Memorial Day United States Flag Display
Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service. In observance of Memorial Day, fly the United States flag at half staff from sunrise until NOON , and then raise it to full height from noon to sundown.
United States Flag Code
Section 7.M
The flag, when flown at half-staff, should be first hoisted to the peak for an instant and then slowly lowered to the half-staff position. The flag should be again raised to the peak before it is lowered for the day. On Memorial Day the flag should be displayed at half-staff until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff.
FBI’s Code Name for Trump Investigation’s Secret Meaning Revealed
Six months went by between the time the FBI launched a secret counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign (which officially began at the end of July 2016), and James Comey disclosing the investigation to the public during a hearing in March of 2017.
Contrary to protocol, the FBI did not notify the Gang of Eight of the investigation, which Comey says was done at the advice of Bill Priestap (who heads the FBI’s counterintelligence division).
It took six months before the public would learn of the investigation and another year after that before we’d learn the name of the investigation: Operation Crossfire. The name of the operation is a reference to the 1968 Rolling Stones song Jumpin’ Jack Flash, which co-songwriter Keith Richards says “refers to his being born amid the bombing and air raid sirens of Dartford, England, in 1943 during World War II.”
The names that the FBI chooses for their operations reveals some info about the nature of the operation, and this case is no different.
The answer may be found in the 1986 Penny Marshall film named after the song, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” In the Cold War-era comedy, a quirky bank officer played by Whoopi Goldberg comes to the aid of Jonathan Pryce, who plays a British spy being chased by the KGB. The code name “Crossfire Hurricane” is most likely a reference to the former British spy whose allegedly Russian-sourced reports on the Trump team’s alleged ties to Russia were used as evidence to secure a Foreign Intelligence Service Act secret warrant on Trump adviser Carter Page in October 2016: ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
If Smith’s analysis is correct, it would be explosive in light of the fact that it proves the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign prior to opening their counterintelligence operation.
The FBI’s spy was a man named Stefan Halper, a U.S./U.K. dual citizen with connections to intelligence agencies in both countries. Halper had met with Trump campaign members George Papadopoulos, Sam Clovis, and Carter Page in attempts to extract damning information against the Trump campaign. After Trump’s victory, Halper tried to pitch himself to be an ambassador to Asia but wasn’t given a position.
It’s interesting to see the role that British intelligence operatives played in this investigation. John Brennan had meetings with the head of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, who passed along any surveillance of Trump campaign members they picked up. It was a British spy who authored the dossier – and now a British spy that was tasked to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
One might say that sounds a lot like foreign meddling in an election.
Revealed: Fusion GPS Closely Tied to Russian Lobbyist at Trump Jr. Meeting
 John Moore/Getty, Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APNEW YORK — Email transcripts and other information disclosed in testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveals a significant relationship between Russian-born Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshi and the controversial Fusion GPS firm that produced the infamous, largely discredited anti-Trump dossier.
Akhmetshi was one of the participants at the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials.
The meeting has been the subject of much news media coverage related to unsubstantiated and collapsing claims of collusion with Russia. All meeting participants generally agree the confab focused largely on the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian officials accused of involvement in the death of a Russian tax accountant, as well as talk about a Russian tax evasion scheme and alleged connections to the Democratic National Committee.
Trump Jr. previously explained that he took the meeting thinking it was about “opposition research” on Hillary Clinton and was disappointed that it wasn’t.
The Russia collusion conspiracy was sparked by the dossier produced by Fusion GPS, which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Trump’s primary political opponents, namely Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
Akhmetshi’s November 14, 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, released last week and reviewed in full by this reporter, contained numerous sections that detail his past relationship with Fusion GPS and the company’s co-founder, Glenn Simpson. Some of that relationship spanned the period just prior to the meeting with Trump Jr.
In one instance, Akhmetshi was asked about an email obtained by the Senate committee in which he described Fusion’s Simpson as a “colleague.”
The email related to the Russian-linked Prevezon Holdings Ltd., a firm that had settled a case in the U.S. involving the purchase of real estate with allegedly laundered money, accusations that centered around the Magnitsky Act.
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who countered the Magnitsky Act along with Akhmetshi, was an attorney for Prevezon. Veselnitskaya was also present at the meeting with Trump Jr. Fusion GPS was involved in the case since it investigated financier Bill Browder, who successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act and was a witness in the Prevezon legal matter. Fusion GPS investigated Browder for another client and their findings were used in the Prevezon trial.
