90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1925

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #637

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #817

Obama-Biden Government in Exile Ran Hunter Laptop Suppression Operation

Protecting Biden and his family from any negative news coverage prior to Election Day meant once again leveraging powerful federal agencies and Democratic lawmakers

to play along.

They got the band back together—to the extent the original members ever broke up in the first place.

Recent disclosures by independent journalist Matt Taibbi confirmed what other reporters have been covering for the better part of two years: According to files obtained by Elon Musk, the new owner and CEO of Twitter, the social media platform protected Joe Biden and his family from a major and potentially election-altering scandal as millions of Americans were voting early for president in October 2020. Years of denials and dismissals related to Hunter Biden’s lucrative shakedown of hostile nations, including Russia and China, were set to explode just a few weeks before Election Day.

Big Tech—and the government—was ready. Immediately after the New York Post published damning material retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop contradicting Joe Biden’s longtime protestations that he had nothing to do with his son’s profiteering gigs, Twitter claimed the reporting was based on “hacked material” and in violation of the company’s terms of service.

“Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe,’” Taibbi wrote in a lengthy tweet thread on Friday.

The Post’s Twitter account was frozen for two weeks; Twitter users were forbidden from sharing articles on the site. Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump’s press secretary at the time, was locked out of her account for sharing the Post’s story. Amid internal confusion as to the company’s shaky explanation for censoring the coverage of Biden’s laptop, Twitter’s general counsel defended the move. James Baker told employees that “caution was warranted” and claimed “some facts . . . indicate that the materials may have been hacked.”

If Baker’s name sounds familiar—and not in a good way—it should. Baker served as former FBI Director James Comey’s top lawyer during Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s attempt to sabotage Trump’s campaign and presidency with claims he had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton.

Baker’s fingerprints are etched indelibly on any number of Russiagate-associated scams, from seeking the first illicit FISA warrant on the Trump campaign to promoting the falsehood of suspicious links between Trump and a Russian bank. (Jonathan Turley calls Baker the “Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.”)

And this is where Taibbi’s tweetstorm took an odd and easily disproved turn. Taibbi says he saw “no evidence of any government involvement in the laptop story.” Now, giving Taibbi the benefit of the doubt—perhaps former Twitter executives wisely purged records between the company and government officials before being escorted out of headquarters—maybe he didn’t see any specific correspondence confirming the participation of federal agencies in the scandal. But the evidence is in full view and has been since the summer of 2020.

First, recall that Biden family corruption was the worst kept secret in Washington, and one that threatened to derail Biden’s third run for the presidency. His team took aggressive steps early in the campaign to halt media coverage of Hunter Biden’s extensive overseas business arrangements. In 2019, Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, currently the White House communications director, blasted the New York Times for publishing a quasi-critical piece questioning Hunter’s multimillion dollar paycheck from Burisma and his father’s efforts as vice president to stop the Ukrainian government’s inquiry into the corrupt...

What did the FBI know, and when did it know it?

The recently announced results of the FBI’s investigation into bomb threats made in February targeting Historically Black Colleges and Universities effectively debunk the narrative that these threats were made by a malicious group of white supremacists.

On November 14 — six days after the midterm elections — USA Today reported a senior FBI official said the “bulk of the threats leveled against historically Black colleges earlier this year are believed to be linked to a single juvenile who has been prosecuted as a minor by state authorities.”

The agency’s admission raised more questions than it answered. What the feds have not said is:

The race of the suspect
The motive of the suspect
When the suspect was charged
What state was the suspect charged in
Why the agency did not charge the suspect as an adult after terrorizing HBCUs

And perhaps most importantly: Why didn’t the agency share the results of the investigation far sooner than a few days after the midterm elections — and after multiple requests from Congressional Republicans and Democrats?

“The Biden administration launched an FBI investigation into the February threats, labeling the incidents ‘hate crimes’ and ‘Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism,’” Politico reported in mid-August. “Six months later, there have been no arrests. No suspects have been named, there have been no public statements about what triggered the threats and no clarity given as to whether the incidents were linked.”

Over the past six months, members of both parties called on the Department of Homeland Security and FBI multiple times to inform them of progress on the investigation. The most recent request was on Oct. 4 by Republican U.S. Senator Tim Scott along with Democrats in the HBCU Caucus.

