The industry standard.

Via Washington Times:

You’ve heard it out there. You know the story already. USA Today “broke” it in a huge scoop on Monday: “Exclusive: Secret Service depletes funds to pay agents because of Trump’s frequent travel, large family.”

That’s yuuuge. Trump is bankrupting America! America, d*mn it!

“The Secret Service,” the explosive lead said, “can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission — in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.”

The “scoop” came from Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, who in his interview with USA Today said that “more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.”

“The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Mr. Alles said. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.”

Under former President Barack Obama, 31 people were protected by the Secret Service. Under Trump the number rose to 42, including 18 family members. Shocking.

CNN got all wee-weed up with the “exclusive”: “Secret Service can’t pay agents for Trump and his family, report says.” Lots of other mainstream media outlets followed the salacious story — Trump and his family are bankrupting America!

But it turns out the whole story was just plain old fake news.

Mr. Alles, in clarification to USA Today’s breathless report, later said that funding for roughly 1,100 agents working overtime in 2017 is not an issue “that can be attributed to the current administration’s protection requirements alone, but rather has been an ongoing issue for nearly a decade due to an overall increase in operational tempo.”

So, wait, it’s NOT Trump? It’s been happening for “nearly a decade” — so, uh, starting in, oh, say, 2009, 2010? When Barack Obama was president.

But Mr. Alles went on. It’s not at all what USA Today reported. “The Secret Service has the funding it needs to meet all current mission requirements for the remainder of the fiscal year and compensate employees for overtime within statutory pay caps,” the USSS director said in the later statement. “The Secret Service estimates that roughly 1,100 employees will work overtime hours in excess of statutory pay caps during calendar year 2017. Our agency experienced a similar situation in calendar year 2016 that resulted in legislation that allowed Secret Service employees to exceed statutory caps on pay.”

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Oh, this makes so much sense. Not.

Via Free Beacon:

In a strange turn of events, the Democratic National Committee is now attacking President Donald Trump for not building the border wall fast enough.

In a Tuesday press released titled “Trump’s Empty Promises On Border Wall,” the DNC wrote: “Trump has failed to deliver on his signature promise to build a border wall and have Mexico pay for it. Trump even admitted in a private conversation with Mexico that his border wall promise was ‘the least important thing.’”

It is fairly early in the Trump administration to expect a completed border wall. Construction of new border walls and replacement fencing is set to begin in 2018. The Trump administration appears unlikely to build a wall from sea-to-sea like Trump proposed on the campaign trail.

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Another case of overreach by the Feds.

Via AZ Central:

A federal jury in Las Vegas did not return any guilty verdicts Tuesday against four men accused of conspiracy and weapons charges for their roles in the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff.

Jurors returned not guilty verdicts on some counts and deadlocked on others after four days of deliberation, delivering a second surprising defeat to federal prosecutors in the case.

Jurors notified U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro on Tuesday that they had reached an impasse on several counts, and the defendants were called into court at 2 p.m. when the verdicts were returned.

Richard Lovelien of Oklahoma and Eric Parker, Steven Stewart and O. Scott Drexler, all of Idaho, were being retried on conspiracy, extortion, assault and obstruction charges for helping Cliven Bundy fend off a government roundup of his cattle in what became known as the Battle of Bunkerville.

A jury in April deadlocked on charges against the four men. It convicted two other defendants on multiple counts. But the jury could not agree on conspiracy charges — a key component of the government’s case — against any of the six.

Keep reading…

HT: HARP2

ESPN has now confirmed this is true. We are truly living in ridiculous times.

Via Washington Times:

Apparently, even being Asian doesn’t mean people won’t take you for being a white nationalist.

According to the popular college-football blog Outkick the Coverage, ESPN pulled an Asian announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game. The announcer’s name is Robert Lee.

“Did I mention that Robert Lee is Asian?” blogger Clay Travis asked rhetorically in a post that poured scorn over the popular sports network for political correctness, calling it “MSESPN.”

Citing “multiple Outkick fans inside ESPN,” Mr. Travis said Mr. Lee was pulled from the Cavaliers Sept. 2 game in Charlottesville against William and Mary “because they were concerned that having an ASIAN FOOTBALL ANNOUNCER NAMED ROBERT LEE would be offensive to some viewers.”

The fatal violence in Charlottesville earlier this month grew out of a white-nationalist and neo-Nazi march in favor of keeping up a statue of Robert E. Lee — “the Confederate General who died in 1870 and shares a name with” the ESPN announcer, Mr. Travis helpfully explained.

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Pull the chain and remove her.

JEFFERSON CITY, MO. – A Missouri state senator has been removed from all committee assignments after posting on Facebook that she hopes President Trump will be assassinated.

Tuesday morning, Senate Democratic Caucus leader Sen. Gina Walsh said Maria Chappelle-Nadal is a “distraction” to senators and released a statement saying she has been removed from all committees.

