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Macy’s announced Tuesday it will be closing 150 “underproductive locations” over the next three years as sales dip and the company looks to expand its higher-end luxury brands. The department store chain saw nearly a 2 percent drop in sales during the fourth quarter of last year when compared to its fourth quarter of 2022. In 2023 as a whole, its net sales dropped 5.5 percent and its digital sales dropped 7 percent Macy’s new CEO, Tony Spring, who stepped into the role this month, expressed optimism in a statement accompanying the sales report, which was released Tuesday alongside the...

From now on, Russian and Belarusian entities can only buy CPUs operating at below 25 MHz and offering performance of up to 5 GFLOPS from Taiwanese companies. This essentially excludes all modern technology, including microcontrollers for more or less sophisticated devices. Due to restrictions imposed on exports to Russia by the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union, leading Taiwanese companies were among the first to cease working with Russia after the country started full-scale war against Ukraine in late February. This week Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) formally published its list of high-tech products that are banned...

Christopher Steele shed new light on his work for the Clinton campaign and DNC, revealing in testimony last month that he met with two lawyers for the Democrats as part of his investigation into Donald Trump. Steele met with Perkins Coie partners Michael Sussmann and Marc Elias, he testified. Steele said that Sussmann provided him with the now-debunked tip that a Russian bank had a secret communications channel with the Trump Organization. awyer representing the DNC and Clinton campaign provided Christopher Steele with information in 2016 regarding an alleged secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank,...

The "Tech Executive-1" in John Durham's indictment of a Democratic cybersecurity lawyer testified in a lawsuit that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked to testify by the special counsel. Rodney Joffe, former senior vice president at Neustar, coordinated in 2016 with Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton's campaign and Joffe, from the FBI in September 2016 when he pushed debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank. Alfa Bank filed a "John Doe" lawsuit and deposed Joffe in...

Daniel Jones, lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation program, founded the Democracy Integrity Project in January 2017. Tax records show he funded Steele, Fusion, and others involved with Russia-related inquiries, keeping a web of groups working and donor money flowing to the tune of millions. The new filings contend that “the purpose of the Democracy Integrity Project is to promote democracy in the United States and around the world.” Tax records from the Democracy Integrity Project filed in November 2020 and made public in April show the Jones organization sent $1,222,714 in 2019 for...

U.S. Attorney John Durham has reportedly opened a new front in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. According to a report, Durham is seeking grand jury testimony from computer scientists behind an allegation that Donald Trump’s real estate company had a secret communications channel with Alfa Bank. The Alfa-Trump theory was first floated in October 2016, but was debunked in the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Durham is also reportedly seeking the testimony of Daniel Jones, a former Senate Intelligence Committee investigator who partnered with Fusion GPS and Christopher...

A dark money group based in California contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, the organization that has contracted with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump. The Democracy Integrity Project’s founder, a former staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has acknowledged to the FBI that the group provides information to the press, lawmakers and investigators. Fund for a Better Future is the second Democracy Integrity Project donor to have been identified. George Soros gave $1 million to the group. A dark money group with links to several high-profile liberal activists contributed $2 million to The Democracy...

There are several dozen critical issues that stem from revelations about the DOJ and FBI conduct in/around the Carter Page FISA application (2017) and Steele Dossier writ large; but DOJ official Bruce Ohr still being employed isn’t one of them, and here’s why. (further down) -- Bruce Ohr wasn’t the only non FBI person back-channeling information from corrupt source Christopher Steele into the FBI and Mueller team in 2017. SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner was doing exactly the same thing. Senator Warner was having secret contacts, “would rather not have a paper trail”, with Steele through liaison Adam Waldman, and then...

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

A new bombshell report reveals that a George Soros-backed group paid nearly $4 million dollars to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the author of the debunked Trump-Russia dossier. The rumors and stories of Soros funding the discredited hit on Trump have been circulating for sometime and are now confirmed. Back in 2018, Washington Post reported that George Soros had indirectly funded Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier, a spokesman for the billionaire financier has acknowledged. Michael Vachon, the Soros aide, told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that Soros provided a grant to a nonprofit group...

Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trump’s campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached. The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress. The operation’s nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily “research”...

