I don’t care what age you are. If you’re the proud home of a Y chromosome, there are two things that are unassailably awesome: ninjas and missiles.
If you like both of those, you’ll probably like the AGM-114R9X, a rare variant of the Hellfire missile. Unless, of course, you’re a terrorist.
According to The Drive, the missile was used to kill two people in northern Syria near the place where Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed.
The thing about the AGM-114R9X is that it “substitutes the warhead found on standard models for a set of folding sword-like blades for minimum collateral damage,” The Drive reported.
“There are reports that two individuals in the van died, but their identities and if they are affiliated with any known terrorist groups are unclear at the time of writing. There is one report that at least one person who was killed belonged to Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, or HTS, a group that splintered from Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria in 2017.”
A note used for crossing HTS checkpoints appears to confirm the identity of the person killed. If true, this is the first Coalition strike against HTS in 2 years – the US increasingly shifted to targeting more radical factions (ISIS, AQ, Ansar al-Tawhid). pic.twitter.com/UAwHibEJwy
#Syria#IdlibUknown warplanes have airstriked a vehicle in Atmeh, Northern Idlib.The bodies of 2 (?) men have been mashed but the vehicle has not exploded. It’s not clear then if this is the result of an #US assassination attempt with another #US R9X missile. pic.twitter.com/hiPJA2FHve
This isn’t the first time that the ninja missile has been used. The Wall Street Journal reported on its existence earlier in the year after it had been used in several strikes in the Middle East.
However, the missile has been in the pipeline for quite a while. In fact, it was even considered to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The ninja missile is so effective that it actually passed through the roof of one of its target cars without breaking the windshield.
The secret R9X missile is designed to destroy individual terrorist targets without harming surrounding civilians and could potentially kill a car’s front seat passenger without harming the driverhttps://t.co/FVhkegsStI
“To the targeted person, it is as if a speeding anvil fell from the sky,” one source said at the time.
Yet, the vehicle remains intact — as the photos prove.
Overall, it’s an amazing weapon. It reduces collateral damage and the possibility of innocent civilians being killed. It’s a triumph of technology. And most importantly, we can call it the ninja missile.
How much more awesome can the AGM-114R9X get?
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Donald Trump and Adam Schiff aren’t the best of friends, and that enmity intensified after the House Intelligence Committee chairman’s recent impersonation of the president.
Trump’s response is generally to up the ante, and he certainly did so during a news conference at the NATO summit near London on Tuesday.
The president unloaded on Schiff, calling him “deranged,” a “maniac” and “a very sick man.”
The remarks came as he was speaking beside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and was asked about the possibility the California Democrat might be called during a potential impeachment trial in the Senate to discuss his connections with the whistleblower who kicked this whole saga off.
Trump was asked: “What do you want to learn from [the] Adam Schiff testimony?”
Schiff’s testimony is supposed to ascertain his relationship with the whistleblower, which has been controversial; one of his staffers met with the whistleblower before he filed his complaint.
Trump, though, said he wanted zilch from Schiff.
”I learn nothing from Adam Schiff. I think he’s a maniac,” Trump said.
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”What would you — what would you want to learn if he testified?” the reporter continued.
“I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he’s a very sick man, and he lies,” Trump said.
“We have a perfectly beautiful, three-to-four-page transcription, and then, in the other case, a two-page transcription of the conversation,” he added.
“But a lot of people didn’t read that. How many people call you — a friend of mine called up — a top person in New York called up, great friend of mine, very successful: ‘Gee, I didn’t like what was said.’ I said, ‘Oh, where did you see it? Did you read it?’ ‘No, I didn’t read it. I heard Adam Schiff give it.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s not what was said.’ And I sent him a copy of what was said. He said, ‘This is like — this is great. This isn’t what he said.”
“This guy is sick. He made up the conversation,” he continued, referring to Schiff.
“He lied. If he didn’t do that in the halls of Congress, he’d be thrown into jail. But he did it in the halls of Congress, and he’s given immunity. This is a sick person. He’s a liar.”
Trump was responding to a clip where Schiff gave a J/K version of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Schiff said it was all a joke, but a lot of what he said didn’t come across as someone who was entirely joking.
