The truth often hurts.

Susan Rice discusses Iranian use of the money back when Obama was in office:

https://twitter.com/Dronetek/status/1215031028487733248

Susan Rice this week:

Latest map with 124 sanctuaries. I never realized how much I like green! So do the red and blue areas underneath 😎 pic.twitter.com/wnOQ3KaG5S

— Philip Van Cleave VCDL (@VCDL_ORG) January 8, 2020

JAW-DROPPING:

Look at how massive the line is for the #TrumpRally in Toledo tonight!

Ohio loves @realDonaldTrump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7oNBQH3OrE

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) January 9, 2020

I watched some of the rally. The crowd was loud and raucous, chanting USA! and other slogans. Like him or hate him, Trump is a phenom. No Democrat comes close.

https://youtu.be/9Wb8q6iQF3s

Kane:

“…A former federal agent has stepped forward to admit illegal spying on Attkisson’s computers, and has implicated colleagues. In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has been implicated in yet another improper government spy operation.

In the new complaint, Attkisson v. Rosenstein et.al., investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson names former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein and four other Justice Department officials as the government agents who of illegally survielled her electronic devices.

According to the complaint—filed in United States District Court in Baltimore, Maryland—Rosenstein led “a multi-agency task force in Baltimore that conducted surveillance of the Attkissons’ computer systems” and “used USPS IP addresses on other occasions to conduct operations.”

The complaint states that all of the defendants “were agents and/or employees of the United States Government working with Rosenstein” to conduct “the unlawful surveillance and hacking of the computer systems of the Plaintiffs.”

In June of 2017, Rosenstein signed off on the fourth and final application for the improper FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. A month earlier, he offered to wear a wire to spy on President Trump when he visited the Oval Office, although he later claimed that he was just joking.

Attkisson took to Twitter Thursday to explain in a video update about her case that she had just filed a new lawsuit in her years long fight “to hold the government agents accountable for the intrusions into my computer.”

“We have just filed a new complaint which I hope satisfies one of the issues a judge had that we’ve not been able to name the actual names of the government agents involved in the intrusion,” Attkison announced in her video. “Of course we argued we could not name the names because the government and courts would not permit us discovery to learn the names!”

She added: “We did some additional detective work. We have five names to present to the court—names based on our information that were directly involved in the surveillance of my computers. One of them is Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, a former Department of Justice official.”

Besides Rosenstein, the other defendants named in the complaint are Shawn Henry, Sean Wesley Bridges, Robert Clarke, and Ryan White.

In 2010, then FBI Director Robert Mueller named Shawn Henry as the executive assistant director (EAD) of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB).

Henry left the FBI in 2012 and now is president of CrowdStrike Services, the cybersecurity firm hired by Democratic National Committee to examine its computer network in 2016 after it had been hacked. Crowdstrike ultimately determined Russia had hacked the DNC emails…”

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Iran To Replace State-Run Television With MSNBC Broadcast https://t.co/eJMaORVt4A

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 8, 2020

STEPHEN KRUISER:

“…After President Trump made it clear on Wednesday morning that Iran’s actions on Tuesday night weren’t going to be the beginning of another interminable desert war I was quite relieved, as I’m sure most of you were.

While I’m not naive enough to think that Democrats would heap praise on the president they so despise, I did think they might express some relief as well.

Or maybe acknowledge that he’d just taken everything in the escalation department down several notches.

It is no secret that the Democrats and their media mouthpieces were convinced that President Trump was going nuke Iran sometime before the Super Bowl. Matt Vespa has a good rundown on the media’s chatter about it at Townhall.

I would even go so far as to say that they were hoping that we would end up in a war because that might help them in the election. These are the same people, after all, who spent last year rooting for Americans to be hit with a recession.

If you’re wondering whether I am implying that Democrats wouldn’t care if American troops were in harm’s way if it would help them defeat Trump in November, I am not.

I’m saying it outright.

Rather than just admit that Trump handled the situation well with his remarks on Wednesday, the Democrats just plowed ahead as if the president had declared war…

They’re doing this to limit Trump’s war powers.

You know, for the war that he’s not declaring.

