It’s Wednesday, December 20th, 2017…but before we begin, how’s THIS for a government operation akin to Obamacare:
“A half-hour behind schedule Monday morning on its inaugural ride along a new route, an Amtrak train carrying 77 passengers derailed on a tight curve south of Seattle, sending train cars into the woods and onto a highway below, killing three people and injuring dozens.
Federal transportation investigators were on their way to the crash scene along the highway between Tacoma and Olympia. They said no cause had yet been determined. Concerns about the safety of the bypass route—meant to speed rail traffic—had been raised in the past by local officials.
Rail experts said online GPS data from the train and the pattern of wreckage indicated that the train took the curve—with a posted speed limit of 30 miles an hour—too fast (an additional 50 mph too fast!), lifting 12 cars and an engine off the rails; some dangled over the highway.
An anti-crash system for trains designed to thwart serious accidents of human error, such as derailments from over-speeding, wasn’t activated, according to an Amtrak spokeswoman…”
Helluva way to run a railroad; then again, imagine the carnage had it been running on time!
Now consider how your healthcare will improve…
Or NOT!!!
…when Progressives finally gain unfettered control of that!
Meanwhile, here’s a Daily Gouge UPDATE:
“Investigators are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding train plunged off an overpass, killing at least three people, was distracted by the presence of an employee-in-training next to him in the locomotive, a federal official said Tuesday. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators want to know whether the engineer lost “situational awareness” because of the second person in the cab.
Preliminary information indicated that the emergency brake on the Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state went off automatically and was not manually activated by the engineer, National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said. The train was hurtling at 80 mph (129 kph) in a 30 mph (48 kph) zone Monday morning when it ran off the rails along a curve south of Seattle, sending some of its cars plummeting onto an interstate highway below, Dinh-Zarr said, citing data from the locomotive’s event recorder.
Skid marks — so-called “witness marks” — from the train’s wheels show where it left the track, she added. Dinh-Zarr said it is not yet known what caused the train to derail and that it was too early in the investigation to conclude why it was going so fast…”
And here we thought the derailment was due to a lack of “situational awareness” owing to the presence of another individual in cab. Like…WHAT: it was the engineer’s first time running the route?!? The excuses for this bit of bureaucratic blarney stink like an Obama or Clinton at low tide.
Yeah,…and the reason First Officer Murdoch failed to sight the iceberg which sunk the Titanic in time was the presence of other “individuals” on the bridge immediately prior to the collision.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, as David French describes at NRO…
“Over the weekend Politico’s Josh Meyer published a blockbuster report that can’t be allowed to disappear into the void of the holiday season. In painstaking detail, it documents claims that the Obama administration crippled Drug Enforcement Administration operations against Hezbollah as part of its effort to reach a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.
Why would the DEA, of all agencies, target an international terrorist organization? It turns out that Hezbollah had become a major player in international cocaine trafficking and was using proceeds from its drug-running and arms-dealing to finance — among other things — the purchase of explosively formed penetrators (EFP’s), the deadliest IEDs used against American soldiers in Iraq.
Hezbollah had transformed itself into an “international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year.” The DEA’s “Project Cassandra” was designed to disrupt this syndicate. And just as the operation began reaching into the highest echelons of one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, the Obama administration started to shut it down...”
Since inquiring minds are just dying to know why, Politico provides the damning details:
“In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
…Obama had entered office in 2009 promising to improve relations with Iran as part of a broader rapprochement with the Muslim world. On the campaign trail, he had asserted repeatedly that the Bush administration’s policy of pressuring Iran to stop its illicit nuclear program wasn’t working, and that he would reach out to Tehran to reduce tensions.
The man who would become Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director, John Brennan, went further. He recommended in a policy paper that “the next president has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries” through not only a direct dialogue, but “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system.”
By May 2010, Brennan, then assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, confirmed in a speech that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, saying it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and, ultimately, a political party with representatives in the Lebanese Parliament and Cabinet, according to a Reuters report.
“There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”
In practice, the administration’s willingness to envision a new role for Hezbollah in the Middle East, combined with its desire for a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program, translated into a reluctance to move aggressively against the top Hezbollah operatives, according to Project Cassandra members and others…”
You’ll forgive us for ending a sentence with a preposition as we wonder, in all seriousness, exactly whose side WERE these guys ON?!?