“I have a favor I want from you,” Schiff said back in September, according to Fox News.
“And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.”
Schiff would later say he thought it was obvious that he was joking.
The Democrat said the intention of the message could clearly be inferred.
“The summary of the president’s call was meant to be at least, part, in parody,” Schiff said.
“The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the president never said, ‘If you don’t understand me I’m going to say it seven more times.’ My point is, that’s the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words.”
Except it wasn’t, but thanks for trying.
Now, is that “maniac” material? Perhaps not. “Sick?” More or less.
This is only beginning, sadly.
Of course, had the president done what Schiff did in terms of making up a narrative, this would be all over the place. No, Trump wouldn’t be thrown into jail, although Democrats could always dream.
Rest assured, though, we’d be having a moment like this — a moment where Democrats would be wondering whether the president’s words were enough to remove him from office.
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The liberal media likes to hype that a lack of social media censorship and free speech online are ruining our democracy. But podcast host Joe Rogan has a different take. The host of the Joe Rogan Experience Joe Rogan told Democratic Party presidential primary candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) on the Nov. 26 episode that Big Tech companies are “interfering with democracy.” And Gabbard, who is suing Google for $50 million and accused the platform of suspending her campaign’s advertising account at a critical period after a Democratic presidential primary debate,…
A book by the co-founders of Fusion GPS confirms that dossier author Christopher Steele passed to James Comey’s FBI anti-Trump material compiled by Cody Shearer, a shadowy former tabloid journalist who has long been closely associated with various Clinton scandals.
That Shearer’s memo made its way to the FBI raises further questions about the origins of the agency’s Russia collusion probe.
In their new book, Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch make the following disclosure about Steele’s initial meetings with Rome-based FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta.
The FBI’s Gaeta had asked Steele to share anything he deemed potentially relevant. The Shearer memo qualified, in Steele’s mind. He provided a copy of the memo to the FBI at meetings in Rome on October 3, with a handwritten note on the front—scrawled in the back of a Roman taxi—explaining his understanding that the document had been written by Shearer and that he had no knowledge of its sourcing and couldn’t vouch for its veracity. Copies of the report and Steele’s note were dutifully recorded in the FBI’s file documenting its dealings with Steele.
It was at Steele’s 2016 meetings with Gaeta that the unsubstantiated dossier material was first given by Steele to the FBI alleging collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
National Reviewpreviously dubbed Shearer a “Creepy Clinton Confidante” and “The Strangest Character in Hillary’s Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.”
Simpson’s book relates that Steele obtained Shearer’s memo from Jonathan M. Winer, an Obama State Department official who was an associate of Steele. Winer got the memo from longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer previously described as an “old friend.”
After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Postoped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.
Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by Blumenthal. Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer.
Now the book by Simpson and Fritsch, Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump, confirms that Steele passed the anti-Trump Shearer memo to the FBI. The book alleges that Steele did not know the Shearer memo was passed to Winer by Blumenthal but that Steele did know when providing it to the FBI that Shearer was the author of the document.
Last year, the Guardian newspaper reported the FBI had been utilizing a dossier authored by Shearer as part of its since discredited probe into Trump and alleged Russian collusion.
The Guardianreported the so-called Shearer memo was given to the FBI by Steele in October 2016.
The newspaper reported that, like Steele’s dossier, Shearer’s memo cites an “unnamed source within Russia’s FSB” alleging Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence during a 2013 trip to Moscow in which the future president purportedly engaged in “lewd acts in a five-star hotel.”
Shearer’s name, meanwhile, was mentioned in a January 25 letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, addressed to the DNC and to Marc E. Elias, an attorney at the Perkins Coie law firm. The Washington Post previously reported that Elias, utilizing Perkins Coie, retained Fusion GPS to conduct the firm’s anti-Trump work on behalf of both Clinton’s presidential campaign and the DNC.
In his letter, Grassley inquired about a second possible memo on Trump, asking whether “anyone at the DNC” ever received “other memoranda written or forwarded by Mr. Steele regarding Mr. Trump.”
