Posted on 09/04/2019 6:05:00 AM PDT by billorites
It is now clearer than ever that the whole Trump-Russia collusion argument, as many of us have been loudly proclaiming since it began, is a monstrous hoax, “a conspiracy so immense”—to use Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s infamous words in his attack upon General George C. Marshall in 1951—that it has been hard for the public to take it on board.
Of course, the assimilation of what has happened has been made more complicated by the extremely agitated political ambiance of the Trump era, which was to a large extent inevitable given the mandate this president received to make profound public policy changes and to assault the whole bipartisan political class in its entrenched positions.
As soon as the rock was pried off the fact that the much-touted Steele dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the alarm bells rang on the smell-test monitor. Clinton’s memoir of the election, blaming everything on being “shivved three times by Jim Comey,” and on her opponent’s “treason” with the Russians, cited the Steele dossier several times as independent corroborative evidence of President Trump’s treachery and betrayal of the nation.
But the stark contrast in policy and personality terms between the president and the Democrats, and the bellicosity of the president himself, which can be embarrassing but may have been essential for him to get through the unprecedented effort to undermine him illegally, do not in themselves explain the very long fuse that is burning with excruciating slowness toward the powder keg of explicit revelation of Democratic law-breaking. Media Collusion
Comey has lied again in claiming that he has been cleared of leaking classified information, even though he is accused of leaking only a small amount of classified information to his lawyers, and that that is not in itself worthy of criminal prosecution. But the leakage of information that he had a serious professional obligation to treat discreetly, for the declared motive of provoking an investigation into matters that he knew to be wildly implausible and for which there was no believable evidence, is, as Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz described it, dangerous. Comey and his supporters have tried to represent this as an act of courage by a public servant genuinely distressed at the thought of Trump as president. In reality, the motive was rank partisanship against the president.
Almost the whole political class is somnambulating into an election that will be a fiery coruscation to all the outrages and enormities of the last three years.
The country voted, the Electoral College met, and Comey knew that when he sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrant to “spy” (Attorney General Bill Barr’s mot juste) against the Trump campaign and transition team, on the basis of the Clinton campaign’s false and malicious dossier. Comey’s actions went “beyond” courage and were a grievous corruption of the FBI and a threat to American democracy. Trump did not believe Comey when he told the president he was not under investigation. Comey was responsible for Trump’s well-placed mistrust of him, which obviously justified his dismissal. Andrew McCabe, Comey’s assistant director at the FBI, already has been recommended for possible prosecution for providing false answers under oath and has been engaged as a commentator by CNN anyway.
Unlike anyone I have ever heard of at the FBI, I believe in the presumption of innocence in criminal proceedings. McCabe and Comey are entitled to it. But the action of CNN in hiring McCabe, who confirmed just a couple of months ago that he thought it was “possible” that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, confirms the fanaticism of their hatred of the president. The individuals in the executive and personnel of that network are of course entitled to their views. But there is both a professional responsibility to separate reporting from comment and to try to report fairly, and there ultimately will be a serious commercial penalty for such brazen approval of possible criminal election interference by the FBI. Impeachment Follies
The almost comically otherworldly Trump-haters in the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees—Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—will be back this week no doubt still trying to drum up interest in their still-born impeachment effort-their ludicrous mimicry of an investigation will be the last death rattle of the soon to be infamous Trump-Russian collusion fraud. It is not so surprising that a person’s acquaintances are often passionately hostile to this president, given that people in government and the media normally worthy of confidence in their sanity and up to a point their probity, are behaving so irrationally.
The former directors of central intelligence and national intelligence, John Brennan and James Clapper, obviously have lied to Congress about some aspects of their work, but that does not inhibit them for a moment from lining up behind Comey’s disgraceful conduct. “One man’s leaker is another man’s whistleblower,” said Clapper of Comey last week. But the “whistle-blowing” Clapper extols had to do with allegations about which Comey knew there was no evidence. He asked court approval for domestic espionage on a victorious presidential campaign for reasons, unless he was a completely incompetent police chief, he knew to be false.
