Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Eastern Europe under Extraordinary Threat from Russia

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In part: Russia has been chipping away at the country since at least 2014, when the pro-Russian President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, lost an election, and Putin invaded the Crimea, the peninsula that sticks out into the Black Sea and separates it from the Sea of Azov to its northeast.

Stealth war

As part of Putin’s campaign, a war that isn’t quite a war, most authorities agree that Russian-based hackers mounted a cyberattack called NotPetya back in 2017.  It was aimed primarily at Ukrainian institutions, but it also affected thousands of other systems as well.  The White House later estimated that NotPetya caused about $10 billion worth of damage worldwide.

Now we come down to this week.  On January 15, dozens of Ukrainian government computer systems were infected with malware disguised as ransomware.  An infected computer displayed a demand for a certain ransom to be paid in Bitcoin, but what really happened is that the malware “renders the computer system inoperable,” ransom or no ransom.

Microsoft issued a statement saying that they observed these attacks aimed primarily at Ukrainian government agencies and closely-allied organisations, and that they had issued updates that will address the problems.  But in the meantime, the Ukraine is suffering yet another cyberattack which appears to be instigated by Russia, although no firm evidence of the source has yet been forthcoming.

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The head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency told Military Times in November that Russia could launch an attack through Belarus.

source

Then there is the matter of Putin working to install a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) named former Ukrainian MP Yevhen Murayev as a potential Kremlin candidate and once again warned Russia of “severe costs” of activities to subvert Ukraine.

“The information being released today shines light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin’s thinking,” UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia rejects UK claim

Russia on Sunday rejected a British claim that Russia was seeking to replace Ukraine’s government with a pro-Moscow administration.

“The disinformation spread by the British Foreign Office is more evidence that it is the Nato countries, led by the Anglo-Saxons, who are escalating tensions around Ukraine,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. “We call on the British Foreign Office to stop provocative activities, stop spreading nonsense.” source

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Some other disturbing details:

  1. The Russian Navy has announced plan gunnery and missile firing 160 nautical miles off Mizen Head. The exercises, from February 3rd to 8th, are just on the edge of the drop-off into deep water. It is also within Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Coming at a time of heightened tension between Russia and the West, this highlights Ireland’s strategic position.

    Of all the world’s ocean, it is interesting that Russia selected this small area in the Irish EEZ. It is far from Russia’s operating bases and regular training areas. So the location seems chosen for strategic or political reasons.

  2. Germany is actively collaborating with Russian armed aggression against Ukraine. The Estonians will tell the Germans to go to hell and the rest of NATO will back Estonia against the Moscow-Berlin axis.
    The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is still in force. The Russian regime of state terrorism and the Putinversteher faction in Germany are allied to destroy the freedom and independence of Eastern Europe.
    Germany has no business being in NATO when it aggressively thwarts the principle of collective security on which the alliance was founded. Germany has gone full Soviet with the new Chancellor.
    Russian ally Germany refuses to permit Estonia to transfer artillery to Ukraine, giving a boost to the Russian army which is mobilized for an offensive.
  3. The U.S. has ordered all family members of its embassy in Ukraine to evacuate amid rising tensions of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. State Department also said non-essential personnel could also leave the country at the U.S. government’s expense.

One more item. Since President Biden halted the United States from being energy independent which was achieved under President Trump, the United States no longer exports energy to Europe. In fact, conditions are so dire that the United States is actually buying dirty oil from Russia. Think of that. If Russia decides to punish the U.S. even more….you can bet the cost of gasoline at the pump with reach $8.00 to $10.00 a gallon.

Then there is the threat of the United States versus Russia in the Arctic and in Space…imagine escalating hostilities in those battle-spaces…

Meanwhile…Ukrainians are drilling for safety in fallout shelters.

 

Will Justice Sotomayor Recuse on the Mandate Cases?

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If Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor reads the New York Times and watches CNN, then we clearly understand how her alleged knowledge of all things vaccines and mandates are so wrong and exaggerated. This Judge made statements during oral arguments that were wildly wrong. Yeesh. The Justices do gather after arguments are presented and confab on the cases and then collaborate with their clerks. We can only hope Sotomayor gets the memo on how wrong she is or she must recuse from the case(s) dealing with OSHA, vaccines and mandates.

If the Supreme Court rules on the side of the Federal government then the power of the government over all citizens is limitless and tyranny is in stone.

