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Home » There are two big stories…

There are two big stories…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that I’m not going to cover in exhaustive detail today. But here are some links.

The first story is about the 2016 White House meeting with Ukainian officials to discuss Burisma and Biden, and its significance.

The second is the FISA court’s determination that at least two of the FISA warrants for the Carter Page investigation were invalid.

That could certainly help Page win any lawsuits he might be contemplating.

More:

The FISA court order also noted that it is a federal crime for any federal official to “intentionally…disclose[] or use[] information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having any reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized” by law. The following sentence of Boasberg’s ruling is redacted, raising questions about whether the government used any information obtained pursuant to the now-invalid Page surveillance warrants in other cases.

So, will this ultimately affect the validity of some of the convictions that followed from evidence obtained during those investigations? And will anyone big who signed off on those warrants get into any significant legal trouble as a result?

I think the answer to the last question is “no.” The answer to the first one is “perhaps.”

Comments

There are two big stories… — 31 Comments

  1. I Love you.. not in the way it sounds.. I say this because I enjoy and would miss your post if you were gone. I read your work at least twice a week, I don’t always agree. You see i’m a from Texas and conservative (VERY).. Your honesty stands out in away that not many bloggers even come close. Keep writing so I can keep enjoying.. Thanks

  2. I suspect that the FISA determination is the more prosecutable offense. It seems fairly clear-cut to me. Off the top of my head I can see no reason not to prosecute. Let the dems wail and knash their teeth.

    There must be consequence or the law means nothing.

  3. I’m getting nervous about the Wuhan virus story. There are unverified claims and video footage that the situation is far worse than the Chinese government is letting on. Surprise!

    Worth keeping tabs on.

    Corpses of coronavirus victims are being left unattended in a corridor of a hospital flooded with patients in Wuhan as the Chinese city is ravaged by the deadly infection, it has been revealed.

    The chilling scene, captured by a woman who claims to be a nurse, was posted on the country’s social media network today but quickly censored.

    Dozens of videos posted online appear show people lying in the street after collapsing where they stood as they walked through the streets of Wuhan.

    “China Corona Virus Horror: Hospital Corridor of the Dead and Dying”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7924805/Chinese-nurse-claims-dead-bodies-left-unattended-Wuhan-hospital.html

  5. Naturally occuring virus, engineered bioterror weapon accidentally released or intentional population control? Does anyone doubt that the ChiCom leadership are ruthless enough to intentionally release it?

  6. Good time to check out Steven Soderbergh’s film, “Contagion.” Probably the most realistic pandemic movie around (though not above criticism).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film)

    A mutated strain of very virulent and contagious encephalitis emerges from Macau.

    “Somewhere in the world the wrong pig met up with the wrong bat.”

    I hate it when that happens.

  7. “Say it ain’t so” Joe wants the media to not say anything at all.
    https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/01/24/watch-glenn-beck-read-disturbing-letter-from-biden-campaign-demanding-media-not-cover-hunterukraine-issue/

    So now they’re simply trying to make it go away by demanding that media not cover the “debunked claims” or if they do cover it at all, say that they are “debunked” and only print what the Biden team considers acceptable.

    Glenn Beck busted the Biden campaign big time by reading the letter they sent out to media demanding compliance.
    …
    Imagine if President Donald Trump tried to do that, what the media would have said.

    But the Biden team doesn’t see a problem with commanding the media what to do and what to cover.

    Why? Because a lot of the media are in their corner and will actually comply.

  8. Virginia doesn’t want anyone to say anything about anybody either, which is the way the entire country will go if a Democrat is elected President in 2020 or any year thereafter.

    https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/01/24/not-content-with-violating-the-2nd-amendment-virginia-looks-to-trash-the-1st-amendment-as-well/

    Here’s the full text on Virginia’s website just in the case the above seems so insane as to get me accused of posting something that’s fake.

    This is the kind of thing you’d expect to see passed in communist China or the former Soviet Union. It’s so unbelievably broad as to basically encompasses all criticism of Ralph Northam and the other government officials around him. …
    But even if one thinks the things outlawed in this legislation are indeed bad and shouldn’t be done, the 1st Amendment is still a thing last I checked. Saying “immoral” or “lewd” things in response to the actions of politicians has been standard fare since our founding. One may personally choose to abstain from such, but it’s dang sure not acceptable for a government body to outlaw major aspects of free speech in response.
    The reason for this law is patently clear. Virginia’s current leadership wants to be able to pass wildly unpopular, unconstitutional laws without getting any push back. They don’t want people to organize online campaigns against them or express their displeasure in a way that may animate others to follow suit. This law would be used to harass anyone who steps out of line and it’s ironic that it’s spun as an anti-harassment law protecting high ranking state officials.
    There’s just noway this thing would pass muster at the Supreme Court, but the fact that Virginia Democrats would even feel emboldened enough to attempt this is scary enough. Virginia better wake up sooner rather than later. Their transformation to a blue state has led to some serious unintended consequences and they can put either put a stop to this stuff or be consumed by it.