All of those men participated in the creation of an artificial media echo chamber to lend credence to false allegations of great gravity, in the apparent hope of so destabilizing the incoming administration that it would be unable to function, and possibly would be deeply shaken by an unfounded impeachment of the new president.
It is clearer every week those who say what occurred was an attempted coup are substantially accurate. This is not only astounding and distressing, the extreme state of denial that grips the Trump-hating media makes it likely that the credibility of the national political press will be in tatters long after those responsible for the unconstitutional conspiracy to subvert and pervert the election have been exposed and legally punished. Frauds and Failures
This past week, like most weeks, furnished typical illustrative episodes in this national political descent into the morally corrupt and absurd. One was MSNBC’s statement and retraction the next day that there might be serious evidence that President Trump had secured business loans from Deutsche Bank thanks to guaranties from Russian oligarchs. The other was billionaire Tom Steyer’s effort to buy his way into contention for the Democratic nomination race: when it failed as the cynical amateurism it was, he fulminated that President Trump is “a fraud and a failure.”
President Trump certainly has limitations and sometimes seems to be untruthful and acting in poor taste. But it would be hard to represent anyone rightfully elevated to the presidency in quite such strictures. He may be thought by many a bad president (though I think that is a difficult argument to sustain in a serious analysis). Then again, he is, by his own efforts, a multibillionaire, a former television star, and the 43rd successor to General George Washington in the great office his enemies so venomously begrudge him.
There are two gigantic unrealities, time-bombs that will detonate in the four months to the beginning of the delegate-selection process for nominees of the major parties to national office. The first is the gigantic eruption of the scandalous attempt to affect and undo the 2016 election. The second is the fact that when the public finally looks seriously at the Democratic candidates, the race will tilt like a teeter-totter when a 300-pound man sits at the opposite end to a child.
Every candidate in serious contention for the Democratic nomination, except Joe Biden, has championed tax, immigration, health care, and environmental policies that the great majority of Americans will not seriously entertain—and that is without getting into reparations for descendants of slaves and natives, and legalized infanticide. And the one prominent Democratic contender who can claim comparative sanity and civility—Biden—lacks the acuity for the office he now seeks and always has.
Almost the whole political class, except the president and his inner circle (if he has one), is somnambulating into an election that will be a fiery coruscation to all the outrages and enormities of the last three years. It is like an immense fireworks display, mounting inexorably to a tremendous climax of indictments and an electoral landslide.
Wow!
Fancy words (for me, anyway):
bellicosity
somnambulating
coruscation
fulminated
I hope the author is right and these two public circus acts don’t dissolve into the noise.
I do try to maintain an optimistic attitude. I am sad that there have been no indictments and that AG Barr seems to focus more on his bagpipes than on draining the swamp. HOWEVER -- even without any of that, the Democrats have openly positioned themselves as insanely anti-American. They are fringe, with Biden (Biden!!) being the most normal one on their roster.
Now imagine that AG Barr puts down the bagpipes and starts the wheels turning. Insane anti-Americans? Comey? Brennan? Hillary? Obama? Given the state of the party today, how hard will it be for average people to say, "Wow! That party is nothing but evil!"?
Black is right that this material will come out; that in “normal” times it would be huge.
But if a redwood falls and no one is around to hear it, does it matter?
The problem with ALL of the revelations is that neither Wray nor Sessions nor Barr has been willing to do a damn thing about any of it. Even Horowitz couches his reports in less than brutal language. Horowitz’s reports allow slime like Comey to pretend he did nothing wrong and allow the Hoax News media to avoid even discussing it as a reality.
Therefore, for all intents and purposes all the tick tocks/booms/bombshells of WHATEVER is released will be insignificant. To turn the old courtroom maxim on its head, it doesn’t matter what you can prove, it only matters what the “jury” hears-—in this case, the American public. But the Bible says “faith comes by HEARING,” not having heard. Hearing, and hearing, and hearing. This is precisely how good propaganda works.
Part of that hearing is, . . . “if it is true, someone would have been arrested by now.” And so there we are.
