Errant Nonsense

Of all the bombshell disclosures contained in the IG report, perhaps the most salient fact to emerge and the one that easily answers the many questions as to why the conduct of the criminal investigation was rife with corruption and subterfuge, is the revelation that Obama lied about when he first knew about Hillary’s rogue server.

When asked during a 2015 CBS interviedw with Bil Plante when did he first learn about Hillary’s private email server, Obama lied brazenly  by claiming, “The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

But, as John Kass notes writing in the Chicago Tribune, “But Obama did not learn about Clinton’s home-brew server like “everybody else.”

According to the inspector general’s report, Obama was in fact one of 13 top government officials communicating with Clinton on her private email server, even as Clinton’s server was targeted by foreign intelligence services.

The report also discloses that while Hillary clinton was abroad, she commmunicated with Obama through her proivate server and hostile foreign actors intercepted some of her communication s with the president of the unied states. The name “Obama” in the report was changed later to “seniour government official.”

Obama, along with his secretary of state’s manifiest disregad for security and the classified nature of the emails is another reason the Clinton email investigation was never goi8ng to get off the ground for the simple fact that any normal and competent inestigation would have revealed that Obama was a bald faced liar, it also would have shown his cavalier attitued towards national security.

Everything else that occurred that was done to derail the criminat investigation makes eminent sense in light of this one salient fact. There are certainly other reassons why the investigation was a deliberate sham, most notably, the irreparable damage it woulod havve done to Hllary’s campaign and the irreparale damage it would have done the the Democratic Party.

All of the shenaiggans and chicanery that occurred throughout the investigation; all the standard and customary legal and investigatory procedures that were abandoned in the name of saving the president and insuring Hillary’s election ow can be understood:The granting of immuity without any conditions in exchange; the failure to put Hillary under oath when she testified; the director of the FBI, James Comey, preparing his statement exonerating Hillary before he had even inerviewd her; permitting a potential wintess,likely co-conspirator and long-time Clinton confidante and “fixer”, and, allowing Cheryl Mills to remain in the room during Hillary’s questioning.In the purported role as her “attorney.”, when no such relatinoahip existed. The list goes on and on.

Preservation of his “legacy” was of paramount concern to Obama and if it meant overlooking the felonious conduct of Hillary Clinton, then so be it.

In short, Obama lied, the criminal investigatino died

The much-anticipated Department of Justice Inspector General’s report has now been released. IG Michael Horowitz, concluded the the investigation was not tainted due to overt political bias, although in a damning inculpatory statement he acknowledges that some other top level FBI officials displayed, “a willingness to take official action”, to prevent the election of Donald Trump. Though some Democrats may find comfort in his limited findings, a few items should be noted: the IG’s Report did not in any way address the FBI’s involvement or potentially criminal conduct during the Russia collusion IGinvestigation, that has been the subject of Robert Mueller’s investigation during the past year.

Horowitz intimated in his report released on Wednesday that his potential findings concerning the overt bias of the lead FBI agent in charge of that investigation could be potentially explosive. In the words, as embarrassing as his recent report is to eat e FBI and the unfavorable light in which it cast that agency, most notably James Comey will be mild by comparison.

Although, Horowitz did not conclude that the overt bias expressed by Page and Strzok did not have a material affect on the email investigation, it is important to note, that despite his conclusion, he nonetheless express his concern and was, “deeply troubled by text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page,” his conclusion is not an exoneration of their behavior in the Russian investigation. Strozk’ involvement in the FBI collusion investigation was substantially greater than his role in the email issue. Strozk was instrument in launching the collusion investigation. His repeated and overt bias expressed against Trump throughout that investigation is grounds for concluding the entire matter was tainted from the start.

