FISA memo blows the lid off liberal corruption

Well, what an interesting turn of events. The whole “Trump colluded with the Russians” brouhaha has boomeranged. The hunters have become the hunted. And is it not interesting how frantic the Democrats were in keeping a lid on the FISA memo? This is what I call the cheating girlfriend syndrome. (Sorry, ladies. Feel free to substitute cheating boyfriend. It’s just that I’ve never dated a boy. How last century of me.)

The cheating girlfriend syndrome goes as follows. Your girlfriend is super suspicious. Every girl you even glance at has her giving you the third degree. How do you know her? I don’t. Why were you looking at her? I was just looking around. She happened to be in my line of sight. Are you sleeping with her? No.

Andrew McCabe

The reason she’s asking so many questions is because she’s the one sleeping around.

The Democrats have been accusing President Trump of colluding with the Russians for 18 months now. There’s been not one shred of evidence to back it up. Now the story is beginning to take shape. They were colluding with the Russians. Let me explain.

We now know that Hillary Clinton paid for the Trump dossier by, in essence, laundering money through her attorney to Fusion GPS. We also know that Christopher Steele, the former British agent who authored the dossier, got his info from who? The Russians. It’s hard to know who was zooming who, but somebody was lying. It could’ve been Steele making it all up, or it could’ve been the Russians feeding him a line of baloney. One thing seems certain. Hillary must’ve known it was a load of bovine scatology or she would’ve used the dirt in one of the presidential debates. Instead, she feed it to gullible media folks and politicians like John McCain. Anybody who hated Trump.

It was also fed to the FBI. That’s where it gets interesting. They used it to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump and his campaign. Surely they knew it was bogus. Either that or we have the Keystone Cops in charge at the Bureau. If they didn’t tell the FISA court that their warrant requests were based, at least in part, on the Trump dossier, of which they couldn’t confirm the contents, then we’re only left with one theory. They were crooked instead of incompetent.

If they used their vast power to spy on a political campaign then Watergate looks like jaywalking by comparison. If they also used their vast power to try and unseat a sitting president then we have treason. I don’t use that term lightly. It was an attempted coup d’état. 

As I’ve written here before, I’m sure those involved convinced themselves and each other that it was the best thing for the country. Changing governments by illegal means is never good for this country. Some tinhorn dictatorship? Sure. But we have a civilized and proven way of transferring power that’s worked for over 200 years. It’s called the vote. Problem is the vote didn’t go their way. Too bad. The vote didn’t go my way in 2008 or 2012. Heck, it didn’t go my way in 1992 or 1996. It would never dawn on me that fabricating a story of collusion with a foreign government would be the proper course of action.

The question is where do we go from here? There needs to be a top-down purging of hostile elements in our intelligence community. I don’t mean everybody who voted for Hillary. I mean everybody who thinks the end justifies the means in removing Donald Trump from office.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Why the Schumer Shutdown backfired

We all know how the government shutdowns usually go. Democrats demand something unreasonable. Republicans awkwardly try to push their agenda forward. The left-wing media act as the PR firm for the Democrats. The Republicans get blamed. The government shutdown is over. Not this time.

What was different? Several things. First of all, trying to tie the DACA demands to a continuing resolution to keep the government functioning was transparent. DACA doesn’t expire until March 5. There was no need to throw it in the mix of a spending bill. Times past, however, the Democrats would’ve gotten away with it. They didn’t this time.

One of the reasons is the brilliant framing of the argument by President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mick Mulvaney so cleverly labeled this particular government shutdown ‘The Schumer Shutdown.’ The alliteration was irresistible to even the left-wing media who picked up the phrase and ran with it.

There was also President Trump himself. Nancy Pelosi cackled that the president had nothing to do with the negotiations. He had everything to do with them. Speaker Paul Ryan said as much himself. He said they were passing a bill that Trump would sign. In reality, the person who had nothing to do with the negotiations was Pelosi.

After the Schumer Shutdown took hold in the minds of the American people it was simply a matter of time. The longer the government stayed closed, the worse it became for the Democrats. They were stunned. They’ve never lost one of these. No matter the outcome, they were always able to pin it on the Republicans. This time they couldn’t.

Had we had any other president it might have been business as usual. If Trump knows one thing it’s how to negotiate. What the Democrats failed to recognize is he doesn’t have to have DACA. To Trump, it’s a bargaining chip. To the Democrats it’s everything. What they don’t know is they already have it.

The one thing the Senate Republicans did screw up was pushing the continuing budget resolution down the road only three weeks. That pushes it up near the deadline for DACA and Democrats will surely try to tie the two together again. That’s why having Trump involved is so important.