As noted by The Federalist in part for more details –>

Brian Fletcher, U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General, representing the federal government in Biden v. Missouri, told justices that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra should be allowed to keep the mandate. Challengers, however, noted that the rule forces a medical procedure on healthcare workers who could leave the workforce, and leave rural and poor populations in need of care vulnerable.

“Exercising this kind of power to force the individual to submit to a medical treatment has never ever been something that has been authorized by Congress or done by an agency on an emergency basis,” Louisiana Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill said. “But I don’t think in this case that justifies them co-opting a quintessential state police power. In fact, the opposite is true.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch all seemed skeptical of the vaccine mandate on the grounds that the federal government was extending its reach into state issues. In his questioning, Gorsuch emphasized that the mandate seems less effective as a health and safety protocol and is more of an issue of control.

“Could CMS also implement regulations about exercise regimes?” Gorsuch asked, wondering if “substances that must be ingested by hospital employees” could be implemented “in the name of health and safety?”

Part of this control, Gorsuch hinted, is coming via funding threats.

“These statutes sometimes constitute, we’re told, 10 percent of all the funding state governments receive. This regulation affects, we’re told, 10 million healthcare workers and will cost over a billion dollars for employers to comply with. So what’s your reaction to that? Why isn’t this a regulation that effectively controls the employment and tenure of healthcare workers at hospitals, an issue Congress said the agency didn’t have the authority, that that should be left to the states to regulate?” Gorsuch asked.

In response, Sotomayor asserted her belief that “if you want my money your facility has to do this.”

“This is not an issue of power between the states and federal government. This is an issue of what right does the federal government [have] to dictate what it wants to buy,” Sotomayor said.

“Your Honor, it is a vaccine requirement masquerading as a condition of participation,” Jesus Osete, Missouri Deputy Attorney General, replied.

During the arguments, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Stephen Breyer, and the counsel arguing in favor of the mandate continued to spew misinformation about COVID-19 and the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Kagan repeatedly lied that vaccinated workers couldn’t transmit the virus despite numerous admissions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the jab doesn’t stop viral spread and data showing a significant number of breakthrough COVID cases.

“All the Secretary is doing here is to say to providers, you know what? Basically, the one thing you can’t do is to kill your patients. So you have to get vaccinated so that you’re not transmitting the disease that can kill elderly Medicare patients, that can kill sick Medicaid patients,” Kagan said. “I mean, that seems like a pretty basic infection prevention measure. You can’t be the carrier of disease.”

She later claimed, without evidence, that “people are not showing up to hospitals because they’re afraid of getting COVID from staff.”

Breyer, who used rising COVID-19 case numbers to justify his support for the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for the private sector, also lied about the shot and COVID hospitalizations.

“There are 750,000 people got this yesterday, but the hospitals are full to overflowing, that there is a problem worse than diptheria,” Breyer said. “They’re filling up hospital beds and others are dying because they can’t get in. Okay. Now public interest, call it something else, call it what you might, but it seems to me, it’s hard for me to believe, but it seems to me that every minute that these things are not in effect, thousands of more people are getting this disease. And we have some discretionary power.”

 

Identified Released Bagram Prisoner Killed our Marines in Kabul

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SIS-K suicide bomber who carried out deadly Kabul airport attack had been released from prison days earlier

Where is the outrage? This is on Biden….

NYP: The United States has put together a profile of the suicide bomber who killed 13 US troops outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul four months ago.

The Islamic State terrorist attack — which also left 200 Afghans dead — was carried out by Abdul Rahman Al-Logari, the New York Times reported. The terrorist was a one-time engineering student was freed from a high security prison by the Taliban.Abdul Rahman al-Logari

As the militants overran the country, they emptied jails stocked with both their own prisoners and Islamic State terrorists opposed to them and the US.

“It’s hard to explain what the thinking was in letting out people who were a threat to the Taliban,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior U.N. counterterrorism official said during a recent conference in Qatar, the outlet said.

Al-Logari has been active in terrorist for years before. A 2017 plot he was involved with in New Delhi, India was foiled and Al-Logari was eventually transferred to the CIA which stuck in at Parwan prison near Bagram Air Base.

The base — and its two runways — was infamously abandoned and overrun by the Taliban on July 1. The situation forced the US do conduct its later evacuation from the more exposed and less well-equipped Hamid Karzai International Airport.

