Counting on bad news

From a comment on Democrats are surprised that more money in pay checks is popular. The reality is, however, that a good economy is background, and even then no one knows what the economy will be like in 2020. It is still a knife-edge and even if the economy is great, which it never is for most people, it is the thousand other issues that will matter. The Dems and the media remain coiled and ready to strike, setting things up for when fate creates an opportunity to steal an election. Opposition is much easier than government since oppositions are never held responsible for what goes wrong even if they often are through what they prevent a government from doing. It’s not over till it’s over, and as we have already found out, even then it’s not over. Thus:

Don’t mistake the intent of those who comprise the opposition. As with the down fall of President Nixon, the dems can’t do anything without the collaboration of the GOPe.

Mueller is dragging out the investigation in the hopes the GOPe gives Congress back to the dems. Impeachment is a political process not a judicial one. The opposition has a ten to one advantage in the media. They ignore any evidence that exonerates Trump and continue to push their false narrative. If the dems wwere to prevail in the House, they will be serious about inpeachment. If they win in the Senate they will be sure to stop Trump in his tracks.

This is all made more ominous by the collaboration of the leadership of the GOPe. When you have the Bushes, Romney, McCain, McConnell, McMullin, Kristol, et al opposed to you, that’s a serious headwind.

The sentiment of our age is socialist. Nothing in relation to this sentiment will change between now and 2020.

Socialists at heart

Coming from the area of the social sciences that had made its name on its one key insight, that individual private-sector decision-making is the key to wealth, growth, employment and prosperity, but now to find that virtually the entire profession believes that wealth, growth, employment and prosperity are driven by demand, and particularly government spending, none of this comes as a surprise: According to a survey of members of the American Political Science Association, Donald Trump is the worst president in American history. Meanwhile his predecessor – a man of no known accomplishments (or at least good ones) – is ranked eighth. It’s a clown’s world out there.

This is discussed at Powerline: Is Trump the worst president ever? The final words:

Academia has pretty much abandoned America, and vice versa. There simply is no credibility left in soft fields like “political science.”

As for the economists of the world, I imagine you would get the same ranking in an American Economics Association survey, although they might make Herbert Hoover even lower since he was also a Republican. FDR would, however, rank first even though he prolonged the Great Depression in the US by around eight years. Everyone else was in recovery by 1932-33. In the US it took until around 1940-41. They are all socialists at heart, which is where the social sciences now largely are.

As I looked upon the chair

As I looked upon the chair
I saw a pres who wasn’t there!
He wasn’t there again today,
Thank the Lord he’s gone away!

The poem, such as it is, is my own adaptation from William Hughes Mearns, but the picture I owe to SDA and Clint Eastwood

AND WITH THESE AS WELL: Many more takes on the portraits at Powerline: THE WEAK IN PORTRAITS: OBAMA EDITION, but without the poetry.

 

Sunrise in Pyongyang

Not quite “Wake up, you sleepyhead”. From EVERY MORNING IN NORTH KOREA, THE MASSES ARE AWOKEN BY CREEPY SYNTH MUSIC BLASTING OVER LOUDSPEAKERS. Only a handful of comments at the site, but a quite interesting specimen of the mindset of the left. Marty must work for the ABC.

Marty Krog · 
JUst some more Western media hype painting a negative light over a culture they have no fucking understanding about, but just happy to the stir the shit for some Western agenda. Maybe a bit of chilled music in the morning will stop your retards from shooting each other at school.
Oh please. There are many criticisms to be made about the West but North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, with concentration camps, torture and collective punishment. Maybe you should read the plethora of books there are written by North Korean refugees and the horror they had to endure and then come back and make an informed comment.
Like · Reply · Sep 24, 2017 12:11pm
 Marty Krog · 
Peggy Whitfield Not sure what makes you think I am uninformed, other than your own ignorance. Does Guantanomo Bay mean anything to you? And if you call them terrorists, then do a bit of reading yourself. They were illegally siezed and transported from their places of domicile as a result of 911 which we all know was really guilty of that shit show, and the invasion of Iraq under the false pretenses of WMD.
Like · Reply · Sep 24, 2017 3:52pm

North Korea and the modern media

The Winter Olympics are upon us, not usually of much interest in Australia given that we had experienced global warming well before anyone else. But it was nevertheless brought to my attention by this article in the Campus Review: Former North Korean students, in humanising suffering, tighten diplomatic ties. Not one-eyed at all, specially given the grievance expressed against South Koreans who don’t appear to be as sympathetic to the plight of North Koreans as you might wish, but certainly an article with more sense than you get in the American mainstream media. From Instapundit.

