Errant Nonsense

Revisiting another White House Correspondents Dinner will help demonstrate how the entire affair has, during Trump’s term, degenerated into a farce imbued with unexampled rancor.

Here is how Obama opened up his speech at the White House Correspondents dinner in 2009:

Good evening, everybody. (Applause.) I would like to welcome you all to the 10-day anniversary of my first 100 days. (Laughter.) I am Barack Obama. Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me.

Although it was meant as a joke, it was anchored — as much humor is — in reality. In the case of the media, the reality of Obama’s jest rings true.

Compare the love-affair the press displayed during the eight years of the Obama Administration and contrast it with the crassness and vitriol aimed at Trump who was, last Saturday, the object of the media’s fury.

The difference in treatment is stark and readily apparent to all but members of the Mainstream Media-Democratic Party-Complex.

As one commentator has noted,

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has come and gone and for that we are all very thankful. But the political overhang of the dinner is adding momentum to President Trump’s favorite theme, that the D.C. swamp can only be reformed if additional conservative voices are elected in November. A dinner is just an evening, but this dinner could actually help cement even more independent-minded Americans to the Trump cause.

To add insult to injury, thanks to the WikiLeaks disclosures, we know the media was in collusion with the Clinton campaign during the election as the played their role as her Praetorian Guard. When she was defeated by Trump, journalists became deranged.

The fact that Michelle Wolf was selected by WHCA president Margaret Talev, is Exhibit A in support of the unassailable proposition that the purpose of the affair was not good natured ribbing, but rather, to berate the president in the vilest manner possible.

Those who are perplexed as to why the mainstream media is held in such low esteem by a good portion of the American public need look no further than the nauseating and quite deplorable exhibition of Trump bashing on display at the White House Correspondents Dinner this past Saturday.

The original intent of the event was to bring the President and the press together for an entertaining evening of poking fun at the commander-in-chief.

After the vulgar, profanity-laced diatribe masquerading as “humor”by alleged comedian Michelle Wolf, many journalists, who have a modicum of introspection and perspective are praying for the event to die an unceremonious death.

This is the second year President Trump has been notorious by his absence.

And, who can blame him? The event has degenerated into a bash Trump in absentia gala run by members of the deranged Resistance.

But, it was Trump who had the last laugh.

Michelle Wolf was simply following her marching orders as a member of the opposition. Vulgarity and poor taste is condoned even encouraged by those who cannot abide the results of the election, as it is done for the higher purpose of driving a duly elected president from office.

No one but members of the political and media establishments participate in this orgy of self-congratulation.Trump has diminished the event and by being absent twice has had the last laugh on the mainstream media. How pathetic the entire exercise has become without a president to be the object of liberal jokesters.

The glitzy, celebrity-filled Hollywood charade has degenerated to a unhinged display of Trump hatred that when viewed by the rest of the country, only enhances the public’s low opinion of the Fourth Estate.

Someone should have hung a sign outside the door of the event proclaiming: “Hate has no home here.”

The sordid Stormy Daniels story and the overstrung response by Trump’s Republican critics gives occasion to revisit, once again, the basic premise of the Never Trumpers, to wit, that Trump, due to his moral depravity, is unfit for office. Jonah Goldberg, of National Review seems particularly overstrung over the latest incident, calling the lack of conservative outrage over Trump’s debauchery hypocritical. For many anti-Trump conservatives, the Daniels affair affords them one more opportunity to showcase their moral superiority over Trump voters and to say once again: “I told you so…”

Criticism over the Stormy Daniels incident, highlights The problem with the latest Never Trump crowd’s moral preening is that it highlights the difficulty that has plagued the Trump-is-unfit-for-office foreboding from the beginning: a lack of necessary perspective.

First, the affair with Stormy Daniels occurred long before Trump was in the Oval Office. Second, as Julie Kelly writing in American Greatness notes the “if you don’t condemn it, you condone it” argument is tenuous, at best,

This is a classic example of false equivalence, as if the behavior of Bill Clinton or Anthony Weiner or Ted Kennedy or any number of randy Democratic politicians is similar to what Trump purportedly did as a private citizen in a hotel room during George W. Bush’s second term.. And the “big deal” is that these politicians leveraged their power and position while serving in elected office to seduce, harass, exploit, and assault women.

