LET’S TALK ABOUT IRAN

LET’S TALK ABOUT IRAN   

Iran wanted "many billions of dollars" from the United States for the release of multiple American hostage, The Washington Free Beacon reported recently.   According to the Beacon, senior officials in the Iranian government have been considering requesting payment for months. Earlier this year, the White House paid $1.7 billion to Iran, $400 million of which was given over on the same day that Iran released four American prisoners, according to the Los Angeles Times.   President Barack Obama's administration denied that the money was a ransom, claiming that it was the settlement of a decades-old legal claim between the U.S. and Iran, but admitted that the transaction was delayed to pressure Iran into releasing the captives.   The rest of the $1.3 million is said to be interest on Iranian money held in America since the 70's.

              "We're currently conducting conversations and various dialogues in order to return this money to Iran," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on NBC News in September.   "Perhaps these dialogues can be still conducted simultaneously on parallel tracks while we're conducting those same conversations in order to free the sums of money that are still owed to us."   Iranian news sources, including Mashregh News, which is closely tied to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC), also known as the Revolutionary Guard, report that Iran "should wait and see, the U.S. will offer … many billions of dollars to release" Siamak Namazi, an American businessman, and his father Baquer, according to the Beacon.

"I am saddened to learn of the sentencing of Baquer Namazi and his son Siamak by Iran this week," Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told the Beacon. Kirk chairs the Senate Banking Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance, and supervises the government's sanctions policy on Iran.

"After airlifting $1.7 billion in cash ransom payments to Iran," Kirk continued. "Even the U.S. State Department ‎now warns of increased dangers that the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism will continue to illegally seize Americans and Westerners who travel or do business with Iran. Companies, banks, and American citizens would be wise to stay away from Iran."

              Back in May of this year, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif led their respective delegations in the nuclear negotiations in Austria and Switzerland.   Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday rejected the notion that it’s America’s job to promote business with Iran following the nuclear deal, but again underscored that the U.S. government is not standing in the way of European companies doing business with Tehran.   Except in the case of those companies and individuals that remain designated by the U.S. government for non nuclear-related sanctions, Iran is “open for business,” he said in London.   “Banks in Europe are allowed to open accounts for Iran, banks in Europe are allowed to do business, banks in Europe can fund programs, lend money,” Kerry told reporters ahead of a meeting with European bankers focused on Iran.”   “That’s absolutely open for business, as long as it’s not a designated entity, period. Very simple.”

Iranian officials, led by Kerry’s counterpart and nuclear negotiating partner Javad Zarif, have been complaining bitterly about European companies’ reluctance to do business with Iran now that many sanctions have been lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.

But Kerry said European firms in some cases were using U.S. sanctions as an “excuse” for not seeking opportunities in Iran.   “Businesses should not use the United States as an excuse if they don’t want to do business or if they don’t see a good business deal,” he said. “They shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because [of] the United States.’ That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate. And we sometimes get used as an excuse in this process.”   European banks, he repeated, “are absolutely free to open accounts for Iran, trade, exchange money, facilitate a legitimate business agreement, bankroll it, lend money. All of those things are absolutely open, permissible.”   A reporter asked Kerry why it was the job of the U.S. to advocate for companies to do business in Iran.

“It’s not our job to sell them on doing business,” he replied. “It’s our job to make clear to them what the rules are, that’s all. I mean, we’re not telling people what to go do, but we are telling people what they’re allowed to do, and there seems to be some confusion about that.”   “Iran has a right to the benefits of the agreement they signed up to,” Kerry said.   Addressing lawmakers in Tehran at the weekend, Zarif complained that Iran’s “enemies, especially that Zionists,” were trying hard “to deter foreign investors from participating in Iran.”   “Consequently, we must promote the fact that Iran is the safest and most profitable country for investment,” he said.   U.S., U.N., and multilateral nuclear-related sanctions were lifted with effect from the JCPOA’s “implementation day” last January 16, but numerous other U.S. sanctions remain in place, including measures imposed in response to human rights violations, the regime’s sponsorship of terrorism, and ballistic missile activities.

They include direct sanctions against more than 200 designated Iranian companies and individuals – according to a top Treasury official – and “secondary” sanctions, or those targeting firms in third countries that do business with designated Iranian entities.   Complicating the situation is the fact that some of the U.S. sanctions overlap, targeting both nuclear and non-nuclear issues.  

The 2010 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, for example, takes aim at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and those that do business with the IRGC, for its involvement in the nuclear program as well as international terrorism and rights abuses.   The 2012 Iran Threat Reduction Act imposes sanctions in response to support for the nuclear program, rights abuses and/or international terrorism.   Further, none of the U.S. measures targeting the IRGC and its affiliates have been waived or suspended as a result of JCPOA implementation. But the IRGC is suspected of having interests in many sectors of the Iranian economy, and not all the links are publicly known.   A bipartisan lobby group opposed to the JCPOA has launched a campaign warning foreign companies about the risks – financial, legal and reputational – in doing business with Tehran.   United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) said Tuesday it has sent dozens of letters to leading corporations, “warning of the myriad endemic risks involving Iran,” and that it plans to contact hundreds more in the coming months.   Those contacted already include corporations actively considering opportunities in Iran, including General Electric, Fiat Chrysler, Siemens, Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier and the Danish container operator Maersk.

UANI said it has also been in touch with major South Korean companies. South Korean President Park Geun-hye visited Iran early this month, accompanied by more than 200 business executives. Agreements for construction and energy projects worth $45.6 billion were signed.   In an earlier open letter to businesses, UANI warned it was risky doing business in Iran post-JCPOA.   Noting the IRGC’s penetration of many sectors of Iran’s economy, the letter said doing business in Iran without also doing business with the IRGC would be virtually impossible.