Grassley further asked the DNC to provide “all communications to, from, copying, or relating to” numerous individuals for the periods of March 2016 through January 2017, including any communications between the DNC and Shearer.
A criminal referral authored by Grassley and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) contains redacted information that Steele received information from someone in the State Department, who in turn had been on contact with a “foreign sub-source” who was in touch with a redacted name described as a “friend of the Clintons.”
Numerous media reports stated that the second dossier author mentioned in the Grassley-Graham memo was Shearer.
According to sources who spoke to CNN, Shearer’s dossier is “actually a set of notes based on conversations with reporters and other sources.” CNN reported that Shearer had “circulated those notes to assorted journalists, as well as to Blumenthal.”
Shearer has numerous close personal and family connections to the Clintons and has reportedly been involved in numerous antics tied to them.
His brother-in-law, Strobe Talbott, was friends with Bill Clinton when the two were students at Oxford. Talbott went on to become special adviser to the Secretary of State during the first Clinton administration. Derek Shearer, Cody’s brother, was Clinton’s ambassador to Finland.
The Independentreported on a government investigation of whether Shearer misrepresented himself as working on behalf of the Clinton State Department in Bosnia in the 1990s:
According to the Washington Examiner, Mr Shearer was investigated by the State Department Inspector General in 1998 after he led negotiations that “caused temporary diplomatic damage in Bosnia.” Citing documents obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act, the Examiner reported that Mr Shearer “may have represented himself as speaking on behalf of the State Department” in conversations about the proposed partitioning of Bosnia.
National Review further reported on Shearer’s efforts in Bosnia:
In the middle of the decade, for reasons that remain unclear, he traveled to Europe to negotiate with associates of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian-Serb president known to have orchestrated the mass killings of Bosnian Muslims — including the Srebrenica genocide — during the brutal Yugoslav Wars. Representing himself as an agent of the State Department, Shearer told his Serbian contacts, which included members of Karadzic’s family, that he could reduce the severity of impending war-crimes charges if Karadzic surrendered. He claimed he was in contact not only with his brother-in-law, but also with then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright and even with President Clinton himself.
…
A subsequent State Department investigation found that the Serbs paid Shearer at least $25,000 for his efforts, though the Serbs themselves claim he was paid much more.
Emails hacked from Blumenthal’s AOL account discuss a plan with Shearer to put paid operatives on the ground along the Libya-Tunisia border for about $60,000. The emails talk about “the general” and “Grange,” which ProPublica reported was a seeming reference to David L. Grange, founder of Osprey Global Solutions, a military contractor reportedly seeking to work with Libya’s transitional government.
Shearer’s name was directly associated with a Blumenthal message to Clinton that may have resulted in the Secretary of State meeting with Mahmoud Jibril, an opposition figure in Libya who would later serve as interim prime minister during Libya’s civil war.
National Review reported:
The March 6, 2011 email released by the Benghazi Committee, however, illustrates a more direct link between Clinton and Shearer. “Cody, on his own, still at heart an indefatigable journalist, simply picked up the phone … and had a conversation with one of the key figures in the Libyan National Council,” Blumenthal writes, copying Shearer’s intelligence memo directly into the email.
Shearer’s memo calls Jibril “very smart” saying the Libyan has “no desire to serve in a future government, [but] only wants to help in the transition.” “Someone should contact Mahmod Jipreel [sic],” Shearer continues. “He is balanced, level-headed and understands [the] current situation well.” “Cody says that Jipreel [sic] said he has not been contacted by anyone from the U.S. government,” Blumenthal wrote in the email.
On March 15, 2011, nine days after Blumenthal’s email referencing Shearer, Clinton met with Jibril for 45 minutes in Paris.
In the 1990s, Shearer’s name came up regarding alleged Clinton efforts to suppress charges of sexual assault against Bill Clinton. Questions surfaced about Shearer’s alleged role in the controversial work of Terry Lenzner, a private investigator tied to efforts to discredit Clinton’s accusers.