The reason the Never Trump coterie have no credibility for their argument that Trump is unfit for office and should never have been elected is that they fail to offer a compelling explanation why a corrupt, money grubbing pathological liar, who destroyed 30,000 emails birthed on a home-brew server for the purpose of concealing her disgraceful influence peddling through the Clinton Foundation while secretary of state, would have been a more favorable candidate.

Virulent Trump critic, Tom Nichols, views the election of Trump as an international embarrassment, from which the nation will never recover. Writing in USA Today, Nichols chastises American voters and descends from the sublime to the ridiculous in his overwrought analysis of the dire ramifications of electing Trump:

All of this reveals a great shift in American politics. By electing Trump and tolerating Bolton, we have shown that we are not a nation that can be consistently trusted with the stewardship of the free world. It’s not that Trump, in the end, will collapse NATO, plunge us into a great depression, or start World War III — although with Bolton by his side he is capable of doing all of those things — but rather that the American voters have shown the world that we are capable of astonishing selfishness and petulance. We have abandoned our civic virtue not just at home but also overseas, and once lost, that position cannot be recovered.

Nichol’s fulminations are too convulsive to be taken seriously. Would Nichols equate Trump’s asking our Western Allies to pay their fair share for defense spending after decades of freeloading off the American taxpayer worse than Obama’s shameless apology tour during which he disparaged the very country that elected him president?

Given the choices presented in the last election, few who voted for Trump viewed him as a moral paragon or a man of virtue and circumspection. Given all that was known about Trump, voters still chose him over Hillary because he promised to tear down the corrupt and entrenched power elite that has done so much damage to the nation and body-politic.

As far as Nichols dubious contention that because of his disinterest and ignorance of foreign policy, Trump will be the ruination of the liberal international order, it should be noted that many elites said the same thing about Regan. Clark Clifford, former special adviser to JFK and Lyndon Johnson characterized him as an “amiable dunce”. As far as Goldberg and other anti-trump republicans concerns about Trump vitiating the lofty ideals of conservatism, Establishment Republicans did a fine job by themselves destroying the conservative brand long before Trump arrived on the scene. In fact, the reason rank and file GOP voters supported him was because he promised to upend what for a long time had been a broken and dysfunctional party.

The Never Trump faction’s caterwauling about Trump has fallen upon deaf ears and as the latest polling indicates, inconsequential on Trump’s standing.

The firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was long overdue. McCabe was at the center of a partisan and disgraceful series of events that saw officials from the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ engage in partisan conduct to help facilitate the election of Hillary Clinton and when she lost, to help bring down the administration of President Trump.

Although McCabe — upon the recommendation of career prosecutors at the DOJ — was fired for a lack of candor in cooperating with Justice Department investigators looking into his unauthorized disclosure of information to a Wall Street Journal reporter.

The liberal blog Lawfare contends that there is insufficient information publicly available at this point to form an opinion as to whether McCabe’s termination was warranted. Perhaps, perhaps not. But what we do know, is that the DOJ and the FBI take a failure to tell the truth seriously. As Lawfare acknowledges,

“The FBI takes telling the truth extremely seriously: “lack of candor” from employees is a fireable offense—and people are fired for it. Moreover, it doesn’t take an outright lie to be dismissed. In one case, the bureau fired an agent after he initially gave an ambiguous statement to investigators as to how many times he had picked up his daughter from daycare in an FBI vehicle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled against the agent when he appealed, finding that “lack of candor is established by showing that the FBI agent did not ‘respond fully and truthfully’ to the questions he was asked.”

Although Lawfare intimates that McCabe’s firing may have been politically motivated in light of Trump’s recent criticisms, the recommendation to terminate McCabe originated from the Director of the DOJ’s Inspector General’s office, an Obama appointee, who then referred the matter to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

It is interesting to note that McCabe was fired for the same offense on which Robert Mueller obtained an indictment against Michael Flynn. The glaring double standard between the tenacity with which the special counsel is pursuing Trump and the total lack of a much needed investigation into the machinations by the upper echelons of the FBI and the DOJ during the Obama Administration.

