’d alert them,” the official said.
The official said the decision to grant immunity to the Clinton advisers as well as the computer technician involved in the email deletions was made “with the idea it would be better to know all the circumstances” before the case was closed out.
Comey has told Congress he made the decision not to charge Clinton after she was interviewed on July 2, 2016.
Congressional investigators told The Hill they also have found some contradictions between the FBI’s official account of what happened and what more recently released documents show.
One that is being pursued aggressively by Grassley involves whether the FBI actually investigated possible violations of the Federal Records Act, which required the preservation of all of Clinton’s work-related emails.
The FBI admits it recovered thousands of State emails that originated or passed through Clinton’s private server — some which had been deleted — that were never turned over to the State Department as government records by Clinton’s team.
While the FBI believed none of those were deleted intentionally to keep them from the government, the Records Act allows for a misdemeanor charge in each instance where a government document is destroyed carelessly, investigators said.
Comey told Grassley back in 2016 that the FBI did investigate whether the unlawful destruction of federal records occurred.
But Grassley’s staff has now obtained a sworn affidavit from an FBI agent that directly contradicts the former director’s assurance. The agent testified under penalty of perjury that the Clinton email case did not address the destruction of federal records, Grassley said.
The longtime Senate chairman went to the Senate floor before the holidays to raise another concern: the FBI did not pursue criminal charges when Clinton’s email archives were permanently deleted from her private server days after a subpoena for them was issued by a congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
The deletion occurred on the same day Clinton’s former chief of staff and her lawyer had a call with the computer firm that handled the erasure using an anti-recovery software called BleachBit, Grassley said.
“You have a conference call with Secretary Clinton’s attorneys on March 31, 2015, and on that very same day her emails are deleted by someone who was on that conference call using special BleachBit software,” Grassley said. “The emails were State Department records under subpoena by Congress.
“What did the FBI do to investigate this apparent obstruction?” Grassley asked. “According to affidavits filed in federal court — absolutely nothing. The FBI focused only on the handling of classified information.”
Comey has told Congress he made the decision not to charge Clinton after she was interviewed on July 2, 2016.
Congressional investigators told The Hill they also have found some contradictions between the FBI’s official account of what happened and what more recently released documents show.
One that is being pursued aggressively by Grassley involves whether the FBI actually investigated possible violations of the Federal Records Act, which required the preservation of all of Clinton’s work-related emails.
The FBI admits it recovered thousands of State emails that originated or passed through Clinton’s private server — some which had been deleted — that were never turned over to the State Department as government records by Clinton’s team.
While the FBI believed none of those were deleted intentionally to keep them from the government, the Records Act allows for a misdemeanor charge in each instance where a government document is destroyed carelessly, investigators said.
Comey told Grassley back in 2016 that the FBI did investigate whether the unlawful destruction of federal records occurred.
But Grassley’s staff has now obtained a sworn affidavit from an FBI agent that directly contradicts the former director’s assurance. The agent testified under penalty of perjury that the Clinton email case did not address the destruction of federal records, Grassley said.
The longtime Senate chairman went to the Senate floor before the holidays to raise another concern: the FBI did not pursue criminal charges when Clinton’s email archives were permanently deleted from her private server days after a subpoena for them was issued by a congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
The deletion occurred on the same day Clinton’s former chief of staff and her lawyer had a call with the computer firm that handled the erasure using an anti-recovery software called BleachBit, Grassley said.
“You have a conference call with Secretary Clinton’s attorneys on March 31, 2015, and on that very same day her emails are deleted by someone who was on that conference call using special BleachBit software,” Grassley said. “The emails were State Department records under subpoena by Congress.
“What did the FBI do to investigate this apparent obstruction?” Grassley asked. “According to affidavits filed in federal court — absolutely nothing. The FBI focused only on the handling of classified information.”
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Helen and Moe Lauzier
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