“The United States faces a 21st century global environment that presents unconventional threats from non-state actors, as well as challenges to our economic and national security from traditional state actors. Whether the threats are rogue nations seeking nuclear weapons, terrorists plotting to attack our homeland, or malicious cyber actors seeking to damage and destabilize our critical systems and infrastructure, we must remain vigilant against those who would do harm to our people and our way of life.”
“President Trump’s new National Security Strategy brings to bear all elements of American power to protect our people, generate new economic opportunities, and advance our interests and democratic principles. The State Department will work closely with other federal agencies and our allies and partners around the world to implement this strategy. ”
The publication of the National Security Strategy (NSS) is a milestone for any presidency. A statutorily mandated document, the NSS explains to the American people, U.S. allies and partners, and federal agencies how the President intends to put his national security vision into practice on behalf of fellow citizens.
First and foremost, President Donald J. Trump’s NSS is a reflection of his belief that putting America first is the duty of our government and the foundation for effective U.S. leadership in the world. It builds on the 11 months of Presidential action thus far to renew confidence in America both at home and abroad.
Four vital, national interests—organized as the strategy’s four pillars—form the backbone of this commitment:
Protect the homeland, the American people, and the American way of life
Promote American prosperity
Preserve peace through strength
Advance American influence
This NSS and its four themes are guided by a return to principled realism.
The strategy is realist because it is clear-eyed about global competition: It acknowledges the central role of power in world affairs, affirms that sovereign states are the best hope for a peaceful world, and clearly defines our national interests. It is principled because it is grounded in the knowledge that promoting American values is key to spreading peace and prosperity around the globe.
President Trump’s ultimate goal is to leave our children and grandchildren a Nation that is stronger, better, freer, prouder, and greater than ever before.
The previous effort at justification and damage control over the FBI counterintelligence operation to spy on presidential candidate Donald Trump was likely courtesy of FBI Asst. Director of Counterintelligence E.W. “Bill” Priestap.
The latest effort at justification comes directly from anti-Trump FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok; claiming the ‘insurance policy’ statement was to protect candidate Donald Trump, not to defend the republic against him. :::insert eyeroll here:::
WASHINGTON DC – An FBI agent’s text message that referred to “an insurance policy” and has been cited as evidence of bias against President Trump reportedly alluded to the investigation into Russia’s election interference and any potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
The Wall Street Journal, citing individuals familiar Peter Strzok’s message, said the agent did not mean to indicate that there was a plan to damage Trump. Strzok’s message, instead, was intended to mean that Trump could win the election, and therefore the probe “couldn’t afford to take a more measured approach,” the newspaper said. (read more)
…“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40″…
The rush to justify the actions of the 2016 Counterintelligence Operation against candidate Donald Trump is transparently motivated by congress beginning to question each of the participants.
The demoted DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr is being questioned today, and FBI Assistant Director Andrew “Andy” McCabe is scheduled for questioning tomorrow.
Notice how the demotion of Ohr doesn’t align with the justification provided by Strzok. If there was no issue of malicious ‘intent’ against Trump, then why was Bruce Ohr -a central figure in the overall plan- disciplined for meeting with leadership of Fusion GPS Glenn Simpson before and after the election; only AFTER those connections were revealed to the public.
♦Release #2 outlined the depth of FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page’s specific history in the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton to include the changing of the wording [“grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”] of the probe outcome delivered by FBI Director James Comey.
♦Release #3 was the information about DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr being in contact with Fusion GPS at the same time as the FISA application was submitted and granted by the FISA court; which authorized surveillance and wiretapping of candidate Donald Trump; that release also attached Bruce Ohr and Agent Strzok directly to the Steele Dossier.
♦Release #4 was information that Deputy Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was an actual contract employee of Fusion GPS, and was hired by F-GPS specifically to work on opposition research against candidate Donald Trump. Both Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr are attached to the origin of the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier.
♦Release #5 was the specific communication between FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page. The 10,000 text messages that included evidence of them both meeting with Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to discuss the “insurance policy” against candidate Donald Trump in August of 2016.
Today, President Donald Trump is delivering a speech outlining the administrations’ larger national security strategy. The remarks are much anticipated as President Trump is expected to give the general electorate their first understanding of the Trump Doctrine: using economic leverage to achieve national security objectives.
CTH readers have spent the past year discussing examples of how President Trump uses economic leverage as the core element of his geopolitical strategy. However, it is not discussed, nor has it been accepted/recognized, by MSM or the broader electorate.