The more interesting and potentially devastating findings that will be issued in the spring by the inspector general concern McCabe’s conduct while he was in charge of conducting the FBI’s investigation to Clinton’s emails. Paul Sperry, writing in the New York Post last June noted that,

”Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele.”

It is inexplicable how McCabe could remain in that post when his wife received a $450,000 cash campaign donation for a state senate race from the political-action committee of long time Hillary pal Terry Mcauliffe. Did McCabe nor anyone else at the FBI or Obama Justice Department ever hear of the legal/ethical principle of conflict of interest? McCabe should have immediately recused himself the moment his wife accepted the donation. Even if everything else was above board in terms of the donation, McCabe should of still been removed for the appearance of impropriety the donation would have cast on his impartiality to conduct a thorough, diligent investigation. Indeed, a question arises as to why McCabe waited nearly a month before examining thousands of emails Huma Abedin sent to her sexual pervert husband Anthony Weiner.

Michael Goodwin of the New York Post argues correctly that the termination of McCabe is just the tip of the iceberg in what ultimately will be revealed to be malfeasance of the highest order the purpose of which was to overturn the results of an election. A thorough criminal investigation is warranted into probable corruption by senior level DOJ and FBI personnel who acted in concert, either directly or indirectly, with one political party to tip the election in Hillary Clinton’s favor.

There have been a number of different analyses of the Pennsylvania special election where the GOP lost a seat in a friendly congressional district that Trump carried by 20 points.

At one end of the extreme, Kyle Smith writing in National Review, forebodes doom for the GOP come the midterm elections with Trump at the helm. But what about all the policy successes of the Trump Administration? Smith responds,

So what? say the voters in PA-18, a district Trump won by 20 points, where the Republican candidate Rick Saccone had no major defects (and the Democratic winner Conor Lamb can be expected to vote with Nancy Pelosi on nearly all occasions) and where Trump’s economically illiterate faith in tariffs is popular. Saccone lost the district anyway. To borrow language from the anthem of Trump’s hometown, if the GOP can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere. It’s because of Trump that the (R) next to Saccone’s name was too great a burden to overcome.

Less apocalyptic, is the historical interpretation of mid-term results offered by Jay Cost. Even though he believes the election of Conor Lamb in a reliably red district is not a good sign, Cost notes that,

History suggests that the thing that can save the Republican majority is an uptick in Trump’s job-approval numbers. Gallup has him at 39 percent right now, and the average of all polls puts him around 41 percent, or thereabouts. If he can push that number up to 45 percent, I’d say the GOP has a fighting chance at the majority.

However, the more important question that is rarely addressed by the Never Trump crowd is, if Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker again, what type of political party will emerge from the ashes of the mid-term defeats to be either reborn or ineradicably fragmented?

From the start, Anti-Trump Republicans, particularly Bush loyalists, have never been capable or astute enough of rising above their visceral dislike of the brazen New Yorker to ask, exactly what conditions made it possible for political neophyte to dispatch all the Republican establishment candidates and go on to defeat the invincible Hillary Clinton? Given the potential for losses in November, it is difficult to believe that the Old Guard of the GOP will be [click to continue…]

It is amazing how many myths about politicians endure and continue to thrive even in the face of adverse revelations or facts that prove to be wholly at odds with the facade or public fable of the particular politician.

Examples abound: e.g., there are those who proclaimed Obama as the next Lincoln before he ever set foot in the Oval Office; after his inauguration, he was constantly characterized by liberal commentators and historians as the smartest president in history; the Southern Poverty Law Center of the 21st century continues to be viewed as a key player in the fight for civil rights, despite it being no more than a shakedown operation that maliciously defames groups and organizations with differing political views; for years, we heard what geniuses Al Gore and John Kerry were compared to George W. Bush, who was often caricatured as wearing a dunce cap (“strategery”)

Upon scrutiny, many of these myths collapse or cannot withstand the most cursory due diligence into their veracity, yet the media continues to perpetuate the falsehoods.