A whole host of questions arise in this regard. Why was Stozlk permitted to work on the collusion investigation when his text messages were known to Mueller and other officials that the DOJ? Not removing him from the investigation at the start event though his prior statements about Trump made it abundantly clear that he had a demonstrable conflict of interest and his continuing involvement in the collusion investigation would taint the entire matter because of the appearance of impropriety. These are the reasons that prompted Horowitz’s disapprobation as expressed in the comments noted above.

It is important to note that the IG Report referenced additional texts uncovered that demonstrate for the first time that the lead agent investigating a presidential candidate openly expressed interference with the election.

Page: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

As David Harsanyi, writing in The Federalist notes,

Now, texts don’t necessarily prove an agent acted unprofessionally. Maybe Strozk was showing off to his lover. Maybe Strozk was blowing off steam. But if a law enforcement agent charged with scrutinizing your business says he’s going to “stop you” — on top of dozens of other statements demonstrated high levels of prejudice, including one self- righteous exchange where he praises himself for being in a position to stop the Trump “menace” — would you consider that person professionally unbiased? There’s no reasonable argument that can guarantee that this agent’s work was uncontaminated by his animosity for Trump.

Lastly, despite Comey’s attempt to seek sainthood as a holier than thou participant in the whole matter, Horowitz sharply criticizes his abrogation of Justice Department precedents by appointing himself as a prosecutor. In his self-appointed role, Completely rewrote the statute concerning the applicable legal standard for a finding of criminal liability in the investigation of Hillary’s email server. The provision was initially rewritten by STrozk and then forwarded to Comey who then issued his exoneration of Hillary at his July, 2016 press conference.

In short, despite his book tour, Comey does not appear likely to be canonized any time soon.

The recent Singapore summit between president Trump and Kim Jong Un may not yield any substantive results or resolve any pressing issues; it may simple resort to the bellicose status quo, but it also may be an important first and bold step toward rapprochement, in much the same way that relations with China were initiated and over time, major hostilities subsided, in both word and deed.

North Korea has a history of deceit and duplicity in its agreements with the United States for promises to abate nuclear weapons development in exchange for foodstuffs. Pessimism is not unwarranted.

The Economist snootily calls the summit, “a triumph of showbiz over substance.” They further intone that the U.S., “must be tough-minded and eagle-eyed.” I’m not sure what The Economist said about Barack Obama’s decision to kick the can down the road when North Korea was on the cusp of producing missiles that could hit the United States. Obama also was stridently opposed to a missile defense technology. One wonders was this an example of the application of Europe’s and Obama’s preference for “soft power”?

Remember that when Nixon sent Kissinger to China, the expectations were rather low in terms of having an effect on tempering Communist ideology leveled at the “running-dog capitalists” and “imperialist stooges” — terms that were used continuously throughout the Cold War to describe the “paper tiger” America.

Nixon had an historic meeting with Mao Tse Tong and Chou en Lai — both audacious moments in diplomacy; he was the first American president to set foot on Chinese soil. The supreme irony is that Nixon was a die-hard anti-communist, a fact that was no secret to the Chinese. For those acerbic Trump critics, a history lesson is in order. The first concrete diplomatic step taken after Nixon met with Chinese leaders was a ping-pong match between the top United States team and their Chinese counterparts. At the time, this sporting event was a big deal. The whole world was watching. After the ping pong match other activities were scheduled; with each step the gap between the two countries narrowed.

The fact that China was still a communist country ideologically at odds with the United States was immaterial. As Nixon said at the time, “You can’t ignore a country of one billion people.

What is lost on those who have been critical, nay openly hostile, to Trump’s approach is that Nixon was the least likely politician to go to China. During the 1950’s and 60’s, he was a stout anti-Communist and adopted a hard line on communist aggression; he firmly believed in the domino theory.

Thus, “Nixon goes to China” was a phrase coined at the time and that signified a bold and wholly unexpected reversal of one’s long-held beliefs or policies.

Trump has taken a similar approach, dialing down the pugnacious rhetoric and taking a risk on a summit with a leader who has missiles that can incinerate cities on the West Coast.