“This risk is only further amplified because the IRGC routinely operates through an extensive network of front companies that mask the IRGC’s involvement,” it said. “An international firm active in Iran could therefore easily conduct or facilitate transactions with the IRGC or one of its affiliates or front companies, potentially triggering costly penalties under U.S. sanctions.”   UANI also cautioned firms about the risk to their reputation of doing business with a regime that sponsors terrorism, violates its citizens’ rights, and “remains an international outlaw and force for instability.”   UANI was founded in 2008 by Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., former CIA Director James Woolsey, former U.S. Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross and the late assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke.

Others associated with it include former CIA acting director Michael Morell and former Attorney-General Michael Mukasey. Its chairman is former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.   Speaking to CNBC last Thursday, Lieberman said UANI was asking companies mulling business with Iran to “wait a second. Do you really want to do business in this country?”

Asked about the argument that doing business with Iran is precisely what is needed to help effect change, Lieberman said one had but to look at the conduct of Iranian officials, from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei down, since the JCPOA was concluded.   “There’s no indication that post the Iran nuclear agreement, this radical, expansionist, terroristic administration in Tehran has changed,” he said.   Still, our government continues blithely down the road, ignoring all the signposts.  Are we, collectively, the scarecrow looking to the wizard for some brains?  We certainly are acting as if we don’t have any now. 

Parting shot.   Anybody want to take a guess what that 400 million dollars, in cash, is going to buy for Iran?   They say it was ransom for the four prisoners.  Our government says it was money we owed them.  Really?   It’s funny that they demanded, and got it, all in cash, and that no prisoners were released until the cash was in their hands.  Wake up America, your country needs you…desperately.

DO YOU NEED MORE PROOF?

DO YOU NEED MORE PROOF?  

I saw this the other day and almost threw my coffee mug at the monitor…you may have a different reaction.  Young men are more into makeup now, so naturally the beauty brands are there to market to the growing gender-neutral trends of Generation Z, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday, October 19^th.   The article went on to say…"Gender matters less than it used to," Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group, told the Times. "If you're a youth brand, it's something you need to embrace and understand. It's this very self-confident, hyper-individual generation who are constructing their identity in fashion and makeup outside of their traditional gender buckets."  

CoverGirl recently signed teen makeup artist James Charles as its first male face, marking a movement to appeal to Generation Z's trends.   J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group's report earlier this year revealed, per the Times: 56 percent of Generation Z know someone relating to gender-neutral pronouns of "they," "them," or "ze;".   Only 44 percent bought clothes restricted for their gender;  70 percent support gender-neutral bathrooms.   It is far more trendy than ever to be in the gender-neutral crowd.    "This idea of choice, being whoever you want to be — it's something that is acceptable more and more," art director Fabien Baron told the Times. "It's like the gay evolution in the 60's and the 80's. It's the normal continuation of what should have been happening decades ago."

          It’s not just the physical condition in which the United States is being wussified…it’s everything!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation used to be held in the highest esteem…not so much anymore.  

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI usually only “proffers” immunity deals in return for genuine information and requirements that the recipients cooperate with other investigating bodies, such as Congress.  That said, in this specific case its unclear what the FBI received in return for their immunity deals other than what they could have otherwise taken with a subpoena.  As Jim Jordan said, “if the FBI wanted any other Americans’ laptops, they would just go get them—they wouldn’t get an immunity deal.”  But, of course, by offering immunity, the FBI exempted the laptops and their emails as potential evidence in a criminal case.

Here’s what Rep. Jordan, Republican from Ohio said about the FBI’s decision to grant immunity to Clinton’s IT crew: “Here’s the takeaway in my mind: Cheryl Mills gets a heads up in mid-summer of 2014. July 23, the day before Mr. Combetta’s Reddit post, the House Benghazi Committee and the State Dept. reached an agreement on production of documents. Mills has a conversation with Paul Combetta. He goes on Reddit then, and tries to figure out how he can get rid of all this email. Even though he is not successful then, he has to do it later on with BleachBit. And then the clincher: Just last week, he’s going online and trying to delete these Reddit posts. He’s trying to delete his tracks. He’s trying to cover up the cover-up.  

The same guy later took BleachBit and did delete the emails. The guy you gave immunity to, the guy who took the Fifth in front of us, is online trying to figure out how to remove email addresses (change evidence). That guy who later used Bleachbit, who won’t testify in front of Congress, has correspondence with [Hillary Clinton chief of staff] Cheryl Mills, a subject of the investigation. Cheryl Mills, who also got some kind of immunity agreement. Cheryl Mills, who walked out for part of the questions during her interview with the FBI.”

Director Comey, when he first testified about Hillary Clinton, ran down a laundry list of the things she did wrong, the things in which she broke the law…and then gave her a get-out-of-jail-free-card because he said the intent wasn’t clear enough.  For me, the initials FBI now mean Fink’s Battalion of Idiots.   From the Bleachbit site we have this explanation of what it is…When your computer is getting full, BleachBit quickly frees disk space. When your information is only your business, BleachBit guards your privacy. With BleachBit you can free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn't know was there. Designed for Linux and Windows systems, it wipes clean thousands of applications including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari,and more.  Beyond simply deleting files, BleachBit includes advanced features such as shredding files to prevent recovery, wiping free disk space to hide traces of files deleted by other applications, and vacuuming Firefox to make it faster. Better than free, BleachBit is open source.

          South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy. says Hillary Clinton's team deleted emails "so even God couldn't read them" using BleachBit.   As a little boy I tried to hide things from my mother by putting them behind my back.  As I got older, I found better hiding places, and technology has helped millions to hide stuff they don’t want found.   The question to be asked is this…what was so terrible in the emails that they had to be completely destroyed?   We may never know.   What we DO know is that America IS being fundamentally transformed, as Hussein said he’d do, he just didn’t tell us that we’d be changing from being a great nation into something rapidly resembling Venezuela! 