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The US controlled the base until it abandoned Bagram in early July. The revelation underscores the chaos around the final days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the struggle of the US to control a rapidly deteriorating situation around the airport as it relied on the Taliban to secure the perimeter of the airport.
The US handed Bagram Air Base over to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) on July 1, as the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan neared 90% completion.
At the time, there were approximately 5,000 prisoners at Bagram, an Afghan Ministry of Defense spokesman told CNN. A few hundred were criminals, but the vast majority were terrorists, the spokesman said, including members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. There were also foreign prisoners from Pakistan, Chechnya, and the Middle East detained there. It was up to the Afghans to secure the compound.
As the US was turning over Bagram to the ANDSF, the Taliban accelerated their sweep across the country, claiming to control 150 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts by July 5. It was a sign of things to come, as provincial capitals began falling to the Taliban offensive in rapid succession. By mid-August, the Taliban were on the doorstep of Kabul and the complete collapse of the Afghan military was virtually complete.Biden said, “We will not be deterred by terrorists… we will continue the evacuation.” He said that ISIS-K leadership and facilities will be attacked. More than 100,000 people were “taken to safety in the last 11 days. In the last 12 hours or so, another 7,000 have gotten out,” he said. “These ISIS terrorists will not win. We will rescue the Americans who are there…America will not be intimidated.”

He called those who died “part of the bravest, most capable and selfless military on the face of the earth.. the backbone of America, the spine of America, the best the country has to offer. Jill and I, our hearts ache for all those Afghan families who lost loved ones, including small children, in this vicious attack. We’re outraged.” source

Challenging the Most Recent FBI/DHS Domestic Terrorism Report

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Terrorism appears to have taken on a wider set of definitions and is no longer confined to militant Islam. Seems on the domestic front, there are all kinds of profiles, groups, politics and criminals now in the classification according to the most recent government report.

After the January 6th event in Washington DC, the FBI applied every available human resource and technology to identify potential criminals that they deemed performed a criminal act such as parading. Meanwhile, we have heard little if anything about convictions from all the destruction, death and looting from last summer much less how it continues now with the smash and grabs. It has been reported that the FBI embedded some point people in the J6 Trump rally and that is a common practice with thousands of cases for decades by the FBI, so the did the FBI embed anyone in any of the ANTIFA or BLM or with these large groups across the country doing smash and grabs?

We should have regard for the rank and file FBI and DHS employees but we must challenge management for obvious reasons. Let’s go a little deeper shall we?

Notice ‘intimidate civilian’ population…

Notice ‘destruction of critical infrastructure’…

The report is not very long and it is suggested you read it here. 

The next scandal to be mentioned is the school boards versus parents and the Department of Justice. It is not just about critical race theory, it also includes forced mask wearing and then what else is being taught in the classroom without parental knowledge or consent such as sexual diversity. In fact much of what is taught when it comes to sexual diversity is actually pornography. No one at the Department of Education or the Department of Justice even cares about those violations of laws involving minors. Riots in America: Why is the Fuse So Short? | Clarion Project

Simply Americans are being coerced into believing application of the law is fair and equal, that is hardly the case. We have an activist government and it is being propped up by activists in every agency at the Federal level and now we are seeing it at the state level as we discover these ‘Soros’ District Attorneys refused to prosecute and the same goes for hundreds of judges. It goes far beyond the defunding of the police.

America is in a bad place when it comes to law and order. Laws have no value unless they are applied and applied equally. Criminals and activists are using social media apps and encrypted apps to communicate and coordinate…is that being investigated?

Is the U.S. Healthcare System About to Collapse?

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There’s a reason a 76-year-old woman with a broken femur had to wait 95 minutes for an ambulance at the main TSA checkpoint in the middle of the nation’s busiest airport over the summer.

Half of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s fleet of fully-staffed EMS ambulances were 500 miles away.

11Alive’s investigative team tracked the airport’s Medic 1 and Medic 2 ambulances to the back lot of a factory in Ohio, where Atlanta Fire & Rescue had sent them for extended rebuilds with no replacements ready.

We were told at the time when those two ambulances went into the shop that they will only take 90 days to get it back in service,” Airport General Manager Balram Bheodari told the Atlanta City Council Transportation Committee on Aug. 11. “However, because of the disruption of the supply chain, we were informed it would take 180 days to get those ambulances back,” Bheodari testified.

