NC Renegades

I can understand Joe’s confusion since no one knows who we are at war with today. I will give Joe a pass since he will likely be our next pResident.

David DeGerolamo

Newly released Homeland Security Department documents detail how Secretary Jeh Johnson and 28 other officials defied a security precaution against using Web-based personal email accounts at the office, the conservative legal group Judicial Watch announced on Friday.

The fact that Homeland Security officials “bent rules” on private email use—first reported nearly a year ago by Bloomberg—represented a waiver given top executives that lasted a year despite a February 2014 departmental crackdown on such use for fear of cyber breaches of webmail accounts such as AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, Gmail and Yahoo.

Judicial Watch filed suit in October 2015 after an unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act request to DHS, and in February a U.S. district judge ordered the release of 693 pages.

The newly released records reveal that Johnson was given an exemption from the ban on the first day of its implementation simply because he liked to check his personal email from the office every day, Judicial Watch said in a statement. In an April 7, 2014, email, DHS Deputy Director for Scheduling and Protocol Mary Ellen Brown wrote to DHS Chief of Staff for the Under Secretary for Management Vincent Micone: “Hi Vince – I wanted to flag that S1 [Secretary Johnson] accesses his [redacted] account every day and I didn’t know if we could add his computer to the waiver list? Let us know at your convenience.”

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h/t Cousin John

After saying that the Islamic State still aspires to develop significant offensive cyber attack capabilities, the deputy commander of U.S. Cyber Command said that there’s a bigger concern.  The ability of Islamic State hackers to gain illegal access to sensitive information, like names and addresses of U.S. personnel, is a threat that makes targeting easier.

But what really keeps Cyber Command up at night comes from a more capable adversary.  Lt. General James MacLaughlin says:

“[T]he types of threats that we worry most about today… are adversaries taking full control of our networks, losing control of our networks, having a hacker appear to be a trusted user.” (WSJ)

Adversaries with these kinds of capabilities are a very small circle that includes Russia and China.  And the potential effects of these types of attacks are devastating.

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Look at the facts in the case in Orlando, and you see that when the police arrived on the scene, with overwhelming force, knowing for a fact that there was an active shooter inside, they held cover in the street for more than three hours, while victims inside died from loss of blood. This will not be widely reported, because if you know this you can start to come to terms with the facts that must be dealt with.

You and you only must be willing to be able to come to terms with the fact that your personal safety is no one’s responsibility but your own.  Period, end of story.

Now comes a little more uncomfortable fact, in Arizona, and with the consent of the governed, we are (necessarily THEY SAY) disarmed in a place that serves alcohol if the sign on the door says so, concealed weapons permit or not.   So the politicos that we elect, because we have decided to be emasculated by the state, have decided that places like the one in Orlando,( which has the same law as Arizona),are free fire zones.

I call them killing fields for the criminal type’s intent on doing the most damage possible with the least possible chance of resistance.

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The entire Los Angeles metropolitan area and most of Southern California can expect blackouts this summer.

The power grid is under direct threat as a result of the unprecedented, but little reported, massive natural gas leaks at Alisco Canyon that was ongoing for  four months as an intense summer heat wave sets in.

According to Reuters:

California will have its first test of plans to keep the lights on this summer…

With record-setting heat and air conditioning demand expected in Southern California, the state’s power grid operator issued a so-called “flex alert,” urging consumers to conserve energy to help prevent rotating power outages – which could occur regardless.

Electricity demand is expected to rise during the unseasonable heatwave on Monday and Tuesday, with forecast system-wide use expected to top 45,000 megawatts, said the California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages electricity flow through the state. That compares with a peak demand of 47,358 MW last year and the all-time high of 50,270 MW set in July 2006.

That could put stress on the power grid, particularly with the shut-in of Aliso Canyon, following a massive leak at the underground storage facility in October [Editor’s Note: which was not stopped fully until mid-February 2016].

The large-scale natural gas disaster – which curiously escaped media frenzy and widespread environmental concern – has resulted in the shutdown of key storage facilities that supply most of the power for the southern portion of the state.