DON’T LIKE MUSLIMS? YOU’RE A RAT.

DON’T LIKE MUSLIMS?  YOU’RE A RAT. 

Major Swedish journalist Cecilia Hagen wrote in a recent column about how much she detests rats. However, there was a political connotation. Hagen said called anyone that did not support what is, in effect, an Islamic invasion of Europe, is a “brown rat” and deserves to be exterminated.   The Bar Association Secretary General Anne Ramberg recently wrote in which she called anti-immigrant politicians “brown rats”.   Hagen begins her chronicle with addressing the persistent problem of rats in Stockholm. Then she directed the focus toward people with immigration critical opinions. “It’s those other councilmen who I would like to wipe out in a dignified manner.   She asks a little later how best to “get rid of human brown rats” and suggests the use of poison.

Apparently, Ms. Hagen is one of the many voices that will not expose the corruption of her own government as it has covered up gang rape that is directly caused by a program that paid children to spend time with Muslims. Also, no one heard a peep from her when thebiggest child sex exploitation in the country’s history, involving Muslims, was reported in 2015. And should we even bring up the rioting that took place in 2013? Yep, Islamists were at the core of that too.   However, this woman wants to blame her countrymen for the crimes of the Muslim invaders. It’s sick!   Consider what the outrage would be had this column referred to Muslims as “brown rats” that need to be exterminated. I’m not advocating for extermination of any people group, but rather the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that can even turn the hearts of those who believe the anti-Christ doctrines of Islam. If that takes place, we would see no reason to be concerned with Islam anymore because it would not exist.

The problem in today’s world is that men are quicker to bear the carnal weapons than they are skilled in the use of spiritual ones.   Ms. Hagen should be ashamed of herself for calling out her fellow countrymen who oppose those who follow in the footsteps of Muhammad from entering and destroying their homeland. Give us brave voices not only in Sweden, but throughout the world who expose Islam for what it is and provide a meaningful solution to its destruction.

Let’s talk a bit about that Orlando shooter…The gunman who killed 49 people at a gay Orlando nightclub early on that Sunday morning apparently prepared for his own death before the shooting.   Omar Mateen, 29, added his wife, 30-year-old Noor Salman, to his life-insurance policy and gave her access to his bank accounts, CNN reported on Friday, June 17th, citing unidentified law-enforcement sources.   Now, Salman has left the area where the couple lived, according to the Sun Sentinel.   She's "no longer here," Omar Mateen's father, Seddique, told reporters outside of his Fort Pierce, Florida, home on Wednesday.  Salman was reportedly living with Mateen's father in Fort Pierce when her husband attacked the nightclub. Public records list her most recent address — presumably where she lived with Mateen after they married in 2013 — as a 15-minute drive from his father's home in Fort Pierce.   But Seddique told reporters that Salman was no longer in the area, either.  

I’m reminded of the little boy in the post office, looking at the wanted posters.  He asks his father what the posters are about and the father tells him that those are dangerous people and the police are looking for them.   The little boy then says to his father, “Dad, why didn’t they keep them when they took their picture?”   Good question…why didn’t we detain(at the very least) anyone that goes to a “hot” country and returns to the US.  The FBI, which has lost all credibility in my opinion, seems to operate on a catch-and-release system, much like the Border Patrol.   Wake up America, your country needs you…desperately.

Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired

(aka The Old Alarmist)

Duty.  Honor.  Country.

From: Allen [mailto:aquarius21234@att.net]

Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 4:37 PM

To: 'Larry Usoff'

Subject: RE: S's blog

Hooooold on thar pard … I’m waiting fer yer blog

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Larry Usoff [mailto:amafrog@att.net]

Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 1:28 PM

To: 'Allen'

Subject: RE: S's blog

Ok…now let’s all take Sunday off. J

Larry Usoff, US Navy Retired

(aka The Old Alarmist)

Duty.  Honor.  Country.

From: Allen [mailto:aquarius21234@att.net]

Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 3:53 PM

To: 'Larry Usoff'

Subject: RE: S's blog

Better, thanks. Blog received

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Larry Usoff [mailto:amafrog@att.net]

Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 6:39 AM

To: Al Lerner

Subject: S's blog

Al, this is Sylvia’s blog…have a good weekend, and hope you’re feeling better. J

The Veteran’s Administration is not giving the veterans a fair shake.       

          The Veteran’s Administration’s corruption, neglect and abuse is still around and probably is bigger than ever.  When a man or woman joins any of the services, they, in essence, sign a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount of and up to including their life.   This was written anonymously by a veteran, and how true it is.  Then these brave souls go out and fight to protect and preserve our freedoms at great cost to them and their families.   So when these heroes come home they deserve the very best medical care that this country can give them.   But that hasn’t happened in the past and it’s certainly not happening now.  

          In 2014, the VA got a new director, Robert McDonald, who has done very little to rid this agency of the corruption, apathy and abuse.   Meanwhile, President Barack Obama’s administration appears to be working very hard to keep all this mess going on at the VA hidden from the public.   Problems and horror stories continue to emerge from VA hospitals and clinics across the country.   Why should a veteran have to wait thirty days for a doctor’s appointment and, in many cases, a lot longer?   Secret “wait lists” have been found that conceal how long it really takes to get the health care that these men and women deserve.   The vets are often denied or have to wait months for screenings, such as colonoscopies and endoscopies.   Consults with specialists are hard to come by and there seems to be a large amount of neglect.   Those suffering from PTSD in many cases have not had adequate treatment and some have committed suicide while waiting to be cared for.   Veterans have complained of having to wait long hours only to be greeted by an uncaring, arrogant, employee who shows no respect.  This is the culture of the VA and nobody is ever held accountable.   This is truly disgraceful. 