Shearer’s name popped up in the course of Sen. Don Nickles’ angry questioning of Terry Lenzner, the private investigator who would later, in the thick of the Jones/Lewinsky/Willey/Who Knows Who Else matter, be accused (by Dick Morris, among others) of coordinating efforts to smear and intimidate those women. Shearer had apparently acted as a liaison between Lenzner’s firm, Investigative Group International, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe. The tribe had donated more than $100,000 to the Democratic Party, hoping, according to testimony, that the administration would intervene on its behalf in a dispute over drilling rights on tribal land. Lenzner had been retained to uncover compromising links between Nickles–who opposed the tribe’s claims–and local oil interests. Lenzner, while he admitted that he had accepted the tribe’s retainer, has denied that Cody Shearer had ever worked for IGI–though the firm did once employ his sister Brooke.
Some journalists are beginning to worry that their phone records may have been caught up in snooping conducted by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and revealed in the House Intelligence Committee’s 300-page impeachment report.
In the report, which Schiff unveiled on Tuesday, the committee uses AT&T phone records to draw connections between Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), and his staff; President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani; investigative journalist John Solomon; and now-indicted Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas.
The report lists phone calls between the named individuals — though it does not describe the content of the calls — and suggests that all were part of a scheme to “smear” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. The “smear campaign” forms part of Democrats’ case against the president.
Nunes revealed Wednesday evening that Schiff had used a subpoena of phone numbers, unrecognized at the time, to construct a record of the Ranking Member’s phone conversations — though Nunes disputes the suggestion that he was part of the effort to attack Yovanovitch.
While some media outlets — for example, CNN — have used the details in Schiff’s report to promote his theory that Nunes was part of the plan (with no evidence to support that claim), other journalists have begun to wonder if their phone calls were also swept up in Schiff’s probe.
Fox News White House correspondent John Fox, for example, took to Twitter to suggest that his phone number, too, was likely in Schiff’s records, but simply had not been published.
What’s also interesting about this is that my phone number – and the phone numbers of many of my colleagues were likely included in these logs. They just weren’t published. https://t.co/aPORDxKzLJ
Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist, who is also a Fox contributor, pointed out that many other journalists were “shockingly and shamefully silent about Schiff spying on a member of the free press.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Good news, everyone… Director J.J. Abrams has promised the alphabet people that The Rise of Skywalker is gunna be gay.
Speaking to Variety about the relationship between Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega), which some fans have theorized could be a romantic one, Abrams argued that it goes deeper than romance.
“That relationship to me is a far deeper one than a romantic one,” the A-list Hollywood director explained. “It is a deep bond that these two have, not just because of the trial by fire in which they met, but also because of their willingness to be as intimate as they are, as afraid as they, as unsure as they are, and still be bold, and still be daring and brave.”
“And in the case of the LGBTQ community, it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film,” Abrams continued.
What a relief. Like millions of Star Wars fans, when I was sitting back hating The Last Jedi, I remember thinking to myself, You know what would make this so much better? Some homosexuality.
And now we get to sit through Rise of Skywalker enjoying the subtext of all some man-on-man action between Poe and Finn.
Gee, imagine how much better the original trilogy would have been had we been treated to some hyper-drive sex between Han and Luke.
And since we now know Lando Calrissian is pansexual (I don’t know what that means and I don’t want to know) and has sex with feminist robots (see: Solo — no one else did), imagine all the freak-getting-on happening throughout the Star Wars universe… Finally, it all makes sense… Jar Jar and Chewy. And you just now Obi Wan and Darth are slow dancing somewhere in the Forcey mist of the afterlife.
What in heaven’s name do these idiots think they’re doing?
It’s one thing for Kathleen Kennedy to man-bash with her Mary Sues, it’s one thing to strip Star Wars of romance… But to replace it with this…
Listen, I know we’re not supposed to say this. I know that. Come on… Almost no one wants to see this stuff. Even straight people who say they want to see this stuff don’t want to see this stuff. It makes us uncomfortable. It takes us out of the movie. It adds a layer of sexuality for no good reason other than to add a layer of sexuality. Nothing good comes from this.
Hey, I’m not opposed to Hollywood making movies for the gay community. Hollywood should make movies for everyone, including the alphabet people. I’m just not going to see them, and I’m not going to go see them for one very simple reason… Watching two men become intimate in any way makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I have better things to do with my money and time than to be made uncomfortable.
