Russian sanctions

The House of Representatives this week overwhelmingly passed a Russia sanctions bill this week.

U.S. allies in Europe are extremely critical of the jingoistic move.

Our Congress seems hell bent on reigniting full scale cold war, and maybe even kicking off a hot one.

I suspect U.S. relations with Russia could be quickly and easily improved, but the DC establishment doesn't want that.

DC's establishment works to make Russia seem a bigger and bigger villain, perhaps to distract from its own escalating malfeasance.

Improper spying on Americans

"The National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama years by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies’ ability to obey their own rules." - as reported at TheHill.com 

Trying to spin obvious insanity

I can't read the Washington Post, it's stories are now secured behind a subscription firewall.

But a Post headline makes me chuckle.

Republicans Are In Full Control of Government - But Losing Control of Their Party

Does this really come as a surprise to the disingenuous Republicans in DC?

They've spent years making promises they never intended to keep. And yet they seem shell shocked to  see the party's voter base now seeks to hold them to the standards and policies they claimed to champion.

Voters will not continue to support serial liars.

Yet elected Republicans in Congress seem more inclined to lose power to the Democrats than they are in making amends with the GOP voter base by delivering what they've promised.

They needed a study to see this?

It appears some progressives have begun waking up to the notion that calling opponents "racist" only entrenches opposition. 

Retail's twisted calendar

Home Depot has what's left of its patio and outdoor furniture on close-out. And the one near me doesn't have much left. And it's not just Home Depot that's dumping or already dumped summer product lines.

With two months of summer like weather still to come across the south, and in resort areas like the North Georgia mountains, where people use their decks and outdoor areas year 'round, how much sense do these early close-outs seasonal closeouts make?

Seems to me, it's just another area were retailers are alienating customers... and yet the cookie-cutter MBAs running retail today can't seem to figure out why customers are abandoning their stores and moving to online alternatives.

Only in an idiocracy...

There are apparently Democrats pushing the idea of a Maxine Waters bid for the presidency.

Seriously.

Slate.com is among those floating an apparent trial balloon.

And there's this - this weekend in New Hampshire:

Our assignment desk is now being told no press allowed at the @SCDCNHDems picnic featuring @MaxineWaters #nhpolitics via @AdamSextonWMUR

— WMUR TV (@WMUR9) July 23, 2017

Surely Democrats know Waters is a nut-case. Maybe that's why they locked the media out this weekend.

Russia isn't our biggest problem

Via Twitter:

The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.

— Dennis Prager (@DennisPrager) July 14, 2017

Thought worth contemplating

"The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything." - author unknown

More buzz, but too many holes

NBC News claims to have yet another blockbuster story relating to Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with the Russian lawyer. NBC breathlessly reports a former Soviet  counter-intelligence officer was in on the meeting.

The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.

But dig deeper down in the story.

The guy NBC seeks to raise suspicions over is now a U.S. citizen. We tend not to grant American citizenship to persons suspected of being foreign spies.

And why is NBC withholding the individual's name? Is there a legal reason, or is the intent to create a deeper sense of mystery and intrigue? NBC also identifies the guy as a lobbyist, but doesn't tell us who he lobbies for. Knowing something about the lobbyist's clients might tell us more about the present status of this individual.

Sorry, the NBC story has too many holes. Is it that NBC didn't bother getting the facts to fill them in, or were the facts intentionally left out to make the story seem more intriguing.

Once upon a time under the old rules of journalism, a story written like this would never have gotten past an editor.

Update: Soon after posting this, I saw an AP story filled in one gap, while also reporting a denial to part of NBC's story.

Stuck on stupid

Nancy Pelosi again refers to the sitting president as "President Bush." She even pauses before she makes the blunder as if she's double checking herself.

Bush has been gone more than eight years.

Maybe these are Freudian slips showing Pelosi too knows she should have bowed out of office years ago. She's long past her prime, seemingly past lucidity. It's time for her to go.

Is "protest" an accurate description

Media reports the G20 conference in Hamburg, Germany was targeted with protests.

Yes, there were likely legit protests taking place. But the rioting, looting, and willful destruction of property (both private and public) in Hamburg look more akin to acts of war than what a sane and reasonable person would tag with the more docile sounding term protest.

Understanding MSM mindset

"Media companies, and the journalists they employ, have one overriding responsibility: to catch the big story. But when it came to Trump being elected president, they missed the story. And, oddly enough, instead of this error making them more humble, it’s only made some of them more arrogant and less willing to admit they were wrong. They’ve chosen instead to try to destroy the Trump presidency and thus erase any evidence of their mistake. And in their exuberance, some of them are being sloppy and cutting corners." - Ruben Navarrette