Archive for 2017
March 3, 2017
LET’S ALL PANIC: Everyone Met With The Russian Ambassador. “So the Russians were up to no good, something leading Democrats scoffed at just a few years ago. Also, still distinct from that, people on the Trump team were having ‘normal’ and ‘not unusual’ meetings with the Russian ambassador. What is lacking still is any evidence of quid pro quo. That’s the story Democrats are desperately hoping is behind all this, but the evidence just isn’t there, at least not so far.”
Well, it’s shifted the news from Trump’s successful speech, so there’s that.
Related: No One Mentions That The Russian Trail Leads To Democratic Lobbyists.
The media’s focus on Trump’s Russian connections ignores the much more extensive and lucrative business relationships of top Democrats with Kremlin-associated oligarchs and companies. Thanks to the Panama Papers, we know that the Podesta Group (founded by John Podesta’s brother, Tony) lobbied for Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official. According to a Reuters report, Tony Podesta was “among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.” Among these was the European Center, which paid Podesta $900,000 for his lobbying.
That’s not all: The busy Podesta Group also represented Uranium One, a uranium company acquired by the Russian government which received approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department to mine for uranium in the U.S. and gave Russia twenty percent control of US uranium. The New York Times reported Uranium One’s chairman, Frank Guistra, made significant donations to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for one speech from a Russian investment bank that has “links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.” Notably, Frank Giustra, the Clinton Foundation’s largest and most controversial donor, does not appear anywhere in Clinton’s “non-private” emails. It is possible that the emails of such key donors were automatically scrubbed to protect the Clinton Foundation.
Let’s not leave out fugitive Ukrainian oligarch, Dymtro Firtash. He is represented by Democratic heavyweight lawyer, Lanny Davis, who accused Trump of “inviting Putin to commit espionage” (Trump’s quip: If Putin has Hillary’s emails, release them) but denies all wrongdoing by Hillary.
It’s a good rule of thumb that lefties are guilty of whatever they’re loudly decrying.
WHY IS THE DEMOCRATS’ CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATRED AND MISOGYNY? Richmond Under Fire for Correspondents Dinner Comments: Accused of sexually inappropriate remarks about Kellyanne Conway.
Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., is facing heavy criticism for making what some perceived as sexually inappropriate jokes about Kellyanne Conway.
During the Washington Press Club Foundation’s annual congressional dinner, Richmond commented about a recent photo showing Conway, who serves as counselor to President Donald Trump, kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office.
Earlier in the evening, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., joked that the couch had seen more sordid action during the 1990s, alluding to President Bill Clinton’s sexual impropriety in the Oval Office.
“I really just want to know what was going on there, because, you know, I won’t tell anybody,” Richmond remarked. “And you can just explain to me that circumstance — because she really looked kind of familiar in that position there. Don’t answer — and I don’t want you to refer back to the 1990s.”
Richmond, who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, for his part said in a statement that his remarks weren’t sexual.
“Where I grew up saying that someone is looking or acting ‘familiar’ simply means that they are behaving too comfortably,” the Washington Post reported he said in a statement.
But UltraViolet, a liberal women’s group, criticized Richmond’s comments — despite the fact the group acknowledged it disagrees with “just about everything” Conway does or says.
“No woman deserves to be treated the way Congressman Richmond treated Conway,” a statement from UltraViolet said.
Well, she’s a Republican woman, so . . .
A NOD, NOT FOUR PITCHES: Baseball changes the intentional walk rule.
DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER COUPLE: Fix ‘Tragic’ Bail Reform, End All Catch-and-Release.
RICHARD POLLOCK: Exclusive: The American Left’s Love Affair With Putin’s TV Network.
The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned that a host of liberal American political activists and journalists have much more than occasional meetings with RT. Many of them in fact draw regular paychecks from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s flagship TV network.
It’s rarely reported in the U.S. news media, but many of the liberal activists and journalists who participate in RT programming openly bash the United States and defend Russia.
The American “star” at the Dec. 10, 2015, RT celebration was Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Speaking on a panel titled “Frenemies,” which challenged the view that Russia was an “enemy state,” Stein condemned “this very simplistic defense of who is our friend and who is our enemy is counterproductive.”
