The Democrats in charge of the House side of Congress, and their long media retinue, are in high dudgeon over the Mueller Report and the whole Russia mirage. Their epileptic seizures could be calmed by the application of a little history.
A huge part of the problem is their hatred of Trump which has deluded them into going whole hog on the Trump Manchurian candidate story. It was always an illusion, but illusions must be kept alive in the quest for power. Remember John C. Calhoun’s twisted logic in defense of slavery to keep the slavocracy in power in the South?
Remember the 1934 persecution-by-prosecution of William Insull – the man, more than any other, responsible for the creation of the nation’s electrical grid in the 1920’s – by FDR’s Justice Department as the scapegoat for the Depression and to further FDR’s grand scheme to place the economy, and much of life, under bureaucratic control? If you’re interested, after a 7-week trial, it took a jury only 2 hours to acquit Insull and his 16 co-defendants of all charges.
Examples abound.
Insidious illusions will be always, like the poor, with us, especially if power is at stake. For the Resistance true believers, Trump has to be guilty for him to be dethroned. Belief cometh before proof. So, Nadler and company are issuing subpoenas and contempt charges like a mad counterfeiter, as the media ballyhoo the latest round as Fort Sumter.
But what of Eric Holder?
AG Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress, June 2012.
Obama’s AG refused almost any information and documentation on the DOJ’s still-murky 2010 Fast and Furious operation. 17-21 Democrats in 2012 joined Republicans in approving civil and criminal contempt charges against Holder. The story barely lasted one news cycle in the mainstream media. That’s because contempt of Congress claims are essentially censure votes. These aren’t “contempt of court”. If anything, the targets are holding in contempt the excitable and riled partisan majority in the House.
And there are differences in the Barr and Holder cases. Barr released the whole report with the exception of parts falling under long-established rules and laws, like Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure (FRCP) 6(e) regarding the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. The law’s secrecy mandates were recently confirmed by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (McKeever v. Barr).
The Dems are trying to hang their hat on the exceptions to non-disclosure, but that would stretch “intelligence” and “counter-intelligence” officials to include power-hungry politicos and their staffs as they distort jury deliberations for political ends. How long would it take for the pipeline to the WaPo and NYT to be turned on and the mud to flow?
By the way, the full unredacted Mueller Report is available to selected House members at the DOJ’s skiff, if they want. But they don’t want. They want power and that means Trump’s scalp. This isn’t about the truth. It’s about naked, raw power.
In contrast, Holder ignored and dissed Issa’s House Oversight Committed request for information. Barr gave to Congress and the public almost the whole thing. Holder is free to go on the lecture circuit and bash anyone with a “R” after their name. Barr is daily pilloried on CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the brooding media big sisters. Go figure.
In some cases, we may have to wait for the afterlife to get justice. Humanity’s “crooked timber” holds sway in this life. In the meantime, a little bit of history may help us get beyond the worst that lies within.
I know. I know. The title engages a noun that has entered cliché territory. Still, it applies to Mueller’s tome after an expedition of the likes of Alexander the Great’s invasion of Persia to the ends of the world. In the end, after $40 million and almost 2 years, all Mueller got was indictments of a bunch of foreigners who’ll never face an American judge and questionable actions against bit players for after-the-fact infractions/crimes. The whole rectal exam was about “collusion” – even the “obstruction” barking – and, in the end, there’s no there, there.
The brouhaha proved an old axiom that if you intensely look long enough, you’ll find something – even if that something amounts to … nothing. Turn a building inspector loose on my property for 2 years and he’ll find “something”. How many violations of law did you commit after waking up (maybe before), knowingly or unknowingly? We live in a world of a straightjacket of laws and regulations.
Bottom line: no collusion, and the charge of “obstruction” is silly – so says both Barr AND Rosenstein. The point raised by Barr before his elevation to AG is dispositive. If there’s no crime, for what reason could Trump be obstructing? Key to obstruction is evil intent, something deep within a person’s mind. If there’s no outward sign of it, and if there’s no reason for doing it, why put credence in it?
The reason for the Dem death grip on “obstruction” is politics. The Dems want Trump’s scalp at any price. They’ll pour over the encyclopedia-length full report to stitch together an impeachment indictment. They’ll hang onto any language in the report to keep the issue alive. “Do not exonerate” (in the Mueller summary) is an example. “Exonerate” is a measly word when an investigator does not exonerate. Either they recommend charges or they don’t. To pass the buck to Barr as if there’s a hint of a case, in spite of the lack of evidence and sound Constitutional reasons to reject it, will stoke the Dems’ impeachment fire.
