Errant Nonsense

On the first day of Senate hearings on  confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Democrats have shown what a weak hand they hold in terms of stopping Kavanaugh’s approval. An unprecedented lack of decorum is on display by Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee members, as they have been deliberately interrupting the proceedings from the moment Senator Grassley gaveled the confirmation hearings to order.

Here is a rundown of the Democratspremeditated tactic of incessant interruptions, for those keeping score:

INTERRUPTIONS SO FAR:

Blumenthal, Richard 13

Booker, Cory 10

Harris, Kamala 8

Hirono, Mazie 6

Klobuchar, Amy 3

Whitehouse, Sheldon 2

Leahy, Patrick 1

Coons, Christopher 1

TOTAL 44

There has also been no shortage of grandstanding during the hearings, most notably by Kamala Harris, 2020 Democratic Party presidential contender.

Grassley has refused to delay the proceedings for Democrats to review documents. This brazen dilatory tactic is particularly offensive for two reasons. The same Democrats who are insisting on the need to review documents are the same Senators who had previously proclaimed that they were voting no on Kavanaugh long before the first hearing today. Secondly, all the pertinent documents Democrats need to make an informed decision on Kavanaugh are part of the public record. All of Kavanaugh’s decisions from his tenure on the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air correctly observes that,

The objections of the minority might hold more consequence if the same senators hadn’t pledged to vote against the nominee even before he was appointed. All of them have gone on the record as a nay to Kavanaugh, regardless of his qualifications and temperament. All of them have had open access to twelve years of Kavanaugh’s work as an appellate jurist, which are the records most pertinent to this appointment, and Senate Democrats had covered his previous work in his 2006 confirmation hearing to the DC circuit. Complaining about the late release of barely relevant documents from an entirely different phase of Kavanaugh’s career is nothing more than a stunt.

Perhaps Grassley should end this Theater of the Absurd starring Chuck Schumer and his colleagues on the committee. The virtue of this course of action is that it would spare the country from a frivolous, bad faith and prolonged spectacle that in the end, will be all for naught.

While he is busy fomenting discord during the confirmation hearings, Chuck Schumer can thank his former Senate colleague, Harry Reid for eliminating the filibuster.

What goes around, comes around…

The recent eulogizing of John McCain by members of the Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex was so hyperbolic, that one would have thought he was being canonized. There can be no doubt that McCain was an unabashed patriot who served his county well and with great distinction. However, the lavish praise and adulation bestowed on McCain after his death, was particularly irksome for two reasons.

Those liberal pundits and Democratic politicians who elevated McCain to sainthood status after he died, hardly had the same reverence for him when he was alive. Their ennobling words following hie death, was starkly at odds with how he was vilified when he ran against Obama in 2008.

Since McCain was a prominent member of the Old Guard of the GOP, his death is symbolic, as it signifies the end of the Establishment Republican Party. Trump put a nail in the coffin of Bush Republicanism, which perhaps is why George W. Bush, along with others, in no uncertain terms, used the opportunity of a hero’s funeral to attack the president of the United States.

The media loved “Maverick” McCain on those occasions when he poked a stick in the eye of conservatives in the Republican Party. McCain was so solicitous of the media, that in a very real sense, his constituency wasn’t the citizens of Arizona, but rather, the mainstream media.

For many Republicans, particularly those who expressed their disapprobation for the establishment by voting for Trump, McCain was the personification of the Republican “useful idiot” who was consistently duped and played fora fool by an obliging media. Because he was particularly vainglorious, McCain on many occasions failed to appreciate how an adoring media was capable of turning on a dime and finding him dispensable when a liberal democrat was his opponent.

I think the irreparable damage McCain did to the Republican Party and why he was viewed with such disdain by many in the party, can best be summarized by referring to an excerpt from my book, Election 2016: How Donald Trump and the Deplorables Won and Made Political History,

“Republican politicians who were unaware or utterly indifferent about the nature of today’s Democrats had managed the party for too long. The GOP sought comity and congeniality, whereas the Democrats continually engaged in warfare both in the halls of Congress and in the media. John McCain was prone to this blindness on countless occasions during his tenure in the Senate. For McCain, the collegiality and comity of the Senate as an institution was of paramount concern when seeking to bridge partisan divides. Yet his longtime “collegial” colleague Ted Kennedy had no compunction in casting the collegiality of the Senate aside with his vituperative and entirely false character assassination of Robert Bork during his 1987 Senate confirmation hearings. Kennedy’s assault on this prominent jurist’s character was so offensive and egregious that it spawned a new dictionary term for the lexicon of the late twentieth century: to ‘Bork.’”

