OBAMA TEAM: ORIGIN OF RUSSIAN COLLUSIAN CHARGES

HOW OBAMA TEAM INITIATED THE PHONY RUSSIAN COLLUSION CHARGES

According to the left-leaning commentator Mehdi Hasan:  Mr. Obama may have been the most polarizing political figure in our nation’s history. (See; the intercept.com, “Confronting the Consequences of Obama’s Foreign Policy” Mehdi Hasan (June 22, 2018)

Near the end of his tenure, while in the White House, Mr. Obama threw his support to the worst possible Democrat candidate—Mrs Hillary Clinton—a compromised, corrupt,  political-baggage-encumbered, unappealing individual with high negatives and weak national support.  She had been soundly rejected by the Democrat voters in the 2000 primaries. As a top cabinet official ,  she interlaced her official business as Secretary of State with her husband’s foreign “influence selling” efforts via the phony slush fund called the Clinton Global Initiative.  He operated abroad using his connection with (at that time) the current Secretary of State (and the presumptive future Clinton-president) to garner hundreds of millions of dollars for the Clinton Global Initiative.  This organization acted as a slush fund for Hillary Clinton political activists, supporters and hangers on, to formally support her political aspirations, to pay for opposition research, and as a source of personal income for the Clintons. These unethical (illegal) operations and communications of collusion between husband and (a top cabinet official) wife necessitated that Hillary be able to avoid scrutiny of her politically-damning emails, text messages and other messages.  As a consequence of these compromising activities she was strongly motivated  to use a private, unsecured email account to protect her from government regulations and damaging political revelations,  but that exposed her official communications to hacking by foreign powers. These shortcomings were to lead to her undoing and to much embarrassment and loss for her party and for the nation as a whole.  (Sometimes one wonders would we have been better served as a nation had these two Clintons never emerged from under that rock in Arkansas.)  

Early in the run up to the 2016 elections, it became abundantly clear to the Obama inner circle of the strength of the Republican candidate and the  political weaknesses of Mr. Obama’s choice of “heir apparent”: Mrs. Clinton.  .  These uncertainties may have surfaced as a result of the decisive primary wins of the GOP candidate over an impressive field of 16 candidates and   the revelations of misdeeds and illegal actions of Hillary Clinton, and her private email server.  These activities had led to  criminal investigations by the FBI into her use and misuse of her “home brew” email provider.  

The Obama Administration steeped as it was in an enclosed, secretive, executive  governing architecture that Mr Obama had established and used over his seven plus years in office, it was only natural for his close knit team to turn these sinister established Oval Office practices toward undermining and smearing the GOP opposition candidate whom Obama clearly  considered as a threat to his “legacy”.   Thus Obama and the elites at the highest level of powerful government agencies (FBI, Justice, NSA, CIA) initiated politically motivated “investigations’’ into the Trump campaign seeking damaging information to be used in the campaign.  

Let us be clear, they—the Obama team—politicized the most powerful, intrusive investigative organizations of the government and turned them into political weapons to undermine an opposition political candidate.  They used FBI informants and FBI agents as early as May 2016 to probe the Trump team and perhaps “set them up” for entrapment in some form of illegality.  They utilized the Clinton-paid-for “Steele” sleazy opposition-research document and used this as if it was actual government sponsored “intelligence” which it was not.  Thus was born  “Russian Collusion” charges.  The Obama team was unsuccessful in their early efforts.  And as the election approached all the polls were indicating (incorrectly)   that Clinton would win.  These erroneous predictions permitted  the top  agents in the FBI and Justice to feel confident that their immoral and unethical “efforts” to undermine a political opponent in a national election would never be revealed.   Perhaps,  they were even encouraged into more egregious actions in the belief that the winner (Clinton) would, post election,  pat them on the back and give them a promotion!  

However, Trump was elected and the plans and schemes of the Obama-team perpetrators found themselves in dire jeopardy of exposure and retribution.   It was at this period, that he most egregious policies of the Obama “lame duck” presidency took place as Obama and the hold-over elements in his administration attempted to continue the phony investigations into the Russian collusion scheme to undermine the new president and unseat a legitimately elected president.  

  Obama encouraged and directed the politicization of the most powerful government agencies in this process to oppose what he saw as a threat to his “legacy” (as unsavory as it was).   That sealed his fate as Mr. Hasan has stated, “as the most polarizing political figure in our nation’s history.” 

CHAOS AND MISUNDERSTANDING OF REFUGEE STATUS AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER.

Like so many of our nation’s knotty problems our past governments simply swept them under the rug and waited until their term in office expired.  The problems grew and became more complex not less. A fine example is the immigration fiasco.