Adam Schiff and Andy Kaufman. Any similarities?
In the end, we went to the Mueller café and got … nothing. It’s the equivalent of an air-burger on an empty plate.
The rogues gallery of the shameless and repulsive:
Sen. Kamala Harris (D, Calif.)Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.)Sen. Corey Booker (D, New Jersey)Sen. Mazie Hirono (D, Hawaii)Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D, Conn.)Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D, New York)Sheldon Whitehouse (D, Rhode Island)Sen. Charles Schumer (D, New York)
Many more senators with a “D” after their name – that means you, Sen. Dick Durbin – could be inducted into this hall of shame. Space requires some restraint by limiting the inductees to those constantly running to the microphones and cameras to defile reputations. These suspects come readily to mind.
And, of course, we have the bewildered:
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley (R, Iowa)
Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, in probable consultation with his colleagues, agreed to a week delay of the committee vote on the nomination upon the request of a Dem committee member. Quite rightly, a person could be excused for suspecting something was up. It was. An orchestrated hell broke loose – a shameful and disgusting orchestrated hell.
The Senate Republicans always appear flat-footed when it comes to women making charges against other Republicans and conservatives. The Dems are much more agile. Look at their dexterity in defending Bill Clinton. They smeared Ken Star, created new partisan media flagships in the form of MoveOn.org, rhetorically manipulated Clinton’s perjury and perversities into Republican prurience, and vilified the women accusers of Clinton’s adult sallies into rape and less abusive forms of abuse. And got away with it! Heck, his chief enabler, his wife, Hillary, was only 43 electoral votes shy of appointing liberals to the bench and wreaking other havoc on our republic.
Of course, lefty types dominate the newsrooms which makes a headwind for Republicans but fills the sails of the Dems’ political racing yachts. The Dems have a perpetual downwind advantage. So, credible charges of rape quickly go down the memory hole as hazy teenage charges of teenage antics of ancient vintage get the full rectal examination. Go figure.
Lets’ face it. The Kavanaugh imbroglio is about one thing: keeping a conservative from joining the 8 other potentates in black robes … at all costs! It stands to reason. Progressives wouldn’t be progressives if they weren’t on a mission to remake mankind in their own image. The state, not churches, is the engine for the recreation since their image doesn’t comport with the biblical one. So they fight tooth and nail to control the levers of power. It’s who they are. It means so very much to their political identity.
On the far end of the lefty side of the political spectrum, we have Lenin, a political operator whose credo entails the ends always justifying the means. The notion has seeped into the owner’s manual of politics for Dems in their drive for perpetual reform. The connection is not surprising since lately they have been ideologically sliding ever closer to the old and still-deceased goat in his Kremlin mausoleum. He endorsed state-sponsored terror. The Dems are only slightly more humane, stopping short of the blood on the wall and floor, even though we’re getting close to that. Simple decorum and decency be damned.
Their enthusiasm to get us back on the track to the pc-plagued nirvana means ginning up the hive, using anything at hand. And they have a political mre-equivalent in the estrogen-rich swarm of women’s marches and Mee Too.
Vagina caps for participants in the Woman’s March of January 2017.Woman in vagina suit at the Woman’s March in January 2017.
Everything gets tossed into that maelstrom including Supreme Court nominations, and especially Supreme Court nominations. If the Dems can’t find anything compromising in the nominee’s adult and professional background, just extend the time frame to childhood or at least those in-between years of 15-18. In fact, the teenager phase with its hormonal hyperactivity is probably dense with potentialities for later chicanery. The Dems have hit upon a rich source of tar for their brushes.
One thing about our modern overheated politics is the huge number of willing recruits into the legions of political cannon fodder. What budding NeverTrumper and SJW, with some long-ago life intersection with Kavanaugh, or not, wouldn’t relish the opportunity to step forward to take one for the team? Brush off Andy Warhol’s 15-minutes-of-fame moniker, but replace “fame” with “shame”.
The Folly of “No Woman Lies”
People with vaginas for headgear are chomping at the bit to enter Warhol’s hall of mediocrities. They have in mind a war with the white male patriarchy in the form of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, the guys running CBS and NBC, and any of the other suits in charge of things. But bear in mind that along with the certified brutes we have Columbia University’s mattress girl, Emma Sulkowicz. Fully reminiscent of the sexual revolution’s hookup culture in the college dorm rooms of today, she had consensual sex with fellow student Paul Nungesser. Somehow she turned it into a cause replete with agitprop. (1)
The accuser: Emma Sulkowicsz and her dorm mattress and her supporters at Columbia University.The accused: Paul Nungesser.