I figured OK, it’s Pelosi, and pointless grandstanding is what she does.

Then I saw some remarks from Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois that got me wondering…

It’s almost as if they are disappointed and trying to keep all the talk of imminent war going even absent an imminent war, or any war at all.

The Democrats are more interested in being able to have a “We told you so!” moment regarding Trump rather than peace.

This, as the now-familiar saying goes, is how you get Trump.

Again…”

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Michael Goodwin:

“…If you went to bed early Tuesday, you were surprised to wake up Wednesday and learn that World War III has been delayed. No doubt you were also shocked that Iran blinked, oil prices were tumbling and the stock market was soaring.

Once again, the Chicken Little chorus got everything all wrong. The sky isn’t falling and Donald Trump pulled off a huge victory. Oh, and he’s still president.

Iran’s decision to pretend it was retaliating for the death of Qassem Soleimani, by lobbing ineffective missiles is terrific news for America and freedom loving people everywhere. So was Trump’s Wednesday offer of negotiations, which he wrapped in even tougher economic sanctions and warnings against any new attacks on Americans.

Over the last week, the president has put on a clinic in seeking peace while projecting strength. Just don’t expect to find the outcome described that way in The New York Times or on CNN…”

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Dr. Drew talks potential congressional run against Schiff 

He’s got my vote. Anybody to get Schiff out of there.

Kane:

“…A divided federal appeals court has lifted a lower court’s order blocking $3.6 billion in military construction funds that President Donald Trump planned to use to finance an expanded and improved border wall.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief order on Wednesday granting the Trump administration’s request to stay the injunction that U.S. District Court Judge David Briones, based in El Paso, Texas, issued last month.

The three-judge appeals court panel split along ideological lines, with two Republican appointees voting to temporarily set aside the injunction and the sole Democratic appointee dissenting.

The 5th Circuit panel’s majority did not provide a detailed explanation for its action, but noted that last July the Supreme Court stayed a similar injunction issued by a federal judge in Oakland, Calif.

Judges Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, also said there was a “substantial likelihood” that the plaintiffs in the Texas-based suit — the City of El Paso and the Border Network for Human Rights — lacked legal standing to pursue their claims that Trump’s planned spending violated appropriations limits imposed by Congress…”

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Documents Show Senior Kerry Aide Used Private Email to Send Steele Reports to State Department Colleagues

Democrats Grasping At Straws To Impeach Trump Now Regret Banning Straws

JOHN FEEHERY:

“…He would be a nightmare to play poker against.

He is always on offense. He is always making a big show of his big bets. When he does fold, he does it so quietly, nobody really notices, because he is on with his next big bet.

Predictability used to be the hallmark of America’s international policy. But Trump has changed that equation.

He is unpredictable, unconventional, and he makes foreign leaders, our allies and the Washington establishment exceedingly uncomfortable.

When he folds, like he did on a huge spending package that included some but not all of his requested money for the border wall, he does it so quietly, that nobody really even reported on it.

He folded, but he won anyway.

That’s how good Trump is at playing poker in this modern political moment.

The president has plenty of trump cards up his sleeve as he moves forward on his campaign to reelection this year.

He pulled one of them when he authorized the assassination of one of America’s toughest foes, Qassem Soleimani.

Sure, it was a gamble, and we don’t know how exactly it will play out.

But we do know that the man who had masterminded death and destruction for decades in the Middle East is permanently retired, and Trump’s decisive action has put everybody on notice, from Kim Jong Un to Bashar Assad that he doesn’t mess around when it comes to protecting American interests.

Trump’s move to kill this Iranian terrorist has roiled the Democratic primary, caused the left to embrace him as a martyr and sent the mainstream media into conniptions.

In other words, it has served the president well, from a political perspective.

The president has other cards up his sleeve.

He has the ability to thoroughly dominate media coverage with one 280-character tweet.

No matter what reporters want to report on, from impeachment to the Emoluments Clause, Trump can change the subject to what he wants to talk about.

He ups the ante with each tweet, making grandiose and often ridiculous statements.

The whole controversy over the supposed targeting of Iranian cultural sites is a case in point.