McCain’s lopsided and wholly unrealistic view of “comity”, was one of the reasons why the longer McCain stayed in the Senate, the less enamored many rank and file Republicans became of his leadership position. Over time, McCain’s sanctimony became insufferable, alienating many conservatives as well as some establishment Republicans. His 11th hour vote against the repeal of Obamacare was one such moment. During his career in the Senate, there were many others.

Certified CNN Trump defiler, Carl Bernstein, the Watergate has-been has egg all over his face after a false story bearing his name was hocked as Breaking News by his employer CNN.

Since Bernstein is the go-to guy for analysis on the Trump/Russian narrative,it will be most interesting to hear how he — of Watergate fame — failed to abide by the most rudimentary principles of journalism. Before he helped break the Watergate story, Bernstein was schooled by Ben Bradlee, then editor of the Washington Post, to assiduously check sources before running with a story, particularly one that accuses the president of malfeasance or criminality.

Anyone who doubts that his was the prevailing state of affairs at the Post, should watch the movie, All the President’s Men.Dustin Hoffman plays Bernstein; Robert Redford plays Bob Woodward.

Alas, the standard Bernstein used in terms of checking a sources reliability, was cast aside for the Trump Tower story, which he and two other reporters who had a byline on the story, published. The source on which Bernstein and CNN relied was Lanny Davis, a well known dissembler and prevaricator from the Clinton scandal days. Why CNN and Bernstein would rely on this well known liar, demonstrates how Bernstein and other “journalists” have discarded all standards in order to drive Trump from office.

These new standards, or lack of standards, in the eyes of journalists still in shock over Hillary Clinton’s defeat are wholly justified because of the danger Trump poses to the Republic.

Here is how Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times justified departure from orthodox rules for reporting,

“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?

Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.

Taking his cue from Rutenberg,Bernstein called Trump’s Administration, a “malignant presidency.”

As it turns out, the only malignancy, is Bernstein’s reporting.

Calls for the impeachment of president Trump continue unabated by many Democrats. Enamored with the prospect that Special Counsel Robert Mueller with his Inspector Javert zeal, will find fresh evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Trump in connection with the media’s wholly fabricated Russian collusion narrative.

Many of those afflicted with Trump-Derangement Syndrome, had been fervently hoping that Trump would be impeached based on the testimony of his one-time lawyer, Michael Cohen, who claimed that Trump had knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between campaign staff and Russian agents. In the absence of credible testimony implicating Trump on this score, many hoped that payments to Stormy Daniels arising from a relationship Trump had with her in the past would be sufficient to drive him from office for campaign spending violations.

We already know that that there is no evidence of the Trump Tower meeting, because Cohen’s lawyer, the execrable Lanny Davis, admitted he lied when he peddled that story to the media.

Davis’ conduct is deplorable and hopefully will result in his disbarment. It is, nonetheless, important in the sense that it demonstrates the level of unprecedented animosity towards Trump, whom Democrats still feel is an illegitimate president.

This is one several reasons that the political landscape from Labor Day until the midterm elections promises to be nasty and acrimonious.

Writing in the New York Post, Michael Goodwin identifies what he calls the real scandal plaguing the county. It involve primarily breaches of trust between the government and its citizens as well as rampant abuses of power,

“Another scandalizing event is the behavior of some federal agencies. The Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA took liberties that were morally offensive, and possibly illegal, because they didn’t want Trump to be president. Some individuals, like former top FBI agent Peter Strzok, were dumb enough to put it in writing — on government computers!

Although Strzok and leaders of the FBI were fired or demoted based on misconduct, the current director, Christopher Wray, continues to act as if the events of 2016 and 2017 are mere reputational dents.

That, in turn, outrages Trump supporters and others, with the result that among half the country, the FBI remains untrustworthy. Wray either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care.”

Goodwin is correct in his assessment that the illegal actions of the FBI and intelligence agencies were based purely on political considerations. The heads of these agencies, like every pollster, had no reason to doubt that Hillary would be elected president. Why enrage the next president of the United Staes? Any legitimate investigation into her email chicanery would be a career ender.