The University of Montana tells its incoming freshman “Almost no one lies [meaning female accusers]” in its flabby attempt to assuage the female-genitalia-headgear squads. (2) Really, no woman lies? Emma did.
She filed complaints against Nungesser with the school and New York police and both concluded that action was unwarranted. Corroboration – you know, that thing that presupposes that we are not a god with the power to make pronouncements from a heavenly throne and therefore we must backup what we say – was lacking. There was much to contradict her. And she pursued him as a sexual interest for months after the purported “assault”. She concocted a sham and turned it into a cause.
For 3 years Sulkowicsz was the poster child of the campus “rape culture” movement. The hifalutin Feminist Majority Foundation and others heaped honors upon her for her “courage”. Harassment on campus – the real kind – haunted Nungesser till graduation. Then, in 2017, Nungesser sued Columbia. In the settlement, Columbia apologized and promised “that every student — accuser and accused, including those like Paul who are found not responsible — is treated respectfully and as a full member of the Columbia community.” (1) Mea culpa, but now the cause takes on a life of its own. The genie is out of the bottle.
The Silkowicsz-Nungesser case illustrates the enthusiasm of left-wing activists to turn the Fifth Amendment into the irrelevance of the Third. Lenin would be proud. It’s a rewrite of western civilization’s legacy of enlightened jurisprudence. The rights of the accused are supplanted by the ambiguous “preponderance” of believability and the need to protect at all costs the feelings of the accuser and her allegation from being questioned. The woman-as-accuser is our new god.
The event is only a small chapter in a long tale of moral monstrosities. They include the 2006 public lynching of the Duke lacrosse team, complete with the connivance of the local DA, and the subsequent vindication of the accused and Duke’s agreement to pay the 3 male students $20 million each. Rolling Stone in 2017 had to cough up $1.65 million to the Virginia Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity for its hit piece on the group for a false claim of gang rape. Additionally, the Rolling Stone writer of the article, Sabrina Erbin Erdely, was assessed $3 million for defaming Nicole Eramo, a Virginia University administrator, as the “chief villain”. (3)
The history of our current “rape culture” hysteria is a mixed one. There are real instances of real assaults along with mutual abuse and bald-faced lies. It’s really a story of the sexual revolution’s Sherman’s March through the culture and college life. Hookup, be sexually liberated, experience this integral part of the college experience, and consequences be damned. That’s the message and the kids live it. Don’t be surprised that we lose much of our cultural integrity along the way with a few out-of-court settlements and ruined futures to boot.
Private citizens accused of high-octane falsehoods, and few things are more high-octane than a charge of rape, have recourse to a court of law. Brett Kavannaugh, as a public figure, presents the perfect target. He can be smeared without consequence by any accuser and their huckstering Dem supporters. Support her, damn him, and expunge any semblance of fairness from our deliberations is their sickening message.
We can only hope that they won’t get away with it at the ballot box come November.
The Miasma of Polygraph Tests and Repressed Memories
Miasma by Brian Mashburn.
Unbeknownst to Brett Kavanaugh as he jumps in the water of the nomination approval process is that he just became chum for a partisan shark frenzy. Thrown in as accusatory chum for Dem sharks is Christine Blasey-Ford. She purports an attempted rape by Kavanaugh of 36(?) years ago but witnesses dispute her story. She’s fuzzy on the details. But she is to be believed despite her own 4 witnesses contradicting her and no other evidence.
Oh, she has passed a polygraph test. What about that test? For her examination, Blasey-Ford was asked only 2 questions with the important one being, Is your written statement truthful? This was no deep dive into her accusations. The examiner said that this was to avoid traumatizing the accuser. The test only tells us that she has a foggy recollection, since her written accusation is so foggy, but she believes it. But is it the “truth”?
A polygraph test measures certain bodily reactions such as heart rate and blood pressure to an interviewer’s questions. If the subject remains calm, ipso facto, she must be telling the truth, or so it is assumed. No, it’s only proof that she remained calm, period. Remaining calm can be an intuitive or coached skill. The test also might indicate that the subject believes in something that isn’t true. And aren’t we really concerned about getting to the truth and not ending proceedings with a measurement of a person’s serenity?
Criminal defense attorneys, and most jurisdictions in the country, find polygraph tests highly suspect. Here’s from one law firm’s website: “… a polygraph machine does not have any reliable capacity for detecting the truth or falsity of a statement…. While these [blood pressure and heart rate] may be indicators that a person is lying, they may also simply indicate that a suspect is feeling pressurized by the interrogation even if they are telling the truth.” (4)
What are we to conclude? Blasey-Ford has a long-in-the-tooth murky allegation and she remained calm as an examiner asked her about her “written statement” and not the details of it. Is this the stuff of truth or even justice? Hardly.