          So, what can be done to change things at the Veterans Administration’s hospitals and clinics?   If they are to continue to exist there must be some significant changes.   Here are some suggestions:

          *Get a new director

          *Involve veterans groups

*Get rid of the deadwood bureaucrats who have collected big salaries and great perks while doing harm to our vets

*Give the jobs at the VA to veterans who will show empathy, respect and understanding to their fellow vets and will work diligently to get them quality care

*All systems used by each institution should be reviewed and revised

*There is a provision for vets to get care from outside sources if they are unable to get it from the VA.  I wonder how many know about this?

There are many who think that the Veteran’s Administration’s health care system is beyond repair and should be dismantled.   This is currently an overgrown bureaucracy which has lost sight of what their prime focus should be…delivering quality care on a timely basis to our veterans in an atmosphere of respect, trust and compassion.   Recently, Mr. Obama said everything is fine at the VA, and Hillary agreed.   However, Donald Trump thinks that there needs to be significant change.   So, veterans, for whom will you be voting on November 8th?

CONCLUSION.

CONCLUSION.
A few years back there was a series of disaster films, with worldwide catastrophe as the focal point.   One in particular, a story of a huge comet striking the earth, impressed me a lot.  As I watched the film a thought came to me…what if the end of the world was to come by a comet?   How would the population of the earth respond?   Would they be as calm as the people in the film or would they riot and revert back to anarchy?
Looking around at the riots that have occurred in the last two years, for the deaths of people who may or may not have been guilty, they seem rather petty compared to the end of the world.   Now, having said that, and not knowing the full story on most of the killings and subsequent riots, it does appear that one or two people are not tipping the scale over an estimated seven billion that would be lost.   Terrorism is quite a different story, I believe.  Jihadis are following edicts in their holy book, but that doesn’t make it any the less horrible…nor does it excuse them from complete annihilation when a large object strikes the earth.    
So…what do you do when you, and the rest of the world, is threatened with extinction?   In the films there’s always survivors and they always have a good outlook.   Reality is a bit more stark, I think.   When the world is destroyed, it won’t really matter where you are, who you are, or what you’ve done.   You will go wherever your bits and pieces go.   If you are a believer you’ll go to some sort of heaven or paradise…or hell.   As gruesome as this all sounds it is a very real possibility because scientists say that it happened once before, which is why the dinosaur age came to a sudden halt…and it could very well happen again.
Also years ago there was a book about this big blue ball that we live on, and the author treated it as if it were a spaceship hurtling through space…which, in fact, it is.   He proposed that earthlings look to other planets to colonize just because earth might disappear one day.   Jules Verne, back in 1865, was already thinking about going to the moon, and in 1968, we did just that, and landed a man on the moon and returned him safely to earth.   We’re now contemplating expeditions to Mars which is the next-closest to our own planet.   Trips to Mars are not going to be short ones, and from what I’ve read, young people could grow old on such a trip.   Is Mars even habitable for earthlings?  
This is from a site called Mars.com , After the Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in our solar system due to several reasons: Its soil contains water to extract…It isn’t too cold or too hot…there is enough sunlight to use solar panels…Gravity on Mars is 38% that of our Earth's, which is believed by many to be sufficient for the human body to adapt to…It has an atmosphere (albeit a thin one) that offers protection from cosmic and the Sun's radiation…The day/night rhythm is very similar to ours here on Earth: a Mars day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds…so you can appreciate why Mars may be the new home for earthlings.
Maybe this gave you something to think about.  I hope so.   As Bogie says, the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world…and that’s just as true as if you said 3 billion, because when it’s over, it’s over.
My parting shot is this, sent in by a reader.  I think it’s humorous, and if it offends anyone…too bad.  “Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French and it’s all organized by the Swiss.  Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and it’s all organized by the Italians.”   If you have comments, get me at amafrog@att.net  I answer everything.

WHO’S ABOVE THE LAW?

WHO’S ABOVE THE LAW?

Recently, the House Republicans’ continuing investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server on  prompted new subpoenas, three witnesses taking the Fifth Amendment and one Clinton family information technology aide explained his use of a hammer to destroy his boss’ obsolete mobile devices.   Justin Cooper, a 15-year all-purpose employee of the Clinton family, was the only IT specialist among four invited by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify rather than invoke his right not to incriminate himself.   The result was new detail on the origins of the private server in Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home following an FBI investigation that found “carelessness” by her but no grounds for prosecution. Republicans said they are just getting started in asking what they see as unanswered questions about the security and transparency of Clinton’s arrangement, while Democrats called the series of hearings a redundant, politically motivated election-year “photo op.”

Asked why, as the FBI reported this month, he took a hammer to one of Clinton’s mobile devices, Cooper said “it was not done in any way to destroy or hide information” but to avoid “putting it in the trash where someone could find it.” He stressed that whenever he switched Clinton to a new mobile device, he “felt it was good practice” to destroy the old one after all data had been transferred and backed up.   Cooper said the Clintons never discussed with him any issues about the Federal Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act. On the contrary, he said, he went to great lengths to fully transfer all data from the old device to the new.   On questioning by Republicans, however, Cooper acknowledged that he did not have security clearance, despite having access to many State Department emails in the course of helping both Bill and Hillary Clinton. When he found some official content on his own backup computer, he said, he turned it over to his attorneys who relayed them to the FBI.

Cooper, who now works as a consultant for a variety of clients but not the Clintons, also acknowledged that he was not an IT expert; he was the “interface” with the Clintons. The “engineering” and security of the private server were the province of Bryan Pagliano—whom Republicans had invited as the key witness. Pagliano declined to show up at the hearing.   It was after the Clinton presidential campaign of 2008 shut down, Cooper said, that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin asked him to work with Pagliano, who had bought surplus computers from the campaign, on setting up Apple iMacs in the Clinton’s New York and Washington homes to relay emails to Clinton’s BlackBerry. “They had a desire to change her email address because a number of people had that address,” he said, calling it a “matter of convenience” to add her account to the existing, Secret Service-protected server being used by former President Clinton.