“THIS WEEKEND’S COVERAGE OF NORTH KOREA’S REGIME AT THE OLYMPICS WOULD MAKE EVEN FORMER NEW YORK TIMES JOURNALIST WALTER DURANTY BLUSH:” The Media Sides With North Korea Over The United States At The Olympics.

Ben Shapiro tweets:

As they say at David Horowitz’s Front Page Website, “Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out.” The DNC-MSM are really going out of their way to drop the mask this weekend.

Flashback to last year: “Following the lead of CNN’s Brian Stelter, Thursday’s Situation Room touted the spike of sales in the book 1984 and strongly hinted that Americans view the Trump administration as the real-life version of Big Brother portrayed in George Orwell’s classic.”

UPDATE: Speaking of Stelter, as Michael Malice, the author of Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il tweets, “Reminder that CNN was more hostile to an American citizen who made a wrestling gif than to a representative of the most evil government on earth.”

The epic Clinton scandals and cover-ups currently under investigation

It’s not just the story but the source that is remarkable. From The Sunday Guardian: How Obama’s Hillary Clinton cover-ups destroyed DOJ and FBI. It starts:

The epic Clinton scandals and cover-ups currently under investigation in Washington will make Nixon’s Watergate and subsequent cover-up look like kindergarteners playing in a sandbox.

My columns over the past few years have detailed how Washington DC, under twenty-five years of neoliberalism and the iron-fisted rule of the Clinton/Obama regime, have corrupted and weaponised senior members of Washington’s most bureaucratic law enforcement and intelligence agencies to act against the law and against the principles of democracy. Making matters much worse, senior members of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency have been operating a “shadow government”, which is only accountable to the “deep state.”

The Obama/Clintons’ shadow government operatives will stop at nothing to cover up their crimes against democracy, including the destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. Destruction of evidence has been a big theme throughout the Bill/Hillary Clinton era. Just take a look at scandals involving the missing emails, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation. Based on the recent announcement from the Department of Justice regarding the 50,000 missing texts written by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, it appears this trend is continuing. The announcement states, “There was a problem with Strzok and Page’s bureau-issued SamsungGalaxies—that ‘firmware upgrades’ and other technical issues deleted records of texts sent from not only their phones but many phones across the bureau. We regretfully report that these text messages were lost.” This occurred during a crucial time in the Russia investigation that included Michael Flynn’s resignation due to lies about his Russian ties and FBI Director James Comey’s firing.

But it’s only when you see stories like this in the NYT, WP, and on the mainstream media will you know the jig is up. Meantime, it’s the largest conspiracy in history, involving the Democratic Party and everyone who is willing to tolerate, and indeed actively support, the descent of the United States into a one-party state, which includes a large number of nominally Republicans as well. And for further interest, here is a list of some of the author’s other columns.

 

 CORRECTION: I did think it was a near impossibility that the Guardian had broken ranks but that is how it looked. From Tom in the comments:

Don’t get too excited, Steve: the Sunday Guardian is an Indian outfit and has nothing to do with the Green communist propaganda rag in the UK. The fanciful idea that the Graniaud would use a Ben Garrison cartoon should have alerted you. They are up to their necks in Steve Bell and his ilk. Steve used to be amusing in a nihilistic way, but has become a parody of himself since Trump sent him around the bend.

So we are back to where we were, a near universal media silence on the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes. It’s not even that virtually none of it is reported, but that the left and their minions prefer not to know.

Does the left ever get anything important right?

Just wandering through Instapundit this morning and the overpowering sense of no is everywhere. Examples:

1) LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Mad Max violence stalks Venezuela’s lawless roads.