Now under Mr. Trump this problem has erupted like a giant carbuncle under our national saddle.  Something must be done.

One of the tangled knots is how do we handle “asylum seekers” and “refugees”.  There are international agreements in this regard.   We are a signatory nation to the 1951 UN protocol on refugees.

That agreement requires a nation to offer temporary asylum if refugees  are fleeing from persecution due to race, ethnicity, religion, etc. etc.  Theses folks rightly should not be turned away at the border of the nation from which they are fleeing so that they are forced to go right back into the circumstances from which they are attempting to escape.

But the circumstances at our Mexican border are different.  No one is fleeing from prosecution in Mexico.   Once these refugees from Panama, Equadoran, Honduras, Nicaragua, etc step over the border into Mexico...it is Mexico which has the legal responsibility to provide them with shelter and temporary refugee status.  Mexico shirks on that responsibility and permits (some say encourages) these folks to pass through their nation. They freely ride the national railways north.  They continue through Mexico and attempt to make illegal entry into the USA on our southern border.  When they appear at our border the vast majority  are no longer “refugees” from violence or persecution—requiring a legal hearing and adjudication.  They have made a decision about where they want to go—now they are simply economic migrants and have not rights to legal protection as refugees. .  We have no responsibility to take them in.

Mr. Trump is correct.  We can and should simply send them back to Mexico.

Say no to “open borders”..it is a prescription for chaos.

  

The ignorance and hubris of Peter Strzok: “We will stop him”.

What have we learned?  We should all know now that the FBI leadership has apparently forgotten  the underlying principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of our great nation—that the power to govern is derived from the people...not from a monarch, a former president, or an existing governing establishment—or the FBI.    

We learn (sadly) from the recent IG Horowitz report on the Clinton Investigation of pervasive political bias in the FBI and even more seriously that FBI top echelon investigator Peter Strzok (and others in the top ranks of the FBI) seemed to think that they had the right to decide who should govern the USA.  (Strzok: “We will stop him” ). They forgot the most  basic principle  of the modern state—-that these establishment types  had no power to govern—aside from casting their own individual  vote...once the polls closed and the 64 million people who voted for Mr. Trump won the day.  At that instant on the late night of November 8,  2016, the power to govern passed from Mr. Obama (and his minions) to Mr. Trump who was revealed as (resoundingly) as the choice of the people.   

The idea of the “Devine right of kings (or the “Devine” right of former presidents, or minions of the establishment like Comey, Brennan, Page, and Strzok ) happily died with King James of England in 1625.  The golden concept that the power to govern is derived from the consent of the governed was best enunciated by John Locke (1632-1704) and those concepts were thankfully and wisely incorporated into our political culture by our Founding Fathers.

 It is a sad commentary that Mr. Obama ( who apparently schemed to initiate the so called “Russia Collusion” investigation to smear a political opponent —and later the designated President) and the top leadership of his (Obama government) and the  FBI —CIA and NSA etc. as well as too many other denizens of the DC swamp have either forgotten this cardinal political  principle or perhaps never knew it.  

They are the real threat to our democracy—-not Mr. Trump. 

IMIDACLOPRID: COLLAPSE OF LIS LOBSTER FISHERY

IMIDACLOPRID:  A FACTOR IN DRASTIC DECLINE OF LOBSTER IN LIS?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the neonicitinoid pesticide IMIDACLOPRID became widely used.  It’s period of wide use and application coincides closely with the drastic decline lobster  Homarus americanus (American Lobster) populations in Long Island Sound.  Rather than attributing the population collapse of lobster and  several other Crustacea genera to disease, and the “global” warming of LIS waters, this author suggests that another factor —the widespread use of pesticides known as nicotinoids may be a significant part of the cause attributable to the disappearance of American lobsters from our local waters.  Formal scientific analysis  of the impact of IMIDACLOPRID and similar compounds in the marine environment should be conducted. 

 In 1999, at the apex of the disastrous collapse of the lobster population in Long Island Sound, the Huntington Town Board voted to freely store lobster pots and boats of the township’s struggling lobstermen in the town’s landfill site.  They made the offer in the hope of sustaining the businesses of   the Town’s more than one hundred lobstermen who worked in  the former multimillion dollar commercial lobster industry. They assumed that, as in the past, the lobster population would  recover and the boats and traps would be reclaimed.  But now, nearly two decades later, the boats are gone and the remaining rusting and decayed pots are  considered a  threat to the town’s groundwater.  Recently, (May 15, 2018) the Town Board voted to rescind the storage agreement and required all lobster pots to be removed from Town landfill.  The Huntington Town Board’s decision  underscored  the death knell of a once grand tradition on Long Island.  For perhaps a century, skippers of small boats from all along the North Shore from Northport to Mattituck  went out to sea to set lobster pots to harvest the most sought after, delectable and valuable crustacean— Hommarus americanus

See Long Island Sound Study:  Status and Trends: LISS Environmental Indicators (longislandsoundstudy.net). 