The other scandal that has been unfolding since the later stages of the presidential election, as explained in my book Election 2016: How Donald Trump and the Deplorables Won and Made Political History, is the utter debasement of the Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex. Their bias and outright rancor towards Trump has been clearly manifest. The media have abandoned all journalistic standards in their quest to reverse the results of a fair and legitimate election. One telling example is the steadfast refusal of CNN to retract the Trump Tower story after it has been thoroughly debunked. This is indicative of a network that has no shame.

The underpinnings of the entire abrogation of legal and ethical standards by the media and government agencies was the firm belief that Trump should not be elected president and if this effort failed, do everything necessary to insure that his presidency was unsuccessful. As former federal prosecutor, Andy McCarthy has astutely observed, the Mueller investigation is at bottom, all about the election of Donald Trump.

That is the underlying reason that is the basis for all the other scandals: to Democrats and the media alike, Trump is illegitimate because of a phony Russian collusion scenario ginned up by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Clinton campaign. This dossier by Steele was used as a basis to obtain a warrant from the FISA court to spy on the Trump campaign.

That is the real Russian story and one that has induced a collective yawn on the part of the mainstream media — that is perhaps the most unsavory scandal of all.

Longtime Clinton lackey, and fixer, Lanny Davis, returned to the political scene recently. Davis is a master of mendacity, a known and skillful liar; corrupt to the core. He was one of the smear artists that defended the Clintons during the plethora of scandals that erupted during the 1990’s.

Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, the missing Rose Law firm billing records, wherever and whenever a Clinton scandal erupted, there was the ubiquitous Lanny Davis, defending the Bonnie and Clyde of America politics on all the cable TV shows. In short, the man, like the couple to whom he has been indelibly wedded, has no shame.

True to form, the unrepentant Davis has admitted recently that he spread a false story and then lied about being the source.

Davis agreed to represent Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer and confidant, now turned informer. Davis suggested that Cohen could implicate Trump in crimes related to obstruction, collusion and violations of campaign-finance laws.

Davis went further and claimed that Trump had advanced knowledge about Russian hacking of Clinton campaign advisors communications as well as Democratic Party emails. Davis also said there was evidence that Trump approved the notorious meeting with Russian intermediaries in Trump Tower.

CNN, using Davis as one of their sources, ran with the story under its now hackneyed “Breaking News” bombast.

After weeks of driving the story, Davis came forward to say that, in fact, that his client, Cohen had no evidence whatsoever of the Trump Tower meeting. Then, when asked if he was the source of the erroneous story, he issued an unequivocal denial. Davis told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of the story.”

Two days ago, Davis in a stunning reversal, admitted to being the source of the fabricated story. Law Professor, Jonathan Turley, recounts Davis mea culpa. As Turley notes,

“Davis’ denial came as a surprise, since various reports pegged him as the source. Finally, last night, Davis admitted being the source of the false story on the Trump Tower briefing and lying about it when subsequently challenged; he told BuzzFeed that “I made a mistake. I did not mean to be cute.” Well, it’s a tad beyond cute”.

Since Davis’s skullduggery represents conduct that is inconsistent with the ethical duties of an officer of the court, at a minimum, he should be disbarred.

Not only was Davis knowingly pushing a false and defamatory story about Trump, in the process, he most likely did his “client” grievous harm. As Turley notes,

“Worse yet, the story planted by Davis, if true, would have implicated his client, Cohen, in false statements made to Congress, since Cohen previously denied such knowledge. In other words, the story was not just false but potentially put his client in jeopardy.”

What is even more astonishing, CNN, who used Davis as a source, has steadfastly refused to retract the false story and apologize. This is the same CNN that has been forced to retract a number of stories on the Trump Russian Collusion narrative, that were later proven to be demonstrably false.

Since it is the “Get Trump” network, CNN’s posture should come as no surprise.

In the meantime, Trump is having a field day hammering CNN for its manifestly irresponsible conduct.

President Trump recently rebuked the social media companies for for their deliberate and incontrovertible censoring and shadow blocking conservative content. The articles and commentary that have been blocked are written by some nationally known commentators as well as other authors whose content is dubbed hateful because they oppose many progressive policies.

Google and Facebook claim that they only block or take down content that doesn’t meet their “community standards.” This is a term that is pristinely undefined. This pretext has been used as a sword to stifle, and in some cases eliminate conservative content on the Google and Facebook platforms.

It is indisputable that the reigning religion at both Facebook and Google is political correctness in its most extreme form.