QUESTION: Hello. You mentioned that the tax cut will allow many companies to expand and hire more staff. At a WSJ forum, Gary Cohen asked a group of CEO’s if they would expand or hire more workers with the corporate tax cut and less than a dozen raised their hands. Some have commented that the savings will be used for stock buybacks and bigger bonuses instead. Which do you think will happen?
Thank you for your blog, it is very helpful.
JS
ANSWER: The businesses that Cohen put that question to were big public business. The big public businesses only employ about 38% of the private sector workforce while small businesses employ 53% of the workforce. Indeed, over 99% of employing organizations are small businesses and more than 95% of these businesses have fewer than 10 employees.
I have probably advised more of the biggest corporations in the world than anyone. The bigger the business grows, the more it becomes like government. The boards are taken over by lawyers, accountants, and political tokens. The original entrepreneurs are usually expelled from boards because they are far too innovative than corporate America.
I had a front-row seat in Radio Corporation of America, where I began my career in computer engineering (software & hardware). Most people are unaware that RCA was a leader in computers. The board of directors thought the computer would be like the radio, which made the company. Everyone during the Great Depression wanted a radio to listen to FDR’s Fireside Chats. Then, RCA had all the government contracts for World War II.
By the 1960s, RCA had the main-frames tied up. They had installed their machines around the world in government installations. They wanted me to go to the most remote outpost and the tour of duty was 1-year and one-day. Thule was top secret back then. The location was the frigid northwestern coast of Greenland and was the U.S. military’s most isolated base. This was the home to one of the Pentagon’s primary tools for keeping an eye out for intercontinental ballistic missile launches from Russia. I turned down the post and that ended my career in computers at RCA.
RCA sold its computer division to IBM and Univac. They kept the servicing contracts of these big installations. However, they thought the computer would decline in price like the radio into crystal sets so they believed they were being smart and sold what they thought was the peak. RCA is now just a subsidiary and no longer a leader in the computer sector. Oh, how the mighty fall.
Why do big companies buy small start-ups? Because the bigger the company becomes, the less innovation they possess. They have to go out and buy start-up to expand. All expansion of technology comes from the bottom moving up. It does not come in the other direction.
The big companies will bring back their cash and some will take-over small companies. Others will use the cash to buy back their stock. It is also like funds management. Give me $100 million and it is easy to produce 50%+ returns annually. Give me $10 billion, the sheer size cannot be traded efficiently as a small amount of money and performance will collapse to a normal level and sometimes 5-8%.
Small companies do the bulk of the hiring, while the big companies contract and impose all sorts of restrictions. The economic growth comes predominantly from small business – not big corporates. So the response Cohen got is absolutely normal. The big contract and the small are the entrepreneurs.
The Tory Rebels in the UK Parliament joined forces with Labour and the Remain Camp to defeat BREXIT in reality. They claim that Parliament will now vote on the BREXIT deal, but in reality, they have created an open door for more uncertainty and economic chaos.
The Tory rebels were Mr. Grieve, Heidi Allen, Ken Clarke, Jonathan Djanogly, Stephen Hammond, Sir Oliver Heald, Nicky Morgan, Bob Neill, Antoinette Sandbach, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston. Another Conservative MP, John Stevenson, abstained from voting in both lobbies. Meanwhile, two Labour MPs, Frank Field, and Kate Hoey voted with the government.
The amendment was authored by former attorney general Dominic Grieve and was championed by other pro-Remain campaigners. The fact that the Remain camp indeed remains delusional about the economics of the entire mess is beyond contemplation. This seriously calls into question why there is no qualification to be a politician. They are ignorant of the fact that the GDP of Britain peaked in 1973 and has declined ever since joining the EU. Are they just stupid or corrupt? Britain is disliked in Brussels and has lost just about every case to defend Britains in the EU Court. Yet these people are oblivious to reality.
Nicky Morgan revealed their true motives when he tweeted:
“Tonight Parliament took control of the EU Withdrawal process.”
These Rebels have seriously undermined the process and the Prime Minister. Granted, PM May does not know how to negotiate. Britain holds all the cards. It should go for a HARD BREXIT and watch Ireland and Brussels crawl. The Germans will be on the phone to Brussels calling them an idiot since Britain is Germany’s biggest market for their cars. Already German cars sales in Britain have dropped sharply and diesel cars have become almost not salable.
Meanwhile, the cash Pound closed last week at 13323 leaving it neutral to bearish on our yearly models for now. As we enter 2018, the resistance will fall to the 145 to 151 level. The Pound Sterling thus still remains in a vulnerable position against the dollar.