Some claim it is all 4D chess. That the arrests need to be timed to impact the election that is coming. To which I reply, “BS!” Barr could arrest 20 people yesterday and their trials would be front page next year. Barr is doing nothing because that is what he is going to do today, tomorrow, and every day he remains in place.
I hope that you are on. But I fear that you are right. Government rarely polices itself to any meaningful degree.
To me it is becoming glaringly obvious that Barr replacing Sessions is a back room deal Trump made. The deal allowed Trump to bring Barr in to put an end to Mueller’s Treason. The counterpart to this deal was the coup conspirators would be allowed to skate “to protect the integrity of the DOJ (FBI).” Not my words, Barr’s very own words. The thing the “elites’ overlooked in this deal was that WE weren’t party to it and would never approve. So Barr may have saved the DOJ a public flogging but in doing so he is destroying the country itself. IMHO, this is a good thing because if such a deal was made this country needs to be destroyed and replaced with a better one. So it all works out pretty conveniently, really. WE don’t need to “do” a damn thing. Barr and the DOJ are destroying the country for us. Just stand ready to pick up the pieces.
The absolute worst thing about the Russian collusion hoax was that it set a new low precedent. If the people who committed this atrocity are left unpunished then our system is irreparably harmed.
Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any political will or sense of justice within the DOJ to punish the traitorous heathens who committed these grave crimes.
A nation with a two-tier justice system is really not a nation at all. Just a conglomeration of BS words with lots of shovels to pile it on.
It also sets the tone from the top that our laws are meant to be broken. Not good at all. It also numbers the days this nation can survive as a nation before anarchy and chaos becomes the norm.
Then the idiot pols ask why there are so many young people going off the rails! No justice; no peace. They made this happen by not fixing the border security problem and punishing the law-abiding instead of the criminals of which they can include themselves. It’s hard to not consider the current crop of pols as criminals with the exception of just a few.
Tagline!
“But if a redwood falls and no one is around to hear it, does it matter?”
Except there will be millions of voters who will be around to hear it when it falls (if it ever actually does).
That “if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make any noise?” is the best analogy I’ve heard regarding the MSM, and subsequently, the public at large when it comes to this whole steaming travesty against President Trump.
Keep your powder dry.
Keep in mind that if there no indictments this will have a negative effect on voter turnout. Trump needs to handcuff a few people or the whole collusion hoax will hurt him at election time!
The Press will not report on the coup scandal as they themselves are involved. They will instead do everything in their power to cover it up or deflect attention.
Conrad Black likes his words and I wonder if he naturally talks this way or that it is a put on, in part, because as a one time Lord in the British Parliament, that is what you do: flog your verbal acuity. It makes you seem smart, competence and classy. It also instills fear and respect in your enemies, though it didn’t help Conrad all that much when he served a prison sentence in the US. Still... there wasn’t much that we didn’t know in this piece. It was a fancy summation to deliver two main points. The two points are really reducible to one main point: the sh@t will hit the fan come 2020. Again, not much that we didn’t know already.
There are two gigantic unrealities, time-bombs that will detonate in the four months to the beginning of the delegate-selection process for nominees of the major parties to national office. The first is the gigantic eruption of the scandalous attempt to affect and undo the 2016 election. The second is the fact that when the public finally looks seriously at the Democratic candidates, the race will tilt like a teeter-totter when a 300-pound man sits at the opposite end to a child. (My emphasis.)
Fat chance on the first unless Barr does his job. Prosecuting McCabe is the litmus test, a test he's so far failed.
I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. Otherwise, McCabe would have been indicted by now.
As far as Black’s language is concerned, I don’t think it’s put on in any way. Rather, it’s how he was taught to write and speak from the day he was born. Grow up way, being constantly corrected by your parents and others, you get that way. The other side of the coin is black “ghetto talk,” learned from childhood and very hard to unlearn.
I know somebody who speaks like Black and it was a pretense of sorts, a romantic pretense, but a pretense because they really grew up in a white, middle class ghetto. They didn’t want their background known. The only thing they wanted known was that they were capable of attending cocktail parties where they would speak at length about Thomas Hobbes. Speaking about Hobbes at a cocktail party isn’t done — but they thought so, in a romantic never-having-done-it way.
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