James Clapper, who was Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in the Obama administrations, was on CNN yesterday and was asked, “Are you concerned that Barr or Durham’s investigation will find wrongdoing and seek to punish former intelligence officials like you?”
The message I’m getting from all this is, apparently what we were supposed to have done was to ignore the Russian interference, ignore the Russian meddling and the threat that it poses to us, and oh, by the way, blown off what the then commander in chief, President Obama, told us to do, which was to assemble all the reporting that we could that we had available to us and put it in one report that the president could pass on to the Congress and to the next administration. And while we’re at it, declassify as much as we possibly could to make it public, and that’s what we did. It’s kind of disconcerting now to be investigated for, you know having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president.
Rush Limbaugh went off on this yesterday, because what we now know about the “Russian interference” — an illusion of “collusion” created as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign — exposes Clapper’s investigation as part of political hit-job orchestrated by Democrats. For Clapper to twice say this was done on Obama’s orders is huge.
Spent the last couple of days at the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia meeting which was, as always, filled with interest and revelation. There are a handful of us on the free market side of things, but it is always instructive. If you are interested in these sort of things, even just in economics as such, you should become a member of HETSA and perhaps come along to the meetings.
Two things occurred to me at this particular meeting, which perhaps I ought to have noticed before.
The first one was while I was in conversation with our guest speaker whose specialty was in the theory of capital which is also my own, his from the Marx’s Capital side of things, mine from another side of things. But as we pressed on about the nature of the oppression experienced by the worker today, it became clear to me for the first time what the difference in our perspective is, or at least one such difference. For me, I take the past as unalterable, the present as the bequest from what came before and the future thought about in relation to how things might be improved given where we are. But he had one additional aspect that permeated everything he said and thought, and that was how unjust the past had been and how important it was to punish those who had been at fault (as he saw it) for these sins of the past, and in some way provide some kind of retribution for the harm that had been done.
Of course, most of those who in his view had been wronged are now long dead. Those who would be helped now are somehow those who might be brought together in some present-day category of those who had been wronged, and whoever might be paying the compensation, are those who are not in any specific sense the actual direct beneficiaries of this presumed wrong-doing, but that anyone who is doing well in the present – pick some category, capitalist, the rich, you name it. It is they who owe compensation to those other categories and groups identified as not doing as well today.
The more I listened, the more it was clear that this is the mantra of the left in general. Their aim today is to decide which categories of people had, in their view, been a victim of some perceived injustice in the past, and then work out who in the present compensation can be paid. A madness, but given that we cannot change the past, a very poor way to go about framing public policy.
The other revelation was how the obvious bits of economic policy for an economist – such as the great great harm that is done by trying to assist anyone by controlling prices rather than providing whatever compensation one might feel is necessary only after the market has determined what prices should be charged – seems a fantastic wrong. You cannot tell such people of the certain harm that comes from rent control or minimum wages. Deaf, dumb and blind to markets, although they live in a world of such abundance and ease, beyond anything imaginable less than a hundred years ago, all brought to them through the market economy. The misery and harm such people cause to others with their sanctimony and ignorance is hard to calculate, but it is enormous.
The NYT published an article asserting 40 “facts” indicting Trump. In truth, each of those “facts” was false or pure opinion based upon intractable bias.
This one is Number 40. Go to the link to read the first 39. It’s a long article, and you may already know most of it in one way or another, but it’s an important reminder all the same.
If you follow all the links to the LA Times to CBS, what you will find is a 2015 article where Trump did indeed refer to the America being created by Obama a “hell hole” and that Trump said he was thinking of running for the Presidency to “make America great again.” A significant majority of the electoral college firmly agreed over a year later.
I also think Trump was again trolling the Democrats. If you’ve paid any attention to the Democrat presidential candidates this time around, you’ll see that they describe America in dystopian terms as an impoverished, violent, racist . . . hellhole. Trump long ago accepted the Democrats’ characterization of our once great nation and promised to reverse that damage.
I think the only reason he has the strength for it is that he finds it all funny, in a very tragi-comic way. I will also find it funny, but only when his presidency is over in 2025.
“In climate change, the left has found an emergency big enough to justify taking control of everything.”
I went along myself yesterday to the demo in Treasury Gardens, and truth to tell, I found it boring. It was so clearly a Marxist, anti-capitalist, pro-socialist network of the kind I had been part of in my long-ago youth, right down to:
What do we want?
Climate change action!
When do we want it?
Now!
Fifty years later, even the lines are the same although the issue is different. Except it’s all so new and exciting for these ignorant and uninformed students who have not an independent or educated thought in their heads – I’d like to see how they’re going in their maths and chemistry courses. Every statement from the podium was a cliche, so much so that within ten minutes the cheers simply evaporated and everyone just got to talking to the people they were with. No one any longer cared what the speakers had to say.