But she has “repressed memories”, which can be scientifically suspect and an excellent source of fairy tales. Many adults have languished, and are languishing, in prison due to testimony of “repressed memories”. The use of “repressed memories” catapulted Florida state attorney Janet Reno to fame and a seat in Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Attorney General. Sadly for Reno and the claque of psycho-therapist fans of “repressed memories”, the convictions are being reversed. It’s a poor rack for Dem”solons” to hang their hat.
It’s not that people can’t have “repressed memories”. The problem lies in the tactics in the conjuring of them into the rudiments of testimony. Even as strong a defender of the phenomena as Jim Hopper (Teaching Associate in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry of Harvard Medical School) acknowledges that, “There is strong evidence that people can sincerely believe they have recovered a memory or memories of abuse by a particular person, but actually be mistaken [my emphasis]”. Further he writes, “There is strong evidence that such memories have led to accusations about particular events that never happened and accusations of people who never committed such acts.” For Hopper, the potential for misuse of the theory lies with the therapist. (7) True, very true.
“Repressed memories” as false accusations turned into false convictions? Enter Harold Grant Snowden, Bobby Finje, Janet Reno, and the “Miami Method” into the unhinged child sex-abuse saga of the 1980’s and 1990’s. (6)
Harold Grant SnowdenBobby Finje, 14, at the time of his rial.
The “Method” involved a brew of “expert” testimony, multiple child witnesses, and questionable physical evidence. The physical evidence is doubtful because it might, or might not, be supportive of the charges. The tests for sexually transmitted diseases produce positive results for conditions not necessarily sexually transmitted. The tests as corroboration don’t corroborate. And, by the way, conveniently for Janet Reno, the test samples were mysteriously destroyed. Witting or unwitting destruction of evidence by the state?
What of the multiple young accusers who allegedly confirm each other’s stories? The problem with their testimony is the same as with the testimony of the child-therapist “experts”. The children were saying things on the stand that came out of the interview sessions of therapists Joseph and Laurie Braga.
The characters of Joseph and Laurie Braga as depicted with kids in the made-for-tv movie “Unspeakable Acts”, 1990.
Later courts found their techniques suggestive and coercive to the point of planting false “memories” in the kids’ heads. Young adolescents playfully interact with an interviewer when the questioner starts presenting elements of a scenario no matter how outlandish. An Easter-bunny-believing kid can come to accept the reality of the Bragas’ new artificial reality. The kids on the stand were confirming a Braga story of the suspect’s abuse of children in oral/anal sex, spaceships, dismembering babies, and Satanic rituals. The Bragas added new meaning to the word “travesty”.
Both Snowden and Finje were exonerated. Bobby Finje, 14 at the time of the accusation, was acquitted by a jury. It took Snowden 11 years to be cleared on appeal. Many of the other convictions were overturned or sentences commuted by parole boards due to “substantial doubt” about guilt. (8)
Janet Reno still became Attorney General. She refutes the Peter Principle because she kept rising despite showing incompetence at lower levels.
Caution is wise when tinkering with the “repressed memory” stuff.
Today, caution is out the window as the old child sex-abuse hysteria feeds into another hysteria, the delirium to neuter Trump and conservatives. Blasey-Ford’s hypothetical “repressed memories” of attempted rape first appeared in marital counseling in 2012. That’s a 30+-year repressed memory. Important details are missing, the named 4 witnesses/participants deny it, and her verbal and written statements contradict her therapist’s notes.
The only non-corroboration corroboration is that of people who confirm that she mentioned the matter to them not in 1980-1-2-? but in … 2012. Kavanaugh’s name wasn’t attached to the story till 2016 or 2017.
So what do we have? We have a repressed memory of an event allegedly with many people present but none can validate. What can we conclude? We can conclude that she was serene while wired to a polygraph. Anything more than that belongs in the fever swamp of The Resistance.
Auditioning for the Role of Additional Accuser
The week-long interregnum in the Kavanaugh hearing was a busy time for the left-wing/Dem hive. Its minions went fishing for candidates to fill roles in the expanded cast of their not-based-on-facts docudrama, “The Sick and Evil Brett Kavanaugh”. It didn’t take long for auditioners to show up.
The New Yorker article on the second Kavanaugh accuser, Deborah Ramirez.
