Byron York reports Washington Free Beacon confesses to funding opposition research with Fusion GPS

Here, about an hour ago:

Lawyers for the conservative publication Washington Free Beacon informed the House Intelligence Committee Friday that the organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump opposition research project with Fusion GPS. The Free Beacon funded the project from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016, whereupon it withdrew funding and the project was picked up by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. ...

The Free Beacon was founded in 2012. Its founders included Michael Goldfarb, who has moved back and forth between conservative journalism, politics, and activism. The Free Beacon was originally part of a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization called the Center for American Freedom, but in 2014 became a for-profit organization. It has never revealed its ownership. Conservative billionaire Paul Singer, a major funder of the Free Beacon, strongly opposed Trump at the time of the opposition research project.

Laugh of the Day: "Fans are still angry about Kaepernick’s continued unemployment"

Sure they are, says the dumb ass right here.

Good on ya: NFL TV viewership down nearly 19% from 2015

Reported here.

WaPo story detailing Hillary/DNC funding of Trump dossier isn't news at CNBC tonight

NYT's Maggie Haberman: Democrats sanctimoniously lied about funding Trump dossier for a year

WaPo: Hillary and DNC also paid for infamous Trump-Russia dossier, retaining Fusion GPS which hired Brit Chris Steele

"Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier" :

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the firm in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by a still unknown Republican client during the GOP primary. ...

The Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since Nov. 2015 — though it’s impossible to tell from the filings how much of that work was for other legal matters and how much of it related to Fusion GPS.

Kurds and Arabs backed by US retake ISIS' strongholds in Raqqa

Story here.

ISIS' control of Mosul ended in July.

So Trump has defeated in 10 months what Obama let develop into a grotesque scourge for three years by unwisely withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Obama has many senseless deaths on his hands as a consequence, notably many Christians with direct links to the original Christianity of the Middle East, not to mention the destruction of priceless antiquities at Palmyra and other places in the region.

You don't think this liberation would have happened under Hillary, do you?

Trump action against Obamacare is angering the correct people

"Trump’s Executive Order on Health Care Is Flat-Out Disgusting"

Jonathan Turley: Trump's order ending healthcare subsidies overturns Obama's original unconstitutional order

Read about it and watch here.

Real winning, but how vulnerable the constitution has been to the executive.

More good news: Trump ends effective immediately $7 billion in funding for out-of-pocket medical expenses for low income insured under Obamacare

From the story here:

The cost-sharing funds, estimated at roughly $7 billion for this year, pays for low-income consumers' out-of-pocket medical expenses. Under Obamacare, insurers are required to offer lower costs for these services, for which the government then reimburses them. If they do not receive the funding, they must still offer discounts, and without an action from Congress they would be likely to sue for the money.

Good news: Trump does end run around Obamacare, expands ability of more associations to offer plans using Executive Order

From the story here:

The president signed an executive order "to promote healthcare choice and competition" Thursday morning at the White House. 

It is said to expand access to "association health plans" – group plans written by trade associations, small businesses, and other groups. Such large group plans do not have to abide by all the requirements of individual plans under 'Obamacare.' The order also tasks administration officials to develop policies to increase competition in the health insurance industry.

Trump orders the flag at half staff to honor Vegas victims, you know the flag, THE ONE DISHONORED BY THE NFL

Trump keeps giving Norm Crosby, the Master of Malaprop, a run for his money

Chicago's resident spokesman for Big Brother, Eric Zorn, proclaims anti-Americanism is the true patriotism

In The Chicago Tribune here:

I resent that Trump has chosen to use what was a minor controversy about a few kneeling football players into a major wedge issue.

Not just because it flagrantly insults the concept of liberty that true patriotism embraces, but also because his focus threatens to turn standing for the national anthem into a partisan act. It’s the same bit of branding judo he’s trying to perform on the expression “Merry Christmas.”

Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg says Hillary lost in 2016 because of sexism, doesn't mention why Hillary lost in 2008

Black sexism, the hate that dare not speak its name.

Here:

CBS’s Charlie Rose asked Ginsburg at an event Tuesday night if she thought sexism contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Trump in 2016. “I have no doubt that it did,” she replied. Ginsburg said that while there were many elements that led to Clinton’s loss, sexism “was a major, major factor.”

Roy Moore clobbers Trump's chosen candidate Luther Strange, giving the lie to the "cult of Trump"

Disgraceful bitch Hillary: "Hopefully Trump hasn't ordered the killing of journalists"

Quoted here:

ROSE: He’s an authoritarian?

CLINTON: He has tendencies toward authoritarianism.

ROSE: So, he’s no different than Putin?

CLINTON: Well, hopefully he hasn’t ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like.

Told ya: Trump to raise lowest tax bracket from 10% to 12%

Story here:

Top White House and GOP leaders have agreed to raise the lowest individual tax rate from 10 to 12 percent, paired with doubling the standard deduction, 5 senior Republicans tell us.

The standard deduction becomes the football in this scheme. If the doubling survives intact, which is hardly certain, down the line someone can say it must be reduced, without advocating a change in the bracket percentage and voila, you've got a nice little tax increase on the poorest members of society without directly raising taxes.

This ridiculous tinkering with rates and deductions just continues ad infinitum since 1913.

As with the Obamacare repeal efforts, there are no guiding principles informing the tax reform debate.

Mandating health coverage at the federal level is tyrannical, and so is the income tax, quite apart from its deliberate inequalities.

Trump kept insisting on a replacement for Obamacare as well as a system of progressive taxation during his speechifying.

There's no there there. 

Laugh of the Day: Trump's chief of staff patrols White House perimeter to keep Trump IN

Jack Lew, who presided over an 87% increase in the national debt as Treasury Secretary, is suddenly worried about the debt implications of tax reform

From the election of Obama in 2008 until the election of Trump in 2016, $9.2 trillion were added to the total public debt. We've gone from $10.6 trillion in the hole to $19.8 trillion over the period.

Yet now we hear from Jack Lew in The New York Times here that

"digging a deep hole of debt by cutting taxes will make it harder to pay for other priorities. And when that debt makes deficits skyrocket in the future, policy makers would have to choose between raising taxes and cutting investments and vital benefits. ... Some Republican policy makers suggest they may reject mainstream approaches and assume positive economic effects that go far beyond those normally projected by the budget office and the tax committee. ... Such a reckless move would almost surely produce an explosion of debt."

Actually, the Obama Administration dug a deep hole of debt right off the bat by spending money it didn't have, tacking on $600 billion of spending to Bush's last fiscal year, and then regularizing the increase by avoiding the budget process in favor of continuing resolutions, the Congress' new bipartisan method of fleecing the American people. Deficits skyrocketed contemporaneously, and then Democrat policy makers recklessly passed Obamacare with its spendthrift Medicaid expansion. They didn't have to choose between anything.

The only people more full of horseshit than the Republicans are the Democrat engineers of the Obama economic catastrophe.