Remember where this whole Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals thing started. It was a ploy by President Obama to put a different face on illegal immigration. He could find some girl who was dragged over here at six months old who spoke perfect English and was the valedictorian of her school. That was supposed to erase the image of the tattooed MS-13 gang member who was butchering people in the streets for kicks.

The DACA folks (and they’re not kids any longer) were never in danger of being deported. Think about it. The only person who could’ve deported them was Obama. And he issued an order to protect them. From whom? Himself? No, it was all a publicity stunt to get the American people to believe they were in imminent danger of being deported. The Democrats have told that lie so long they now believe it.

So, Trump wants the wall. He wants an end to chain migration. He wants an end to the lottery visa. In order to get it he’s willing to give the Democrats something they already have. As I’ve said, it’s like selling New York the Brooklyn Bridge. They already own it.

The cards have already been dealt to give Trump what he wants. The House and Senate Republicans have to just not screw it up.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump's comment about 'sh**hole countries' was correct

We’ve had some time to digest the furor over President Trump’s alleged comments about certain countries as “sh*%holes.” Now it’s time to learn from the experience.

First, the president denies using that particular term. That may make this whole discussion moot if it were ever possible to prove it either way. Several lawmakers back up his account. The usual Trump detractors have feigned outrage over the mere use of the language when they’ve called him far worse. This was a private conversation in the Oval Office about a pressing issue in this country. Immigration—both legal and illegal—is something that needs to be tackled. Having participants in the debate go tattletale to the Washington Post is counterproductive to solving the problem. They sound like little babies who are only concerned about scoring political points and not really doing anything constructive.

But let’s concentrate on the terminology itself. We all know what the president is alleged to have said. Is it true? Without question it is. Haiti, for example, has a poverty rate near sixty percent. It certainly qualifies for what might henceforth be a new informal State Department designation. According to the UN, of the twenty poorest nations on earth, fourteen are in Africa.

Exhibit A in Trump's immigration argument

Critics of the president’s choice of words immediately called it—and him—racist. These are basically the same type of people who’ve stood idly by for generations ignoring the conditions in these very countries. If they haven’t ignored them they’ve applied liberal solutions that have only made matters worse. They blame “colonialism” for the plight of these countries. Most were subjects of either the French or the British. That argument doesn’t hold water. Hong Kong was a former possession of the British Empire. So was Canada. And you may remember a little possession of the British by the name of the United States of America.

The widespread poverty in these now-designated “sh*%holes” is due largely to the tin-horn dictatorships or communist regimes that followed their independence. The liberal solution is to redistribute resources from the countries that have figured this out to the countries who haven’t. Naturally, those resources are bottled up by the same despots who’ve made sure the rest of their country remains poor.

That’s not what the meeting in the Oval Office was about. It was about immigrants from these countries. President Trump’s contention is we shouldn’t be importing people who are prone to either be criminals or wards of the state or both. And he’s exactly right. Immigration to this country should be like a job interview. A State Department official should look across the desk at the applicant and ask him or her what they can contribute to this great country of ours. That doesn’t mean they have to be doctors. It means they need to be able to add something positive when they arrive, not drag the country down.

Yes, there are exceptions for refugees, but as we’ve seen with the recent El Salvadoran flap, some refugees come and never go home. These folks came to escape an earthquake in 2001 and they’re still here.

Check out Roy Beck’s gum ball illustration from Numbers USA on YouTube some time. You’ll understand that we can’t possibly take in everyone who wants to come here. Nor should we. Many of these people should remain in their own countries to bring pressure to bear on the sinister forces that keep them in poverty.

Donald Trump, in his crude but effective style, has finally brought the issue to the fore. We can either call it racist or address it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The real story of Fusion GPS is beginning to emerge

I’ve never bought this notion that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. To me, the story carries about as much weight as the Trump dossier. As we dig deeper into this bizarre story, we find the two are indubitably intertwined. 

The now-debunked dossier accuses Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev of hacking into the DNC computers. Gubarev is suing BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. In such a lawsuit, the defense is allowed to provide documentation to defend itself. Surely Gubarev wouldn’t be suing if the civil lawsuit risked exposing him to criminal charges.

Fusion GPS, the company Hillary Clinton hired to compile the dossier, is suing to try and stop a subpoena from Gubarev’s lawyers seeking everything they have related to the dossier. Think about this for a moment. If the dossier were really legit there’s no way Fusion would be suing to stop documentation that would confirm its legitimacy. Quite the contrary. They would be providing all the evidence they have to the press to make their case against Trump.

The most powerful argument against the veracity of the Russian hacking story is the fact that no U.S. intelligence agency has ever inspected the DNC servers. Is that not incredible? James Comey said they were taking the word of a company called CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is company that protects clients from data breaches. The mission statement on their website states, “We don’t have a mission statement—we are on a mission to protect our customers from breaches.” Their most high-profile client was the DNC. It’s unlikely they would be bragging that their only mission is to stop data breaches when they couldn’t stop the data breach at the DNC. In fact, it’s unlikely they would still be in business if that were really the case.