For those anti-trump Bush Republican critics, a question: exactly what did either Bush do to insure that North Korea did not obtain offensive nuclear capabilities? What effective policy did any Republican president implement to thwart and parry North Koreas rapacious foreign policy?

I think the answer is they all did a splendid job following the kick-the-can-down the-road policy, later bequeathed to Obama.

And these establishment Republicans are attacking Trump?

For the past two decades, academic institutions have been incubators for birthing new theories and concepts to feed the diversity beast’s need for instances of perpetual grievance. The latest manifestation emanating from reeducation camps masquerading as institutions of higher education, is the racialist notion of “white privilege.”

White privilege, is the latest zany concept that gives succor to left-wing professor’s contention that America is an irredeemably racist country. This social theory is blessed by academic administrators and Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors of Diversity and Inclusion, whose job descriptions demand finding or fomenting new instances or paradigms of oppression against minorities or groups they unilaterally deem have been “marginalized.”

This analysis of racism found expression recently in the harsh criticism of Kanye West by commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, a perennial fixture in the pages of The Atlantic and a darling of the left. After West’s forbidden complimentary comments about president Trump, an unhinged Coates excoriated West for his audacity in, “bowing to the power of whiteness” and thereby collaborating with all the forces, both historical and current that perpetuate racism and were responsible for slavery.

This latest socio-economic theory is the culmination in a long line of post-modernist, neo-Marxist analysis of society and politics championed by tenured professors and administrators at our nation’s colleges and universities, who came of age during the Viet Nam war protests.

When the war ended, the academic left faced a crisis: what would replace the anti-war movement as a cause sufficient for mobilization and disruption? To add insult to injury, when the Belin Wall fell and communism was repudiated, there was no longer any interest from students for advanced seminars in Marxism. New dialectical social theories of strife and inherent and inevitable conflict needed to be created to replace the fallen left-wing god.

Racial theory provided fertile ground for the need of the academic left to carry on the dialectical historical struggle. New academic theories about racism, embraced by the Democratic Party, asserted that individual acts of racism were now irrelevant and moot as racism was now deemed “institutionalized.”

No concept is more fitting for the idea that racism is now manifested by entire groups or institutions, than that of white privilege. The traditional Marxist theory of the historical inevitability of the conflict between capital and labor has been supplanted. Now, “marginalized groups” or people “of color” take the place of Marx’s commiserated proletariat and those born with white privilege play the role of capitalists.

But here, the similarities with Marxism end. For Marx, ultimately the conflict ended with the withering away of the state, the end of the class struggle and the triumph of a communist utopia. For today’s racialists, there is no end game, only perpetual strife and racial antagonism. This perverse belief is what prompted a law professor at Yeshiva University recently to proclaim that whites are incorrigibly racist and as such, should always be viewed as the enemy of African-Americans.

The incoherence of such philosophizing based on the implacable and never-ending racial animosity becomes readily apparent when one views the inherent contradictions of the theory in practice.

For example, although the indelible stain of white privilege can never be removed, the new racialist theory does provide exemptions or waivers for those who approve of diversity and inclusion policies (formerly known as affirmative action). The benefit of this bargain, or temporary waiver, for white liberal politician is that they won’t be stigmatized by the never-ending cries of racism, white privilege, white nationalism and white supremacy by the academic purveyors of racialist theory — so long as they don’t deviate from proscribed progressive policies.

Additionally, since oppression, according to the menacing nature of whiteness theory is defined purely by skin pigmentation, how does one characterize former president Obama? Was he the nation’s first ‘black” and thereby oppressed president, or the country’s first half-white, and of necessity, half-white privileged president? The practitioners and proselytizers of racialist theory should explain why these questions are not germane to their theory of racial animosity.