“It is important that the Missouri Senate conducts their work without distractions. With that in mind, Sen. Chappelle-Nadal has been removed from her committee assignments. This will help to ensure the success of the Senate, and the state, going forward,” she said.

Previously, Chappelle-Nadal was a member of eight committees: veterans and military affairs; public assistance; seniors, families and children; judiciary and civil and criminal jurisprudence; government accountability; education; health and pensions; and public employee retirement.

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Yup, according to Obama, the war in Afghanistan was over years ago. Except not so much…

Via Townhall:

On Monday, President Donald Trump laid out his strategy for the war in Afghanistan going into 2018 and beyond. While reaction to the strategy was somewhat mixed, there was one thing that stuck out: Wait, didn’t former President Barack Obama say that we’d be done with this by now?

Why yes, yes he did. Let’s take a trip in the way-back machine and look at some now-regrettable tweets, dug up by Fox’s Stephen Miller:

As it turns out, neither did President Obama.

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It was for the children.

Via Charlotte Observer:

The man accused of pepper spraying Confederate veteran re-enactors in Newton last week is a retired Burke County Schools principal who still works for the system.

Newton Police charged Karl Philip Smith, 56, of Morganton, with two counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of “failure to disclose to any law enforcement officer that the person holds a valid permit and is carrying a concealed handgun when approached or addressed by the officer.” He is free pending an Oct. 11 court appearance.

Smith was a principal at two schools – first at East Burke High School and most recently at W.A. Young Elementary School – before he retired on June 30, schools spokeswoman Cheryl Shuffler told the Observer.

He was reassigned to the bus garage after he retired as a principal and plans to retire from the school system on Aug. 31, Shuffler said.

Smith earns $6,897 a month as a transportation worker and was suspended with pay on Monday pending further investigation, the Burke County Schools said Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Observer.

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Equal-opportunity employer. He had a fetish for shooting gay black men full of drugs.

Via Daily Mail:

A probe has been launched into the death of man at a prominent Democratic donor’s home after it was previously ruled an accidental meth overdose.

The circumstances surrounding the death of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore are being questioned after people came forward with ‘incriminating information’ about Ed Buck, whose West Hollywood home Moore was found dead in on July 27.

Buck, 62, who has given money to names such as Hillary Clinton and Jerry Brown, has been accused by other escorts of instructing them to ingest dangerous amounts of drugs for pay.

Buck’s attorney has repeatedly denied the accusations.

The LA County Sheriff’s Office, at a city council meeting on Monday, said it was investigating the death but needed the cooperation of other alleged victims.

‘Ed Buck has been soliciting young, gay black men,’ Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, told reporters outside the city council meeting.

‘He has them wear these long white under-johns. He takes pictures of them. He hits them up with meth. The more meth that they smoke and inject, the more money that he gives them.’

Keep reading…

Something Obama was reluctant to do for fear of offending people.

This is horrific and child abuse.

Via Daily Caller:

Angry parents gathered Monday night to protest a California teacher that read transgender books to her kindergarteners and encouraged a clothes-changing demonstration, saying it was inappropriate to vividly portray transgenderism to such young children.

In an alleged attempt to introduce a diversity of opinion, the Rocklin Academy teacher read the kindergarteners two books on transgenderism and let a student reveal her “true identity” by changing clothes in front of the class. To many parents of the kindergarten students, however, the fact that the school board failed to warn them in advance of the teacher’s intentions was unacceptable.

“These parents feel betrayed by the school district that they were not notified,” said Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute, according to CBS Sacramento.

“The kindergartners came home very confused, about whether or not you can pick your gender, whether or not they really were a boy or a girl,” England said at the board meeting Monday night.

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Hi @brhodes pic.twitter.com/ZCQYJiKoO5

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) August 22, 2017

Unreal.

Via Free Beacon:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) — Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations.

The report by a panel of independent U.N. experts, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained.

“The panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile, and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK (North Korea),” the experts wrote in the 37-page report.

“Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” according to the report.

Keep reading…

“Their motto (Google) is do no evil, they’re full of sh*t” – Steve Jobs

Via The Sun:

The technology giant has effectively turned millions of its users’ smartphones into listening devices that can capture intimate conversations – even when they aren’t in the room.

If you own an Android phone, it’s likely that you’ve used Google’s Assistant, which is similar to Apple’s Siri.

Google says it only turns on and begins recording when you utter the words “OK Google”.

But a Sun investigation has found that the virtual assistant is a little hard of hearing.

In some cases, just saying “OK” in conversation prompted it to switch on your phone and record around 20 seconds of audio.

It regularly switches on the microphone as you go about your day-to-day activities, none the wiser.

Keep reading…

Kim is the one who’ll end up in a body bag…

Via Fox News:

President Trump is pictured looking out over a Guam graveyard cluttered with crosses in a photoshopped image from the newest propaganda film — and grim warning — from North Korea.