I believe the whole Russia hacking story was a cover-up for the real story that this was an inside job from a disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter. The fact that the dossier that supposedly uncovered the Russian breach has now been largely discredited adds credence to that theory. In fact, there’s no evidence at all that the Russians hacked the DNC other than what we’re being told by CrowdStrike, a company founded and run by Hillary supporters.

What’s even scarier is the FBI may have used the Trump dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, a man described as a Trump advisor. If the dossier is what FBI agent Peter Strzok described as an “insurance policy” in case Trump got elected president, we have a disturbing conspiracy that goes way beyond campaign dirty tricks.

And if the Russians didn’t really hack into the DNC servers is there even a Trump/Russian collusion story to investigate? No. The breached servers is the pretense used by the FBI and now the Mueller team to investigate Russian collusion. Otherwise, they have nothing. That means that the entire affair is predicated on information taken from a piece of paid-for campaign propaganda from Hillary Clinton that is demonstrably false.

Strzok was the point man on the Trump dossier at the FBI. He was also the guy who facilitated Hillary being let off the hook for the illegal computer server scandal. And he was the man who entrapped Michael Flynn. He’s also a fierce political partisan who had such animus against Donald Trump that he just might do anything to bring him down. And he conveniently found himself in a position on the Mueller team to do just that. But only if we take the basic premise of hacking as fact. Which we can’t.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

We could use some global warming about now

The new year came in like a lion. The average temperature in the contiguous 48 states was eleven degrees. Over 85 percent of the country was below freezing. Nearly a third was below zero. For much of the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains, temperatures were about 30 degrees below normal. Omaha, Nebraska hit minus 20, breaking a 130-year-old record. Other records were shattered all across the nation. Now, I understand that weather is not climate, but this whole global warming narrative is becoming more and more ridiculous.

From KING5.com

The U.K.’s Metro newspaper announced with glee that a mini Ice Age could hit by 2030 and “save us from global warming.” Save us from global warming? How many folks would love a little global warming about now? According to Science Daily, the cold kills about 20 times more people than the heat. Think about that for a moment. If we really care about saving lives then these climate change zealots should be praying for global warming. Oh, that’s right. They don’t pray. Well, maybe to a graven image of Al Gore.

It’s funny how the Branch Algorians are nowhere to be found when the temperatures hit single digits. Yes, there are a few die-hards braving the cold and the wind to preach the gospel of Al. The Guardian claimed 2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Niño. Of course, when you dig down you learn they’re using surface temperature data that we now know is not only highly inaccurate due to human error but has been purposely manipulated by NOAA and other so-called scientific institutions.

But authors of a study defend NOAA’s fudging of temperature data. “Stations have moved to different locations over the past 150 years, most more than once,” they write. “They have changed instruments from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, and have changed the time they take temperature measurements from afternoon to morning. Cities have grown up around stations, and some weather stations are not ideally located. All of these issues introduce inconsistencies into the temperature record.”

Isn’t this exactly what those of us who argue against using surface temperatures have been saying for years? Surface temperatures are too unreliable to be used as a true picture of climate. Yet this study argues that NOAA should not only use them but manipulate them as they see fit. NOAA, like many U.S. agencies, has been infiltrated by global warming zealots. We’re witnessing a scattering of so-called scientists and policymakers from the EPA now that President Trump is demanding hard science rather than hysteria.

The hard science is the satellite temperature data. We’ve been measuring surface and ocean temperature via satellites since 1979. What it shows is virtually no warming since 1979.

KING5-TV in Seattle greeted readers of their webpage with this headline: “Yes, it’s freezing. But climate change is still real.” They seemed to be trying to convince themselves more than their readers. They dragged out a Miami meteorologist who claimed the rest of the world was warmer than usual “with the warmest readings in the poles.” So, I checked the temperature for the poles. Minus 28 Celsius at the North Pole. The average for January is minus 24. At the South Pole, as of this writing, it was minus 29 Celsius. The average for January is minus 31.

The KING5 piece warns that climate is “the average weather conditions that prevail” at any given location. Agreed. Then if satellite data show we haven’t warmed globally in 40 years then the science is settled. Stay warm. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The liberals ignore the truth about tax cuts

My wife called me at work not long after President Trump signed the Republican tax bill into law. She asked me if we would be getting a tax cut or a tax hike. It was an interesting question, and one for which I did not have an answer. There are myriad tax calculators that have popped up since the tax bill debate began. I hadn’t used any of them.

I’m not faulting you if you have. It’s only natural to be curious about how such a massive overhaul will affect you. The question is does that determine your support or opposition to the new law? It shouldn’t.