Might we finally get to the bottom of the dark forces that used the state in their relentless attempt to dislodge newly elected President Trump? Based on a new report about dark money rolling into Fusion GPS coffers, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, seems to think so.  Here is his tweet: This is actually important as we wait for the March 14 Steele and Cramer depositions to made public.  https://t.co/Srz7SusezS    Coming from him, it says something. Here is what the Daily Caller found: A dark money group based in California contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, the organization...

A non-profit group linked to Fusion GPS has ties to a cybersecurity firm recently implicated in a self-described “false flag” operation in the Alabama Senate race. The Democracy Integrity Project, which works with Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele, partnered before the 2018 midterms with New Knowledge, an Austin-based firm that has been tied to an operation that created fake Russian bots in Alabama’s December 2017 special election. New Knowledge recently produced a report for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and TDIP’s founder was in contact with two Democrats from the committee. A nonprofit group linked to Fusion...

The team of opposition researchers behind the infamous anti-Trump dossier embraced by the FBI were paid big bucks to continue trying to dig up dirt on Russian meddling in American politics – even after the 2016 presidential election. That revelation, buried inside a 243-page report released by House Intelligence Committee Republicans last week, has sparked new speculation about the identities of the secretive donors who were funding the post-election project. According to the House Intelligence Committee report, Daniel J. Jones – the president of the Penn Quarter Group and a former staffer for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein – “secured the...

A new report shows a Democrat senator contacted a former Feinstein staffer back in 2017, in hopes of continuing an investigation so-called "collusion" between Trump and Russia. The former Feinstein staffer operates a group called "Democracy Integrity Project" which is heavily funded by Soros and has connections with Fusion GPS, as well as dossier author Christopher Steele. The one thing that's still not confirmed is the identity of the senator that reached out to the former Feinstein staffer. Daily Caller A Democratic senator outsourced parts of the investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion to a former Senate staffer with links to...

Especially at this time of year, I’m a fan of ‘finger food’ that can be made ahead, frozen, and ready in just minutes in the event of impromptu visitors. Nothing fits this bill better than the Gougere, a light savory ‘puff’ of cheesy pastry that goes wonderfully with cocktails and freezes very well. There are many variations on the Gougere, but this one is basic and classic: http://chezbonnefemme.com/recipes/gougeres/________________________________________________________ Last Thanksgiving, I took the advice of Freeper ‘boatbums’, and we dry-brined our turkey for the first time; it really was the best turkey we’ve had, even though we made the mistake...

There was a ton of bad news for Hillary Clinton in two new polls that put the former Secretary of State’s favorability deeper into negative territory amid harsh voter assessments of her personality – particularly her trustworthiness. When asked by CNN/ORC if Clinton was honest and trustworthy, only 42 percent of respondents said yes while 57 percent said no. That was down from 50/49 percent in March and 56/43 percent in March 2014. Clinton’s favorability ratings are also the lowest in a Washington Post-ABC News poll since April 2008 when she first sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Today, just 41...

Barack Obama approaches his nomination for a second term with the lowest pre-convention personal popularity of an incumbent president in ABC News/Washington Post polls since the 1980s. He’s also at his lowest of the year among registered voters, with trouble among women. Just 47 percent of registered voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll see Obama favorably overall, down 7 percentage points from his recent peak in April, while 49 percent rate him unfavorably. He’s numerically underwater in this group for the first time since February.

In the continuing debate over whether to ban smokeless tobacco from the MLB, Commissioner Bud Selig wrote in a letter today that he personally believes that "smokeless tobacco should be banned at the Major League level, but that is a subject that we are required to bargain over with the Major League Players Association." That said, in the current round of bargaining to take place this year, the MLB will propose to restrict the use of smokeless tobacco "comparable to restrictions in place at the Minor League level" [which has an all-encompassing ban on tobacco products], wrote Selig in a...

Two Navy helicopters from North Island Naval Air Station were damaged, and their pilots are now grounded, after some bizarre flying over Lake Tahoe last week. A Navy spokesman confirmed Thursday that a video posted on YouTube is genuine footage of two MH-60 Romeo helicopters from North Island’s Helicopter Maritime Strike 41 squadron. The video shows the $33 million helicopters flying low over the lake. One seems to lose control, spinning and crashing into the water. The pilot then regains control and pulls the craft back into the air. The Navy wouldn’t identify the pilots or say whether the...