The New Yorker made a splash with a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez. She claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a Yale party in the early 1980s. She was drunk; there are gaps in her memory; she pieced together the story over 6 days of flogging her memory and consultations with her attorney; and the red flag in these allegations: no reliable corroboration.
The New York Times couldn’t find anyone. The paper reported,
“The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.” (9)
Only one person could admit to hearing something like this from someone. That attempt at validation lies somewhere between not-for-certain hearsay and hallucination.
Next, we have the tall tales of Julie Swetnick.
Julie Swetnick
Her story upped the ante from mere attempted rape and exposure to serial gang rapist. Now we’re getting close to the Satanic-rituals-in-spaceships style of accusation that was evident in the 1980’s child sex-abuse fever. She spins a tale of Kavanaugh at 10 drug-induced gang-rape parties from 1981 to 1983. Further, she was raped at one of them in ’82. What she was doing at high school parties when she was a sophomore in college is anyone’s guess. (10)
And, as in all the others, no one can corroborate. How is it that serial gang rape in a small community of high school students – with one college sophomore in attendance – can go unnoticed for 35+ years? How is it that corroboration is so difficult about something so heinous and so well attended for such an extended period? Her claims evaporates any possible meaning of credible.
There have been other stories coming down through the ether equally as bizarre. The fact is, there appears to be no shortage of auditioners. My Demdar (radar capable of detecting Dem bogies) is activated. Lawyers and other handlers within the loose network of Dem operatives have fingerprints all over much of this.
This May Not Be A Criminal Court But It Certainly Looks Like A Lynching.
One of the Dem talking points in response to their clear intent to discard the presumption of innocence is to assert that the Kavanaugh hearing isn’t a criminal trial. Yes, and neither was the above.
The Dems intentionally miss the point. The presumption of innocence and the rest of the rights of the accused go to the heart of elementary fairness, one of the great projects of western civilization. That legacy was an attempt to establish and codify the simple rules of fairness. The rules are more than a matter of guidelines for court proceedings. They touch upon how we relate to one another in the broader course of our lives. The Dems have conveniently forgotten them in their zeal to smash their opponents.
Here’s a sample of the forgotten civilized principles that the Dems would do well to remember. (1) Before the accused can defend themselves, he or she must know the accusation in order to refute it. (2) The burden of proof must rest with the accuser since it’ll be forever hard to prove a negative – the demand that a person must prove that he or she didn’t do it. (3) The charge must be stated in a falsifiable manner. That is, it must be stated in way for it to be capable of being proven or disproven. It’s simple logic (see the writings of the philosopher Karl Popper). (4) And a charge against a person can’t be allowed to stand on the say-so of one person alone. More is required.
That’s how it should be, but that’s not how it is for the Dems when the swing seat on the Supreme Court is in the balance. It’s amazing how quickly they jettisoned our inheritance for a leg-up on those who disagree with them. Disgraceful. Disgraceful.
RogerG
Footnotes and Bibliography:
A full accounting of the Emma Sulkowicsz episode is found here: “It’s High Time Columbia’s Mattress Girl Was Discredited”, Mona Charen, National Review Online, 8/4/2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/columbia-university-mattress-girl-emmas-sulkowicz-paul-nungesser-lawsuit-rape-accusation-exonerated/
Once more, Mona Charen: “What the Left and Right Don’t Get About Campus Rape”, Mona Charen, The Federalist, 8/31/2015, http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/31/what-the-left-and-right-dont-get-about-campus-rape/
“Rolling Stone to Pay $1.65 Million to Fraternity Over Discredited Rape Story”, Sydney Ember, 6/13/2017, NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html
“Why Polygraph Tests Are Not Admissible in Court”, Broden & Mickelson: Criminal Defense Attorneys website, 10/13/2015, https://www.brodenmickelsen.com/blog/why-polygraph-tests-are-not-admissible-in-court/
An excellent introduction into the mania about child sexual abuse at daycare centers can be found here: “The Child Terror”, PBS Frontine, originally aired on 10/27/1998. A synopsis and transcripts can be seen at https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/terror/.
