- Monday July 22nd, 2024
- "It Is Not A Question of Who Is Right Or Wrong But What Is Right Or Wrong That Counts."
- --Geoff Metcalf
- Providing an on line Triage of the news since 1998
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World & Nation
Secret Service chief says Trump had full security on day of shooting; thin on answers to House panel
Lawmakers frustrated as Kimberly Cheatle ducks answers to questions
Secret
Service Director Kimberly Cheatle acknowledged Monday that her agency
had disagreed with the Trump campaign over some requests for
protection, but insisted no corners were cut on July 13, the day former
President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
“There were no
assets denied for that event in Butler on the 13th,” Ms. Cheatle told
the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
But Ms.
Cheatle was stingy with other details about the shooting that came
within a quarter of an inch of killing Mr. Trump and how the shooter
gained access to a rooftop with a 150-yard line of sight to the former
president.
She said she’s still trying to figure out which agency was supposed to be in charge of “overwatch” of that location.
“There was clearly a breakdown and a failure that day,” Ms. Cheatle said.
White House pushes back on GOP calls for Biden to leave office
The
White House on Monday pushed back on Republican lawmakers who have
called on President Biden to resign as commander-in-chief after he
announced that he would no longer seek reelection.
Andrew Bates,
a spokesperson for the White House, said Mr. Biden will finish his term
and will deliver “historic results for the American people.”
“President
Biden inherited an economy in freefall, a skyrocketing violent crime
rate, alliances in tatters from his predecessor,” Mr. Bates said in a
statement. “He turned around to deliver the strongest economic growth
in the world and the lowest violent crime rate in nearly 50 years while
making NATO bigger than ever.”
Mr. Biden, 81, stepped aside
from the campaign Sunday after weeks of pressure from Democrats who
worried that he wouldn’t defeat former President Donald Trump, the GOP
nominee. There have been long-running concerns about his age and
declining abilities.
Harris speaks for first time since Biden ended campaign, praises his ‘unmatched’ legacy
Kamala
Harris is the first female U.S. vice president — and the first Black
woman and person of South Asian descent in the role, and one of the
Democratic party’s most prominent figures.
Vice President Kamala
Harris is being thrust into the most scrutinizing of spotlights,
suddenly the leading candidate to succeed Biden as the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee and her party’s main hope of defeating
Trump.
She spoke Monday at a White House celebration with the
NCAA championship teams, her first appearance since Biden announced he
was leaving the race.
Pro-Israel Leader Slams VP Harris for Backing College Gaza Protests
The
president of a prominent pro-Israel group denounced Vice President
Kamala Harris for supporting protests over the Gaza war on college
campuses.
Harris became the early favorite to capture the
Democratic Party's presidential nominee on Sunday, when President Joe
Biden announced he was ending his bid for reelection.
Student
protests over the Gaza war — which began after Hamas terrorists' Oct. 7
invasion in Israel — occurred on many college campuses toward the end
of the school year.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu confirms meeting this week with Biden before speech to Congress
Despite strained ties, U.S. officials expect a less confrontational visit than in 2015
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Biden on
Tuesday, a day before giving a much-anticipated speech to Congress on
the war in Gaza and the crisis in the Middle East, the prime minister’s
office confirmed Sunday in a statement.
Mr. Netanyahu has had a
strained relationship with Mr. Biden as the clash with Palestinian
Hamas militants who carried out the Oct. 7 terror attack approaches its
10th month. He delayed his departure from Israel until Monday for the
meeting with Mr. Biden, who is recovering from a bout of COVID-19.
The
Israeli prime minister famously did not meet with former President
Barack Obama or then-Vice President Biden on another trip to Washington
to give a joint speech to Congress in 2015 to argue against Mr. Obama’s
Iran nuclear deal, a speech that infuriated U.S. officials at the time.
Top U.S. general: ‘We’ve got to do better’ at countering China, Russia in America’s own neighborhood
U.S.
officials and private companies have “to do better” at engaging allies
across Central and South America to counter aggressive Chinese and
Russian moves in the region, such as Moscow’s recent docking of
warships in Cuba and Beijing’s establishment of secretive space
facilities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela.
That
was the core message Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, commander of the
Pentagon’s Southern Command, delivered at the annual Aspen Security
Forum that brought dozens of current and former high-level officials
together with tech and defense industry executives in the Rocky
Mountains last week.
In remarks largely overshadowed by the
appearance in Aspen of more prominent U.S. officials, including
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and by panels on the Mideast and
Ukraine wars, Gen. Richardson sought to draw attention to great power
competition playing out in America’s own neighborhood.
DNC advances plan to nominate new 2024 ticket in online vote
Biden's withdrawal upends process just a month before convention
Moments
after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 race Sunday afternoon,
members of the Democratic National Committee met to advance plans to
pick a new nominee in an online vote that could be held in a matter of
days.
The DNC’s credentialing committee met online Sunday to
approve the slate of more than 4,700 delegates for the party’s Aug.
19-22 convention in Chicago, and members confirmed they are moving
ahead with a previous plan to choose the party’s presidential nominee
in an online vote by Aug. 7.
“We are saddened that he is
stepping aside as a candidate,” DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee
Co-Chairman James Roosevelt said of Mr. Biden’s announcement. “I am
also convinced that we are beginning today the process of choosing a
very strong Democratic successor for him as president and with that
president, a Democratic vice president.”