The regime followed the video with a statement posted through its KCNA news agency, saying Trump “spouted rubbish” and frequently tweeted about “weird articles of his ego-driven thoughts” and attacking South Korea’s “puppy-like” Defense Minister Song Young-moo for “pinning hope on that mad guy.”

But the picture of a graveyard believed to be in Guam may be the most rattling in the video, given dictator Kim Jong Un’s repeated threats to strike the U.S. territory with a missile. The video also features Vice President Pence engulfed in flames.

Keep reading…

Even the Democrat mayor of Phoenix is telling people they need to chill out.

Via Reuters:

Large protests could greet President Donald Trump on Tuesday when he travels to Arizona for his first campaign rally since he caused an uproar with his remarks about a white nationalist demonstration in Virginia.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, asked the Republican president to postpone Tuesday’s event scheduled for 7 p.m. MST (0200 GMT on Wednesday) in light of his response to the street battles that broke out earlier this month at a protest against the removal of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville.

Trump was widely criticized for blaming both white nationalists and counter-protesters for the violence at the rally organized by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

“America is hurting. And it is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline,” Stanton wrote in the Washington Post. “With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match.”

Several anti-Trump demonstrations are planned for Phoenix, according to social media postings by local activists.

Keep reading…

How many years is this now? Can we finally get to the truth?

Via Fox News:

A federal judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to release the names of specific employees involved in targeting Tea Party groups, after years of litigation over what conservatives have long called “chilling” behavior by one of the government’s “most feared” agencies.

Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also said the IRS must provide information about which groups were targeted and why, along with a strategy to make sure such targeting doesn’t happen again.

The IRS is involved in multiple lawsuits with conservative groups related to the Tea Party targeting scandal; this particular case involves True the Vote.

“We’re thrilled the judge has taken this step and it feels good to have it recognized that they need to be held to account,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht told Fox News on Monday. “What happened to me was very personal—my name was thrown around the IRS, and the names of the people involved need to be known. What they did was criminal.”

Keep reading..

And he knows an abject liar when he sees one.

Pathetic.

How progressive.

Via Mercury News:

Amid neighborhood backlash, city leaders have pared back one of San Jose’s most creative ideas for housing its thousands of homeless — erecting shed-like “tiny homes” for them — from 99 potential sites to just four.

The tiny homes, usually about 70 square-feet, are temporary sleeping cabins with doors and windows. Other states like Oregon have used them to house the homeless, and a bill by former Assemblywoman Nora Campos, allowed San Jose to build the unconventional structures to get people off the streets amid a housing crisis.

But finding sites for the tiny home villages — which could house up to 25 people — proved to be a major challenge. The city looked for publicly owned sites that were a half-acre in size, near transit and with access to utilities. But after an outpouring of complaints, San Jose officials added even more restrictions — 100 feet away from homes and creeks and 150 feet from schools and parks, leaving just a handful of potential sites.

“It’s a shame that we didn’t have more viable opportunities from this list,” said Ray Bramson, the city’s acting deputy director of housing. “But we were constrained because land is so hard to find in this community. Some of the major concerns that we heard were about the potential impacts, from traffic to noise to new people coming into the neighborhood. We’re trying to be respectful of neighbors and the community.”

Campos said Friday she’s “disappointed” with San Jose’s new criteria and that the city is missing an opportunity to use her bill to “lead the charge” on reducing homelessness.

“They’re almost segregating homeless families from existing neighborhoods and that’s not what San Jose is about,” Campos said. “If we can do this right and not give in to NIMBY-ism, then we set the path for other cities in California to address the homeless crisis in their own communities. This sends the wrong message.”

Keep reading…

HT: Wirecutter

He hit on the reasons why Obama failed such as announcing a time table for leaving.

Via Free Beacon:

The Trump administration will place new pressure on Pakistan to stop providing safe haven to terrorists as part of a broader Afghanistan strategy update announced Monday night.

President Donald Trump, who delivered a long-awaited address outlining a new plan for the 16-year war, now the nation’s longest, suggested the United States will slash the billions of dollars in aid provided to Pakistan annually if it fails to take action against terrorist groups, namely, the Taliban.

“Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan,” Trump said. “It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.”

Pakistan and bordering Afghanistan are home to the highest concentration of terrorist groups in the world, with more than 20 U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations residing in the two countries. The Pakistani government is notorious for harboring terrorist groups, including top Taliban leaders.

Trump also said the United States will seek greater help from India, Pakistan’s neighbor to the south, in the areas of economic assistance and development in Afghanistan.

The announcement follows a months-long policy review encompassing top U.S. military commanders and political advisers and aims to change the tide of the war that has been locked in a stalemate for over half a year.

Trump in his Monday speech said he will not detail troop levels, nor will he issue an end date for withdrawal. He said the war will be guided by conditions rather than timelines, but did not expand on how the United States would achieve victory.

Keep reading…