And the box office backs me up on this. Look at what happened to Star Trek when Sulu, who had been a heterosexual for 50 years, miraculously turned gay. Look at what happened to Solo after we learned Lando Calrissian is a pansexual (I don’t know that that means and I don’t want to know). I’m sorry, but biology is biology, human nature is human nature, and “gay” is its own genre — and I’m fine with that genre. Knock yourselves out. I’m not going to watch, but I wish you all the luck in the world.
Parents really resent this stuff. It forces them to have to explain human sexuality to their children, to puncture a crucial piece of that innocence, long before they should have to.
“Woke” means all kinds of things, but chief among them is “bad storytelling.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
MADRID, Spain — The most important thing – indeed the only thing – you need to know about the U.N.’s latest climate circus, COP25, is that it was originally going to be staged in Santiago, Chile.
Why is this fact so important? Because the reason COP25 is no longer being held in Chile is because the green policies introduced by the country’s president Sebastián Piñera have proved so disastrous and unpopular that Chile is in flames.
It began with protests over ticket prices on the Chilean metro, which were hiked by 200 per cent. The increase was the result of Piñera’s drive for renewable energy. He wants the country to go carbon neutral by 2035.
Chile’s total (theoretical: for such tiny figures are immeasurable) contribution to ‘global warming’ – is 0.000015 degrees C.
In order to avert this disaster, Chile’s green government has carpeted the length of the country with expensive, unreliable, bird-killing wind farms and solar farms. It has introduced 96 new green taxes and regulations.
Thanks to its green policies, Chile is fast becoming the new Venezuela.
At a conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, I met a Chilean engineer Douglas Pollock (he has an ancestor buried in Westminster Abbey but despite the name he is very much a Chilean). He spoke with tears in his eyes as he outlined the terrible damage that environmentalism has done to his country in such a short space of time.
True, the revolution has since been hijacked by the hard left – just like it has in France with the gilets-jaunes protests, which originally began as a protest against fuel price hikes, again the result of green policy.
You can hear Douglas talk about the tragedy that has befallen his country in the interview above.
You can also find his speech, in which he talks in more detail about the damage done by green policy to Chile’s economy here.
Nice one, greenies. You have no claim to the moral high ground. What you are doing to the planet is pure evil.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents discovered a previously deported man attempting to fraudulently claim family migrant status. The man falsely claimed to be the father of a 15-year-old boy.
Eagle Pass South Station Border Patrol agents apprehended a man on November 3 who illegally crossed the border from Coahuila, Mexico, with a teenage child. The man allegedly claimed to be the father of the boy. Agents detained the man and boy and transported them to the Border Patrol station for processing, according to information provided by Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials.
All migrants apprehended at the border undergo a biometric background investigation. During the records check, the agents identified the man as a 35-year-old Guatemalan who had been deported earlier this year under a different name, officials stated.
The agents investigated further and discovered the man was not actually the father of the 15-year-old Guatemalan boy.
“We receive cases all the time in which criminals will manipulate families and provide false promises to get what they want,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz said in a written statement. “Thanks to the attentiveness of our agents, this ongoing investigation crippled this man’s attempt to disguise himself as the child’s father.”
In an effort to detect and deter these attempts at false family claims, ICE deployed dozens of teams of HSI special agents, Breitbart News reported in April. In early results, ICE told Breitbart News on Thursday that about 25 percent of the cases investigated by HSI resulted in the determination of false family claims. The agency is also testing a “rapid DNA” program to quickly prove or disprove claimed parent-child relationships.
In May, Breitbart Texas reported that a previously deported Honduran man attempted to re-enter the U.S. by falsely claiming to be the father of an infant child.
Agents said the migrant claimed the boy as his own and presented what later turned out to be a fraudulent birth certificate. Agents at the McAllen Central Processing Station became suspicious of the parent-child relationship and turned them over to HSI.
During interviews with ICE, the man identified as Amilcar Guiza-Reyes, a 51-year-old from Honduras, reportedly admitted he obtained the fraudulent birth certificate to establish a father-son relationship. He further stated he intended to use the child to “further his unlawful entry into the U.S.,” ICE officials stated.