The committee is
scheduled to meet again Friday to determine whether they will actually
go through with the online vote now that Mr. Biden has dropped out. His
was to be the only name on the ballot when Democrats planned to vote
online in the coming days.
Does It Really Matter Who Replaces Joe?
Yesterday,
on July 21, pressured by a growing caravan of defecting Democratic
Party leaders, donors and media acolytes who could no longer cover for
senility publicly exposed by the infamous June 27 debate from hell,
President Biden surrendered his 2024 reelection bid.
After all,
people surrounding Biden, his family included, clearly knew he was
cognitively unfit to serve as U.S. president, commander in chief, and
leader of the free world prior to the time they conspired to
orchestrate his original 2020 basement bunker campaign.
This was
long before The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted that
"President Biden’s halting, stumbling debate performance Thursday night
showed all too clearly that he isn’t up to serving four more years in
office.
Are Democrats' About to Repeat Their 1924, 1968 Nightmares?
Prior
to President Joe Biden ending his 2024 re-election campaign the
Democrats worst nightmare was reliving their chaotic 1968 Chicago
Convention.
But now, it may be reliving their chaotic 1924 Chicago Convention.
Biden’s departure unleashes countless questions.
What was the final incentive to get him to quit the race? If so, who delivered it?
Was money involved. If so, how much?
From the Archive....
TO KILL OR FEED A MOCKINGBIRD
By Geoff Metcalf
July 29, 2002
Two mutually exclusive and under reported stories have been troubling
me.
* The apparent penchant for political operatives to leak
classified information that jeopardizes national security.
* The generational control of information dissemination by
powerful controllers.
So we have another ‘Catch-22’.
The complicity of the mainstream media to spin, cover, and obfuscate
government abuse of power under the color of authority was not unique
to the Clinton administration. It may have been more ubiquitous,
and at times even clumsy, but it was not unique.
It has been reported that in June 1991 David Rockefeller allegedly told
a Bilderberg meeting in Baden Baden German, "We are grateful to the
Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great
publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected
their promises of discretion for almost forty years." He went on to
explain: "It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for
the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during
those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march
towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an
intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the
national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."
Some argue that quote is apocryphal urban legend. However,
although I have never been able to find three corroborating independent
sources for it, it IS consistent in content and tone with other
Bilderberg quotes I HAVE been able to confirm.
“If we had been subjected to the light of publicity….” Indicates the
one world, globalist, wannabe controllers were/are successful in
managing the message.
Operation ‘Mockingbird’ was a program supposedly conceived by a
brilliant Machiavellian State Department official, Frank Wisner.
Wisner selected Philip Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post to
manage the program. According to Deborah Davis, author of
‘Katharine the Great’, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected
members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications
vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a
former CIA analyst."
Over twenty five major newspapers and wire services became willing
house organs for the CIA media manipulation.
Investigators digging into MOCKINGBIRD have been flabbergasted to
discover FOIA documents in which agents boast (in CIA office memos)
of pride in having placed "important assets" inside every major
news publication in the country.
I know, this is the stuff of Ludlum novels conspiracy wackos, but not
until 1982 did the ‘Company’ finally concede that reporters on the CIA
payroll have been case officers to field agents.
I have too often observed, “Some people don’t like to be confused with
facts that contradict their preconceived opinions.” I have also
noted (and struggle to maintain) “It is not WHO is right or wrong…but
WHAT is right or wrong.”
Anyone with almost ‘any’ military experience has no doubt seen the once
ubiquitous posters cautioning “Loose Lips Sink Ships”. It is a
left over phrase from WWII and among “lessons learned”.
In the complex world of intelligence loose lips can and have cost lives.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, Senator Patrick Leahy (currently the
Senate Judiciary committee’s lead obstructionist) used to be the Vice
Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the mid 80s.
Leahy allegedly ‘inadvertently’ exposed a top-secret intercept of
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak that led to the capture of the Achille
Lauro terrorists. That supposed slip of the tongue “cost the life
of at least one Egyptian operative.”
http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/1/31/85757
Loose Lip Leahy was forced to resign in disgrace 14 years ago in the
wake of having to acknowledge he leaked secret intelligence to the
press. However today he lords his power over the Senate
Judiciary committee. Congress’ institutional memory must be as
short as some of Jennifer Flowers former paramours.
In our contemporary environment in which whistleblowers have become in
many cases heroes it is important to make the distinctions between the
appropriateness of corporate and political whistleblowers and the idiot
or miscreant who leaks information with genuine national security
implications.
Currently the FBI is investigating national security leaks from
specifically the House and Senate Select Intelligence committees.
This is serious stuff.
Defenders of the indefensible will argue it is a political witch-hunt
by politicians in a heavy C.Y.A. mode. That is not true but a
convenient political spin job.
Sure it is true the white house is p.o.-ed over media reports that the
National Security Agency had received but not acted on two early
warning messages to 9/11. Dick Cheney reportedly went ballistic
and ripped congressional leaders. Both House and Senate Select
Intelligence committees asked the Attorney General to conduct an
investigation (and no doubt quietly prayed it would be botched).
Justice said in a statement, “…the appropriate department officials
will expeditiously review this matter and take any appropriate
action.” Not if congress has anything to say about it.
Don’t expect anything fast. Remember Leahy resigned in disgrace
14 years ago and today has the chutzpah to pontificate ad nauseum to
the Judiciary committee and stall any and all Bush judicial
appointments.
More on Operation Mockingbird
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/