In his testimony, one Senate griller asked Akhmetshi about a December 2015 email from a Bloomberg News reporter that states he was told that Akhmetshi was “handling media calls” for Prevezon and its owner.
Akhmetshi’s email reply, in which he calls Fusion GPS’s Simpson “my colleague” was read aloud: “I am traveling this week, but my colleague Glenn Simpson, cc’d , will be able to brief you on the particulars of the case.”
Another email read in the testimony described plans for a February 4, 2016 dinner meeting between Simpson, Akhmetshi and Veselnitskaya, with Akhmetshi confirming that he did have a meeting with Simpson and Veselnitskaya around that time, possibly dinner. This puts Simpson in person with two participants in the Trump Jr. meeting just four months before the June 2016 Trump Tower meet, although Akhmetshi described the meeting with Simpson as being about the Prevezon case.
A major theme of the testimony is Akhmetshi’s self-described working ties to numerous members of the “Western” media.
He describes pitching stories directly to Simpson while Simpson was a journalist prior to his co-founding of Fusion GPS. Simpson previously worked for the Wall Street Journal.
Akhmetshi also relates a previous working relationship with Simpson’s wife, pitching her stories while she served at the Wall Street Journal.
Akhmetshi stated that he helped Veselnitskaya set up her widely circulated NBC News interview in which she claimed she was an “informant” for the Russian government. That interview prompted a flurry of news media coverage attempting to draw connections between the Trump Jr. meeting and the Russian government.
Throughout the testimony, Akhmetshi denied any foreknowledge of Fusion’s anti-Trump dossier. However, he did say that he had heard the salacious charges about Trump from friends in the news media prior to the dossier’s public release by BuzzFeed in January 2017.
The meeting with Trump Jr., meanwhile, was reportedly set up by publicist Rob Goldstone, who claimed in an email to Trump Jr. that Veselnitskaya had opposition dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Veselnitskaya told the Wall Street Journal that she approached Russian real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, whom she was representing, to help set up a meeting with the Trump campaign as part of her efforts opposing the Magnitsky Act. She was also looking to spread information about Browder, she said.
Agalarov organized the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow when the pageant was partially owned by Donald Trump.
Agalarov’s son Emin, a Russian singer who also knows the Trumps, reached out to Goldstone, his publicist, to contact the Trump campaign on behalf of Veselnitskaya, according to the Journal report.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump Jr. explained that he took the meeting thinking it was about “opposition research” on Clinton and was disappointed that it wasn’t.
“For me this was opposition research,” Trump Jr. said. “They had something, you know, maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about … so I think I wanted to hear it out. But really it went nowhere and it was apparent that wasn’t what the meeting was about.”
Trump Jr. spoke about the contents of the meeting: “It was this, ‘Hey, some DNC donors may have done something in Russia and they didn’t pay taxes.’ I was like, ‘What does this have to do with anything?’”
Trump Jr. told Fox News that Goldstone apologized for wasting the campaign’s time with the meeting.
“I think what happened [is] he sort of goosed up, he built up, there was some puffery to the email, perhaps to get the meeting, to make it happen,” Trump Jr. said. “In the end, there was probably some bait-and-switch about what it was really supposed to be about.”
Speaking to the Journal, Veselnitskaya indicated there was a mix up about the intent of the meeting: “My expectation before the meeting was he read my letter of information, he got interested, and he was going to help me. His expectations were totally different, as I can understand now.”
“By the time I stepped into the meeting room to talk with Donald Trump Jr., all I knew was that I approached the elder Mr. Agalarov with a request to help,” Veselnitskaya said. “And I knew his son Emin communicated with Donald Trump Jr.”
Written with research by Joshua Klein.
Investigators: Putin’s Russia shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet in 2014
 Photo - Buffy May via Creative Commons LicenseIt took almost four years, but we finally learned the truth.
Investigators have found that a 2014 plane crash was actually caused by the Russians.
Flight 17
People around the world were stunned when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 exploded.
At the time, nobody seemed to be able to figure out what caused the explosion.
Was it sabotage?
Was the plane actually shot down?
After four years of investigating the incident, a Dutch-led investigation found out the cause of the mysterious explosion.