Similarly, no racialist professor has ever been able to answer satisfactorily, the question how it was that many of the very same White Nationalists who voted for Trump, pulled the lever twice for Obama. Were they miraculously transformed from Obama supporters into White Supremacists overnight? The ultimate instance of reductio ad absurdum, would be that poor white Appalachian coal miner being told he is the beneficiary of white privilege. It is unanswered questions such as these, that render white privilege theory as nothing more than an exercise in monumental silliness.

The more the Democratic Party embraces such nonsense, the more distant it will find itself from those individuals who were once part of its coalition but switched and voted for Trump.

I wish the pathological lying clown Bill Clinton and his corrupt wife Hillary would ride off into the sunset and leave us all alone, instead of forcing us to watch painful 1990 re-runs of the Bill and Hillary Show.

Bill Clinton, “it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”, is back in the news once again, peddling his tiresome and patently false statement that he in fact did apologize to Monica Lewinsky, even though his apology was to the entire nation. Those alive during the Clinton years will recognize this subversion, crafted to perfection by the Clintons, a the non-apology apology. No one in command of their faculties believes such giddy nonsense.

Remember this is a man while wagging his finger on national television, famously told a bald face lie by proclaiming: “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, I never lied…etc., etc.”

It’s nice to see Bill Clinton hasn’t changed since he was president. Clinton and his wife are the living embodiment of the old adage: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Now, during his book tour, he is up to his old tricks again, parsing and prevaricating as never before. Who does he think will believe him?

As I noted in my book, Election 2016,

“The Clintons have been insulting the intelligence of the public for decades. They have suffered no political price for doing so, partly because the media was willing to bury the negative stories in connection with the Clintons’ scandals, but also, because of the short attention span of the electorate, who due to the sheer volume of scandals, investigations, hearings, etc. in connection with the couples political life in Washington, could not keep up with all the drama and intrigue.

After the Clintons left office, conservative media and the internet had broken the broadcast network’s role as gatekeeper, a function that was used often to bury or ignore stories that were unfavorable or detrimental to Democrats. It’s interesting to recall, it was the Drudge Report that broke the Monica Lewinsky story, not the mainstream media. Newsweek originally was in possession of the information, but decided to kill the story. Today, the old media rules no longer apply, but the Clintons didn’t take notice.”

Now he is regurgitating and refreshing his old perfidies and mendacity for the the 21st century and he assumes that the political environment and the media damage control apparatus, so effective in protecting him in the 1990’s is still operative today.

In fact, one could argue that Clinton’s statement that he is a #MeToo fellow traveller is evidence that he has dementia, there is no other plausible explanation for this statement, it far surpasses even the gold standard for mendacity established by himself and Hillary over twenty years ago. Even for die-hard Clinton fans and sycophants, the #MeToo comment is a bridge too far. Bill and Hillary assumed that nothing has changed since Bill was in the Oval Office. This mentality, in part, cost Hillary the election, but to hear more of the same in the age of Harvey Weinstein strains credulity — even coming from the mouth of a Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s latest comments simply reinforces the ineluctable fact that for many voters, the thought of sending the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics back to the White House, where they would invariably despoil the presidency yet again, was unthinkable.

Message for Bill and Hillary: For Gods Sake, Just Go!

There was an outcry from the Left over Roseanne Barr’s patently offensive and racially tinged comment about Valerie Jarrett. Predictably, instead of applying the same standard for patently offensive speech to Samantha Bee as was invoked against Roseanne, liberals have doubled down in their pathetic defense of Samantha Bee.

After her half-hearted apology in the wake of her calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c t”, Samantha Bee’s Progressive Praetorian Guard leaped to her defense.

Wasn’t it clear to all reasonable people that Bee’s comments were beyond the pale? Not so. Ivanka deserved the harsh and profane criticism because of her tacit agreement of her father’s immigration policies. In one of the most vile defenses of Bee’s conduct to date, Katy Waldman , whitening in The New Yorker, offers this justification,

” It is her complicity in her father’s agenda, most recently in policies that actively traumatize immigrant parents and children, that is obscene—far more than any four-letter word. It profanes and pulverizes any claim she might have on representing the interests of mothers and children. “Cunt” makes of womanhood something repugnant, and so does Ivanka, who embraces the shine and the softness of femininity at the same time that she rejects its bravery, love, and power.”

