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Fusion GPS Accuses Grassley, RINO-Graham 

Of Endangering Their Sleazy Employees 

by rickwells.us 

{ rickwells.us } ~ Fusion GPS is claiming to be upset that the names of their sleazy... criminal employees who were involved in the political hit on President Trump are being released. Get used to it boys, court records are public too. The smear merchants who fabricated the Trump dossier for the Democrats to use against the incoming President Trump have accused Senator Chuck Grassley of endangering their employees by failing to hide their identities despite multiple requests. Maybe the juvenile delinquents haven’t yet learned that sometimes the answer is simply “no,” and you don’t get what you want. Grassley isn’t one who takes kindly to being dictated to and multiple demands for the same thing isn’t going to enhance one’s prospective outcome. Maybe they shouldn’t have tried to take down the President if they were concerned about being discovered...   https://rickwells.us/fusion-gps-grassely-employees/ 

FBI in Possession of Second Trump Dossier 

by Jim E.

{ thepoliticalinsider.com } ~ Your eyes aren’t deceiving you – you are indeed seeing double. That is, two Trump dossiers!... The Guardian just broke a major story on how the FBI is in possession of a second – yes, a second – Trump dossier. From the report, The FBI inquiry into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election has been given a second memo that independently set out some of the same allegations made in a dossier by Christopher Steele, the British former spy. The second memo was written by Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the liar-Clinton White House in the 1990s. Well, well, well, is it any surprise a liar-Clinton hatchet man is behind this second dossier, which only alleges many of the debunked claims listed in the first?... https://thepoliticalinsider.com/fbi-possession-second-trump-dossier/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=criticalimpact&utm_campaign=TPI_breaking_newsletter_1_30_2018&utm_content=4b4ea4948726422aa6473c7b9fa19141&source=CI 

How State Leaders Can 

Begin Undoing liar-nObamacare’s Damage

by Robert Moffit

In 2018, millions of middle-class Americans, particularly those unsubsidized enrollees in the states’ individual health insurance markets... are rightfully anxious about the future of their health care. They face skyrocketing premiums—a 34 percent jump for “standard” plans—as well as exploding deductibles, amounting to many thousands of dollars annually. In some states, health insurance costs are so high that enrolling in the liar-nObamacare coverage is akin to financing a second mortgage. Choice and competition in these liar-nObamacare markets are plummeting, as networks of doctors and other medical professionals get narrower, while fewer and fewer insurers offer coverage in the states’ declining exchanges....  http://dailysignal.com/2018/01/25/state-leaders-undoing-obamacares-damage/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell%22&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRObU5tRXdObUpsTXpJMyIsInQiOiJvMEJYMmlDanBBVjdibElRMGx6VWgrMzlJSXd1dDFVbUQxQVI5UlNpSW0xZ1d1ZitxSVdSclJOUFN4UFoxVURVNEk1QzVOelNLS01DTVwvYnJpWXNuOGFYU0tVTVpsTnFJUlRpQVRveEhuNzRmRVR3YXRnMk9HOEdQMEhNZGZcL2dnIn0%3D 

Senator Menendez’s Ongoing Corruption 

Trial Has Democrats Scrambling for a Plan B

by Kemberlee Kaye

{ legalinsurrection.com } ~ While the national media was losing their minds over the Alabama GOP’s nomination of failed candidate Roy Moore... a Democrat Senate seat in New Jersey has received little attention. Democrat Senator Bob Menendez is in the middle of his second trial the first a mistrial, facing corruption charges. We’ve covered the long, sordid history of allegations, indictments, and trials here. ( https://legalinsurrection.com/?s=menendez&image.x=0&image.y=0 ) In the midst of what would be a career-ending scandal for anyone else, Menendez is up for re-election. It’s been some fifty years since New Jersey elected a Republican Senator, so should Menendez be worried? You bet...  https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/01/senator-menendezs-ongoing-corruption-trial-has-democrats-scrambling-for-a-plan-b/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29 

tommclaughlin.blogspot.com “Perfect.”