SEE: Lobster landings for Connecticut and Long Island

Lobsters were very common in our waters in the mid 20th century. As a young boy, I caught them free diving with a simple rubber-band-propelled spear around isolated underwater rocks just off our north shore beaches in waters less than ten feet deep.  And during the the sixties and seventies if you lived anywhere near the north shore, and had a small boat, and could build a few traps, and set them out, baited with trash fish—you could harvest lobsters.  The catch was sparse with only one or two pots, but the thrill of seeing a big reddish-brown lobster in the dripping trap balanced on a boat rail was a great sight as well as a tasty and nutritional  addition to a small families’ diet.   

Those conditions did not last for by the late 90s the lobster population collapsed in Long Island Sound,  

In the fall of 1999 the NYS DEC and Connecticut DEC reported that lobster landings in western LI Sound fell by 100%.    These organizations reported that hundreds of thousands of lobsters had died.   For Connecticut alone reports indicated  a loss of income to commercial fishermen of over $16 million dollars per year.   But the lobster was not the only victim of the die off.  Other marine critters including the Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus) and the the Spider Crab ( Libinia sp) were also affected by population decline. 

 How did it happen?

Disease?

According to the Sea Grant Organization (See: seagrantsunysb.edu) marine scientists in several states tested western LI Sound  lobsters for disease.  They found no bacteria or viruses, but they did find a parasitic protozoan called “paramoeba” in the brain tissue of dead lobsters .   Typically lobster populations affected by disease, decline for a few seasons then rebound.  That was the concept that drove the Huntington Town Board to offer storage for lobster pots.  The lobsters would be back and the pots needed again. 

Global Warming?

Some attribute the drastic decline in population to global warming.  Regional sea water temperatures have been rising over the long term.  Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts, in Falmouth, MA, has been recording sea water temperatures since the 1880s.  Niantic Harbor, East Lyme CT,  Milford in in New haven County CT, with a shoreline in central L I Sound.  is in the western end of Long Island Sound All of these stations were used to create a generalized long term graph of sea water temperatures.  The composite graph shows a pattern in which the mean sea water winter temperatures in central Long Island Sound do reflect a troubling change which ranged from 1 to 3 deg Celsius from 1880 to 1940.  By the 1960s the  winter range of temperatures  had risen to the 1-4 degrees C level and by the 1980s that increased into the 2.5 to 5 degree C level.  But the drastic fall off of population in the late 1990s did not coincide with any specific spike in temperature.  In fact the population of Blue Claw (Callinectes sapidus) Crabs, and Spider Crabs dropped during that period as well.  The Blue Claws in Long Island Sound are at point of their most northern range.  They are typically a more southern species.  A warming of Long Island Sound should have INCREASED their population. But they seem to have disappeared about the same time as the lobsters.  

Imidacloprid (1985)

But there may be other causes too.  A new class of insecticides, called neonicotinoids, was synthesized in the 1970s. It mimicked  the toxic effects of  nicotine found in tobacco smoke.  One of these chemical toxins  produced by the Bayer Company  was patented by Bayer in 1985  and labeled “Imidacloprid”. It was introduced in the early 1990s and by the late 1990s it was extensively used world wide.     It became a phenomenal success almost immediately becoming the most widely used agricultural insecticide in the nation. By 1999 it was the most widely use insecticide in the world.  .  By 2013 virtually all corn and one third of the soybean crop in  the nation was being treated with Imidacloprid (or related pesticide).   Based on 2017 figures  that would mean that more than  120 million acres of crop lands were laced with some form of neonicotinoid pesticide.

The result of this widespread  usage was unexpected (?) lethal and sublethal  effects on

 non-target insect pollinators—such as bees and butterflies.  The fact that these soil and foliage treatments are recurrent year after year suggest the likelihood that surface waters which drain these vast agricultural acerages may leach neonicotinoids pesticide residues into rivers and streams and standing bodies of water.    In 2012-2014 the NY State Department of Environmental Protection did a study of imidacloprid in groundwater on Long Island.  Their results show widespread contamination of groundwater in Long Island aquifers.

