Mom of ‘Success Kid’ Says Meme Helped Save Father’s Life

A boy who went viral about a decade ago due to the “Success Kid” meme is now 10, and his mother said that the picture helped save his father’s life. Sam Griner, the boy, became a meme at the age of 11 months, showing a picture of him clutching sand on the beach. The meme has been used to describe a moment of stupidity that turned out to be better than expected, and it was popularized on Reddit, 4chan, and social media websites. Tens of thousands of variations of the meme have been created since it first became popularized.

The mother of the boy, Lacey, told Unilad earlier this month that the meme changed their life forever. The picture, she said, had nothing to do with “success.” The boy was merely eating sand when she snapped the photo. “Justin and I took Sam to the beach that day specifically to take photos. I’d recently purchased my first dSLR camera and wanted to get some nicer family photos with baby Sammy, who was just 11 months old at that time,” she said of the photo, which has now been viewed likely hundreds of millions of times. She added, “We went to the beach and as soon as I would put Sam down in the sand, he’d get a handful of sand and try to put it in his mouth, as babies that age do with everything.” She added: “The Success Kid shot was taken just as he was about to put his hand in his mouth. If you look at the photo closely, you can see sand in his hand and around his lips.” Lacey said her son would typically make “the funniest, silliest faces.”

According to The Metro, in 2015, he attempted to raise money for his father to have a kidney transplant. His family managed to raise $100,000 for a successful operation. “I didn’t mention Success Kid on the GoFundMe page because I wanted it to be about Justin. Later I decided to post a link to the fundraiser on my Twitter page and said, ‘If everyone who ever created a Success Kid meme donated $1, we could save Success Dad’s life,'” Lacey also told Unilad about the fundraising efforts. The boy’s father had a kidney transplant in 2015.

“There were so many nice comments and people sharing similar stories. I wish everyone could experience the best of humanity in the way that we did. It’s a reminder to me that people are overwhelmingly good,” Lacey explained. Website KnowYourMeme said the original photo was shot in August 2007 by his mother, Laney Griner. The photo then made the rounds on MySpace after it was uploaded on Flickr and Getty Images. Later, Reddit picked up the meme in 2011, according to Business Insider. The Obama White House even used the image to promote immigration reform. The meme was originally called “I Hate Sandcastles” but grew into the “Success Kid” meme.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mom-of-success-kid-says-meme-helped-save-fathers-lfe_2935872.html

Senate Makes Earmark Ban Permanent

A Republican initiative in the Senate, led by Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.), passed an amendment on Thursday renewing and codifying a Congressional ban on earmarking bills.

"The last thing taxpayers need is for the same politicians who racked up a $22 trillion national debt to go on an earmark binge," Sasse said in a statement. "It's pretty simple: Earmarks are a crummy way to govern and they have no business in Congress. Backroom deals, kickbacks, and earmarks feed a culture of constant incumbency and that's poisonous to healthy self-government. This is an important fight and I'm glad that my Republican colleagues agreed with my rules change to make the earmark ban permanent." The Senate placed a temporary ban on earmarking bills in 2011, following a push from Senate Republicans and a promise from former President Barack Obama that he would veto any incoming bill that was filled with unrelated pet projects. At the time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada) had fought Obama on the ban, telling the president to "back off," according to Politico. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) had already placed a ban on earmarks in House bills earlier in the year.

The Senate voted in 2017 to keep the ban in place, with a push led by former Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.). Flake launched an investigation in 2015 which found that, despite the 2011 ban, many earmarks had slipped through, with hundreds of millions spent on side projects, such as grape research and subsidies for a ballet theater in the wealthiest congressional district in America. Similarly, a Citizens Against Government Waste report found that Congress had approved $5.1 billion in earmarks in 2016. In 2016, House Republicans attempted to undo earmark bans, but the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) rebuffed the effort, saying that it would inappropriate right after a "drain the swamp" election.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/senate-makes-earmark-ban-permanent/

Mark Meadows views fresh 'Strzok coverup' material at DOJ

Rep. Mark Meadows said he was at the Justice Department to review new information about former FBI agent Peter Strzok. The North Carolina Republican was spotted at Justice Department headquarters in D.C. with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Thursday. Asked by a reporter why he was there, Meadows said, "I was reviewing text messages and new correspondence that pertains to the Strzok coverup."