Later, “user problems” surfaced, and Pagliano thought they needed to expand to a “more robust” system that he helped physically install in March 2009. The only people with email accounts on the server, Cooper said, were Hillary Clinton, Abedin and Chelsea Clinton.   Cooper said he was not around when the server was moved to a secure room in the home after Hillary Clinton became secretary of State. “I’ve never been in a position to be technical expert on either the server or whether classified email was sent to secretary,” said Cooper. He did acknowledge, when asked by Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., about the risks of hacking attacks by Russia and China, that this “is something to be concerned about.”   In response to other lawmakers’ questions, he said he was paid by the Clinton family executive services contractor, and that he is paying his own attorney fees during the investigation.

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, opened the hearing by saying, “Hillary Clinton as secretary of State for roughly four years helped create one of what is reported to be one of the biggest security breaches in the history of the State Department and it is an absolute mess.”   He said he wanted to hear from Pagliano and two officials from Platte River Networks—the private firm that later supervised Clinton’s server—to learn details on how the server would have been safeguarded against hacking when there was “no encryption, no dual authentication.” Chaffetz said Pagliano was hired at the State Department as a GS-15 but failed to report that he was also being paid by the Clintons.   And Chaffetz wanted Platte River Networks employees Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta to explain an email released by the FBI that appears to express the firm’s anxiety about being asked in March 2015 to delete past Clinton emails without a written agreement staying why—given the fact that a congressional committee would subpoena them.

Neither employee present would speak beyond invoking, on advice of counsel, the Fifth Amendment. Their silence and the absence of Pagliano prompted Chaffetz to decry the way Pagliano “thumbed his nose at the U.S. Congress.  I will continue to explore all options,” Chaffetz added. “Anyone under the illusion that I’m going to let it go and sail off into the sunset is mistaken.”   Ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said, “Today is our third emergency hearing about Secretary Clinton’s emails in four business days.  I believe this committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clinton’s campaign for president.” Stressing that the FBI had already concluded a professional investigation that found no criminal liability, Cummings said, “The point of today’s hearing is to investigate baseless Republican accusations that Secretary Clinton or her aides ordered the destruction of emails to conceal them from investigators.” He argued for having Pagliano, whom the Justice Department granted immunity, testify in an executive session.

Republicans made it plain that the issue isn’t fading soon. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee who was permitted to attend and pose questions, said he had just issued three more subpoenas to private IT firms working on the Clinton server. Their responses, he said, suggest “obstruction of justice” and “continues a Clinton habit of secrecy, not transparency.”    In gaveling the hearing to a close, Chaffetz announced it was being recessed to a later date. 

What I deduced from this is that, even when a Congressional subpoena is issued, you don’t have to show up, if you work for the right people.  If you or I refused to show up when subpoenaed by a lower court, you can bet they would issue a bench warrant and we’d go straight to jail, not passing GO and not getting two hundred dollars either!

HILLARY, THE QUEEN OF THE MAY

HILLARY, THE QUEEN OF THE MAY…

She lies even when lies gain her nothing, and REWARDS corruption among her inner circle, (looking at YOU, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz). In that environment, even little inconsistencies begin to look suspicious.   Remember the health story? Cough, cough. ‘Feeling fine’… ‘Just allergies’… Doctor Drew weighs in, gets his show cancelled… Collapse… ‘just overheated’… People tweet weather conditions… ok, it’s Pneumonia.   This is the deception Hillary’s famous for… she even had the primaries in her own ‘Democratic’ Party ‘rigged’. And when DWS resigned in shame? She was immediately snapped up by the Clinton campaign.   First off, we already knew Hillary had a custom-built podium, presumably to minimize the apparent difference in height between the candidates. That’s where this latest controversy begins.

First, there was the video clip from the end of the debate of someone (dubbed ‘The Cleaner’) taking a folder away from Hillary’s podium, before walking past the moderator’s table.   The question being asked by some, is ‘did Hillary have advance notice of the questions?’   Hillary seemed a little ‘too’ ready for the questions. Is this the same Hillary who didn’t understand that ‘C’ stood for Classified?   We now know who they guy in the clip is: The Cleaner has been identified as Brady Williamson, a long time democrat operative and three-decade member of the democrat debate negotiation team.   One keen observer noticed a glint of light off of Hillary’s podium that was not seen on Trump’s.   If Hillary were generally thought to be honest, this would probably be waved away as a trick of the light shining off the polished wood. But Hillary has a track record of gaming the system, doesn’t she?    Find the video of the debate, and notice which podium has all the activity around it?   You probably want to watch this with the sound down, because it goes way past actual observable details, and ventures into wild conjecture, especially after the 10-minute mark. But it points out the observable differences between the podiums that are giving some observers pause.   And again, we emphasize — if Hillary had been an honorable woman, none of this would EVER have even come up in the first place.

            Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton claims to care about every American. What does she really think about those who can’t help her out, though? As November comes closer, we look back at one incident involving her luggage that could tell us a lot about how a Clinton presidency might look.   Back in 2014, FBI agent Gary Aldridge published a book called “Unlimited Access,” dealing with his time at the bureau. A lot of the most explosive details from it had to deal with Aldridge’s interactions with the first family during the 1990s — specifically, with Hillary Clinton.

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, and to nobody’s surprise, Hillary Clinton was considered a pain to work with and was nasty to almost anyone she came across. She mistreated Secret Service agents and pretty much every person in the White House apparatus.