“Harold Grant Snowden”, The National Registry of Exonerations: A Project of the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Scoeity, University of Michigan Law School & Michigan State University School of Law, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3871
“Child Abuse: Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse”, Jim Hopper, https://www.jimhopper.com/child-abuse/recovered-memories/
A recounting of the 14 significant child sexual-abuse cases can be found here: “Day-care sex-abuse hysteria”, wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
“Christine Blasey Ford Reaches Deal to Testify at Kavanaugh Hearing”, Sheryl Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos, New York Times, 9/23/2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-testify.html
“Things Fall Apart: NYT Delivers Another Kill Shot To Kavanaugh Sexual Misconduct Fiasco”, Matt Vespa, Townhall.com, 9/27/2018, https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/09/27/things-fall-apart-nyt-delivers-another-kill-shot-to-kavanaugh-sexual-misconduct-n2522947
The workings of the federal behemoth in DC would make the tangle of Amazon tributaries seem as straightforward as a lonely highway on the North American plains. Case in point: the 2016 shenanigans of our topmost public servants in the FBI and DOJ. After the release of the October 2016 FISA warrant Saturday (7/22/2018), though, at least some of the mystery is beginning to lift. The pungent odor of a partisan campaign of federal officials against a candidate is wafting beyond the confines of DC. I’ll wait for the reports of the Inspector General and Mueller before any grand conclusion. But, as for now, the public should be getting the sense that a large mound of garbage is building nearby.
Of particular concern is the relationship of DOJ and FBI aparatchiks, the DNC, and the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Steele dossier and FISA warrant. Further, as for the warrant itself, was hiding the connections in the application’s footnotes, and under vague pseudonyms, sometimes requiring a jurist’s conjecture – if he or she was up to it – sufficient to render the thing legitimate? Look, the warrant’s defenders say, “All you have to do is dig a bit”. Are they serious? Calling it proper with a straight face requires the help of an intoxicant.
A year after the warrant’s approval, it is apparent even to the NY Times that the notorious Steel dossier was a DNC and Hillary campaign piece of naked oppo research. A NY Times article of October of 2017 laid out the connections. The line of descent goes something like this: $12.4 million from the Hillary and DNC war chests to Perkins Coie; from Perkins Coie and its lead election lawyer, Marc Elias, to Fusion GPS (managed by Glenn Simpson); from Fusion GPS to Christopher Steele; Steele’s oppo research product to the FBI and into the warrant – making up the bulk of the “probable cause” for the warrant. (1)
How did DNC oppo research get to the FBI and move the national security machinery of the federal government to operate for the benefit of the Hillary campaign? Two answers seems apparent: one of America’s power couples and an intense anti-Trump animus par excellence among some of the fed’s movers and shakers. A relevant example of a fed power couple is the Obama DOJ’s #4, Bruce Ohr, and his wife Nellie. Nellie worked for Fusion GPS as it was conducting the Dem commissioned oppo research. She would have access to the Steele memos that make up the “dossier”. From her it goes to her hubby and from him to salivating administrators in the DOJ and FBI. Sound reasonable?
Bruce Ohr, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, and Nellie Ohr, Bruce’s wife.
Voilà, we are inundated with investigations, accusations of collusion, incessant calls for impeachment, and shouts for confrontation everywhere by Democrats in a fevered state of war. In addition, the media’s fixation on what is, in essence, good old fashioned campaign smears – the same stuff of politics going back to Socrates – keeps the hyper-active ginned up. Just click the remote over to the ladies of The View to get a dose of the hysteria, or stir up the wasp nests on Twitter with any kind sympathy for Trump.
Sure, Trump has done much to fuel the hysterics, though the extravagant hyperbole predates our current instigator-in-chief. Remember the references to Reagan as an “amiable dunce”, “cowboy”, or allusions to “Bonzo”; or the chant about Bush 42: “Bush lied and people died”? The term “truther” began life as a Bush conspiracy to foment war, akin to the second gunman on the grassy knoll. You see, to the unhinged, the mayhem of 9/11 couldn’t have been conducted by jihadis. The scent of meth-induced hyperventilating was much in the air.
And we have Obama ready to step into the mire. Not content with merely using the trusty technique of smearing your opponent, he went on to bash a broad swath of the electorate. He coolly dismissed his rural detractors by saying, “… they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”. Claptrap replaced engagement with the voters. Substituting the word “deplorables” for an entire opposing constituency is beginning to gestate.
Going full “deplorable”, Hillary blasted them with this comment (Sept. 9, 2016): ” … you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic — Islamophobic — you name it”.
So now we have Trump giving back – and indeed in some ways pushing the envelope – what the left has been dishing out for years. No excuses, the whole thing is disgusting. Well, few of us can no longer lay claim to be chaste in our slide to incivility. The genie is out of the bottle. The left likes to trumpet Joe McCarthy as the quintessence of evil. Borrowing the metaphor, the left has gone full McCarthy for quite some time, and some on the right have followed suit. Thanks Trump, Trump sycophants, the loud but minuscule alt-right, Code Pink, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, Michael Moore, the Resistance, campus social justice warriors, pc panderers (meaning the bulk of the Democratic Party base), lefty bankrollers, lefty celebrities ….
