Sept. 15, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Labor Strike Threats Return: It is almost as if it is scripted
By Rick Manning
Shock.
The Railroad strike has been settled at the last possible moment after heroic phone calls by President Joe Biden.
Who actually buys this garbage?
The potential strike was the culmination of ten years of negotiations replete with numerous lawful federal government interventions to cool things down.
The latest deadline was the result of the end of a federal government cooling down period, and the unions who were threatening to strike were rejecting a proposal prepared by the Biden appointed President Executive Board (PEB). The unique labor laws governing the rail and airline industry’s give the federal government extraordinary involvement and power over labor disputes affecting these two industries.
So, after years of watching Washington, D.C. go to the last minute on government funding deals, who is surprised that a crisis which the Biden administration has been part of creating over the past twenty months or so, was brought to a head and miraculously solved by the cape wearing Biden just in the nick of time.
What a joke.
Given that the PEB created the settlement that the unions were rejecting, Biden knew exactly what the union would likely accept and the President had to power to jam it down the railroad industries collective throats. That is what happened.
The result?
The cost of transportation will go up as the 1970s wage/price spiral just begins to take effect, spurring more price increases.
Other private sector unions, emboldened by the result, will demand new contracts that include cost of living adjustments plus new money, reflecting and accelerating Biden’s inflation spiral.
The bottom line is that Joe Biden has not only made inflation great again, he has reintroduced America to another phenomena from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, the threat of the crippling labor strike.
So, if you were script writing for this administration, where would the next labor crisis hit?
If it were me, the next strike threat would be at the ports on the west coast where the contract between the Ports and the West Coast Port Worker Union has expired for months but negotiations continue, until they don’t.
So, if modern politics is little more than navigating a series of manufactured and planned crises, what better opportunity exists than to have a potential strike threaten 40 percent of all imports that come into America.
CNN could reinstate their war time countdown graphics with the heavy drumbeats in the background, while detailing in serious tones that Christmas might have to be canceled as the toys all are sitting on ships.
MSNBC will respond in hushed awe as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explains that in addition to his and his husband’s child-care duties, he is spending at least fifteen minutes a day focused on the port crisis – the kind of sacrifice that only the most heroic government leaders would make.
And of course, President Joe will call the Port leadership using his best “C’mon, man” intonation promising them money from the federal government for “infrastructure improvements” in exchange for giving the unions whatever they want to not strike.
The mid-October announcement could already be written. Christmas saved by last ditch Biden efforts. Department store Santas dancing joyously in Lafayette Park as their services will still be required. All of this culminates with Macy’s announcing that a brand new Biden balloon will appear at their Thanksgiving Parade cheered on by the transgender children’s chorus sponsored by the New York City library system.
And America’s inflation wage inflation spiral accelerates, while the public applauds all the way to the ballot box. https://dailytorch.com/2022/09/labor-strike-threats-return-it-is-almost-as-if-it-is-scripted/
Special Master in Trump Case Might Be Judge Who Signed Off on Carter Page FISA
The special master in the Justice Department case involving former President Donald Trump’s documents seized from Mar-a-Lago could be a judge who signed off on a secret surveillance warrant on then-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Judge Raymond Dearie was the same judge who approved the final Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to continue allowing the FBI to spy on Page as it was looking for any signs of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, based on a dossier of phony allegations paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
That FISA warrant came after then-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was aware that Page, a Navy reservist, had acted as a CIA informant but purposely hid that information, which was favorable to Page, by doctoring an email to falsely indicate that Page had not been a CIA informant. Clinesmith pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement and received 12 months of probation and a sentence of 400 hours of community service.
Dearie was one of the names submitted by Trump’s team to serve as special master in the case, causing surprise among both Trump supporters and critics.
Andrew Weissman, the lead prosecutor in the failed special counsel investigation helmed by Robert Mueller, called Trump’s decision to submit Dearie’s name as a “screw up.”
“Having their own SM choice rule against them will be fun to watch. Dearie is a model judge,” he tweeted.
However, according to Fox News, Dearie could be in a unique position to review actions taken by the FBI, given that he approved the FISA warrant based on falsified information by Clinesmith.
Judge Aileen Cannon is expected to decide this week on a special master, as well as the scope of what could be used by the Justice Department in its investigation.
To view online: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/09/14/special-master-in-trump-case-might-be-judge-who-signed-off-on-carter-page-fisa/
The Machiavellian Intent of John Durham Surfaces inside His Court Filing, Outlining the FBI Hiring of Igor Danchenko as Confidential Informant
This is sickening to read, and perhaps even more sickening to accept. CTH has long outlined the belief that Bill Barr was the Bondo application to cover the DOJ and FBI institutional rot, and John Durham was the ongoing spray paint application.
The bottom line is an ongoing DC operation to preserve the institutional credibility of the justice system. A credibility, which is – at this point, entirely destroyed – yet the effort continues.
In a court motion today [pdf HERE], special prosecutor John Durham outlines the case against Christopher Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko. For more granular information about the filing itself, visit Techno Fog [review article HERE].
The basic legal case brought by Durham is predicated on the notion that Christopher Steele’s source for his dossier, Igor Danchenko, willfully and intentionally lied to the FBI, and therefore Danchenko is guilty of purposefully misleading FBI investigators assigned to the Trump-Russia/”crossfire hurricane” investigation.
This is where we must stop pretending. The Durham premise of a “duped FBI” is laughable on its face. No one in the FBI or DOJ-NSD was “duped” by false information from Igor Danchenko.
The lies, as they were with Clinton lawyer Michael Sussman, were well known to be false, yet materially beneficial to the unspoken intention of the DOJ/FBI, which was to target Donald Trump. The corrupt intent of the DOJ and FBI is the basic rot John Durham was appointed to cover over.
John Durham is running a Deep State cover operation to protect the institutions of the DOJ and FBI from evidence of their prior activity. The bulls**t of pretending this is not his motive is, well, quite simply nonsense and needs to stop. Look at today’s filing itself, overlay the timeline and you can see the corrupt intention of the FBI and John Durham’s clear objective is to cover for them.
The big picture takeaway is right there on the second page. Pay attention to the dates.
CONTEXT – From January 2017 through October 2020 the FBI was using Danchenko as part of its investigation. This includes the entire timeline of the Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann special counsel operation which took place from May 2017 to April 2019.
Danchenko was Christopher Steele’s primary source for information he put into his “dossier”. The DOJ-NSD and FBI used the Steele Dossier in lieu of a valid ‘wood’s file’ to support the FISA surveillance and search warrant application against Carter Page. The title-1 warrant gave the DOJ-NSD and FBI the ability to conduct surveillance over Donald Trump as a candidate and as a President. The warrant was issued in October 2016 and renewed thrice in 2017 (Jan, April, June).
The warrant was used to conduct electronic surveillance of President Trump during the time he was in office. Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann renewed the warrant to support their targeting of Trump and officials in his orbit. Most of the evidence gathered by Weissmann/Mueller was captured using surveillance legally authorized by the FISA warrant.
Without the Steele Dossier, there wouldn’t be evidence to support the FISA application. Without the FISA warrant there wouldn’t be legal surveillance of Trump. This is the importance of the Steele Dossier and as a consequence the importance of Igor Danchenko who provided the fabricated material within the dossier.