Looking at the Pound against the Euro, it closed last week at 88200. The Yearly Bearish Reversal rests at the 82800 level. Our pivot point for resistance in 2018 will be 88120. This makes this very interesting. A closing above that means the Euro can still rally to exceed the 2016 high of 94150. A closing beneath 88120 will be a sign of weakness for the Euro and BREXIT will still unfold.
Support will be at 78800 in 2018 and resistance will stand at the 93100 level and that appears to be very firm.
QUESTION: Hi Marty,
I have been reading your blog daily for the last few years, as well as the archives. I just read your explanation of the difference between the house and senate versions of the tax cuts. The only thing that baffles me is not including charitable giving as a deduction. It seems to me that many people will stop giving what they can’t deduct. Then all these charitable organizations will then end up hat in hand pleading funds from the government. I would think it would be less expensive to the government keep charitable deductions than not. ANSWER: Both plans keep the charitable deduction and the property tax deduction will be capped at $10,000. Your assumption that people donate simply because they get a tax deduction is wrong. All the donations of the famous millionaires like Rockefeller were before the income tax. I personally bought computers for everyone at the grade school I went to and put in the necessary educational software. I never took a deduction because something that big ends up only causing an audit.
I have never known anyone to donate large sums only because they get a deduction. Donations are typically made because you have a passion for something not because you get the deduction. Under that theory, nobody would care who you gave money to. Even when we sold my mother’s house, we donated most of the furniture and they give you a slip[ for a deduction, but it’s just not worth the hassle to use it.
The big donations that get written off are usually from estates.
It is my belief, based on mounting evidence, a specific cast of characters -within the Mueller “Russia Election Interference” probe- were placed there to protect people behind the FBI’s initial false claims. Those claims formed the basis for the counterintelligence operation against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump.
According to reports, in August 2017 the Mueller team went around the Trump administration in their quest for documents, by directly demanding documents from the General Services Agency (GSA); the entity that hosted the communication network for the Trump transition team.
According to reports, the content of 12 email accounts was handed over to the Special Counsels’ office; consisting of thousands of pages of transition team communication. Innocuous, ordinary transition stuff, but the method of procurement is jaw-droppingly unethical, possibly illegal.
Well, now you don’t have to rely on reports. Here’s the actual letter (Full pdf):
Now, let’s take a stroll and explain to our neighbors exactly what this entire plot is all about and why they should care….
Here’s the way the entire construct looks in simple outline.
Career officials, managers and staff within the DOJ and FBI wanted to help ensure Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. Those people were ideologically aligned with President Obama, and held the goal of maintaining progressive advances as part of their motive.
A “small group” was formed within the DOJ and FBI to facilitate this goal. The first goal was to remove Clinton from the burden of the FBI email investigation.
Once that goal was achieved, they moved on to Clinton’s 2016 challenger. By the time the 2016 GOP convention drew near, everyone accepted that challenger would be Donald Trump.
As such the FBI “small group” began monitoring candidate Donald Trump in June/July 2016 as part of a plan toward the benefit of candidate Hillary Clinton.
However, the FBI and DOJ officials also needed an actual basis, a legal justification for their behavior and the time they were spending. The plan to justify that behavior was to create an official counterintelligence operation.
To get the counterintelligence operation going, they needed a reasonable basis for creating one. That basis was the formative seeds of claims of Russian connections to the Trump campaign.
To establish the basis the Russian elements needed for the operation; the DNC and Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to contract Christopher Steele to write a dossier that would form the legal grounding for the counterintelligence operation.
Fusion GPS hired DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, who was well versed in counterintelligence operations, CIA operations, and using tradecraft to create illusions.
Nellie Ohr worked with retired British MI6 Agent Christopher Steele to manufacture the Steele Dossier. The dossier would create take innocuous connections between Trump and Russian people, enhance them, fabricate some nefarious appearance, and then be turned over to Bruce Ohr’s counterintelligence buddy in the FBI Peter Strzok.
In essence, the Clinton’s created the Russian “angle” out of thin air; and the FBI and DOJ used that creation as the legal underpinning for the counterintelligence operation.
The cointel op was always just a ruse for wiretapping, surveillance and monitoring of Donald Trump campaign officials.
The FBI (Strzok) and DOJ (Ohr) dressed up the Steele Dossier to apply for a FISA warrant (DOJ Attorney Lisa Page). The surveillance was happening with or without the FISA approval; but the FISA warrant would make the surveillance legal.
The initial application to the FISA Court was so sketchy (June/July 2016) is was actually denied. Denials rarely happen. One-in-a-thousand.
The Steele Dossier was dressed up some more. More stuff added, thanks to Christopher Steele and Nelli Ohr, to the second FISA application in Sept./October. That FISA application again submitted by Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page. That warrant was approved.