But the city was told the ambulances would be out of service for 240 days, according to internal documents obtained by The Reveal through public records requests.

The vendor’s written quote with the 240-day estimate was delivered to the city in November of last year, six months before the ambulances were sent to Ohio. Both Medic 1 and Medic 2 were sent for refurbishment at the same time, further reducing available ambulances at Hartsfield-Jackson, the nation’s busiest airport.

The airport had purchased new ambulances in the past, which can replace the old units with no loss of service. However, it’s not clear why the city chose a lengthy rebuild instead, or why both units were sent to Ohio simultaneously instead of one at a time.

Crazy…but then again…emergency rooms cant handle patients anyway as noted below.

Hospitals battle burnout, compete for nurses as pandemic spurs US staffing woes | S&P Global Market Intelligence

LONG BEACH, Long Island (WABC) — The emergency department at a Nassau County hospital has temporarily closed due to nursing staff shortages as a result of New York’s vaccine mandate.

Officials at Mount Sinai South Nassau said Monday that all other options were exhausted before the decision was made to close the ER, starting at 3 p.m.

Instead, patients in need of emergency care will be directed to the hospital’s main campus in Oceanside. An ambulance will be stationed at the ER at all times for the duration of the closure.

The closure will last for up to four weeks and could be expanded, depending on staff availability.

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Hospitals and nursing homes around the U.S. are bracing for worsening staff shortages as state deadlines arrive for health care workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

With ultimatums taking effect this week in states including New York, California, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the fear is that some employees will quit or let themselves be fired or suspended rather than get the vaccine.

“How this is going to play out, we don’t know. We are concerned about how it will exacerbate an already quite serious staffing problem,” said California Hospital Association spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea, adding that the organization “absolutely” supports the state’s vaccination requirement. source

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The US can't keep up with demand for health aides, nurses and doctors

Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.

“It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”

The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has stretched the nation’s nurses as never before, testing their skills and stamina as desperately ill patients with a poorly understood malady flooded emergency rooms. They remained steadfast amid a calamitous shortage of personal protective equipment; spurred by a sense of duty, they flocked from across the country to the newest hot zones, sometimes working as volunteers. More than 1,200 of them have died from the virus. source

CVS changing the business model could be a clue of what is to come –>

CVS announced its plans to begin closing its doors–about 900 locations across the country. Though that looks like a lot, it’s only 10 percent of the company’s retail locations. Though don’t expect the remaining 90 percent to look 100 percent like CVS stores as we know them. Because the big news is really less about its closures and more about what’s to come for the future of the pharmaceutical retailer. And that’s the accessibility of healthcare services across the nation. What CVS is doing is exactly what it set out to do when it first launched nearly six decades ago in 1963.

In the words of the company’s mission, its goal is to “make high-quality health and pharmacy services safe, affordable and easy to access.”

This is a crucial reminder to businesses everywhere: growth doesn’t mean getting bigger, it means getting better. That does not mean getting better at everything, as many are compelled to do. But getting better at what matters most: your core offering. Because it’s also the core reason customers choose your business over the alternatives. And in the case of the pharmaceutical retailer, that’s healthcare.

Your local CVS will no longer necessarily be a place to go when you realized you’re out of milk or to pick up a greeting card–and never mind a late-night destination to grab that 6-pack when no other stores nearby are still open. But your local CVS will be turned into “destinations that offer a range of health-care services, from flu shots to diagnostic tests,” according to the company’s news release.

In other words, a place to go for all things health–as one would expect a pharmacy to be. However, it had become a company that wore many hats. Not only does it serve as a drug store, but also as a convenience store, a grocery store, and in some places, even as a liquor store. With so many revenue channels, there were a number of ways in which the company could grow.

For example, in an effort to expand it could have worked to more directly compete with Walmart, which also offers in-store pharmacies. Or it could have gone after the eCommerce giant, Amazon, which acquired PillPack and entered the pharmaceutical space with its own online pharmacy.

But in a wise–and evidently strategic–decision, it opted to expand in terms of depth. In other words, rather than continuing to be a jack of all trades, it will focus on being the master of easily accessible healthcare And to make strides towards this decision that reinforces its mission, it’s stepping away from offering the breadth of its current offerings. After all, cigarettes and scratch tickets aren’t exactly synonymous with health. source