    This is one of the things that Virginia would probably consider illegal harassment.
    https://babylonbee.com/news/gov-northam-says-virginia-should-be-kept-comfortable-while-lawmakers-debate-whether-to-kill-it

  12. Watching Rudy is just gravy on the meat-and-potatoes of Sundance’s theory about the genesis of the whistleblower’s complaint.
    If you’ve already heard that, there is nothing new.
    If you haven’t, take a look at the Deep State in action.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/01/24/rudy-giuliani-i-wont-stand-by-and-watch/

    There’s a very strong likelihood this entire impeachment construct was manufactured out of nothing to serve dual purposes: (1) Remove President Trump, and (2) protect the crew who were using Ukraine as a proxy political venue and source of financial gain.

    National Security Council resistance member Alexander Vindman starts a rumor about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call, which he shares with CIA operative Eric Ciaramella (a John Brennan resistance associate). Ciaramella then makes contact with resistance ally Mary McCord in her role within the House Intelligence Committee. Mrs. McCord then helps Ciaramella create a fraudulent whistle-blower complaint and submit via her former colleague, now Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson….

    …And that’s how this entire Impeachment operation gets started.

  13. The left hates the idea of the rule of law, GMAFB. Sooner or later you will have to choose: them or us.

  14. Neo

    Contrast these stories with others that are damaging to anyone on the right.

    Every revelation (true or not) is a bombshell The beginning of the end. A huge turn. Without regards to seriousness or merit.

    Anything damaging to the left. Its just a trickle. Purposely parceled out in small doses Underplayed and basically ignored. Then the goal posts can slowly move to where ever it is needed now.

    I dislike the policies the Democrats want. Sometimes strongly. But I detest the current media even more. I dont see any way there can ever be any bipartisanship . As long as only one side can be wrong. And that very few items can be discussed with even the pretense of fairness.

  15. China has locked down several cities and 30 million people. The Wuhan hospital footage shows crowded conditions though not chaotic. Hospitals also have tents outside for overflow. China is working to build a new hospital there in six days.

    The head of the European version of CDC is interviewed at the end looking rather grim.

    “China puts millions under lockdown to contain Wuhan coronavirus”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltcV3Q-1ztw&t=37s

  16. By “anyone big who signed off on those warrants”, you must mean:

    Sally Yates
    Andrew McCabe
    James Comey
    Rod Rosenstein

    Isn’t signing off on a bogus warrant the equivalent of perjury? The evidence was provided by two of the names listed above in their testimony before Congress in 2017. McCabe testified that without the Steele dossier there would be no FISA warrants and Comey testified that the Steele dossier was unverified.

    What more evidence is needed than two criminals’ confessions before Congress?

  17. parker – GMAFB
    Gradient Magnetically Assisted Fluidized Beds

    Looking up internet slang is very educational.
    😉

  18. huxley on January 25, 2020 at 9:43 am said:
    China has locked down several cities and 30 million people. The Wuhan hospital footage shows crowded conditions though not chaotic.
    * * *
    I looked at some of that.
    Totally insane: here is a virulently contagious disease, and everybody is packed into hospital corridors breathing on each other.
    Even the ancients practiced the concept of quarantine, even if they didn’t know why it worked.
    I understand China has also closed every movie theater in the country, which is probably a good idea.
    Looks like The Great Wall is off my bucket list for awhile.

  19. Doug Purdie on January 25, 2020 at 9:45 am said:
    …
    What more evidence is needed than two criminals’ confessions before Congress?
    * * *
    Well, for the Right, “you don’t need evidence, you only need allegations,” as Speaker Pelosi said.
    For the Left, catching them red-handed in the act isn’t enough.
    Cf: Feinstein’s chauffeur, the Awan family, Holder and the New Black Panthers, etc etc etc.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/eprgyt/pelosi_on_impeachment_process_its_not_a_question/
    “It’s not a question of proof, it says what allegations have been made and that has to be subjected to scrutiny as to how we go forward, but it should not be ignored in the context of other events that could substantiate some of that.”

  20. I understand China has also closed every movie theater in the country, which is probably a good idea.

    AesopFan: Anyone who watched Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo in “Outbreak” (1995) knows that!

    My younger sister has been diagnosed with a learning disability but from the movie she sure remembered the importance of finding the original disease source when we talked about Ebola twenty years later. (Although that still doesn’t quite explain the magical antiserum they come up with in the movie.)

  22. D.Cohen: Ah. Media hype hype.

    Odds are the Wuhan virus won’t burn the world down. But early on we don’t know, and it’s worth worrying about new dangerous things, because we don’t know.

    AIDS started as a disease which only afflicted gays, Haitians and Africans. We weren’t even sure it was a contagious virus at the beginning. However, it has killed some 30+ million people with 38 million more infected today, which means millions more will die in our lifetimes.