It was a missile traced back to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of Russia.
According to the report, the missile was launched from a small area just outside of Snizhne, a small Ukrainian town.
That area at time was controlled by a group of separatists, therefore by default, the Russian military.
In addition, it had been reported by another news agency of the presence of Russian weapons in the area at the time the airplane was downed.
In all, 298 people were killed in the attack.
Russian Denial
The Russians, of course, had their denial in the can and ready to open the moment this investigation came to a conclusion.
The foreign ministry has called the investigation full of “bias and political motivation.”
In other words, it was not their missile.
This is not the first time the Russians have been involved in downing a passenger airliner.
Adam Schiff, Democrats, Media Play Orwellian Word Games to Deny ‘Spygate’
 J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the Democrats attempted Thursday to deny President Donald Trump’s claims of “Spygate” after they emerged from a bipartisan briefing about the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 campaign.
Following their lead, the mainstream media have labeled “Spygate” a “conspiracy theory” — even though Obama administration officials like former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have admitted to the spying.
Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, emerged from Thursday’s briefing to read a statement on behalf of the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, attacking Trump’s claims:
Today’s “Gang of Eight” briefing was conducted to ensure protection of sources and methods. Nothing we heard today has changed our view that there’s no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign, or otherwise failed to follow appropriate procedures and protocols.
That is the basis for claims like MSNBC’s “Trump’s nonsensical ‘Spygate’ conspiracy theory ends with a whimper.”
But a careful reading of Schiff’s statement reveals that he and Democratic leaders are attempting to fool the public.
First, it is important to note that Democrats, and the mainstream media, are disputing the term “spy.” They admit that there was an “informant” but refuse to allow the term “spy,” though in this context it means the same thing.
Second, note that Schiff said that Democrats merely said their “view”of the evidence has not changed. He did not say, nor could he, that “no evidence” existed as a matter of undisputed fact — because the evidence is already public.
Third, and most crucially, Schiff said Democrats did not believe “the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the Trump campaign.” He did not deny that a spy, or spies, might have been recruited from within the campaign.
Note how Schiff’s statement moved from language covering all possibilities (“the FBI or any intelligence agency”) to language covering only one possibility (“placed a spy”). That is an incomplete denial, and likely a deliberate one.
Update: Melissa Francis of Fox News observed Friday that another reason “nothing” Democrats heard Thursday had changed their minds is that the Department of Justice failed to provide the documents that Congress requested.)
Finally, Schiff and the Democrats said that the FBI and the intelligence services “follow[ed] appropriate procedures and protocols.” That little coda is meant to suggest, as Clapper has argued, that whatever spying (or “informing”) took place was completely justified — i.e. it was an attempt to spy on the Russians from within the campaign, not on the campaign itself. That excuse, of course, presumes that there was collusion between the campaign and Russia.
In short, the statement Schiff delivered yesterday, and which Democrats and the media are relying on today, is the same nonsense that he has been feeding the public for two years in an effort to sustain the Russia conspiracy theory.
Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist summed it up perfectly Thursday in an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight:
Everyone knows that there was a spy and in fact people who were involved in the spying are admitting there’s a spy. They’re saying, though, because the government term is “human intelligence informant” or something like that that therefore it’s not a spy. Whereas normal Americans understand when you are gathering information on someone surreptitiously, that’s the common definition of spying. And more than that, that’s just a stunning revelation that this was happening under the previous administration that there would be this kind of surveillance, not just at least one human intelligence informant but also wiretaps, national security letters which are how can you secretly get a subpoena and who knows what else is going on like widespread spying involving multiple people in the Trump campaign and we still don’t really know what’s going on because they’re trying to fight answering.
That is the simple truth that Schiff, the Democrats, and the media are trying — and failing — to hide from the public.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
While the media fawned for eight years over baby names involving Barack and Michelle Obama, don’t hold your breath waiting for any similar news out of this administration.
Marginalizing Much-Maligned Melania
Left-wing hatred of Melania Trump is inversely proportional to flyover admiration for the first lady.
That doesn’t change the facts though, and the fact is baby girls named after First Lady Melania Trump are on the rise.
And why not? It’s a pretty name associated with a classy woman.
According to the Social Security Administration the name “Melania” is the fifth fastest growing name for baby girls in the United States, rocketing up 720 spots on the list from 1,650th a year ago.