Another feminist supporter, Christine Estima mistaking her prolific profanity for exposition, had this to say about the furor ,

“Should it be used as an insult to tear down another woman? If that woman is complicit in the subjugation and oppression of women and then goes on television to admit that she doesn’t know what “complicit” means, then yeah, have at it. We cool, Sam Bee. We cool.”

These pathetic justifications and abrogation of the very same standards they apply with rigor to conservatives and Trump supporters is one of the reasons why, as Andrew Klavan correctly notes Donald Trump is president.

The hypocrisy on display her is simply too galling to go unnoticed.

Any fair minded and intelletually honest person must be wondering, why do Samantha Bee and Joy Reid still have their talk show host jobs? Last Weednesday night, Bee referred to Ivanka Trump, the first daughter, as a “feckless c. t.”

The answer is really quite simple. Liberal talk show hosts and comedians in general, enjoy progressive immunity for any criticism or invective levelled at conservatives and president Trump. They’re members of a protected class: progressives women who have talk shows. National Review’s David French quite properly calls it, “progressive peer-group privilege.”

Despite recent discovery of homophobic, anti-semitic and 911 truther posts from a blog she maintained earlier, MSNBC host Joy Reid, to date, has the full support of the liberal network.

The media in general and Hollywood in particular, are an intergral component of the Democratic Party’s new coalition of the ascendant. Democratic politicians need the movie moguls money (see, e.g., Harvey Weinstein and Hillary Clinton practically embracing at one of her fundraisers.) Those in the entertainmet industry aren’t going to cashier thier colleagues for misconduct because they are all fellow liberals and since Trump, in the eyes of progressives, represents a mortal threat to the Republic, family members are fair game.

As David French notes,

No reasonable person thinks Samantha Bee would still have a job at TBS if she used the same terrible language to insult Chelsea Clinton or Michelle Obama. No reasonable person believes that MSNBC would stick with a conservative for so long in the face of anything like the steady drumbeat of outrageous revelations (excused, in part, by dubious claims of hacking) about Joy Reid’s old work.

At the root of the phenomenon of progressive double standards is the sanctimonious and mistaken belief in their innate moral superiority. Given this premise, political opponents aren’t merely wrong in thier philosphical convictions taht are at odds with progressive dogma, they are evil; they are racists; they are homophobes; they are misogynists, etc., etc. For progressives, the only appropriate descriptive language for such miscreants are the most extreme terms supplied by the English language. That is why Trump is never referred to as a right-wing conservative, but rather, as a Nazi, a man who wants to tear “immigrant” children from their parents.

When Donald Trump tweeted,

what would happen if that word had been directed at Michelle Obama or one of her two daughters: “You think they’d still have a TV show?” the obvious answer to that question is a resounding No.

Recently, Obama opined that there were no scandals while he occupied the Oval Office, which is of course, preposterous. The only reason former president Obama could make such a statement with a straight face is that the mainstream media insured that none of the rampant abuses of power that occurred during his tenure saw the light of day.

One of the reasons for the rock bottom approval ratings of journalists was their manifest lack of interest on reporting about the numerous scandals that occurred during the Obama Administration. In short, they dropped the ball and were missing in action for the past eight years.

Writing in The Federalist, David Harsanyi notes,

“Now, perhaps the president didn’t experience the fallout from a scandal, which is very different from never having been involved in one. For this confusion, Obama can thank the political media.”

After Trump was elected, some journalists claimed that his attacks against the press were responsible for creating a “Renaissance” among members of the Fourth Estate to now, after an eight year absence, hold those in power accountable. This naturally raises the question, if there is currently a Renaissance in the world of American journalism, it must have been preceded by an historical period that can only be characterized as the Dark Ages.