            On one occasion, she asked an FBI agent to carry her luggage. That wasn’t part of his detail, and insulting at the very least. When he declined, she exploded at him.   “Stay the f*** away from me! Just f***ing do as I say!” Clinton reportedly told the agent.  Classy.   We’ve all heard the tales about how Clinton has mistreated the Secret Service or our men in uniform, which should be a good enough reason not to vote for her. Behind the supposedly equable exterior lies someone who isn’t exactly the most grounded individual.   Remember: After Hillary Clinton gets your vote (or, hopefully, not), she doesn’t have to kiss up to you anymore. You’re just another FBI agent who should be handling her baggage. We’re all going to be Hillary Clinton’s baggage handlers, and it’s going to come at the expense of our economy, our constitutional rights and our security.   Is this the woman you want as our commander in chief? I certainly don’t.

            And, even newer was the leaked audio tapes and how Clinton really thinks about the millennials.  Hacked audio of a conversation between Hillary Clinton and donors during a February fundraising event shows the Democrat nominee describing Bernie Sanders supporters as "children of the Great Recession" who are "living in their parents’ basement."   Speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by former U.S. ambassador Beatrice Welters, Clinton says in a clip released by the Free Beacon that many of her former primary opponent's supporters sought things like “free college, free health care,” saying that she preferred to occupy the space "from the center-left to the center-right" on the political spectrum.   During the conversation, also reported in the Intercept, Clinton confesses to feeling "bewildered" by those to her far-left and far-right in the election.

"There is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates," she said. "And on the other side, there’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel."

While stressing the need to not serve as a "wet blanket on idealism," Clinton paints fans of the then-surging Vermont senator as political newbies attempting to deal with an economy that has fallen short of their expectations.   "Some are new to politics completely. They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement," she said. "They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future."   Clinton added: "If you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing."    

"I think we all should be really understanding of that," Clinton said.   The audio, which according to the Free Beacon was "revealed by hackers who breached the email account of a campaign staffer," surfaces the same week that Sanders hit the campaign trail to try to win those same young voters that Clinton has struggled to attract since clinching the Democratic nomination.  For Sanders to cave in as he did, there had to be a deal that was made, and I’ll bet a steak dinner on that!

Now, let’s talk about her running mate, Tim Kaine, for a bit.   Tim Kaine lied and got caught doing it…

The Democrat Party relentlessly panders to the Hispanic community to get votes.   Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine sank to new depths of shameless political spins during a recent CNN interview.   But what shocked viewers was that his statement was such an over-the-top lie that he got called out by the liberal host.   Appearing on CNN’s New Day, Hillary’s running mate – Senator Tim Kaine – claimed that sanctuary cities don’t exist.   Mediaite reports: 

“Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine was called out by CNN New Day host Chris Cuomo Thursday after suggesting that sanctuary cities– localities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials– do not actually exist.   “I trust the voters of communities to hold their mayors and their police departments responsible,” Kaine said. “When Donald Trump kind of goes after these phantom ‘sanctuary cities’ and talks about how bad they are, basically what he’s going after is police chiefs. And I trust police chiefs in terms of knowing what should be done to keep their communities safer and police departments and mayors a lot more than I trust Donald Trump.”

That was too much even for Chris Cuomo – the son of liberal icon and former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo.  

Mediaite further reports on the host taking Kaine to task: “Cuomo took issue with Kaine’s insistence that the idea of sanctuary cities was only “phantom.” “But why do you say ‘phantom’? You know that there are places that refuse to cooperate with Immigrant Customs Enforcement and they have their assembly of different reasons for why they do it, but sanctuary cities are real,” he said.  “They exist, they’re not phantom,” he continued. “And a lot of people believe that, you know, you have those people being rewarded for not working hand in hand with ICE.”

Sanctuary cities became a hot-button issue during the campaign after the murder of Kate Steinle.   Steinle was killed by an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported five times, but was able to roam freely in the sanctuary city of San Francisco.   CNN reports on the circumstances surrounding her murder: “On the evening of July 1, 2015, Steinle was walking on a busy pier of the Embarcadero with her father when there was a single popping sound in the air. The 32-year-old medical device sales representative was shot in the chest, a bullet piercing her aorta, according to the lawsuit.   Her father, James, held her in his arms. “Help me Daddy,” were her last words to him, the lawsuit said. She died later at a hospital.   The man accused of firing the deadly shot — 45-year-old Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez — is an undocumented immigrant and a repeat felon who has been deported five times to Mexico, according to the suit.”

San Francisco is one of over two hundred sanctuary cities in the United States where elected officials refuse to enforce federal immigration laws.   Trump has made ending sanctuary cities one of the ten proposed immigration reforms.   He said he will withhold federal funding from cities that refuse to enforce our immigration laws.   The Democrat and Republican tickets clearly have different priorities on immigration.   Hillary has promised amnesty in the first 100 days, and Tim Kaine claims sanctuary cities don’t exist.   Trump has promised to secure our border, build a wall that Mexico will pay for, end illegal immigration, and transform our immigration system into one that serves American interests and American workers.

Parting shot…I would say those are worthwhile goals and I believe Trump is the one that can do them.  If, however, your thinking is that we should have four more years of Obama, his failed policies and lies, then, by all means, vote for Mrs. Clinton.

THIS AND THAT FOR OCTOBER 2016

THIS AND THAT FOR OCTOBER 2016

Some things may never come to light if the mainstream media has their way.  They are the public relations arm of the Democrat party so it follows that any negative news is going to be buried or diverted.  So, here’s something for you to think about…Breitbart News, on August 2^nd, 2016 reports that Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet.   This development is significant, as his website proved—as Breitbart News and others have reported—that he financially benefits from unfettered pay-to-play Muslim migration into America.   His website, shows that as a lawyer he engages in procurement of EB5 immigration visas and other “Related Immigration Services.”   The website is completely removed from the Internet, and instead directs visitors to the URL at which it once was to a page parking the URL run by GoDaddy.