If Hillary was elected, the entire counterintelligence operation just disappears into the ether. No-one would ever know about it.
But Hillary didn’t win.
Trump did.
Subsequently, the entire Trump Counterintelligence Operation was likely to be exposed. So the team behind the CoIntel scheme had to make up the “Russian Interference in The Election” narrative, a larger narrative, to cover their tracks.
The manufactured basis for the FISA warrant, ‘Muh Russia’ now needed to become real; or at least have the appearance of being real or justified.
That’s why the goofy “Joint Analysis Report on Russian Interference” was created. Brennan (CIA), Clapper (ODNI), and Comey (FBI), and to a much lesser extent the outsider Mike Rogers (NSA). This became the “17 intelligence agencies” blah.. blah… blah.
It was never 17 intel agencies. It was four. Only three pushed it. Mike Rogers said he had low/moderate confidence in the underlying intelligence within the report. The report was created as evidence to enhance the cover. Nothing more.
[My hunch is if you put the Steele Dossier together with the Joint Analysis Report, you will find 90% of the FISA application documentation.]
Additionally, the entire crew, from the Obama Administration and current career people within the DOJ, FBI, etc., who understood the larger scheme, needed ongoing people to continue ensuring the story was maintained.
That drove the need for a Special Counsel investigation. Mueller’s investigation was really just another way the players within the original scheme could keep a lid on the events in 2016.
That’s why many of the FBI/DOJ “small group”, the crew who cleared Hillary in the email investigation, were also assigned to the Mueller investigation. Controls were needed.
Inside Mueller’s crew, the “small group” essentially works to watch over what information the Trump officials could possibly be discovering…. under the auspices of investigating ‘Muh Russia’ etc. If the “small group” comes across a risky trail being followed, they work to impede, block, delay or deflect anyone from that trail.
That’s the ‘high-level’ summary of the way things look from a researched perspective.
There’s one guy at the heart of this operation who can blow the lid of EVERYTHING.
♦Release #2 outlined the depth of FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page’s specific history in the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton to include the changing of the wording [“grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”] of the probe outcome delivered by FBI Director James Comey.
♦Release #3 was the information about DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr being in contact with Fusion GPS at the same time as the FISA application was submitted and granted by the FISA court; which authorized surveillance and wiretapping of candidate Donald Trump; that release also attached Bruce Ohr and Agent Strzok directly to the Steele Dossier.
♦Release #4 was information that Deputy Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was an actual contract employee of Fusion GPS, and was hired by F-GPS specifically to work on opposition research against candidate Donald Trump. Both Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr are attached to the origin of the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier.
♦Release #5 was the specific communication between FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page. The 10,000 text messages that included evidence of them both meeting with Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to discuss the “insurance policy” against candidate Donald Trump in August of 2016.
People have caught on; it was bound to happen. Back in August 2017 Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein created a special joint task-force within the FBI and DOJ to track down intelligence leakers. The investigative unit was requested by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
No-one was really paying much attention to it, until recently people started realizing the false media stories were too structured. The stories were fake, but the leaks were real.
Someone was seeding congress with carefully constructed false information and then watching to see where that false information surfaced. This is exactly how you track down leakers. We previously referenced it as “Black Hat Hunting“.
A few false stories leading the news might be accidental, but the Donald Trump Jr. email date leak, a CNN story, was so specific and so carefully crafted, it became the fake news leak that evidenced a clear strategy going on behind the scenes. CTH has been discussing the likelihood for several weeks, now there’s a bunch of people who have caught on:
(Front Mag) […] The investigation itself is real enough. In August, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats announced the formation of a counterintelligence unit inside the FBI that was going to get to the bottom of national-security leaks. They were looking not just at the intelligence community but also Congress. Which is where the biggest of last week’s botched CNN stories gets even more interesting.
The email that CNN reported was part of the investigative evidence shared with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Republican Devin Nunes, with ranking Democratic member Adam Schiff. So a member of the committee or staffer is the likely source of the CNN leak—and it probably was not a Republican.
If the mistaken date was on a document that was leaked to CNN and was part of a government sting operation—which sought to identify the leaker by altering a date on a document, and providing that document to only one member of the oversight committee—then whoever leaked that document has now been outed, and is facing some real trouble.
Of course, you can argue that Trump’s appointees to the DOJ and DNI are playing a dirty game against the elected officials and honorable civil servants who are just trying to get to the bottom of Trump’s collusion with Russia. On this reading, the GOP is just providing cover for a treasonous president. But the unending string of false stories being fed to a pliant media points in a different direction.
