90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, November 29, 2019

More Winning, NATO Countries Set To Meet Trump Defense Spending Targets

More European allies in NATO are set to meet a defense spending target sought by the United States in 2019, with sharp rises in Romania and Bulgaria, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, but Belgium and Spain will continue to lag.

NATO allies agreed a target to spend 2% of economic output by 2024 after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. U.S. President Donald Trump has increased pressure on them, accusing Europe of taking U.S. protection for granted and warning of consequences.

Nine NATO countries will now meet or exceed the NATO target of spending 2% of national output on defense by the end of this year – the United States, Bulgaria, Britain, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Turkey and France are expected to be just below the goal, with only Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg still spending less than 1% of economic output on defense.

That compares to seven NATO countries on target in 2018.

The increases also mean that between 2016 and the end of 2024, Europe, Turkey, and Canada, are expected to increase defense spending by a cumulative $400 billion.

“The accumulated increase in defense spending by the end of...

Hong Kong Protesters Hold Trump ‘Rocky Balboa’ Posters at Thanksgiving Rally

Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong held up posters featuring U.S. President Donald Trump depicted as “Rocky Balboa” at a special rally on Thanksgiving Day to thank the president for signing legislation supporting their cause.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted a humorous image of his face superimposed on Sylvester Stallone’s body, circa 1976, in the role of prizefighter Rocky Balboa.

Left-wing Hollywood personalities were outraged, and mainstream media fact-checkers tittered in disapproval, but most people took the tweet as a joke.

Except in Hong Kong. There, protesters appear to have taken the image seriously, as a depiction of American resolve against China.

On Wednesday, President Trump signed two relevant bills into law. One, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, “mandates sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who carry out human rights abuses and requires an annual review of the favorable trade status that Washington grants Hong Kong,” the Associated Press reported. The other bill prohibits the export to Hong Kong of non-lethal arms used by police to suppress protests.

It was not clear at first whether the president would sign the bills, though they had overwhelming support in Congress. Trump is in the midst of delicate trade talks with China, and while he has sometimes used the Hong Kong issue to gain leverage, he has also appealed to China by supporting talks instead of confrontation. In a statement Wednesday, he said: “I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong.”

Once the bills were signed, protesters were jubilant. At the Thanksgiving rally, they sang The Star-Spangled Banner:

The Left Has Despicable Hero's:

If You Wear The Shirt, You Too Can Be A Douchebag..

Nice T-Shirt...

Thank You Che Guevara...

Obama And Che Guevara...

If Fidel Castro And Che Guevara Had A Son....

ICE Busts Hundreds of Student Visa Fraudsters in University Sting

The perps tried to use student visa programs to get around the rules.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested more than 250 people who enrolled at a fake university hoping to cheat the United States’ student visa laws.

ICE set up the program to lure in individuals who have sought to take up residency in the country through student visas, without actually studying at a real university and paying tuition.

Most of the people who were busted trying to game student visa rules in order to obtain legal residency have been described as Indian nationals.

The fake students signed up with “University of Farmington,” a sham Detroit university that advertised itself as a pathway for the foreign nationals to obtain legal residency in the US without actually being a real college students. In reality, the University of Farmington was a creation of ICE from its inception.

The arrests have been taking place since January. Farmington never offered any college classes in a physical location, not qualifying as a accredited university to those who claimed student status in order to keep a visa.

Detroit’s ICE office has confirmed that 80% of the fake students busted in the sting have been deported or voluntarily left the country. Another 10% have been ordered by immigration judges to depart. The remaining 10% are currently fighting ongoing cases in the immigration court system.

Several “recruiters” for the fake school are facing criminal charges for finding people willing to sign up to commit...

Media Hypes Fusion GPS Founders as Victims

It’s a little like the proverbial child killing its parents and throwing itself on the mercy of the court because he's now an orphan, but, with the wheels of Barr-Durham-Horowitz justice inexorably turning on them, there are Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, on a media book tour claiming they are the victims of right-wing vengeance for their role in orchestrating a criminal fraud upon the FISA court and a coup against a sitting president of the United States. Holy Michael Avenatti!

