90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, April 17, 2020

Panda Boy Hears A Who...

The Government Is Destroying Our Cities, But Trump Might Be Onto A Cure

There are a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington who see no problem with an America defined by big box stores and chain restaurants.

California released a plan Tuesday to reopen businesses. One thing conspicuously missing from the governor’s slideshow was any sort of timeline, replaced instead by a six-point plan to remake society around fear of the coronavirus. Could be June, he said in a press conference, or even July or August. One thing conspicuously included was the observation that “things will look different,” including restaurants having to open “with fewer tables.”

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is right that “things will look different”: When our front doors finally swing open and we come out blinking in the sunshine, our cities and towns will be mere husks of what they were just a month ago. Empty storefronts, boarded-up shops, terrible “local art” installations in windows that once showed friends and families laughing over their favorite dish and bottle of wine.

Nine states have issued similar “plans.” Washington, D.C. chimed in Wednesday, extending the shutdown another month. Meanwhile, the House and Senate are fighting when they’re talking at all. The ideas batting about Capitol Hill are more money for leftist projects, more for employees, and more for that last plan that isn’t working. There is, however, a major resource to stop this nightmare that has not been tapped yet — one the president, who has spent far more years as a businessman than politician, teased on Friday.
The Problem

The Senate’s phase III Paycheck Protection Plan funds are “going fast” and set to run out “this week,” one small bank president told The Federalist; not that it mattered much to a lot of restaurants anyway. Politicians’ plan to give small businesses funds on the condition they either pay it back on an impossible deadline or disperse it to their employees wasn’t in their interest for actually surviving this crisis.

As one restaurateur told The Federalist, “My employees are already on unemployment. What am I going to do, hire them all when there’s no work to do, only to have to let them go again in June when the money runs out and we’re still not able to open? Back into the unemployment line, which could be longer by then? That’s not good for any of us.”

The reality is many of the small businesses we love might never open up again. Because even when bars, restaurants, and event spaces, for example, can legally open their doors, how many will be able to? For most of those, profit margins aren’t big.

Do leaders like California’s governor actually, really, honestly think that telling a steakhouse they can only have half as many customers will keep them in business? That the owner of a diner that needs to put six feet between each customer will still get up for work at 3 a.m. every morning? That a man will build a 50-foot bar so he can seat eight patrons? How about the neighborhood Italian or Chinese or Mexican spot that stacked table on table but you didn’t mind because you loved the food and the staff? Or you and your spouse’s favorite cozy little date spot? Gone, shuttered. It isn’t worth it for them to...

FBI collected improper cell phone pictures while spying on Carter Page in Russia probe

This Photo Was Not Found In Carter Page's Cell Phone, I Photo-shopped It From A Painting Of Bill Clinton In Jeffrey Epstein's Mansion...

Page says multiple FBI misconduct issues in Russia case make it worse than Watergate.

The list of FBI misdeeds in the Russia investigation keeps piling higher.

In addition to filing inaccurate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, hiding evidence of innocence from the courts and falsifying a government document, the bureau collected inappropriate cell phone photos during two secret premises searches in summer 2017 while spying on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The revelations surfaced belatedly this week when the government declassified once-redacted footnotes from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigative report on the bungled Russia case.

Footnote 379 revealed that in 2019, nearly two years after the inappropriate pictures were gathered, the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD) self-reported two violations notifying the FISA court that FBI personnel conducting two premises searches violated rules designed to protect Americans from unnecessary privacy invasions.

The rules are known as Standard Minimization Procedures (SMPs) and require FBI agents not to collect, gather or store privacy information about an American target that isn’t germane to the investigation, according to current and former FBI officials familiar with the procedures.

The footnote lays out in detail the concerns disclosed to the court, saying the improper actions occurred after the fourth and final FISA warrant against Page was issued in summer 2019 and FBI employees conducted two secret premises searches.

“On May 10, 2019, NSD sent a second letter to the FISC concerning the Carter Page FISA applications, advising the court of two indicants in which the FBI failed to comply with the SMPs applicable to physical searches conducted pursuant to the final FISA orders issued by the court on June 29, 2017,” the footnote said.

“According to the letter, the FBI took and retained on an FBI‐issued cell phone photographs of certain property taken in connection with a FISA‐authorized physical search on July 13, 2017, which NSD assessed did not comport with the SMPs,” the footnote from Horowitz added.

“In addition in a separate incident on July 29, 2017, the FBI took photographs in connection with another FISA‐authorized physical search and transferred the photographs to...

Michigan Sheriffs Will NOT Strictly Enforce Gov. Whitmer’s Executive Order

A group of Michigan sheriffs have declared that they will not strictly enforce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s draconian stay-at-home order.

“While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority,” Leelanau County Sheriff Mike Borkovich, Benzie County Sheriff Ted Schendel, Manistee County Sheriff Ken Falk and Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole said in a joint press release.

“She has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens,” the sheriffs said.

Foxnews.com reports: The sheriffs said that, instead of stringent enforcement, they “will deal with every case as an individual situation and apply common sense.”

They added that they had taken an oath to protect the “God-given rights” of the Michigan and U.S. constitutions. “We believe that we are the last line of defense in protecting your civil liberties,” the release stated.

The sheriffs noted that their focus should be on reopening their counties and getting people back to work, but added that CDC guidelines such as social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks should be followed.

Whitmer enacted a stay-at-home order March 24. It was originally set to expire April 13 before being extended to April 30. Over the weekend Whitmer announced an expansion of her order, which among other things prohibits residents from visiting family or friends with the exception of providing care, bans public or private gatherings of any size or family ties, and places restrictions on what essential businesses which remain open may sell.

Whitmer – who had to issue clarifications to her orders, most notably when someone tweeted a picture from Walmart saying that children’s car seats were “non-essential” items – has so far remained steady in her resolve that Michigan needs to stick to strict stay-at-home measures in...

CNN is far from alone when it comes to boosting Chinese propaganda, but it’s home to the most recent example of American media pulling for China in the past few months.

The network experienced almost immediate backlash April 13 when it published a story in which the main source was a press release from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Stated clearly: CNN’s article reporting the Chinese Navy “has done a much better job controlling coronavirus than the US Navy” could hardly be told apart from the PLA press release it cited. It was an almost exact replica.

“There is a word for anyone who takes the word of an authoritarian regime, with a long record of lying, whether it was President Trump praising China’s clearly flawed response to Coronavirus or U.S. media repeating clearly bogus PLA talking points: Fool,” Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at New America told the Daily Caller.

Cadets from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy march in formation before a ceremony to mark Martyr’s Day at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Monday, Sept. 30, 2019. (Mark Schiefelbein – Pool/Getty Images)

CNN’s propaganda push was “incredibly irresponsible” and “audacious,” Rebeccah Heinrichs at the Hudson Institute, added.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that it is Chinese communist party propaganda,” Heinrichs said of the article. “While we’re in the middle of this pandemic, there’s multiple things going on at the same time. One of them is a fight for clarity and accurate information. And we know that the Chinese government is still propagating false information and so for American media to not look at anything that comes out of China very skeptically … is so irresponsible.”

“I mean the job of the media is to expose what is true and they are very hyperactive on making sure they do that. You can be hypercritical of the U.S. government, but then to turn around and to copy and paste Chinese communist party propaganda when the stakes are so high is just incredibly audacious and...