As anyone who’s ever watched a police procedural knows, when the facts keep changing, someone isn’t telling the truth. The reason that Russiagate reporting keeps choking on its errors is because the narrative itself is founded on a big untruth—the Steele dossier. (read more)
Because the wrong information within the CNN leak was so conspicuously specific, and because the details were confirmed by two additional media outlets, a bunch of people realized such a fake news story could not possibly have happened organically. All three media outlets: CNN, CBS and ABC had to be using the same congressional leak source.
Ed Henry discussed the most likely culprit last night:
(Click to enlarge this statement from DJT-Jr attorney)
Indeed, it’s not just Donald Trump Jr. who suspected the culprit. Almost every intellectually honest person who has looked at this, comes to the conclusion the most likely source of the leak was Intelligence Committee Minority Chairman Adam Schiff.
If you accept the original seeds were planted to discover leakers, you then have to assume Schiff was a target of this joint task force. That likelihood also passes the common sense test.
Appearing on Fox News, political pundit Dan Bongino also noted the likelihood:
.
♦Two “independent sources” both looked at an email, and both came away from reading that email with the wrong date? How is that possible?
It has been CTH contention for several weeks that a counterintelligence sting operation has been going on within the IC community. False trails of information, seeded by ‘White Hat’ investigators, intended to be captured by ‘Black Hat’ leakers – and delivered to their usurping allies in media. The stories are fake, the leaks are real.
The back-story on this endeavor includes an almost complete, years-long, Dept of Justice Office Inspector General investigation that no-one was paying attention to until recently. And don’t forget the ongoing FBI investigation into the Awan Brothers, vis-a-vis quantifying the potential intelligence compromise therein, plays into this.
That said, it would not be the IG carrying out a counterintelligence sting operation to identify leakers. In actuality, no official IC agency would be empowered to place fake news in front of congress. Setting traps for congress is generally bad form, and for matters of trust – really bad politics. That reality, amid those who follow DC politics, is the central point to dismiss such the “Black Hat Hunting” theory.
However, few people were paying attention four months ago when Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told us they were going to do exactly that:
04:30 …”The FBI has created a new counterintelligence unit to manage these [leak] cases”…
08:17 …”these National Security breaches do not just originate from within the Intelligence Community. They come from a wide range of sources within the government, including the Congress.”…
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Two days later, Sunday August 6th, 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reiterated he was going to follow through on the investigative demand of AG Sessions and DNI Coats and again referenced a “new counterintelligence division within the FBI”.
00:50 …“we’re responding appropriately. We’re going to devote more resources, re-evaluate our procedures and make sure we investigate every one of those leaks in an appropriate way.”…
1:07 “We have seen a surge in referrals (of leaks). We’ve seen an increase in the number of leaks. And we’re going to respond appropriately and try to establish an effective deterrent. Criminal prosecution isn’t the only way to prevent leaks but it’s an important part of the solution.”…
1:43 “That significant increase has necessitated an increase in resources. And so we have re-prioritized our cases within the National Security Division, we’re providing appropriate supervision at a high level, we’ve created a new unit within the FBI to focus on those leaks, and we’re going to devote whatever resources are necessary to get them under control.”…
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If you consider the years-long IG investigation is coming to a conclusion, and you understand there’s a new FBI/DOJ unit focused on finding ‘leaks’; and there have been several high-profile ‘mistakes’ based on leaks recently: Brian Ross on Flynn, Bloomberg/Reuters on Duetsche Bank (Trump records), CNN on DJT-Jr/WikiLeaks, etc.
OK, believe it or not, the Australian government wants sweeping changes in the Catholic Church and other organizations, including making celibacy voluntary for clergy, but the real kicker is that they want priests to report people who confess sins in church. Politicians no longer have respect for religion or the beliefs of people. To them, there is no God, only their power. This is getting really insane.
There are a number of states now looking into imposing a tax on every mile you drive your car. The leader of the pack has been the West Coast. I previously reported that California wanted to tax space shots per mile they flew into the sky. Then California wants to tax taxi drivers per mile they drive. Oregon was looking into taxing per mile you drive. Illinois was looking at taxing motorists 1.5 cents per mile they drive.
Well, California is losing money as oil prices are down and people are shifting to electric cars more so there than perhaps anywhere else in the country. So what is the solution to needing more money? Of course, you guessed it, California now says what the heck, let’s just tax everybody per mile they drive and that will make up for the loss at the gas pump.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
The publication of the National Security Strategy (NSS) is a milestone for any presidency. A statutorily mandated document, the NSS explains to the American people, U.S. allies and partners, and federal agencies how the President intends to put his national security vision into practice on behalf of fellow citizens.