The fact that the date of introduction of these new chemicals and the collapse of the Long Island lobster population seems to coincide closely is suggestive of a possible relationship.   The Sound is an enclosed marine basin in which marine water circulation is restricted and which is heavily impacted by groundwater from Long Island  and by groundwater and surface water discharges from Connecticut. The Thames, Housatoinc, Quinipiac, and Connecticut rivers drain a vast area and discharge mostly into the narrow western part of the Sound.    

Although almost all inquiries regarding the impact of neinicitinoids have been related to terrestrial impact and effects upon insects.  Some studies have recently focused on the aquatic environment and effects upon the other group of Arthropoda —Crustacea 

See Frontiers in Envronmental Science (Agroecology and Land Use Systems) 02-11-2016 (http//doi.org/10.3389/fends. 2016.00071 

Francisco Sanchez-Bayo, Koichi Goya and Daisuke Hayasaka,

In Contamination of the Aquatic Environment with Neonicotinoid and its implications for Ecosystems,  Sanchez-Bayo et. al., have implicated the neocicitinoid  pesticides as having with widespread use and potential for transfer of residues to the aquatic environment.  

Neonicotinoids (neonics) are, as their name suggests, “new nicotine-like” synthetic insecticides based on the chemical properties of the natural toxin nicotine.  The authors of the above study  review the history of this widely popular pesticide.  In the early 1990s the first insecticide of this genera was introduced as “imidacloprid” and patented by Bayer AG in 1985.   Imidacloprid was an instant success.  It was claimed to be as effective as the old organophosphate and organochlorine insecticides in use since the 1940s, but without the negative  environmental impacts, broad toxicity, bioaccumulation, and health problems to applicator workers caused by those older chemicals.  

Because Neonicotinoids are “systemic poisons (they are often  incorporated into the seed coat or are sprayed on the roots) they avoid wide contamination of surrounding areas. They are systemic poisons, that is they are absorbed (at the place of contact)  and then spread naturally through the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruit of the pant to which they are applied.  Thus the farmer need only insure that a “neonic”insecticide comes into contact with some part of the plant ( for instance  the germinating seed) to protect the entire adult plant from a host of insect pests which might attack, roots, leaves or fruit.  This “one time” application saved farmers enormously in time and fuel costs. The economic benefits of systemic neonics  were enormous and as a result in a few short years neoneicitinoids have become the “largest group of insecticides on the global market” (See Sanchez -Bayo).

 Their impact on bees and other terrestrial pollinators is well known.  Recent bans of certain classes of neonicitinoids has been recently imposed in the EU as a result.  Some countries have banned seeds treated with neonicitinoids,   

  This class of chemicals (cholinesterase blockers) which affect the nervous system of the target animals (Arthropoda i.e. Crustacea and Insecta) act by blocking a class of neuro active chemicals at neuronal receptors which stop nerve transmissions.  Thus they enable continuous neural impulses of affected neurons which eventually lead to the death of the  neuron or neurons.  (Simply stated this class of pesticide causes a form of “insect Parkinson’s disease” on the affected critter. It does not kill outright. They live on in a state of neural overactivity.). As more and more of the chemical binds to other neuronal receptors—causing increased damage to the nervous system and ultimately the death of the organism.  The impact on the insect is as if it were affected with an “insect Parkinson’s disease. 

Because neurons can not regenerate, the impact on target organisms often results in what the authors describe as “time-cumulative toxicity”.  The targeted organism may not die immediately.  But sub lethal doses have subtle effects on the nervous system which eventually lead to death.  Sublethal doses on bees nervous systems may cause them to fail to return to the hive, others may have impaired movement, feeding inhibitions, or  reduced or altered reproductive behaviors, or similar dysfunction leading to eventual death. 

Though Sanchez Bayo studied the impact of neonicitinoids in fresh water systems, the conclusions regarding aquatic impacts can be related to enclosed marine basins such as LI Sound which are heavily affected by terrestrial run off.  

It could well be that the coincidence of higher temperatures, disease outbreaks  AND the introduction of neonicitinoids into the terrestrial environment surrounding LIS had a synergistic effect on the American Lobster population causing a drastic decline.  Focusing our efforts only on disease outbreaks, and water temperature rises may be a terrible mistake.  

Further study of the impact of the various iterations of this potent pesticide should be evaluated by appropriate studies of the impact on the marine environment and native Crustacea by the  threat of imidacloprid (and similar neonicotinoids) on the marine envirnment.

With proper controls on use of this virulent pesticide, we may hope to see the American lobster and the Blue Claw return to Long Island Sound waters. .