I’m hearing that a lot lately. If I tell a waiter or waitress my menu selection (s)he’ll say, “Perfect.” Talking to a with a technical support person or medical professional, I’ll identify myself by phone number or birthdate and hear: “Perfect.” How can my name or birthdate be perfect?

And then there’s “Yeah, no” to begin a response to a statement or a question. The first few times I heard “Yeah, no” I was thinking the respondent is confused or ambivalent, but after hearing them again and again I’m thinking maybe they’re a kind of preface designed to avoid giving offense to the interrogator — a way to keep one’s foot in the door so as to be able to backtrack if necessary and declaring from the start that you could go either way on the question.

Another trendy phrase is “having said that” or “that said,” which seems to be a signal that what follows builds upon whatever has been expressed. It leaves me thinking: “I know you just said that; I heard it.” Maybe it’s a clue that the speaker is about to go off in a different direction. Maybe it’s just superfluous, or a way to collect one’s thoughts before going on — a substitute for “ahhh…” which might sound foolish if repeated too many times. Or, that said, maybe the speaker thinks the phrase makes him sound cool and intelligent because he’s heard it used by others he considers cool and intelligent.

For years now I’ve been hearing “He signed off on it,” to mean “He approved it,” but the juxtaposition of opposite prepositions feels incongruous. “On” follows immediately after “Off” and disturbs my linguistic instincts. One can “sign on” to something, meaning to join with it, but to “sign off” would mean to quit. Those meanings are extant and have been for most of my lifetime so to hear “sign off on” for so long now is bothersome — almost as bad as beginning a response with “Yeah, no.”

And, lately “nuance” is being overused, especially when employed to describe a person when it was formerly limited to things like artistic performances or physical works of art. A synonym would be “subtle.” Now it’s used by progressives to disparage the president, as in: “Trump lacks nuance,” a condescending strategy to portray him as thick-headed and unable to recognize subtle shades of meaning that progressives and their ilk all perceive.

The tired expression “thinking outside the box” is finally in decline whereas “thrown under the bus” is still is wide use. I complained about the latter in a 2011 column in which I tried in vain to figure out where it originated. I’m learning to tolerate it though because it’s clearly not going away. I’ve stopped wondering: why a bus? Why not under a subway car or a truck? And, no more do I try to imagine what throwing someone under a bus would actually look like.

Many of us are careful to be fashionable in what we wear, drive, listen to, and say. There was a time I adhered to fashion trends like these but it was brief and long ago. As verification that I don’t any longer, one of my daughters sent me a Fathers’ Day card last year with a caricature of a geeky-looking man under which was written:

“Dad, your refusal to care who thinks you’re cool used to puzzle me.” (open card) “Now it inspires me!” 

At Whole Foods in Portland, Maine last week were men in various combinations of skinny jeans, man buns, facial metal, skin graffiti, and other trappings of millennial progressivism. They considered those accoutrements vital to their identities and I felt sorry for them, especially the older ones who hadn’t grown beyond all that. I like the multi-grain sandwich bread the store bakes on site every day, and it’s the only thing I buy there so I was in and out quickly. Had I stayed longer I might have heard samples of leftist language trends currently in fashion. 

For example, progressives have assigned new connotations to the familiar word “woke.” So far I’ve only encountered it in writing but were I to hang out at left-wing gathering places like Whole Foods I would probably hear it spoken. The new meaning has only figurative reference to sleeping or waking up; contextual clues indicate it’s a gauge of political consciousness. Merriamwebster.com confirms that, declaring: “‘Woke’ is increasingly used as a byword for social awareness… a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE).”

Also included was a caution from a New York Times writer that use of the word by white people would invoke charges of cultural appropriation — a definite linguistic/fashion/PC faux pass.