In one video apparently showing a looting and uploaded to social media, people are seen gleefully dragging live chickens from a stranded truck.

The looters use tree trunks and rocks to stop vehicles, and are particularly fond of “miguelitos” – pieces of metal with long spikes – to burst tires and halt vehicles.

A ring-road round the central town of Barquisimeto, with shanty-towns next to it, is notorious among truckers, who nickname it “The Guillotine” due to the regular attacks.

In some cases, crowds simply swarm at trucks when they stop for a break or repairs. Soldiers or policemen seldom help, according to interviews with two dozen drivers.

Yone Escalante, 43, who also takes vegetables from the Andes on a 2,800-km (1,700-mile) round-trip to eastern Venezuela, shudders when he recalls how a vehicle of his was ransacked in the remote plains of Guarico state last year.

“Social media” is as close as this Reuters report gets to the words “socialism” or “socialist.”

2) INEZ FELTSCHER STEPMAN: How Uber’s Pay Gap Disproves The Pay Discrimination Myth. “It turns out that female Uber drivers work shorter hours, are less likely to work during peak times, and drive more slowly. Because the compensation structure is automatic, Stanford researchers were able to pin down the three factors that caused the gap: experience on the platform, willingness to work at peak times and in busy areas, and driving speed preferences.”

Nonsense. Unshakable feminist media science demonstrates irrefutably that when men are doing better than women it’s because of discrimination, and when women are doing better than men it’s because men are stupid and incompetent and should be more like women.

3) FALLEN ANGELS IS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? The sun is going to be really cool in 2050, scientists say. “Based on 20 years of data collection and observations, a research team led by physicist Dan Lubin calculated that the sun will be 7% cooler — and dimmer — by the mid-century.”

4) JUST RELEASE EVERYTHING BUT THE LAUNCH CODES AND THE NOC LIST: A second memo is on the horizon as Nunes gears up to launch the next strike in his investigation into the FBI.

 

The deep state reaches the surface

From January 12, 2017, that is, from even before the inauguration, even then titled, The Deep State.

If you are not spooked by all of this then you are made of tougher stuff than I am.

MEDIA AND CIA FALL FOR ‘GOLDEN SHOWER’ HOAX…
TAPPER, BLITZER RATTLED…
YOU’RE ACTING LIKE NAZIS, TRUMP TELLS SPY CHIEFS…
Russian tech expert named in report never even contacted!
GREENWALD: ‘Deep State’ Sabotage…

The last of these comes with the actual title, “The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer”. Here is the opening text, but I have to say this is terrifying and in no sense politics as usual, unless this really is politics as usual, although we have never before seen it revealed so openly.

IN JANUARY, 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There are a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combatting those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

“Morally bankrupt” it most certainly is and then some. “Certain to backfire on those doing it” is very optimistic. If this is how things are, Nazi is not going too far in describing what is going on. If the evidence were not before our eyes of the way in which the media and the CIA have worked with the Democrats to undermine Trump’s authority you would think all of this is impossible.

The core question is whether it is OK for a government in power to use surveillance agencies to win elections

The details are below. The main point is that the Democrats used an obviously nonsense piece of spyware as a justification to listen in on private conversations among the Republicans both before the election and after. You care if you are worried that large bureaucratic organisations such as the FBI can be used to take down an opposition party. You don’t care if any means necessary is all the justification one needs to subvert the Constitution to ensure Democrats always win presidential elections. Sure it’s worse than Watergate. It is not just corrupt to its core by any standard but also frightening if freedom and constitutional government are to have any meaning. But that is of no concern to the Democratic Party nor the media if being done by Democrats, so where will this all go? Nowhere, my guess, but we shall see. These are the details from Breitbart. The actual memo released today is found at the link at the end.

The House Intelligence Committee released its classified memo detailing alleged abuse by senior FBI and Justice Department officials on Friday, after the president approved its release.