The coup leaders were the subject of discussion on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” recently along with a well-deserved rebuke from one of the true victims of their perfidy, California congressman and House Intelligence Committee ranking member, Devin Nunes. As Fox News reports:

MSNBC lobbed softball questions at Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, in recent days and allowed their political bias to overshadow the facts, said Laura Ingraham and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., on Wednesday.

Simpson and Fritsch made the rounds on several MSNBC shows, to promote their new book, "Crime in Progress," which detailed the Steele dossier and their investigation into President Trump.

"It’s typical -- whatever they accuse you of doing, they're actually doing," Nunes said during an interview on "The Ingraham Angle."

"Even the title of their book is hilarious because they're the ones that are continuing the crimes... I think part of what this book is about is not to sell a bunch of copies, it’s to get out ahead of the lawsuits that are coming…

Ingraham said the network went out of its way to paint the research firm founders as the good guys and promoted the book as if it were the truth.

"The same media outlets who fell for the ridiculously phony... Steele dossier, are now embracing the founders of the firm behind the Steele dossier," she said earlier in the segment….

Nunes then called for Fusion GPS to be shut down for engaging in criminal activity and racketeering.

"They're the ones that went to foreigners, they took money from the Democrats and went to Ukrainians and Russians to dig up dirt on Trump," he said. "These guys are a complete joke, they're a racketeering operation and they need to be shut down -- very dangerous for democracy."

Nunes has filed a lawsuit against Fusion GPS and a Democratic group called Campaign for Accountability charging them with racketeering and organizing a campaign to discredit and marginalize him in retaliation for the exposing their efforts in the production and distribution of the...

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records show that Chick-fil-A is not only stopping donations to Christian organizations but is funding left-wing extremist groups, including the anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Chick-fil-A’s 2017 990 IRS filing shows the fast-food franchise made a $2,500 donation to SPLC, among a laundry list of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT orgs, Townhall reports. The Chick-fil-A Foundation has come under conservative scrutiny since its decision to stop supporting Christian charities such as the Salvation Army, caving to disingenuous pressure campaigns from far-left activists.

The SPLC is most infamous for inspiring an attempted domestic terror attack against the Family Research Council (FRC), a group that lobbies for pro-marriage and pro-life policies.

In 2013, Floyd Lee Corkins II was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the first-ever conviction for domestic terrorism under Washington, DC, law. Corkins pled guilty to assault with intent to kill and committing an act of terrorism for entering the FRC’s office in August 2012 and shooting a black security guard, who ultimately thwarted his attack. Corkins used the SPLC’s “hate map” — an error–filled digital map giving the addresses of entities that the org deems “hate groups” — to locate the FRC for his planned massacre.

Corkins was carrying a bag of Chick-fil-A sandwiches when he entered the building and started shooting. He later told prosecutors that he planned to smear some of the food on the faces of his would-be victims.

FRC President Tony Perkins swiftly denounced the Chick-fil-A Foundation’s support of “one of the most extreme anti-Christian groups in America.”

“Not only has Chick-fil-A abandoned donations to Christian groups including the Salvation Army, it has donated to one of the most extreme anti-Christian groups in America,” Perkins said in a statement. “Anyone who opposes the SPLC, including many Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and traditional conservatives, is slandered and slapped with the ‘extremist’ label or even worse, their ‘hate group’ designation.”

“It’s time for Christians to find a fast food alternative to Chick-fil-A,” he concluded.

In addition to the FRC terrorism episode, the SPLC has suffered a number of other setbacks and humiliations, but it has not backed down from its extremist agenda, refreshing its “Hate Map” in 2018 and putting mainstream conservative activists in the same category as neo-Nazis and the alt-right.

The FRC remains a target on the map, even after the listing nearly got some of its staff killed. Other supposed “hate groups” include the Center for Immigration Studies, Center for Security Policy, Federation for American Immigration Reform, and...