“Cases like this demonstrate the real danger that exists to children in this disturbing new trend,” HSI Acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs said in a written statement. “And while we have seen egregious cases of smugglers renting and recycling children, this case involving a six-month-old infant is a new low – and an unprecedented level of child endangerment.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
Husband-to-be Christopher Smith died while saving the lives of others from a gunman at his own bachelor party in Indianapolis.
It was supposed to be a night of laughter and celebration as Smith, 41, prepared to marry his fiancée, Schena Singer, in approximately two weeks.
But the bachelor party turned deadly when an unidentified man inside Jake’s Pub in Indianapolis pulled out a gun.
Smith, who was with friends and family, including his future son-in-law, reportedly decided to try and tackle the man in hopes of preventing a shooting.
“Chris, seeing and knowing his son-in-law and friends were there in line of fire, he tried to tackle him and the guy opened fire,” Shanon Singer-Mann, Smith’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, told Inside Edition.
“[He] shot Chris then just kept shooting within the bar.”
Smith died as a result of the gunshot wound, a tragedy that his family is struggling to understand.
“His kids are in shock and we’re all just devastated,” Singer-Mann said. “And with the holidays, I don’t know if we truly are coping. We’re just simply doing the best we can to honor him.”
Singer-Mann told WXIN that her sister had to abruptly shift gears from anticipating her own bachelorette party to planning a funeral.
“To go from supposed to be going to your bachelorette party to having to go and plan your fiance’s funeral, it’s just so tragic,” Singer-Mann said. “You’ll never understand why something like this happens, never.”
An Indiana man died while protecting others from a gunman at his own bachelor party. https://t.co/Fgu6JZ5aZZ
Smith’s family believes that his decision to go after the gunman prevented what could have been more lives lost that night.
“It does not surprise me Chris selflessly jumped up,” Singer-Mann said. “He’s always known to help the ones he loves, and even ones he doesn’t even know.”
According to Singer-Mann, Smith’s organs are set to be donated.
“Again, saving more lives,” she said.
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An anonymous donor from Idaho gifted $50,000 and health insurance for a year to Brad Crow and his family as a way to wish them a Merry Christmas.
Crow, who lives with his wife, Erica, and their two adopted children, has been through a season fraught with medical crisis, pain and financial devastation.
When he was 14, Crow was diagnosed with bone cancer. He ultimately beat the cancer through radiation, chemotherapy and surgery to replace a bone in his leg.
Crow, who works in construction, decided to begin building a home for his family last summer on their Idaho property. But in the early stages of the project, Crow fractured a bone in his leg and needed surgery to replace the bone, echoing his cancer ordeal.
The surgery was considered a success until Crow developed a staph infection that left him hospitalized and fighting for his life.
“I almost died a few times, it was pretty scary,” Crow told East Idaho News. This past spring, Crow had to have his leg amputated.
As if the amputation was not enough for one person to manage, Crow’s hip bones had started to deteriorate and he had a hip replacement shortly after the amputation.
Crow’s health complications have left him without work for over a year, causing extreme financial strain on the family. Erica has kept her job as a school bus driver to bring in as much income as she can.
The family has also been living in their camper in a shop Crow built until his health improves enough for him build their home.
It was Erica’s sister who nominated the Crow family to benefit from a gift from the community Secret Santa. Each season, a mysterious donor in the Idaho neighborhood, known as Secret Santa, gives money away to needy families in the area.
In order to maintain anonymity, Secret Santa asks journalists from East Idaho News to deliver all the money and gifts to the selected families every day in December until Christmas.
Erica was moved to tears as she opened her family’s gift — $50,000 to help with building their new home, plus a year’s worth of health insurance for Brad, who otherwise would have been uninsured in 2020.
“No,” she gasped in amazement when she saw the amount written on the check.
The blessing came at a time when the Crow family needed it the most. Through all the hardship, Crow said they have relied on their faith to give them hope.
“Just got to keep going,” Crow said. “Have faith everything is going to be okay. That’s all you can do.”
Secret Santa has helped the Idaho community for four years in a row, this year giving away a total of $500,000 to families selected from a list of nominees.
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