James Damore, the Google engineer who was fired for questioning the one-dimensionality and prevailing group think at the giant internet search company has brought the company’s extremism to the fore.

Facebook is no different than Google on the political spectrum. Trump has cautioned both companies that if they continue to censor content, there will be consequences.

The social media companies partner with far left groups like the multi-million dollar Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that slanders respectable organizations as “hate” groups.

The New York Post describes the ludicrous and specious response to president Trump’s charges that the social media companies block conservative content,

“Tuesday brought endless commentary and reporting on how President Trump was being utterly ridiculous and conspiratorial to accuse Google of bias in its search algorithms. Funny: Just over a year ago, in June 2017, the European Union fined the company $2.7 billion for … bias in its search algorithms.”

Both Google and Facebook are now de facto publishing platforms that wield enormous power over the type of content provided to the public. In an interesting development, a group of conservative Facebook employees have banded together to protest the stifling liberal orthodoxy that permeates the work environment at the company. It is heartening to see that some conservatives are fighting back against an environment of oppressive political correctness that suffuses Silicon Valley.

It is hard to tell what is more sad and distressing, The New York Times belief that Sarah Jeong’s prior and copious racist rants did not disqualify her from serving on its editorial board or, the pathetic attempts by those on the left to defend her reprehensible comments.

The Times ludicrous response to the public outcry over her hiring was that her acerbic and racist comments were of no consequence as they were written in response to internet trolls attacking Jeong because she was Asian and a woman. Those who believes such unadulterated nonsense must surely have an IQ in the single digits.

Other progressives have argued that Jeong’s comments were justified because whites are irredeemably racist or are insufficiently aware they are irredeemable racists. Other defenses of Jeong are utterly incoherent, the most notable of which, unsurprisingly, comes from Vox

Some conservative commentators, such as Kevin Williamson have argued that the Times should ignore the pressure from the online lynch mob and stand by their decision, reasoning that conservative writers should be similarly immune from the irascibility by those on the left.

The problem with this argument is it describes an ideal world where the right would be judged and benefit from the same standard that would be applied to the left. This, however, is a not the world that we have been living in for the past twenty years, which severely diminishes their argument for a cease fire.

The reality, regrettably, is that the left has operated from the principle that they can establish standards, insist on their applicability for conservatives, yet at the same time, absolve themselves from the very same standards they have established . That is the issue in the Jeong matter. Those conservatives who argue that we should let sleeping dogs lie miss the significance of protesting the hiring of Sarah Jeong as monumentally hypocritical.

Williamson himself was subjected to the hypocrisy of the left on this issue, when he was hired by the Atlantic and then summarily dismissed for previous comments he had made that upset progressives sensibilities.

Conservative should continue thieir criticism of the Times as to expose the Intellectual infantilism of progressivism.

The New York Times recently announced that it had hired Sarah Jeong, a journalist to complement its editorial board. Jeong previously wrote for the Verge. Shortly after she was hired however, it was discovered that Jeong has a copious and colorful history of vile racist comments against whites, most particularly white men. Here is a sampling of her views: “dumba fing white people,” musing about how much joy she gets “out of being cruel to old white men” and how “white men are bullsh.” For good measure she also compared white people to “groveling goblins” and questioned why they’re “genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun.”

You can find a listing of Jeong’s greatest hits: here.

Why the Times would give this angry woman a forum at the “newspaper of record”. Is one of the reasons conservatives dismiss the mainstream media as nothing more than an extension of the Democratic Party. Her hire represents a classic example of one of the essential tenets of progressivism. Establish a standard, in this case former statements of conservatives that are sufficiently derogatory according to the catechism of liberalism to justify the individuals termination — no matter how sincere the apology.

But, if the same standards are not applied to progressives. Indeed, one of the cardinal principles of progressivism is they progressive are immune from the application of the very same standards they themselves have established for others. By definition, unless a standard is applied universally, it is no longer a standard, but rather a manifestation of partisan hackery.

Here is an eye opener for all white people, not some, but all, who think they aren’t racist and can never be absolved of racism, or, what is now commonly described in the fever swamps of the radical academic left as “white privilege.”

The Timed hired Jeong for her anticipated brilliance in addressing such momentous issues as: What would it be like if we all deleted Facebook? What does the future of online privacy look like?Why can’t the tech industry diversify? And, two of my favorites: Are monkeys allowed to sue over copyrights? And what in the world is #cockygate?