Among the memo’s findings are:

  • The anti-Trump dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee formed an “essential” part of the initial and all three renewal surveillance applications against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page;
  •  The political origins of the dossier were “known to senior DOJ and FBI officials,” but those origins were not included in applications to obtain the warrant;
  • Also used to justify the surveillance warrants against Page was a news story supposedly corroborating the dossier, that was pushed by the dossier author Christopher Steele himself — yet the FISA application incorrectly says Steele did not provide the information in the article;
  • Perkins Coie — the law firm for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee hosted a meeting with Steele, Fusion GPS and media (this revelation makes it harder for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to deny they knew about the dossier, though Clinton and other top DNC officials at that time have denied knowing about it);
  • Steele was “suspended and then terminated” as an FBI source, after the FBI learned that he made an authorized disclosure of his relationship with the FBI to liberal media magazine Mother Jones, and he lied to the FBI about his previous media contacts with Yahoo! and other outlets;
  • Steele — although portrayed as a “boy scout” by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson — had personal bias against candidate Donald Trump, telling senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president”;
  • Ohr’s wife Nellie Ohr assisted with the dossier, but the FBI or the DOJ did not disclose this connection in the application for the FISA warrant, even though Bruce Ohr worked “closely” with Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates and then Rod Rosenstein;
  • At the time that the FBI used the dossier to obtain the spy warrant on Page in October 2016, head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Bill Priestap had assessed that the corroboration of the dossier was still in its “infancy,” and after Steele was terminated as a source, an FBI unit assessed his reporting as only “minimally corroborated”;
  • FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that no warrant would have been sought without the dossier;
  • The FISA warrant also mentioned information related to another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, even though there was no evidence of cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos;
  • The memo does not state what the information about Papadopoulos was, but said that information was the trigger to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation on Russian meddling and collusion in late July 2016 (he had told an Australian diplomat at a London bar that a Maltese professor connected to Russia had told him he had dirt on Clinton in the form of emails);
  • Peter Strzok, the No. 2 at the FBI’s counterintelligence division opened the bureau’s investigation on Russian meddling and collusion (text messages between him and fellow FBI official and lover Lisa Page show that he held an anti-Trump bias).

The memo was released without any of the redactions sought by the FBI and the DOJ.

The Democrats know their business and their clientele

Picked up at The Other McCain: A few headlines from Breitbart.com.

Democrats Bringing More Than Two Dozen Illegal Aliens to Trump’s SOTU

Rep. Paul Gosar: I’ve Asked Capitol Police, Jeff Sessions to Arrest ‘Any Illegal Aliens’ Attending Trump’s SOTU

New York Times: Immigrants Are Superior to Americans and Their Kids

‘Dreamers’ Arrested for Human Smuggling —Twice in Two Days

11 Democrats to Boycott Trump’s State of the Union Address — 49 Fewer than Snubbed Inauguration

But what is most depressing is that the Democrats know their constituency, which is made up of rusted-on fools plus any so-called independents who can be gulled into voting their way because of some issue of the moment driven by their media allies. I also liked this comment from DeadMessenger:

(1) Isn’t it weird that in America, our flag and our culture offend so many people, but our benefits don’t?

(2) How can the federal government ask U.S. citizens to pay back student loans, when illegal aliens are receiving a free education?

(3) Only in America are legal citizens labeled “racists” and “Nazis,” but illegal aliens are called “Dreamers”.

(4) Liberals say, “If confiscating all guns saves just one life, it’s worth it”. Well then, if deporting all illegals saves just one life, wouldn’t that be worth it?

(5) I can’t quite figure out how you can proudly wave the flag of another country, but consider it punishment to be sent back there.

(6) The Constitution: It doesn’t need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread.

(7) William F. Buckley said: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other points of view, and are then shocked and offended when they discover there are other points of view.”

(8) Joseph Sobran said: “‘Need’ now means wanting someone else’s money. ‘Greed’ means wanting to keep your own. ‘Compassion’ is when a politician arranges the transfer.”

All good, but playing to the base, that is, mostly us. But his enemies are his enemies not because of what he does or doesn’t do but because they are filled with hatreds and envy. None of that will disappear and all will be in play come the elections in 2018 and 2020.