    Should we not have bought the “media hype” back then? Many more would have died by now had there not been such a strong global response. Or we could have just shrugged and said, well, more people die of malaria and cancer, so what’s the big deal?

    In 1918 the Spanish flu pandemic killed 3-5% of the global population. But it looked like regular flu except with higher mortality.

    When are we allowed to worry without some guy writing for the NY Post slapping our wrists?

  23. The point of the NY Post article was that the Wuhan virus looked like the flu in terms of number of hospitalized patients who died. This sounds odd, because nobody thinks of the flu as **that** deadly, but what the article pointed out is that if you compare — for both the flu and the Wuhan versus — the percentages of patients sick enough to be hospitalized who then subsequently die, you end up with about the same result. Around 15 percent or so of patients hospitalized with the flu die — sometimes somewhat more and sometimes somewhat less, depending on the strain of flu — and the numbers coming out of China now suggest the same 15 percent or so of patients hospitalized with Wuhan also die. (The comparison with the killer flu right after WWI is problematic because when patients developed pneumonia back then there were no strong antibiotics to treat the pneumonia — penicillin was not discovered until the 1930’s.)

    The Ebola viruses that every so often sweep over certain regions of Africa sound a lot more scary to me than the SARS and Wuhan diseases. When Ebola first hit the news it seemed like everybody who got sick died — 100% death of hospitalized patients — and there were no vaccines.

  24. When the Chinese government is FINALLY forced to admit that China is facing trouble regarding this epidemic, one may well conclude that China—and the world, in this case—is in HUGE trouble. (In fact, this is probably the ONLY possible conclusion.)

    Speculation is rife. Rumor is rampant. Catastrophic forecasting will be the norm for the foreseeable future.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/how-china-hiding-true-number-coronavirus-deaths
    https://www.zerohedge.com/health/martenson-risk-true-pandemic-higher-were-being-told

    Perhaps the only advantage of this gruesome and potentially catastrophic event is that it might compel governments to cooperate against this “common—and immediate—enemy” (with who knows what positive consequences) while also knocking Greta Thunberg and AOC off the front pages, as it were.

    The response against this enemy has already begun (a “collusion” between the public weal and capitalism, perhaps?—what say you, Bernie?)
    https://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/20/01/15171574/vir-biotech-aggressively-working-on-potential-wuhan-coronavirus-treatment

    Nonetheless, like most scandals, one can pretty much count on this being a far more explosive event than one is led (or wants) to believe (NY Post articles notwithstanding); as the cover-up, desperately driven and spun, can no longer be sustained….

    P.S. Ironically, while the coronavirus dominates the news cycles, a stunning (if it is accurate) medical breakthrough:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/health/scientists-britain-may-have-just-accidentally-found-cure-cancer

  26. You know the Wuhan coronavirus is big when it pushes Trump impeachment coverage to the side at CNN.com.

  27. D. Cohen: As a child I developed a morbid curiosity about diseases. I think it was reading Jack London’s “Scarlet Plague,” an early science fiction novel in which almost all of the world succumbs to a highly contagious, high mortality pandemic.

    So yes, I know that regular flu kills a shocking number of people, but we’re used to that number, just like we’re used to the number of people who die of cancer, malaria and automobile accidents. Sad, if it’s you or someone near and dear, but life goes on.

    However, my point is that the Wuhan virus remains as yet an unknown quantity. You may believe you know that it won’t come to more than SARS, but really you don’t know.

    According to latest reports there are “super-spreaders” of the Wuhan virus, who can infect not just 1-4 people but on out to a dozen or dozens.

    The presence of a super spreader in Wuhan indicates that the virus can spread with some ease, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

    He calls them “super shedders,” since they shed the virus — for example, in sneezes or coughs — in larger quantities than most other people.

    “You only need one super shedder to say, ‘This dog is going to hunt,’ ” he said. “It really does speak to the potential for this virus to be transmitted.”

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/23/health/wuhan-virus-super-spreader/index.html

    No one knows how far this will go. I doubt it will end the world as we know it like Jack London’s scarlet plague, but it could be serious. I’ve never cared for those whose response to a situation is to start wagging fingers about how others are responding rather than something constructive.

  28. Barry Mieslin: I don’t trust the Chinese government a jot on their Wuhan numbers. However, it is clear they are frightened and taking action.

    Can anyone build a serious hospital in six days? The Chinese say they will and are giving it a shot.

  30. And will anyone big who signed off on those warrants get into any significant legal trouble as a result?

    There’s another person thinking about this question. Name? Donald J Trump

    It goes right to the top. […] Let’s see how it all comes out.

  31. Okay, this is morbid humor, but everything I know about medicine*, I learned from M*A*S*H.

    https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-23-at-9.51.27-PM.png?w=1084&ssl=1

    https://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-23-at-9.51.39-PM.png?w=1078&ssl=1

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2ad7f4bd958f26752bafe60b9f0793fbcdc618e73756a479bbd596e61db7c46c.jpg

    *ditto most of what I know about drinking alcohol, as opposed to the medicinal kind.

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