Hours after their visit, President Trump gave Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority to declassify information" related to the origins of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Meadows and Jordan's visit to the Justice Department also comes after House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes said he learned that an August 2016 text from Strzok about an "insurance policy" had to do with the FBI's use of an unverified dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Strzok was the lead investigator of the Hillary Clinton emails inquiry and opened the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia in the summer of 2016. Text messages between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which they displayed a negative opinion of Trump, were uncovered over the course of the Justice Department's inspector general investigation into the DOJ and FBI's conduct during the investigation into Hillary Clinton's unauthorized private email server.

The report, which came out in the summer of 2018, said their text messages "potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. But the inspector general determined that there was no evidence “improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions." Both Strzok and Lisa Page, who are no longer with the FBI, have been a focus of GOP investigators concerned about potential bias within the Justice Department and FBI.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mark-meadows-views-fresh-strzok-coverup-material-at-doj

John Brennan's prized Russia informant abruptly said to be imperiled by Barr's new power

The need for secrecy was so great that CIA Director John Brennan hand-delivered information from a critical informant close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an envelope to President Barack Obama in August 2016. Now, one day after President Trump gave Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority to declassify information" related to the origins of the federal investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the New York Times reports this source is in jeopardy. The declassification order, celebrated by GOP allies and derided by Democrats as a "plot to dirty up the intelligence community," could put the Justice Department at odds with the CIA over the protection of the identity of this key informant who provided information about the Kremlin's role in interfering in the 2016 election.

Specifically, this informant was the U.S. intelligence community's source in determining that Putin personally "ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election" to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in favor of Trump. Obama made this public before he left office. The informant is described as being a long-nurtured source who rose up the Russian ranks. Believed to still be alive, the well-being of the informant is one concern as Barr digs into the earliest days of the Russia investigation. Former national security officials and Democratic lawmakers are also worried that Trump may be putting other sources and methods at risk as part of a politically motivated effort to "investigate the investigators." Overseen by Brennan, the information delivered by this high-placed informant was treated with the utmost care, but done so outside of the norm.

Word of this high-placed informant first came out in June 2017 in a Washington Post story that said Brennan began feeding this material to Obama and a small group of aides with a report in an envelope to be read and promptly returned to the CIA. The material was deemed so sensitive that it was kept out of the President’s Daily Brief due to concerns that too many people would be made aware of its contents.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/john-brennans-prized-russia-informant-abruptly-said-to-be-imperiled-by-barrs-new-power

>>6581708

Indeed we did:)

Defense contractor the Pentagon accused of 'gouging our taxpayers' repays $16M

A defense contractor accused of overcharging the Pentagon for mission-critical parts has agreed to repay the government $16 million after its executives were grilled by Congress last week. TransDigm Group cut several checks to the Pentagon on Thursday as part of a repayment agreement after the company's high profit margins selling aviation parts to the military became public. TransDigm executives faced bipartisan backlash for their business practices last week during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. "Today’s decision by TransDigm to refund millions of dollars in blatant overcharges would not have happened without the hearing in the Oversight Committee last week," said committee chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Ga., in a statement Friday. "This is solid, bread-and-butter oversight that helps our troops and the American taxpayers. We saved more money today for the American people than our Committee’s entire budget for the year."

A Pentagon inspector general review of some of the parts TransDigm sold to the government found the company was raking in excess profits ranging from 17% to 4,451%. Many of the parts were required for essential military aircraft, meaning Pentagon contracting officers had no choice but to purchase them, even though they knew the prices were exorbitant. Assistant secretary of defense for acquisition Kevin Fahey told the committee that TransDigm was "gouging the taxpayers with their sickening business practices." Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who helped lead the investigation into TransDigm, wondered why the company had not paid back the $16 million suggested by the inspector general.

"The company is worth $1.2 billion, why not just pay back $16 million?" Khanna asked TransDigm executives during the hearing. "We're still evaluating that," said Nicholas Howley, the company's executive chairman and founder. He expressed concern that paying back the money would imply TransDigm did something wrong or illegal. The Pentagon found that TransDigm's actions were legal, though perhaps unethical. Holding TransDigm to account was "a good first step," Cummings said, but he added "we must do even more in the future to prevent unscrupulous contractors from holding us hostage through abusive monopoly contracts."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/defense-contractor-the-pentagon-accused-of-gouging-our-taxpayers-repays-16m

>>6581771

Or they are trying to document some Neurological Disorder…Brain Truma