The point I was trying to make yesterday is that it is all very well to be speaking among ourselves on our side of the fence but useless if we cannot force these climate totalitarians to engage in a dialogue. The Conversation – in my view out of weakness and not strength – now seeks to shut down debate on climate change within its confines. There is, of course, nothing that these ignoramuses say that we are unaware of. They, on the other hand, are unaware of every bit of the counter-arguments that have been made on our side. They are certainly unaware of the massive evidence proving that they are almost certainly wrong. This, from Cut and Paste at The Oz yesterday, is typical of the attitude they have:
Climate warrior/worrier Tim Flannery confesses to failure, Guardian Australia website, Tuesday:
Each year the situation becomes more critical. In 2018, global emissions of greenhouse gases rose by 1.7 per cent, while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere jumped by 3.5 parts per million — the largest ever observed increase. No climate report or warning, no political agreement nor technological innovation has altered the ever-upward trajectory of the pollution. This simple fact forces me to look back on my 20 years of climate activism as a colossal failure … My children, and those of many prominent polluters and climate denialists, will probably live to be part of that grim winnowing — a world that the Alan Joneses and Andrew Bolts of the world have laboured so hard to create … As I have become ever more furious at the polluters and denialists, I have come to understand they are threatening my children’s wellbeing as much as anyone who might seek to harm a child.
The dams are full and he mentions not a world. His failure was to be WRONG!!! And you know who is really “threatening my children’s wellbeing as much as anyone who might seek to harm a child”? And not just my children, but every one of those children all around the world who showed up to show off their ignorant concerns before returning to their comfortable, well-provisioned homes of first-world high consumption. Not only do these cruel and thoughtless airheads jeopardise their own futures, both economically and politically, but do so to an even greater extent for their counterparts in the less prosperous parts of the planet. My disgust at these people, especially for their adult leaders who corral these students into these ignorant jaunts in the park, is almost unbounded.
The question I wanted to raise in my post yesterday is to ask how we can make the climate people engage in dialogue so that everyone can hear both sides of the argument being presented at the same time with rebuttals and replies. How do we have a true Q&A? The ABC is filled with leftwing dolts who pander to their own side and ignore the other. You can have The Outsiders and Andrew Bolt who reflect our views, while also discussing both sides, but only viewed among ourselves.
The Conversation has turned into The Monologue. And they don’t care. Like all pseudo-academics of their kind, they already know the truth so do not have to discuss anything with anyone who disagrees. This decision ought to be seen as a great intellectual scandal, that a website designed for academics to discuss issues amongst themselves has shut down one half of the debate. They are the true terrorists, the actual fascists, the genuine Nazis. They are the people you read about in 1984.
I would say we cannot let them get away with it, except I don’t know what to do so that they do not get away with it. Really, what is to be done?
Bret Walker SC is an old-fashioned stickler for precise legal language. That is why his clinical evisceration of the judges who ruled against George Pell is so effective.
Without a skerrick of emotion or one wasted word, Walker has torn the guts out of the Court of Appeal majority who rejected the cardinal’s appeal against convictions for sexually assaulting choirboys.
Grave allegations of sexual misconduct against a US Supreme Court justice. Cameron Stewart, The Australian, Monday:
Donald Trump has come out swinging in defence of conservative Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh, saying the Justice Department should “come to his rescue” in the face of fresh attacks … The President was responding to a new book by two New York Times reporters that claims to have uncovered more evidence of sexual harassment involving Mr Kavanaugh when he was a student. The new book, The Education of Brett M. Kavanaugh: An Investigation, examines claims by Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Mr Kavanaugh’s, who alleged during his confirmation process that he had exposed himself to her at a party while they were in college.
Everything the left and much of the media touch have the same corrupting effect, it seems.
Is this really a one-day wonder? The story has virtually disappeared from the news. Maybe it’s just a ripple but maybe it’s not. We might soon find out how much we like things without cheap energy.
That’s what blogs are now for, to post the minor stories of the day while the media goes on about idiotic and obviously false claims of sexual harassment by Supreme Court justices by women who cannot even remember any such event.
A lot of Fake News is being reported that I overruled the VP and various advisers on a potential Camp David meeting with the Taliban. This Story is False! I always think it is good to meet and talk, but in this case I decided not to. The Dishonest Media likes to create…
…the look of turmoil in the White House, of which there is none. I view much of the media as simply an arm of the Democrat Party. They are corrupt, and they are extremely upset at how well our Country is doing under MY Leadership, including…
…the Economy, where there is NO Recession, much to the regret of the LameStream Media! They are working overtime to help the Democrats win in 2020, but that will NEVER HAPPEN, Americans are too smart!
It is a metaphor often used to say President Trump’s tweets and media messages are akin to watching a cat chase a red dot controlled by POTUS…. Apparently President Trump also thought it was funny.
It’s astonishing, and also depressing to find how accurate this metaphor is. Sadly, given that there are still people who read the NYT and WP and believe what they say, you really can fool some of the people all of the time.
New York Times releases a second edition with a different headline after Twitter backlash and liberals announce they’re canceling subscriptions.
Must not say anything even slightly positive about the President. They live in a sheltered workshop in which exposure to reality will drive them crazy crazier. Taken from here.
They would also have noticed that the story on China can also be read as pro-Trump but they’re not into that kind of thing in the same way.
LET ME ADDTHIS: Here are a pair of those who had complained about the original headline.
Law of Markets 