We have our opinion…though if your’s is any different, we strongly recommend you consider yourself among those highlighted in the #4 video at the top of the page.
Speaking of bad actors, as the WSJ reports…
“Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another. They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack to North Korea.
The attack spread indiscriminately across the world in May. It encrypted and rendered useless hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses and homes. While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers. It was cowardly, costly and careless. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible.
We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either. Other governments and private companies agree. The United Kingdom attributes the attack to North Korea, and Microsoft traced the attack to cyber affiliates of the North Korean government.
The consequences and repercussions of WannaCry were beyond economic. The malicious software hit computers in the U.K.’s health-care sector particularly hard, compromising systems that perform critical work. These disruptions put lives at risk.
…North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious. WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless…”
But like the Iranians and their plans to immolate Israel…
…under the Obama Doctrine, the NoKo’s must be given equal freedom to destroy…even if the target is the majority of those who survived The Holocaust.
And this just in from FOX News:
“Let them fight for a little. It will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” – Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas, echoing former mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake giving space to rioters “who wished to destroy”!
“Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas announced Monday that he is retiring, which the city said is “effective immediately,” following criticism surrounding the department’s handling of a deadly white supremacist rally in the Virginia town this past summer.
Thomas, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force who was appointed to the position in April 2016, said that “nothing in my career has brought me more pride than serving as the Police Chief for the City of Charlottesville.”…”
For those who read the Monday edition of The Gouge, this is akin to Harry Reid suggesting his diversion of some $22,000,000 of taxpayer funds to a significant campaign contributor somehow constituted “one of the good things I did in my congressional service”.
Then there’s the latest from NRO‘s Andy McCarthy on…
“Three final thoughts:
First, I again ask: Why on earth does Mueller need a staff of 17 lawyers? The justification for this empire-building is that it ensures adequate resources can be thrown at complex legal issues that arise in an investigation of the president involving classified matters and foreign intrigue. Yet here again we see Mueller’s team, rather than working out a careful legal arrangement with lawyers for the witnesses to guard against tainting their investigation, using the bully approach — because, they reckon, they can. Consequently, we have a mess where we shouldn’t even have an issue. The Trump camp is now claiming Mueller, in addition to refraining from giving the Trump lawyers a heads-up about the request for transition materials, failed to set up rudimentary guard rails — such as a “taint team” to pre-screen the materials and make certain Mueller’s investigators were walled off from anything privileged that they should not have examined (a lapse that could eventually lead to defense motions to suppress evidence and dismiss charges).
Second, I often think that in their disdain for Trump, Democrats and some members of Mueller’s staff have convinced themselves that this situation is sui generis — i.e., because there’s never been any phenomenon like Trump, there is no need for worry that their aggressive tactics will have any precedential effect on future presidencies or presidential transitions. But they are wrong. The less it appears there is any criminal “there” there, the more this investigation becomes a criminalizing of politics. Why would the kind of solid people you’d like to see in government agree to serve if the price is crushing lawyer’s fees and the stigma of criminal suspicion — based, so far as I can tell, on precious little evidence of crime.
Finally, I can’t help thinking we’re seeing a gaslighting gambit. Last week, there were disturbing revelations about misconduct and rampant bias in Mueller’s investigation. In an effort to turn the page, Democrats and their media allies have choreographed three days of drama, fervidly suggesting that Trump is on the verge of firing Mueller — notwithstanding that (a) Trump has stated that he has no intention of dismissing the special counsel and (b) firing Mueller at this stage, when he has not laid a glove on Trump, would be an epic mistake. In that context, this dust-up over documents that Mueller has apparently had for a while is being inflated into a major breach of faith — one that will finally induce the reckless, mercurial Trump to fire Mueller the minute Congress vacates Washington for the holiday recess.
In reality, it is much ado about nothing. Trump is not going to fire Mueller, we are not on the precipice of a constitutional crisis that will tear the union asunder, and the disputed documents are not going to make or break the case. Mueller’s aggressive staffers will continue scorching the earth for a while because that is what they know how to do, and apparently no one at the Justice Department is going to tell them they can’t. But we’re no closer to establishing “collusion.”“
Here’s the juice: anything ephemeral Mueller uncovers regarding Trump doesn’t hold a candle to what Obama and Clinton actually committed!!!
Which brings us, appropriately or not, to The Lighter Side…
Magoo
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