Not surprisingly, some of the frenzy penetrates conversation around the water coolers in the DC workplaces of the DOJ and FBI. It’s a habitat for creating insular, self-reinforcing political and social prejudices that could be lessened if we had something like court-ordered busing to coerce integration in thought and experience. Instead, de facto segregation exists and works to amplify the mania in the media and on the campaign trail. Some in influential positions may have acted on it.
It’s starting to appear that way. The progressive dream of a government of experts, inoculated from the mud of politics, is turning into the reality of an open septic tank. Prejudice and ignorance are still alive and well even among our allegedly disinterested “experts”.
RogerG
Sources and footnotes:
“Clinton Campaign and Democratic Party Helped Pay for Russia Trump Dossier”, Kenneth P. Vogel, NY Times, Oct. 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/clinton-dnc-russia-dossier.html
“FISA warrant application supports Nunes memo”, Byron York, Washington Examiner, 7/22/2018, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fisa-warrant-application-supports-nunes-memo
Come on, let’s face it: “Russia attacked our democracy” is a hackneyed Dem chant to delegitimize the 2016 election. Yes, other culprits like the alleged red neck hatred for the “marginalized” have pride of place in lefty boilerplate. But the Russia mantra offers the unique opportunity to enlist the fabled objectivity of our intelligence agencies in the excuse-mongering. It only works, though, if the history of US meddling (aka “attack”) goes down the memory hole.
To be clear, much past US meddling was a response to Soviet/communist meddling. It is reassuring to know that Mosaddegh and Allende didn’t succeed in turning Iran and Chile into a part of Russia’s “near-abroad”.
Time magazine cover from 1996.
Still, one cannot say that political interference was invented by Putin. We have a well-documented history of “attacking” elections, and, yes, even in Russia. Just ask the ghost of Boris Yeltsin. Boat loads of cash were funneled to Yeltsin’s political clan, some of it laundered through the IMF, to ensure his victory in 1996. (4) Or maybe we should ask Benjamin Netanyahu. In 1999, Clinton sent James Carville over to advise the Labor candidate, Ehud Barak, against Bebe. (3)
Pres. Clinton with James Carville in 1999.
Obama’s meddling in Israeli elections mirrors the recent murky Russian activities. US money goes into one organization and then into another and then into assorted anti-Likud voter drives and electioneering. Obama wasn’t content with “hacking”, Twitter, and Facebook, like the Russians. He sent over to Israel part of his political brain trust – Jeremy Bird, fresh off of Obama’s 2012 field operations. (1)
Jeremy Bird, Obama/Democratic Party field operator, in the Israeli offices of V15, one of the anti-Likud/Netanyahu groups in 2015.
Obama’s hostility to Netanyahu was glaring in 2010 when he rudely left Netanyahu simmering with his aides in the Roosevelt for over an hour. (5)
Maybe comments from experienced intelligence community hands would calm excitable lefties. (4)
* Countering the charge that the Russian effort was exceptional is 30-year CIA veteran Steven Hall: “If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all”.
* Loch K. Johnson, American intelligence scholar and staffer on the Senate’s Church Committee from the 1970’s: “We’ve been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947. We’ve used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We’ve planted false information in foreign newspapers. We’ve used what the British call ‘King George’s cavalry’: suitcases of cash.”
* Dov H. Levin, Carnegie-Mellon scholar, documents 81 US and 36 Russian instances of attempts to influence foreign elections from 1946 to 2000.
You might call this kind of thing a well-traveled approach to foreign policy. This isn’t an excuse, and when it happens to us, it is up to us to sanction the offenders and install additional safeguards. But, please, stop feigning shock and horror at something that is part of the toolkit to bend nations toward your preferred interests.
Grow up, or, better yet, read and listen a little more to sources outside the echo chamber.
