90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, May 30, 2020

No-one Believes The Left's Narrative That These People Are "Protesters"

Rioters Respect One Thing:

Superior Firepower.

The Real Problem Is Our Corrupt Media...

Declassified transcripts add to evidence that FBI had no legal basis to interview Michael Flynn

In call with Russian ambassador, Flynn urged 'we need cool heads to prevail' on sanctions. That's a policy dispute, not a crime, FBI expert says.

In the end, the words that Michael Flynn uttered to Russia's ambassador that landed the former Trump national security in a three-year legal nightmare were simply this: "We need cool heads to prevail."

That was the message Flynn delivered to Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, the day outgoing President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for meddling in the U.S. election, according to newly declassified transcripts of the conversation.

Yes, Flynn talked sanctions. But his message not to escalate a sanctions war was similar to what his future boss, Donald Trump, presented the next day and what many other experts recommended. And it was hardly words worthy of a crime or a counterintelligence threat, a fact that the career agents who worked the Flynn case concluded on their own before their bosses meddled in the matter.

The long-awaited release of the transcripts by new Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe adds to a growing body of evidence that shows the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn, a retired general, in January 2014 or to continue investigating him at the start of the Trump presidency, experts told Just the News.

"Bottom line: the phone call was a foreign policy discussion on behalf of an incoming president. It is of zero counter intelligence interest or any legitimate concern for the FBI,” former FBI assistant director for intelligence Kevin Brock said.

"The fact that Flynn later misrepresented to the VP [Mike Pence] what he said about sanctions during the call is immaterial to the question of whether the FBI had any legal right to interview him in the first place," he added. "It appears that the FBI interviewed Flynn because he signaled that the new administration might go in a different policy direction than the outgoing administration. That is not the FBI's role."

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson agreed. "All of the innuendo about Lt. General Flynn this whole time was totally bunk. There was nothing improper about his call, and the FBI knew it," Grassley said late Friday.

You can read the transcripts here:

Keith Ellison

Why All-Mail Elections Are Too Risky and Unwarranted

The push in Congress and in many states to force an all-mail national election in November and in the remaining state primaries is both unwise and unnecessary.

It is unwise because absentee or mail-in ballots are voted outside the supervision and overview of election officials—thus destroying the secret ballot, an important hallmark of American elections for more than a century. They are susceptible to being stolen, altered, and forced. They can lead to the intimidation and improper pressuring of voters in their homes.

And let’s not overlook the errant vulnerabilities and vagaries of being misdirected or not delivered by the postal system.

Finally, vote-harvesting in states that have legalized it—allowing candidates, campaign workers, party activists, and political consultants who have a stake in the outcome to pick up absentee ballots from voters—dramatically increases the likelihood of fraud and illegal “assistance” of voters.

It is unnecessary because elections have been successfully held under much more onerous conditions, such as in Liberia in 2014 in the middle of the West African Ebola epidemic.

There is no reason we cannot do the same in our neighborhood polling places, using all of the same safety protocols that are allowing all of us to go to the grocery store, pharmacies, and other retail establishments.

In 1998, after a series of cases in Florida involving absentee ballot fraud, the Department of Law Enforcement issued a report on persistent fraud in state elections, calling absentee ballots the “tools of choice” of “those who are engaging in election fraud.”

That included the 1997 mayoral race in Miami, which was overturned because...

How China Managed To Make 'Top Gun' Boring

The Chinese government wants to take you into the danger zone.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Sky Fighters is Top Gun with the imagery preserved, but the life—and frankly any bit of joy—sucked out of it. It defies my attempts to make fun of it. Despite the occasional glimpses into real-life Chinese air force operations, it was boring. I couldn’t wait for it to end.

The Chinese government wants to take you into the danger zone. In 2011 Beijing released Sky Fighters, China’s answer to Top Gun. Like Top Gun, it’s about fighter pilots waging aerial war for their country.

But that’s where the comparison ends. Made by the Chinese military as domestic propaganda, Sky Fighters is possibly the worst movie with fighter planes ever made. And that’s saying a lot.

The film imitates Top Gun relentlessly in scene after scene, but in many ways it’s the American film’s exact opposite. While Top Gun is proof that a cheesy film can still be immensely enjoyable, Sky Fighters proves that a movie with fighter planes can actually be pretty awful.

Sky Fighters is a movie about the pilots of Air Division 903, a storied unit of the Chinese air force that has turned out “tens of generals” during its illustrious history. The action starts with two pilots engaged in air-to-air combat training. Yin Shang Hu, the cocky upstart, outmaneuvers his superior officer, Yue Tianlong, by using the famous Pugachev’s Cobra aerial maneuver.

The rest of the film is hard to describe, because Sky Fighters doesn’t really have a plot. It’s merely a collection of incidents that prove the superiority of the Chinese system, as advocated by Yue.

Which system? All of them.

In lieu of a plot, Sky Fighters poses a series of challenges to Yue Tianlong, each of which he excels at. One of the main themes of the film is the friction between...

A week that saw Derek Chauvin play a disturbing role in the death of unarmed black man George Floyd has ended with the cop behind bars and now facing divorce proceedings as his wife seeks to have their marriage dissolved.

Lawyers for Kellie Chauvin have announced that the former Mrs. Minnesota has filed for divorce from the ex-police officer who was her husband for around a decade.

In a statement, Sekula Law Offices said that the pageant queen is “devastated” by Floyd’s death and her “utmost sympathy” lies with his family, loved ones, and “everyone who is grieving this tragedy.”

“While Ms Chauvin has no children from her current marriage, she respectfully requests that her children, her elder parents, and her extended family be given safety and privacy during this difficult time,” the statement added.

Kellie Chauvin won the Mrs Minnesota pageant in 2018. Derek Chauvin was arrested on Friday. © Facebook/ Mrs Minnesota; © Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office

The only mention of Derek Chauvin in the statement was to note that his wife has filed for the dissolution of their marriage.

Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis police earlier this week after video of him and three other officers arresting Floyd became public. In the disturbing footage, Chauvin can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the African-American man says he can’t breathe. Floyd died in custody.

After days of protests in Minnesota and around the US, local authorities announced on Friday that Chauvin had been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter.

Kellie Chauvin won the Mrs. Minnesota contest in October 2018 and represented the state in the national round of the beauty pageant the following year. In a 2018 local newspaper interview, the realtor described her husband as a “softie.”