ILLINOIS: FINANCIAL BASKET CASE—BLAME GLOBALISM

I read in the June 1, 2018 Editorial of the  Chicago Tribune, a piece entitled: “The ‘Illinois Exodus’, Black Comedy or Disaster movie?”   The editors of the ChiTrib  make it clear that the Ilinois exodus is the latter..an unmitigated disaster.  Illinois is in fiscal crisis mode.  Why?  The state has a whopping $130 billion dollar unfunded pension liability, a backlog  of $7 billion in outstanding current debt, and the worst credit rating of any state in the Union.  It’s fixed costs (pensions, current bills) takes up more than a third of its tax income....even after a massive 32% rise in taxes last year.  That and the fact that the legislation can not come up with a meaningful budget—- makes it a fiscal basket case.  The residents know it and are leaving the state in droves.  When they leave they take their skills, purchasing power and taxable income with them—-exacerbating the fiscal problem in Springfield.  Last year, the fourth in a row,  Illinois lost 34,000 residents—-again.  Illinois is not alone in this category of fiscal basket case— or is it the fault of the hardworking decent folks of that lovely state.  They are all the victims of the hollowing out of America’s heartland’s jobs and sending those jobs to China and Mexico.  We can see this same story replaying in one way or another in all of our heartland states—Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, and elsewhere. 

Globalization touted by our leadership in Washington for the last decades clearly favors only the super wealthy and an elite cadre of global entrepreneurs.  According to Investors Business Daily (1-27-17)  “Million of Lost American Jobs Show High Cost of Unfettered Free Trade”: Between 1999 and 2011 more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs were lost as our national industries picked up lock, stock and barrel and moved their manufacturing to China and Mexico and elsewhere.  (Where they often had to partner with Chinese companies in order to do business).  Other US businesses and industries which supplied raw materials or parts to these outsourcing  companies lost jobs too.   And when these companies took off for foreign shores—these enterprises were casualties too—eliminating another 400,000 jobs.  Well over a million manufacturing jobs were lost during that period.  

Workers lost their well-paying jobs to China and Mexico and the states like Illinois—lost tax payers and revenue.  The reason these states can at present not fund their pension liability or pay bills for their essential operations—are these disastrous job losses.  These states have become part of the now all to common, “rust belts” and “depressed areas”  that are spreading like a cancer across our nation.  The exodus of thousands upon thousands of formerly taxpaying residents from Illinois is only a symptom of the failed, and disastrous—nation destroying—free trade policies decided in  Washington DC to favor a small group of elite wealthy business class citizens. 

It is widely report somewhere that these “out-sourcing companies” save enormously on wages when they move their manufacturing operations to the Far East or to Mexico.  They pay those foreign  workers only a fraction of what American workers earn—the equivalent of $3 dollars an hour—versus perhaps $10-20 dollars per hour.  But where does that extra profit accruing to these policies go?  Not into the community, the state or the nation which spawned and nurtured that company as it grew and prospered—using its educated workers, its infrastructure and the skills of its native residents.  The massive savings in costs of production of outsourcing is not returned to the community—it goes into the pockets  of a few stockholders, top-management and chief executives.  This economic situation  only exacerbate another related US problem—that of unequal wealth distribution.  Funds (money, wealth) has concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people in the USA in part due to globalization. .  (The USA is the richest nation and has the most unequal wealth distribution. )   Wealth (and income) inequality in the USA is not good for the economy!  ( USA: top 1% own 40% of wealth, rest of us —99% share the 60% left over).   It means that those multitudes of workers  who actually spend their incomes on food, clothing, appliances, transportation, etc. etc. (and in that way support other businesses and industries) have less and less in their hands to spend  while more and more of those funds are sequestered from the general economy in the pockets of super wealthy cadre who are few and spend little in ways that stimulate the economy.  

Another problem generated by the decline in manufacturing sector in the US is that of the decline in innovation and development.  Patents  for new products and processes have declined in the USA.  We were once the world’s greatest innovators.  Those new ideas were once generated in the US workplace often by the men and women who operated machines or managed workers.     It is in an active workplace—where breakthrough processes, new ideas and new product ideas are generated—where innovations are developed.  In the USA we have moved virtually all those operations overseas—separating creative workers from the managers and designers by in some cases thousands of miles.  This does not encourage innovation and new development and in fact stifles such growth and the growth in productivity which is associated with it.  

The loss of industry in our heartlands —like in Illinois—means loss of income, loss of tax base loss of vitality of our industries, and less new development and innovation as well as lowered productivity. .  The globalists claimed that “some workers will have to suffer” but they claimed  “overall we are better off with a global economy”.  Well their predictions have been proved to be totally false.  We are all suffering and the suffering is spreading.  The effects of our failed global economy policies have now moved on from the individual workers to their  exodus from  states where those workers once worked, to the financial collapse of those states in our heartland.  What is next?