Nobody seriously thinks that the American people (or the military) would allow the president to target historically or religiously significant sites to punish the Iranians.

And yet the president mentions it, and the media goes nuts…”

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Worth clicking over

Lee Smith:

“…In making Iran accountable, Trump has knocked Iran down to its natural size—and likely made Americans safer from Iranian aggression than they have in fact been at any point in the last 40 years, during which Iranian proxies have repeatedly killed large numbers of Americans. Killing Soleimani is a much more important operation than those targeting ISIS leader al-Baghdadi and even bin Laden, since it will likely shape the future actions of a state, not the leadership rotation of terror groups.

Iranian-backed terror isn’t a stubborn, unchanging fact of the international landscape, except to the degree that we made it so. The policy of appeasement that began in 1979, with the embassy takeover, culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the Obama administration flooded Soleimani’s war chests with hundreds of billions of dollars and legitimized Iran’s “right” to a large-scale nuclear weapons program. In line with the decadeslong U.S. policy of augmenting the Iranian threat in order to avoid taking action against it, Obama said the only alternative to giving Iran the bomb was war.

Donald Trump was vilified when he exited the Iran deal in May. But in the eyes of the foreign policy establishment, he committed an even graver sin by exposing the 40-year-old lie that U.S. policymakers, right and left, had cultivated to rationalize their collective unwillingness to protect Americans from Iranian terror…

…Six U.S. administrations were complicit in turning Iran into a regional power. In that context, the Obama administration’s decision to flood Iranian war chests with cash and recognize its right to build a nuclear bomb was the logical culmination of the rot eating away at the Beltway for four decades. It was perhaps to be expected that an outsider who often doesn’t know when to keep quiet, and can’t stay off Twitter, would be the one to sing out like the boy in the fairy tale. It’s true, the emperor has no clothes. The rules have changed but that doesn’t mean the Iranians won’t be looking for revenge…”

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Michael Moore Tweets Apology For Death Of Soleimani In Farsi

A colossal nitwit

A picture is worth a thousand words. Fifty F-35AII’s The most advanced warplane in the world. That is a small portion of US capability. The MSM is hysterical.

Pray to Greta, Saint of Climate Change, for $18 Plus Shipping

Diana Olick:

• • Buyer sentiment in the housing market remained high in December, according to a monthly survey from Fannie Mae.
  • The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell to the lowest level since October this week, at 3.69%, Mortgage News Daily reported.
  • Prices nationally rose 3.7% annually in November, a new report from CoreLogic said. That is the largest annual gain since last February.

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Philip Klein:

“…As I pointed out before, Trump most likely viewed taking out Soleimani as a calculated risk worth taking. With an economy being crippled by sanctions, regular domestic protests, and military stretching throughout the Middle East, the Iranian regime could afford a major escalation a lot less than the U.S. To Iran’s rulers, war with the U.S. poses an existential threat.

The early indications are that Iran blinked. The regime dramatically launched ballistic missiles toward U.S. troops and made a big show of it to the world, but it also chose targets where it knew Americans were expecting an attack and would be able to take preparations to reduce or avoid casualties. It was telling that even the threats Iran issued tonight, that if the U.S. retaliates, Iran will attack Israel and Dubai, suggest an unwillingness to engage the U.S. were it to risk actual casualties.

It’s possible that, as the sun rises in Iraq and there is a full assessment, it will reveal there were, in fact, casualties. It also is possible that, even in the absence of casualties, Trump could choose to retaliate in a way that triggers another response from Iran. But that seems unlikely. Remember, when Trump backed off retaliating for Iran’s downing of a drone in June, he said the decisive factor was that it was unmanned. If there were no casualties in this case, Trump has an opening to declare victory and avoid a retaliatory strike. In any event, he certainly can take a pause before making any dramatic moves…

…By taking out Soleimani, Trump not only undermined Iran’s capabilities in the region, but he reestablished deterrence by demonstrating that the U.S. had the means, the intelligence assets, and the will to strike Iran hard. Barring casualties, this attack can be shrugged off by the U.S. The cost-benefit analysis is not even close…”

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