The EB5 program, which helps wealthy foreigners usually from the Middle East essentially buy their way into America, is fraught with corruption. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has detailed such corruption over the past several months, and in February issued a blistering statement about it.    “Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”

Grassley’s statement even noted that the program Khan celebrated on his website has posed national security risks.   “There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. “The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”

Khan spoke alongside his wife Ghazala Khan at the Democratic National Convention last week in Philadelphia, and they were honoring their son U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan—a hero who lost his life to a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. On behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, Khizr Khan ripped into Donald Trump’s policies on immigration—specifically bashing his plan to bar Muslim migration from regions afflicted with rampant terrorism into America temporarily until the United States can figure out what’s going on.   Khan even brought out a pocket Constitution, claiming inaccurately that Trump’s plans were unconstitutional. That’s not true, as Congress has already granted such power to the president under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952—allowing the president to bar migration of any alien or class of aliens the president sees as a threat to the United States for any reason at any time. Such a class of aliens could be Muslims, or it could be people from a specific region of the world, or any other class—such as someone’s race, weight, height, age, national origin, religion, or anything else.

The media, along with Hillary Clinton and her supporters throughout the Democratic Party establishment, has pushed the line of attack against Trump for days. Now on Tuesday, President Barack Obama has said that Trump is “unfit” to serve as President over the matter. Even a group of anti-Trump congressional Republicans has gone after Trump on the matter.   But as Breitbart News and other new media have exposed Khan’s various deep political and legal connections to the Clintons—and to Muslim migration—the attack line has crumbled. Now, with Khan deleting his website in an apparent effort to hide his biographical information, the attack is falling apart even more.

What’s perhaps interesting is that also on this website that he has now deleted, Khan revealed that he spent nearly a decade working for the mega-D.C. law firm Hogan & Hartson—now Hogan Lovells LLP—which connects him directly with the government of Saudi Arabia and the Clintons themselves. Saudi Arabia, which has retained the firm that Khan worked at for years, has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton, despite the repeated urging of Trump, has refused to return the Clinton Cash money to the Saudis. What’s more, Hogan Lovells also did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—and helped acquire the patents for parts of the technology she used in crafting her illicit home-brew email server that the FBI director called “extremely careless” in handling classified information.

What’s more, the entire mainstream has proven negligence with regard to this matter as none of them even thought to look into this Khan guy’s law practice before bandying him about as some kind of magic elixir that cures the country of Trump.   That’s the end of the Breitbart report.   As I see it, this is just one more distraction away from seeing the real Hillary Clinton…but this shiny object that we’re drawn to is even worse than we originally thought.   The ties that bind, in this case it’s millions and millions of dollars, tie the Clinton campaign and, no doubt, her presidency if she wins, to the will of Saudi Arabia.   That is not a good thing for this country.

IT’S BEEN ON MY MIND.

IT’S BEEN ON MY MIND.

          There are very few things that I keep on my mind because they get written down.   My father used to tell me that anything written down is permanent and that it could be used against you at some point in the future…and he was right.   The problem, if you want to call it that, is that it works both ways…something written can be used in your defense, as well as against you.   You might have thought one way when you were younger, and then as you got older your values may have changed.  Thoughts cannot be interpreted, and words can be, both ways.  I like words and especially words that people much smarter than I am, have used.   Quotes from those kinds of people are almost always better than anything I could have said…so I use them.   Not everything is a good quote, and some are better than others, but if they get your point across then that’s what matters.   Let’s look at a few things that have been on my mind and maybe there’s a quote about them.

          The flag, the pledge, and the vision

Recently in a small town in Oklahoma, Owasso to be exact, the police refused to allow the American flag in the football stadium.  They were acting on orders from school officials and students were made to put the flags back in their vehicles.  This happened on the same day that, in South Carolina, another high school said that American flags were not welcome at the football game.   Folks, they would have to put me in jail before I would NOT bring an American flag to a game, if I so desired.   On the face of it you might think that it’s an insignificant event, but stack it alongside the other things that are going on, which demean the flag, the armed forces and our country, and it’s a really big deal.   I daresay that we’re on a slippery slope and we’re wearing very slick shoes.   

Back in May, at a Trump rally, his people were told not to sing the national anthem.   The excuse given was that there wasn’t enough time, and Trump responded that yes, there was time, and brought out Sherry Wilkins to sing it.   At a softball game in Louisiana the story was the same…not enough time to sing the Star Spangled Banner, so the fans started singing it and the game was held up for a brief time.   In April at, of all places, the 911 Memorial, some children from a middle school in North Carolina were told they could not sing the national anthem there.   The guards said they needed a permit.   A spokesperson for the memorial said that the situation could have been handled in a more gentle manner.   Let’s suppose, for a moment, that you wanted to visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.   This is a place where many tourists go.   Would it be against the rules somehow, if a class of children, visibly impressed, started singing the Star Spangled Banner?   It very well might be…and that’s wrong.

The United States Ninth Circuit Court recently ruled that a teacher cannot lead the Pledge Of Allegiance because the court ruled that reciting this phrase is a violation of the alleged Constitutional separation of church and state.   So, if the teacher doesn’t lead them, can the students say it by themselves?   That question has yet to be raised as a test case.  When I went to school, we said the Pledge Of Allegiance every morning, but the phrase “under God” was not in it then.  Looking at this in a simplistic manner, the pledge is for the flag, so if the phrase offends you, remain silent for that part, and say the rest of it.  The largest group of faiths in the country are lumped together as “Christian”, but they don’t have exclusive rights to God, so the phrase could apply to everyone…except atheists and Muslims, that is. 