The list goes on and on…

For years, Hillary Clinton, has been revered as an object of liberal mythology. For decades we have been told that she was a brilliant lawyer, an independent woman of great accomplishment; a feminist and champion of women’s rights; a tireless advocate for children and a stellar Secretary of State.

Upon examination, the myths surrounding Hillary, like so many other fabrications created by ambitious and ruthless politicians, their media enablers and supporters, evaporate, like a popsicle in the hot Florida sun.

Given the demonstrable fabrications concerning Hillary’s aptitudes, personality, political acumen, character traits and substantive accomplishments proselytized by her media advocates as well as the indispensable role her husband played in her career advancement, it is astonishing, yet unsurprising, that the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has awarded Hillary the Radcliffe medal.

Previous recipients of the annual award for those who have had “a transformative impact on society,” include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Billie Jean King and Sandra Day O’Connor.

Lizabeth Cohen, the dean of the Radcliffe Institute, noted the award to Clinton was being made “in recognition of her accomplishments in the public sphere as a champion for human rights, as a skilled legislator, and as an advocate for global American leadership.” Dean Cohen went on to describe Clinton as “a model of what it takes to transform society: a lifetime of relentless effort combined with the vision and dedication to overcome one’s inevitable defeats.”

Back here on the planet earth, Roger Kimball writing in American Greatness, reviews the prerequisite qualifications and accomplishments required for recipients against the actual and undisputed professional and political history of Hillary Clinton.

Kimball notes that,

Many readers, dazzled by the memory of Clinton’s recent presidential campaign, may be a bit shaky about her long history of private-sector accomplishment and public service. Here, without pretending to anything like completeness, are a few highlights.

The list he has prepared contrasting the myths surrounding Hillary with reality is quite telling.

Kimball’s sardonic takedown of those at the Radcliffe Institute who truly believe that Hillary embodies the qualities on which the award is based is caustic and a must read.

Hillary’s recent condescending remarks in India about those who live in the great heartland presents an interesting occasion for post-election analysis. Her comments reflected her arrogance, contemptuousness and sublime detachment from the lives and travails of ordinary Americans residing between the two coasts. Every time Hillary opens her mouth about the election, she damages the fortunes of the Democratic Party. The more delusional speeches Hillary gives about the reasons for her loss, the more it reveals about the enormity of the Democratic Party’s stupidity in handing her the nomination carte blanche.

Since Hillary has had a difficult time reconciling her enormous self-regard with the reality of her stunning defeat, here are a few biographical and recent political facts that should help her understand why the country chose a crude reality TV star over the world’s smartest woman.

She told us long ago that she was named “Hillary”after the famed New Zealander, who in 1953, became the first to scale Mount Everest. Apparently, no one told her parents that Sir Edmund Hillary didn’t scale that peak until after she was born. And, if one wishes, unwisely, to continue to suspend disbelief while her lips are moving, the Wellesley College and Yale Law School graduate insisted that she tried to join the Marines in 1975, but was turned down because she was a woman. She said the FBI was merely conducting a “security review” into her emails; FBI Director James Comey said it was not an inquiry but an investigation. She said she dodged sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia; later video revealed her strolling carefree on the tarmac.

The late New York Times columnist, William Safire diagnosed her as a “congenital liar.” She lies when it suits her purposes; she lies when it is expedient; she lies about matters both big and small, trivial and substantive. She lies when she doesn’t need to lie; she lies about her lies. These well known traits are indicative of a woman who has no core, no center, no moral compass and no sense of self. Like her ever changing hairdos, Hillary’s persona fits the mood of the moment, her particular audience, or her self-interest and preferred political narrative.

One wonders if those who were “Ready for Hillary” viewed her 2007 migraine-inducing, grotesque impersonation “I don’t feel no ways tired…” performance to an African-American audience while speaking at the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday, on March 7, 1965, when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by police. This was Hillary [click to continue…]

While visiting India recently, Hillary doubled down on her contempt for the deplorables in flyover country who she claims cost her the 2016 election. Exactly why didn’t those in the country’s heartland join the Hillary bandwagon and join the coalition of the ascendant? For Hillary, the answer is self-evident. Clinton resuscitated her tiresome Trump-voters-are racist/misogynist, etc. theme by telling an audience in Mumbai that the essence of Trump’s message, embraced by his supporters, was,

“You didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are — whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.” Here is how she character.