Another tweet reads, “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men.”

The Times hiring and defense of Jeong’s racist rants against white people finally clarifies that the entire fraudulent concepts of“diversity” and “inclusion” are nothing more buzzwords that gives those members of a “protected class” a license to vilify and discriminate against white men. Or as Seth Barron at City Journal accurately describes it as, “Get Whitey.” The intellectual giants who proselytize this giddy nonsense at our colleges and universities would argue that Jeong’s comments were not only appropriate, but justified.

The Times has defended its hiring of Jeong by claiming, without a shred of supporting evidence, that her comments were in response to being trolled online by malicious white men. The evidence that Jeong’s racist rants were the result of her being harassed? The Times says so, and for them, that’s all the evidence they need.

We are going to see more examples of this social theory in action, particularly in connection with the policy platform of the Democratic Party, which itself has now been overrun and held hostage by the radical and crazy left. Jeong’s views as well as all the zany social theories birthed by the academic left. now represents what has become the intellectual underpinnings of today’s Democratic Party.

In a recent article, Politico seems to believe that former consultant Steve Schmidt’s divorce from the GOP is a big story and that party stalwarts are all abuzz. The article almost reads like a PR piece for Schmidt. The truth of the matter is that all the commotion over Schmidts departure is much ado about nothing. Well over a year after the election people in the party care not one whit about Steve Schmidt’s current views of the GOP or his plans for the future.

The reality is that Steve Schmidt has never really been interested in any one other than Steve Schmidt. His attack on his former client’s running mate was beyond the pale and indicative of a mercenary whose allegiances blow in the wind.

How convenient for Schmidt to have his road to Damascus moment well after his disastrous involvement in the 2008 campaign. It should be noted that Palin was Schmidt’s recommendation for VP. If he had second thoughts and believed Palin would be an anchor around the ankles of McCain’s presidential bid, he could have eliminated her as a running mate. Instead, Schmidt got on board at the time and along with many other GOP illuminates, including the now exiled Bill Kristol, thought it was a shrewd game-changing political event.

No one in the GOP is weeping over Schmidt’s departure from the Republican Party. Long before Trump announced his candidacy, the execrable Steve Schmidt, was a regular and very welcome guest on partisan hack, Chris Matthew’s MSNBC talk show. How anyone could consider Schmidt remotely resembling a member of the Republican Party at that time beggars the imagination.

Schmidt is but one of many exiled former GOP consultants, who for years have milked the Republican Party. Vying for this distinction along with Schmidt is his fellow has-been GOP consultant Rick Willson, another one of the many perpetually deranged never-Trumpers.

Here is the most important and salient fact to remember about Schmidt and his fellow former GOP consultants: their records in terms of winning elections was dreadful, yet they continued to remain on the GOP payroll. As I note in my book, Election 2016: How Donald Trump And The Deplorables Won And Made Political History,

Some of the most prominent members of the Old Guard are the consultant class, who for the past several election cycles maintained an incestuous and profitable relationship with the RNC. Win or lose, the same names would usually crop up: Mike Murphy; Steve Schmidt; Stuart Stevens; John Weaver and Rick Wilson. These political strategists all fed off the parasitic relationship with the party establishment. They repeatedly bilked the RNC and its donors —both large and small. They all sang the same old song. They could all be seen on the cable TV and Sunday morning talk show circuit, their appearances ostensibly booked due to their expertise, which was comical, given their dismal track record.

Schmidt is leaving the GOP not on principle but because his cushy consultant gigs with the party is over. As I further note,

The track record of the consultant class pariahs was dreadful, yet the party continued to hire them. It was a unique and enviable employment relationship where the worse you performed the greater your job security and the more you were paid.

What is astonishing, is that the Republican Party is known, above all else, as the party of business and home of successful entrepreneurs. How members of this elite business club could repeatedly shower astronomical sums and continue to employ the consultant gang that couldn’t shoot straight, time and again, is one of the most endearing mysteries of the GOP of the past thirty years. If the Republican Party were forced to compete in the private sector with the same business plan employed repeatedly by the RNC, they would sooner or later be forced to file for bankruptcy.

After the election, Schmidt realized he had no prospect of ever working for another Republican politician ever again. Hence, his recent and expedient conversion to the Democratic Party.

Whatever fellow Republicans one thinks of Trump, all should be delighted that this Quisling will never set foot in party headquarters for the remainder of their lifetimes.