RogerG
Footnotes and sources:
1. “The Obama Campaign Strategist Who Could Break the Israeli Elections Wide Open”, Roy Arad, Haaretz, 1/26/2015, https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-could-obama-s-strategist-break-elections-wide-open-1.5365391
2. “Blog claims U.S. funded anti-Netanyahu election effort in Israel”, Jon Greenberg, PunditFact, 3/25/2015, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/25/blog-posting/blog-claims-us-funded-anti-netanyahu-election-effo/
3. “The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries”, Nina Agrawal, LA Times, 12/21/2016, http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-us-intervention-foreign-elections-20161213-story.html
4. “Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too.”, Scott Shane, NY Times, 2/17/2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html
5. “Obama snubbed Netanyahu for dinner with Michelle and the girls, Israelis claim”, Adrian Blomfield, The Telegraph, 3/25/2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/7521220/Obama-snubbed-Netanyahu-for-dinner-with-Michelle-and-the-girls-Israelis-claim.html
In testimony before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees on Thursday, FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok described his role in the investigations of Hillary Clinton’s email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election as acts of patriotism. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
It seems a whole lot of things are pungent these days. Peter Strzok, with the olfactory glands of a bloodhound, is hot on the scent of Trump voters as if thoughts metabolize into odors – “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support…”. As for something that’s really beginning to take on the stink of a deer carcass in the summer sun, the FBI’s Hillary and Trump investigations are becoming quite ripe. I’ll withhold judgment till after the Mueller report but the stench is maturing beyond a whiff.
Strzok maintains that he faithfully abided the “bright line” between personal beliefs and work. Who’s he kidding? The email investigation – of which he was central – wreaked: exoneration before the target was interviewed; clear and plain evidence of the destruction of evidence; suspects in the criminal conduct are allowed to represent and collaborate with the target of the investigation; proof of violations of national security statutes messaged into the bland “extremely careless”. The fix was in, and Strzok’s fingerprints are all over it.
Fresh off that sham, Strzok jets off to London to moonlight as DNC oppo research coordinator on the FBI dime. But Trump won the election and upset the apple cart. The 2016 machinations of the DOJ/FBI lawyers at the top of the DC pile were exposed. Instead of savior, Strzok and company ended up with a diet of crow, and maybe facing a few criminal indictments to boot.
The aforementioned reference to Strzok’s uncanny ability to sniff out Trump voters shows another side of this sordid affair. The condescension for the people outside the Georgetown bistros and wine socials and upper middle-class northern Virginia suburbs was as palpable as London fog.
Borrowing Strzok’s “smell” metaphor, his texts smell like the cultural divide at the root of our politics. The Democratic Party is the party of the blue dots (dense urban cores) and the few states wholly beholden to their blue dots. The culture in the blue dots has evolved into a brew of social libertinism, dreamy multiculturalism, and fascist intolerance. Yet, they hold their snouts high in the air at the people who patronize Walmarts. Reagan said that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left him. A more up-to-date version would be, “America didn’t leave the blue dots; the blue dots left America”. The blue dots changed into something that the rest of America didn’t want any part of — thus the election of Trump.
It’s a cultural divide possibly as stark as the one in the 1840’s when a person crossed the Ohio River from free Ohio into slaveholding Kentucky. The places developed as differently as if they were on different continents. For instance, today, the blue dots are at war with traditional standards. One’s simple expectation about the occupants of a public restroom has to be revised as blue dot media mavens propagate the fantasy of 40 genders. You can’t even be certain of the chromosomal makeup of the participants in a girls’ track meet. The cultic philosophies of victimhood and shallow identity-mongering are rampant. And that’s only a start.
Trans wrestler Mack Beggs won the girls’ 110-pound category in a state wrestling tournament for the second time.Transgender female Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell won the 110 and 200 meters at the 2017 Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class M track meet. (Jeff Jacobs, Hartford Courant)
The experience of a person fresh from a Baptist Sunday service and passing through West Hollywood must be akin to the Ohio resident stepping off the ferry into 1840’s Kentucky. Culture shock anyone?
It’s fascinating to wonder if Strzok and Page were caught up in one of America’s premier blue dot bubbles – DC – so much so that their muscular confirmation bias would not appear as a choked worldview but as the only true reality. Insular echo chambers work that way. In the meantime, the notion of a government of enlightened “experts” free of the prejudices of the average person is as shattered as Conan [the barbarian] throwing a 20-lb sledge hammer through an untempered glass window.
A year after the warrant’s approval, it is apparent even to the NY Times that the notorious Steel dossier was a DNC and Hillary campaign piece of naked oppo research. A NY Times article of October of 2017 laid out the connections. The line of descent goes something like this: $12.4 million from the Hillary and DNC war chests to Perkins Coie; from Perkins Coie and its lead election lawyer, Marc Elias, to Fusion GPS (managed by Glenn Simpson); from Fusion GPS to Christopher Steele; Steele’s oppo research product to the FBI and into the warrant – making up the bulk of the “probable cause” for the warrant. (1)
The aforementioned reference to Strzok’s uncanny ability to sniff out Trump voters shows another side of this sordid affair. The condescension for the people outside the Georgetown bistros and wine socials and upper middle-class northern Virginia suburbs was as palpable as London fog.