Hillary further claimed that Democrats, “do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married white women and part of that is an identification with the Republican party and an ongoing pressure to vote the way your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.” In other words, the reason many white women didn’t find her gender based campaign mesmerizing was because their husbands insisted they vote for Trump.

Hillary’s bicoastal elitism and snobbery once again rose to the fore:

“What the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,” she said. “And Trump’s whole campaign — ‘Make America Great Again’ — was looking backward. You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights; you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs; you don’t want to, you know, see that Indian–American succeeding more than you are — you know, whatever your problem is, I’m gonna solve it.”

During the election, Hillary visited coal country and in one of her more ill-advised stump speeches gleefully told miners, that she was going to put them out of a job. Incapable of even a fleeting moment of introspection, she then claims the reason these same voters abandoned her is because they didn’t want to see a woman president.

The fact that no prominent member of the Democratic Party has come forward and publicly rebuked Hillary for her intemperate remarks does not bode well for the party’s prospects for building a national electoral college coalition.

What is truly astounding, even more so than Hillary’s denial, tone-deafness and impolitic comments, is that there is a cadre of die-hard Clinton fans who earnestly believe that she should run a third time.

Recently, tech visionary, venture capitalist and Trump supporter Peter Thiel decided to leave the ideological conformity of San Francisco for Los Angeles. Thiel found the atmosphere in the Bay Area suffocating and had tired of the inflexible doctrine of identity politics and “diversity” preached and practiced by the commissars of political correctness in the corridors of the tech industry.

Thiel isn’t the only one disillusioned with the direction of the captains of the social media sectors, whose businesses manufacture no tangible products, but rather are built on the development and utilization of software for harnessing the potential of the Internet.

Now, many individuals from across the political, social and economic spectrum are questioning the wisdom of allowing these companies to enjoy their monopoly positions. In fact, the increasingly visible loathing of these tech giants, cuts across party lines, with conservatives and liberals both agreeing that steps need to be taken to curb the growing and unchecked power these businesses exert over peoples everyday lives.

Google’s unprecedented market domination is coupled with an arrogance that is breathtaking.

This imperiousness was on display when Google fired James Damore because he had complained about the ideological conformity of the company and the fact that it discourages free expression. Google engaged in this public humiliation of one of its conservative employees without any compunction or fear of adverse consequences.

Google embodies the very worst authoritarian aspects of progressivism. Google belongs to the exclusive club of progressives who cynically proclaim that they are all for diversity, but not diversity of thought.

Google and other Silicon Valley companies embody the very worst authoritarian aspects of progressivism. It is perfectly permissible for them to impose the religion of diversity on their employees and others, but those who challenge politically correct orthodoxy are likely to be castigated and publicly shamed like Damore.

Damore’s case is going to backfire on Google and will have the effect of only accelerating calls to reign in these corporate and unaccountable behemoths — the robber barons of the 21st century.

As Megan McCardle notes, the behavior of Google was precipitous and ultimately counter productive,

That was stupid, because Google has an immense amount to lose, even if a court ultimately vindicates its corporate culture. The company’s internal systems, featuring an immense array of internal employee communications, will be ripped open to scrutiny. If I were a Google executive, I wouldn’t want to bet that employees haven’t said much worse things in emails and on message boards than those featured in the lawsuit. Things that are plainly, inarguably, expensively illegal.

But I also wouldn’t want even milder utterances to turn up as testimony in a lawsuit. Because every nasty comment and intemperate remark about Republicans or white males or conservative Christians is going to get broadcast to the public when this case goes to trial. And as you may have noticed, those folks are half the country.

Perhaps Google thinks its market position is so strong that it doesn’t have to worry about piddly things like whether its employees spend a great deal of time using internal systems to slander half the company’s American customer base. What are you going to do, use another search engine?

Both Google and Facebook have taken steps to suppress publishing conservative political views. Critics argue compellingly, that since Google and to some extent Facebook, exercise inordinate power over who and and what is likely [click to continue…]