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The consequences of not building electrical generating stations. An effective method to control people.

David DeGerolamo

The attack on the religious freedom for those who protect our nation has now come down to this: you can’t even retire from the military with your freedom of religion and speech intact.

Petition to Colonel Raymond A. Kozak, commander 349th Air Mobility Wing:

The recent forcible eviction and assault of Senior Master Sergeant Oscar Rodriguez (Ret.) from the retirement ceremony of Master Sergeant Charles Roberson because he was reciting a speech that mentioned God is shameful, illegal, and cannot stand.

I strongly urge you to apologize to Oscar Rodriguez for assaulting him and infringing upon his First Amendment rights, apologize to Charles Roberson for disrupting his ceremony and hold accountable those responsible for this egregious action that violated the free speech rights of a service member and his invited guest.

Our country has enough enemies. Our military should be united in attacking the real forces that threaten our nation, not those who have served with dignity in protecting it.

If you agree with the above petition, click this link to sign.

Sincerely,

Lt. Gen. (US Army-Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin
Executive Vice President

Family Research Council
801 G Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
1-800/225-4008 | Contact FRC

Requested by Carolyn U

Imagine the collapse of an extended speculative tech bubble, resulting in a broad economic recession.Imagine if the Federal Reserve had persistently slashed short-term interest rates during the downturn, to no avail, leaving rates at just 1% by the time the S&P 500 had lost half of its value and the Nasdaq 100 collapsed by 83%. Imagine that the Fed kept rates suppressed, in the initially well-meaning hope of encouraging lending, growth and employment. Imagine that the depressed level of interest rates made investors feel starved for yield, and drove them to look for safe alternatives to Treasury bills.

Imagine that investors found the higher yields they sought in mortgage securities, which had historically always been safe, and that Fed policy inadvertently created voracious demand for more of that debt. Imagine Wall Street had weak enough requirements on capital and underwriting standards that financial institutions had an incentive to create more “product” by lending to borrowers with lower and lower creditworthiness. Imagine that by the magic of “financial engineering” and lax oversight of credit ratings, Wall Street could pass these mortgages off to investors either directly by bundling, slicing and dicing them into mortgage-backed securities or by piggy-backing on the good faith and credit of the government by transferring them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in return for funds obtained from investors in these “agency” securities.

Imagine that this Fed-induced yield-seeking speculation changed the dynamics of the housing market, and produced a bubble in home prices, coupled with overbuilding and malinvestment. Imagine that the Federal Reserve, focused exclusively on exploiting the very weak links between monetary policy and its “mandates” of employment and price stability, ignored the phrase “long-run” in those mandates, and wholly disregarded the speculative effects of its actions, which any thoughtful central banker should have viewed as a significant risk to the long-run economic health of the nation. Imagine that the then-head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, answered questions about 1) whether speculative risks existed, 2) whether the Fed had any role in addressing them, and 3) whether there was any doubt that the Fed could halt a resulting economic downturn if it occurred, responding with a dismissive “No, No, and No.”

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We don’t have to imagine the above conditions coming true: we are already living with their consequences.

Imagine a world without central banks controlling corrupt governments.

David DeGerolamo

If you think that Donald Trump already has the Republican nomination locked up, then you don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes.  It has long been my contention that the elite will move heaven and earth in order to keep Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office.  One way that they could try to do this is by attempting to deny him the nomination at the Republican convention next month.  Over the past couple of days, the Washington Post, CNN and a whole host of other mainstream news outlets have been reporting on a new “last-ditch effort” that has been launched by Republican operatives to get the Republican convention Rules Committee to unbind all of the delegates and allow them to vote however they want.  As you will see below, they can do this, and if they get enough votes they will do it.

This current effort is different from what we have seen so far during this campaign season, because it is actually being organized by the delegates themselves.  The following comes from the Washington Post…

Dozens of Republican convention delegates are hatching a new plan to block Donald Trump at this summer’s party meetings, in what has become the most organized effort so far to stop the businessman from becoming the GOP presidential nominee.

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