Today’s featured image is of the Salmon River. The Salmon is a lake Ontario trib flowing down from the Tug Hill plateau in New York. Your editor is planning a Steelhead excursion on his next day off. The chrome are just starting to pick up in the lower river, but with the conditions being warm-ish and relatively dry, it takes some work to get them to bite.
Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who falsified an email that led to the whole “Russian Collusion” mess was sentenced today. Despite prosecutors requesting incarceration, Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg handed down a sentence of probation. The prosecutors from John Durham’s Special Prosecutors office argued Clinesmith was not “accepting responsibility” for his criminal conduct as required by law to receive any leniency in his sentencing.
Operation Inherent Resolve spox Col. Wayne Marotto and CENTCOM have announced Abu Yasir, seniormost daesh leader in Iraq was killed in an airstrike on the 27th of this month. The strike also killed 10 other goatf*uckers.
Staying in the middle east, a New York Times contributor has been arrest. Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi, who portrayed himself as some neutral expert on Iran, and charged with being an unregistered Iranian agent. Afrasiabi who is accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), allegedly sought to influence the American public and American policymakers for the benefit of Iran. The Fishwrap of record published several pieces from Afrasiabi over the past few years.
Having to deal with work issues the past few days, I don’t know if y’all are following the GameStop stock deal. It interests me in a 10,000 foot, detached kind of way. I could really not care less if some corporate masters of the universe types short a troubled company or not. What bugs me about that whole deal is the two teired system that’s on full display. The fact that a company that was founded to allow the unwashed masses to trade stocks easily has decided to suspend trading on certain stocks because their hedge fund buddies took a short position on them really bugs the shite out of me. Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, had it right: someone needs to go to jail over this mess. And it’s not the Redditors that decided they needed to do something about it.
There are calls for permanent fencing and barricades to be placed around the Capitol building. You can guess where they’re coming from, so I won’t go into detail other than to say this: Walls and fences are inhumane and don’t work.
A recent (Jan 21-24) Rasmussen survey finds that 53% of GOP voters say it’s a good idea for Trump to start a third party. Thirty percent (30%) of Republicans say a third party would be a bad idea and 17% are not sure. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Politics requires a machine in this day and age. Who am I kidding, politics has always required a machine. And it would be plain dumb for Trump to start his own party when the majority of R’s already support his agenda.
I’m going to close today’s View with a little housekeeping and a couple of announcements.
First off, I really want to thank the team. With year end stuff going on at work for me and Rogue Unicorn doing mythical beast things, WhyNot, AuntiE, American Goddess, Chance and Whiteknightleo have really stepped up.
Starting soon, Haj 5.0 will be bringing us a biweekly (? ) music post. Hopefully, we’ll be getting some more of WhiteKnightLeo’s fantastic work too. The Knight, like Uni and I, is in the middle of real life and has limited time to dedicate to his craft.
Go raibh maith agat, merci mille fois, hvala, vielen Dank, Spasiba!
We are having our best month so far traffic wise. We’re well on our way to 5500 visitors, 10,000 site visits and 76,000 page views for January. And that’s all down to you, Dear Constant Reader. So thank you for choosing our site.
There’s still room for at least one more writer. If you have the desire to write for an internationally read website, drop us a line at the contact page and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Give us a follow on Disqus and Twitter.
As always, if you have any tips, story ideas, comments or criticism, drop us a line here.