Pamela Redmond Satran, co-founder of the baby name site Nameberry.com told People Magazine that there are two reasons for a surge in any celebrity’s name popularity – attractiveness of the name itself, as well as the person behind it.
“Melania … is an exotic spin on the familiar Melanie, with Mila also a very stylish name,” Satran said. “And Melania Trump’s approval rating is higher than her husband’s, so on both counts — the attractiveness of her name and of her as a public figure — she comes out ahead and it makes sense that her name is rising in the ranks.”
Mrs. Trump’s approval rating remains high despite the media’s effort to destroy her relationship with the President.
A journalist for the New Yorker recently went to Melania’s hometown and discovered that people there also like her.
Upon visiting a restaurant, the reporter spotted a dish on the menu named after the First Lady. She asked the waitress if “people here like Melania.”
The waitress’s response: “Of course.”
In 2008, the New York Times was all abuzz over the name Barack becoming popular for baby boys.
“In the last week, Barack, Obama, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha have become inspirations for first and middle names across the United States, according to news reports,” they wrote. “But the Obama baby boom has been even more pronounced in Kenya, particularly in Kisumu, an area in the western part of the country where relatives of Mr. Obama live.”
So where are the reports on baby girls named Melania? You’ll probably only read about it here.
Pope Francis said five words that rocked the Catholic Church
Pope Francis has been a controversial Pope.
Francis has injected his liberal worldview into the political debate.
But nothing compared to the five words he just said that rocked the Catholic Church.
Critics of Pope Francis have accused him of bending to secular liberal cultural sensibilities.
Liberals believe the Church must adapt to the modern world if it seeks to remain relevant.
Traditionalists contend that if the Church drifts from its core beliefs it will lose its place.
Some Chrisitians are concerned Pope Francis believes the Church needs to “modernize.”
Those fears only grew when Francis told a homosexual man who was the victim of sexual abuse by a priest that “God made you this way.”
Breitbart reports:
“Chilean Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of alleged clerical sexual abuse, claims that in a recent meeting with Pope Francis the pontiff told him that God had made him gay and loves him the way he is.
“Juan Carlos, you being gay doesn’t matter,” Francis reportedly told Mr. Cruz in April. “God made you like this and loves you like this and it doesn’t matter to me. The pope loves you like this, you have to be happy with who you are.”
Cruz is one of three victims of Father Fernando Karadima who were in Rome in late April for three days of meetings with Francis. His comments came in an interview published on Saturday with the Spanish daily El Pais.
It is possible that the pope used those very words and it is also possible that Mr. Cruz walked away with that message, but that the pope’s words were somewhat different. In a matter of this nature, the exact words matter a lot.”
God’s love is eternal.
Pope Francis is correct to tell the man God loves him for who he is. And this could be a case of the Pope’s words being misinterpreted or incorrectly reported.
That may have been the case here.
In his report on abuse by Chilean priests, Francis faulted the Bishops for allowing individuals who exhibited homosexual behavior to enter the seminary.
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ommons
Trump Shuts Down Saudi
Resistance
Saudi Arabia recently changed its tune in regards to world oil prices. And President Trump is largely to thank. Under pressure from Trump, the Saudi government decided it would be in its best interest to keep oil prices reasonably low.
The world’s largest oil exporter just made quite a policy swerve. Within six weeks, Saudi Arabia has gone from advocating higher prices to trying to stop the rally at $80 a barrel.
The U-turn scrambled the outlook for oil markets, hit the share prices of oil majors and shale producers and set up a diplomatic wrangle with other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
What changed? The supply threats posed by the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran oil exports earlier this month and the quickening collapse of Venezuela’s energy industry are both part of the answer, but they’re secondary to Donald Trump. On April 20, the president took to Twitter to lambaste the cartel’s push for higher prices. "Looks like OPEC is at it again," he tweeted. "Oil prices are artificially Very High!"
Trump’s intervention gave typically strident voice to a concern held more widely in the U.S. and other consuming countries: oil’s rally from less than $30 in early 2016 to more than $80 this month risked becoming a threat to global economic growth.
This is just another win for the American people from the Trump Administration. The mainstream media will largely ignore this to talk about some scandal they dreamed up, but this is a huge win for America.
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Ciao…….Helen and Moe Lauzier
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