Harsanyi lists several indisputable abuses of power in the Obama Administration and how it makes the media’s current pretension that its sacred duty is to hold government officials (Trump, not Obama) accountable laughable.

Here are a few examples Harsanyi notes that demonstrates the double standard.

An Obama official famously bragged to The New York Times Magazine that he could rely on the ignorance, inexperience, and partisan dispositions of reporters to convey administration talking points to help push through preferred policy. Rather than being hurt or embarrassed by this kind of accusation of unprofessionalism, many reporters are more reliant on the same people than ever before.

Yet many professionals who supposedly deplore the authoritarian nature of an administration that doesn’t answer CNN’s questions were generally quiet when Obama spied on reporters. The Obama DOJ spied on the Associated Press in an attempt to crack down on internal leaks. The DOJ tapped around 20 different phone lines—including cell phone and home lines—that snared at least 100 staffers who worked for the outlet. The Justice Department spied on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, collecting his telephone records, looking at his personal emails and tracking his movements.

Color me skeptical, but somehow I doubt similar Trump efforts would be framed as a “rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe,” as if we were pulling the curtains back on a fashion show. It would be, rightly, depicted as an assault on democracy.

As I noted in my book Election 2016,

“Despite its imperial nature, or perhaps in spite of it, there was a complete lack of accountability for malfeasance and incompetence in the highest levels of the government. The Obama Administration used the IRS, to silence conservative political opponents. Lois Lerner, who was responsible for denying conservative groups tax exempt 501(c)(3) status, operated inside the agency with impunity. When her malfeasance was later discovered, she took the Fifth Amendment and went on administrative leave with full pay.

No executive administrators at the Veterans Administration were disciplined for the negligence that led to the deaths of many former servicemen. Indeed, in many instances, these same individuals who were part of the problem received promotions.”

Given this reality, all of the caterwauling by the media about Trump’s alleged abuses of power can’t be taken too seriously.

The Boston Globe reported on Friday that former Secretary of State JOhn Kerry has been meeting with his Iranian counterparts in an attempt to salvage the Iranian nuclear deal — an agreement that president Trump is in the process of terminating.

The Globe has a humorous manner in describing this perfidy, calling it a

The Globe humorously characterizes Kerry’s efforts at undermining the foreign policy goals of the Trump Administration, “a quiet lobbying campaign.”

“Kerry supporters see in this campaign some of his trademark traits, especially his unflagging energy even in the face of potential failure. Critics see something else, a former office holder working with foreign officials to potentially undermine the policy aims of a current administration”

Other Kerry critics also see some of “trademark traits” on display:

Seth LIpsky is merciless in describing Kerry’s treachery and reminds us that his conniving with Iran is just the latest example of his long history of consorting with foreign governments in an attempt to undermine United States foreign policy:

“This has been Mr. Kerry’s modus operandi since, as a young lieutenant just and in the middle of a war, he began freelancing foreign policy. Back then, he snuck off to Paris and met with, among others, representatives of our active wartime enemy, the Viet Cong. Then he came back to America and plumped for their talking points. Later, he testified against American troops before the Senator Foreign Relations committee.

That’s how Mr. Kerry’s career was launched. Now he’s using the same modus operandi to treat with Mr. Zarif to save a deal that even the New York Times concedes was opposed “overwhelmingly” by the United States Congress. And that was tested in the recent election. It pitted, in Hillary Clinton, a one-time state secretary who supported the articles of appeasement with Iran. Mr. Trump opposed the deal and threatened to tear it up.”

This is truly astonishing. We are witnessing a former Secretary of State actively seeking, through contact with a foreign power, to salvage an agreement which he personally helped craft in his capacity as a representative of president Obama. This simply enhances and lends credibility to the “deep state” narrative.

How else can one describe Kerry’s attempts other than as “collusion?”