There have been several incidents involving a person wearing a uniform…and it could have been a member of the armed forces, a law enforcement person, even a firefighter.  

There have been recent events where members of a police department were refused service…in restaurants, in WalMart and I believe one was in a donut shop, but I couldn’t trace that one.   The point here is that some people simply do not understand that the police, the fire department or the military, are not their enemies.  If something happens in their city, they’re most likely to call upon these uniformed personnel to come to their aid.   Consider what has taken place in some locales in this country…police and firefighters are afraid to go to the aid of the caller because it might be an ambush.   In Europe they are even more involved than we are because they have entire neighborhoods that are off-limits to “infidels”.   We are only a few years behind Europe, believe me, and we’re gaining fast.   When law and order go out the window, do you want to know what comes in?  Anarchy, that’s what comes in…fighting in the streets, and neighborhoods being carved up and placed under the protection of the local strongman.

When you listen or watch the news you won’t hear a lot of this stuff because they have a vested interest in keeping it from you.  Until the news is so bad that they just cannot avoid saying something, and that will be couched in the softest of terms, you will think everything is just hunky-dory.   There is dirty work afoot in this country and the sooner the population understands what is happening, the better off they will be.  Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes.   As far back as 2006, an author was writing about how he thought the world was going…and re-reading that book today it amazes me to see just how accurate his thinking was.   George Orwell, when he wrote 1984, had no idea how close he was coming to the truth of things.  Since he died in 1950, his book has been examined and re-examined to check on his predictions…which are becoming realities at a dizzying pace.   There are always visionaries among us…Thomas Jefferson was one of the greats and both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are testaments to that vision.

This quote, by Winston Churchill, was during World War Two, but it could easily apply to the United States now.  “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

C’mon America, wake up…your country needs you…desperately.

SEPTEMBER RAMBLINGS

SEPTEMBER RAMBLINGS

“What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.”― John Wesley.   In that short sentence it is possible to understand the potential surrender of the United States, to some as-yet unnamed enemy.   Between a feckless government spanning several generations, and the relatively new thing called political correctness, one can trace the downward spiral of imagination, power, and moral fortitude that the United States used to have.   My parents brought me up in The Great Depression, and so my values are different from my children’s.   Their generation was brought up on Dr. Spock and his theories…many of which have proven to have been more harmful than good.   Perhaps their values are better than mine, I don’t know…I just know that they are different.   Recalling that first sentence, and if you will look around with an objective pair of eyes, don’t you see that America has changed?

Politics is supposed to be the business of running governments…but it has morphed into something completely different.  Now it is the home of men and women who’ve made a career out of not working at something we can recognize as a job.   Originally members of the United States Congress were supposed to go to Washington, do their job and when their term was over, return back to their own community and take up their lives where they left off.   Somewhere along the way all that changed.   We have people in Congress that are celebrating thirty and forty years in their seats.   They’ve established a fiefdom and rule over it as a king might have in the olden days.   Term limits, which have been in place for years in the office of the President, should be equally applicable for members of Congress as well.  No one needs to have a vested interest in remaining in Congress…that only makes the gap between one side and the other wider.

As millennia go, what happened in Germany in the 1930’s was just an eye-blink back.  A prominent German journalist, Heinrich Heine had this to say, "Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.", and he was eighty years ahead of his time when he said it.   Anyone who lived through World War 2, as I did, knows about the burning of books…and people.   That was Germany then, and Europe now, as the Muslim hordes invade the continent.   Charles Martel, “the Hammer”, stopped the Muslim invasion at the battle of Tours in 732, but now, in modern times the barbarians are not stopping at Tours …they are planning to take over Europe and, from the looks of things, they are going to succeed by about 2030.   When your population ages, and there isn’t enough of a replacement population to keep things going, another population is going to come in and take over.   That’s is what happened, and continues to happen, in Europe.  The native Europeans were simply not having enough children to keep going…so they brought in, or allowed in, thousands of Muslims.   Demographics show that Muslims breed four to five times more children than do the host countries.

In the legal dictionary this is what it says about a subpoena: “A subpoena is an order directed to an individual commanding him to appear in court on a certain day to testify or produce documents in a pending lawsuit. The power to subpoena a person is granted officers of the court, such as clerks of courts, attorneys and judges. A person may be subpoenaed to appear in court or any designated location to provide testimony for trial or deposition or produce documents or other evidence. A subpoena which requests items be brought with the person is called a "subpoena duces tecum".   Now, having that definition, wouldn’t you think that ignoring a subpoena would bring an arrest, and place the person in jail?   How is it then, that government people get called to testify and simply refuse or ignore the subpoena?   Are they, somehow, above the law that you and I must follow?   While we’re on the subject of appearing somewhere to testify, it seems to me that we have an awful lot of “hearings” and very few “doings”.   When a decision is reached in a hearing, why isn’t it carried out promptly?   Why do we need hearings on hearings, when guilt or innocence has already been established?   Congress is just too committee-minded and not enough action-oriented for my taste.

Back in June, the Senate blocked a $1.1 billion bill to combat the Zika virus, and a Florida senator said that would cause hardships in the state.   The bill, if it had become law, would have cut $750 million from other health programs to fund anti-Zika efforts. The bill also would have cut $543 million in unused funds from the implementation of Obamacare, $107 million from leftover funds used to fight Ebola, and $100 million in administrative funds from the Health and Human Services Department.   To my way of thinking, if you have a plan to fight a disease, and you can save money by cutting waste from other programs, why would you not do that?   The Democrats said that Republicans had inserted a provision cutting financing from the Affordable Care Act,  and that they had stripped a House provision that would ban the flying of the Confederate battle flag in federal cemeteries.   Tell me how you connect the Zika virus with the Confederate flag?