There’s a fundamental question that needs to be asked. Does our tax system maximize our economy, or is it a drag on economic prosperity? How it affects each of us personally is inconsequential. The answer to that question is this tax law goes a long way in stimulating an economy that has been, until Trump won the presidential election, sluggish. The stimulation since the election has been running on anticipation. That anticipation only takes an economy so far until hope turns to disappointment and the economy falters again.

Now the economy has something concrete to believe in. Companies like AT&T and Comcast immediately announced rank-and-file end-of-the-year bonuses. Other companies launched plans for massive expansion and infusion of cash into the economy.

Try as they may to pit all classes against the rich, marketwatch.com posted graphs that told the true story. The people who would be paying the largest percentage of tax hikes were those making more than $1 million per year. The vast majority of taxpayers, even the rich, would get a tax cut.

Of course, it’s the rich on whom the liberals always concentrate. What these same liberals don’t tell you is the rich pay most of the taxes. They lament the fact that those making $20,000 or less get the smallest tax cut. Most of those people don’t pay taxes at all anyway. Hard to give someone a tax break when they don’t pay taxes. 

What really grinds the gears of the leftists is the corporate tax reduction. That corporate tax is cut from 35 percent to 21 percent. They drone on about the “rich corporations” like they’re some individual fat cat who’s going to skate. Taxes are simply another business expense to a corporation. Cut taxes and you cut expenses. Cut expenses and chances are you’ll see prices go down. Liberals seem to understand this concept when it comes to gasoline costs. They talk about how higher prices at the pump will translate into higher prices at the grocery store. The same principle applies to the high cost of taxes.

But let’s assume the liberals are right and these evil corporations will simply take that tax break and give it to their rich CEOs. Those CEOs will pay taxes on that money at a rate of 37 percent in addition to the corporate rate of 21 percent. Liberals should be happy, but, as we know, they seldom are. And as we’ve seen, corporations are already passing along the windfall to their employees and reinvesting in the company. That should convert even the most ardent skeptic. Only those who are purely political can witness that and remain unswayed.

How does the new GOP tax law affect you personally? Whether you get a direct tax cut or not is inconsequential. What matters is a rising tide lifts all boats. No matter what floats your boat politically this tax cut will be good for us all.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Unraveling the conspiracy at the FBI

I wrote in this space two weeks ago that what we were witnessing was nothing short of an attempted coup. Some thought that was simply hyperbole. Now we’re seeing the ugly underbelly of the entrenched bureaucracy in Washington, DC.

Peter Strzok, the now disgraced FBI agent who seemed to be trying to cook the presidential election last year, has been outed for the political hack he is. How he’s still employed with the Bureau is anyone’s guess. He sent a text message to his mistress, an FBI lawyer, regarding a comment she apparently made in Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s office claiming there was no way Trump could win the election. “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.”

What the “insurance policy” was is the subject of much speculation, but it seems obvious it’s the Trump dossier the FBI got from Fusion GPS, a company hired by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump. Colluding with Democrats to bring down a sitting president is nothing short of a coup.

Strzok will tell you he was only doing what’s best for the country. That’s what they all say. Watergate was all about a break-in to ensure George McGovern didn’t become president—for the good of the country. Governments are toppled in the name of what’s good for the country. What’s not good for the country is a handful of rogue FBI employees toppling the duly elected president “for the good of the country.”

This calls into question the entire Mueller investigation. It’s all predicated on work done by the FBI, an FBI we now know had a political agenda. We’ll have to see where this leads us, but it appears Mr. Strzok and possibly others at the FBI may be guilty of treason and sedition. Those are serious charges but these are serious actions. If people inside the FBI were conspiring to remove Trump from office then what else would one call it? And we know Mr. Strzok was a Hillary partisan in charge of investigating her e-mail scandal. He changed James Comey’s now-famous statement regarding Hillary’s actions from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” As you’ll recall, Comey let Hillary off the hook.

It was Peter Strzok who interviewed Hillary and her aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. We know Mills and Abedin lied to the FBI, something that got Mike Flynn in a lot of hot water. Mills and Abedin skated. Why weren’t they prosecuted like Flynn?

The irony is the FBI launched an investigation to discover if the Russians colluded with Trump to influence the election when it was they who were doing the colluding and influencing. It was the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse. And what’s also ironic is the investigation that so many on the left have been cheering may very well be the investigation that brings down the Clinton machine within the FBI. It may also bring down Hillary herself.

Once we fully understand the lengths to which Hillary supporters inside the FBI went to get her elected, the appetite of the American people may very well change. It was Hillary who was colluding with a foreign agent to change the outcome of the election. Christopher Steele is a British citizen. Paying a foreign entity for opposition research in an election is against the law. It’s time the American people were told the truth.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.