One can only speculate as to why the feds slow-walked any announcements.

Worst-case scenario: the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI knew this juvenile was not a credible threat and was not part of a white supremacy group — however they continued to use this HBCU bomb threat story to promote a political narrative that “white supremacy is the greatest threat to the homeland” for eight months leading up to the November 8 election.

On April 8 — a month after the FBI admitted at least they suspected a juvenile — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a speech that “the most prominent threat is the threat of white supremacists. And that came quite clearly to the surface when...

Visage à trois #636

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #815

Biden’s IRS Commish Pick Covered Up Obama’s Targeting of Conservatives

The reward for covering up one crime is the opportunity to cover up the next one.

When Danny Werfel first appeared before Congress after the IRS scandal, he told them all the right things.

“It’s completely inexcusable,” the new acting IRS commissioner reassured members of the House Appropriations Committee. “This important agency is founded on the principle of operating impartially, and we failed in that most basic core principle.”

“The agency stands ready to confront the problems that occurred, hold accountable those who acted inappropriately, be open about what happened, and permanently fix these problems so that such missteps do not occur again.”

In the wake of the revelation that the IRS had targeted conservative nonprofits, there was a lot of outrage and the Obama administration sent in Werfel to clean house. He condemned Lois Lerner, the key figure and arguably the scapegoat for the IRS operation targeting conservatives, and claimed to be very upset that this sort of thing had been going on..

“We have to get to the bottom of it,” Werfel told Congress. “We will uncover every fact . . . I’m like everybody else. I’m frustrated, too.”

Anyone who seriously believed that the Obama administration was going to appoint anyone to head the IRS who would actually get to the bottom of things or uncover every fact was swiftly disabused of that naivete when Werfel released a report later that month covering it all up.

According to the report there was no targeting of conservatives.

“We have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the IRS or involvement in these matters by anyone outside of the IRS,” Werfel assured everyone. “There is no current evidence of the use of inappropriate screeners or other types of criteria in other IRS operations beyond those discussed in the report.”

Key words that repeated throughout the report were “inconsistent”, “mismanagement”, “inappropriate” and “insufficient”. No one responsible for this could be named for “privacy” reasons.

After supposedly asking Lois Lerner to resign, Werfel gave her a one month leave, when asked about her later, he explained that he couldn’t discuss her role with the IRS to protect her privacy. Werfel had promised to produce every single one of her emails and to prioritize finding them and turning them over. It did not happen. And the IRS later claimed that it could not produce them.

“It has to start with a recognition that a trust has been violated,” Werfel had initially told Congress. And then it went on being violated over and over again. Including by him.

Werfel stepped down a few months after Lerner and joined the Boston Consulting Group as a managing director. The controversial consultancy was a donor to the Clinton Foundation and paid Hillary Clinton a quarter million for a speech. Now he’s back as Biden’s pick to head the IRS.

Werfel will return to a newly empowered IRS, which, thanks to Senator Manchin’s dirty deal with the Biden administration, will enjoy $80 billion as part of the ‘Inflation Increase Act’. That’s a far cry from the old days of the Obama administration when Werfel had come to Congress, hat in hand, asking for $1 billion. With the massive increase in the IRS budget, the organization will have more resources to wage war against the political enemies of the leftist faction.

The Biden administration’s choice to pick Werfel over the roster of more extreme nominees that were likely recommended by Elizabeth Warren, is an attempt at rushing through a nomination. Werfel is a known factor and unlikely to trigger any opposition from Manchin or Sinema, the way that Warren’s more Marxist choices might, and will likely get a pass from most Republicans.

But, like AG Garland, he’s likely to once again be the guy guilelessly standing out front whistling a jaunty tune while the bank is being robbed by the fellows in black masks hiding in the alley.

Back in 2013, Werfel proved that he could charm Congress with some happy talk while all the dirty stuff was shoved in the back of the closet. And his nomination ought to be seen in that light. Bringing back the guy who took over after the IRS targeting scandal is a preemptive response to the scandals yet to come. Why bring back a guy whose most famous role at the IRS was overseeing...