RT also was the sole television sponsor of the Green Party event that chose Stein as the party’s 2016 standard-bearer.
Besides Stein, other American participants included Max Blumenthal — son of Sid Blumenthal, who worked with 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Read the whole thing.
ROGER SIMON: Jeff Sessions and the Democrats’ Politburo Politics.
The legal case against the AG seems less than paper thin, hanging on whether Sessions fully answered a stumbling question that was vague in the first place and easily misconstrued, if indeed it was.
Nevertheless, calls ring out all over the Democratic Party for his resignation. In a bloodthirsty, yet pathetic, attempt to put a nail in Sessions’ coffin, Sen. Claire McCaskill jumped in to say that members of her (and Sessions’) Armed Services Committee were never supposed to meet with ambassadors — such meetings were exclusively for the Foreign Relations Committee — only to have photographic evidence of her own meeting with the Russian ambassador appear on Twitter within minutes along with several other embarrassing tweets of previous and subsequent meetings.
Hers was Politburo politics at its purest, behavior not all that distant from the purge trials where false accusations habitually sent defendants to Siberia. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ideology or the public interest and everything to do with power.
It’s not a healthy sign, but our ruling class lacks the patriotism and self-control to avoid this sort of behavior, regardless of the longterm impact on the country.
8 YEARS HE KEPT HIS MOUTH SHUT, NOW WE HEAR FROM HIM CONSTANTLY: Bush opens up on his affection for Michelle Obama.
HMM: European Parliament lifts Marine Le Pen’s immunity for tweeting gruesome images of violence.
As Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, rises in the polls ahead of France’s presidential election next month, authorities will now be able to pursue a case against her. Speaking on French television Thursday morning, she was quick to condemn her European colleagues for what she called “a political inquiry.”
In December 2015, Le Pen tweeted a picture of James Foley, the American journalist executed by the Islamic State in August 2014. “Daesh is THIS!” she wrote as a caption, using another name for the Islamic State.
After a day of immediate and widespread outrage on social media — including from Foley’s family — Le Pen ultimately took down the tweet. “I did not know it was a picture of James Foley,” she said at the time. “It’s accessible on Google. I learned this morning that his family is asking me to withdraw it. Obviously, I immediately withdrew it.”
Because French law considers the dissemination of violent images a potential incitement of terrorist activity, prosecutors were keen to pursue a case against Le Pen. But they could not, as Le Pen was a member of the European Parliament, an institution that guarantees immunity to its deputies to protect their freedom of speech.
That immunity, however, applies specifically to the work deputies do in the European Parliament itself and can be revoked at the request of a respective country.
This looks like a preemptive strike by the French/EU establishment.
THE GRAVY TRAIN STOPS HERE: GOP wants to eliminate shadowy DOJ slush fund bankrolling leftist groups.
“It’s clear partisan politics played a role in the illicit actions that were made,” Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, told Fox News. “The DOJ is the last place this should have occurred.”
Findings spearheaded by the House Judiciary Committee point to a process shrouded in secrecy whereby monies were distributed to a labyrinth of nonprofit organizations involved with grass-roots activism.
“Advocates for big government and progressive power are using the Justice Department to extort money from corporations,” Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton told Fox News. “It’s a shakedown. It’s corrupt, pure and simple.”
There is a recent effort by Republicans to eliminate the practice, which many believe was widely abused during the Obama administration.
When big banks are sued by the government for discrimination or mortgage abuse, they can settle the cases by donating to third-party non-victims. The settlements do not specify how these third-party groups could use the windfall.
So far, investigators have accounted for $3 billion paid to “non-victim entities.”
Three billion dollars is a lot of money, even in Washington.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION DIVERSITY PROBLEM EDITION: Randy Barnett: AALS Executive Committee responds to our letter concerning faculty diversity.
As we previously expressed in our letter, we are grateful to Dean Areen for her courteous reception and to the Executive Committee for meeting with us in January of 2016. We wrote our letter because we had received no formal response to our requests in over a year, and appreciate the response we have now received. But, with all due respect, this response fails to address, or even mention, the thrust of our proposals to address the current imbalance on law school faculties–proposals which we reiterated in our letter of last week.
Indeed, this letter can fairly be read as a silent rejection of these suggestions. Oddly, it discusses an idea we do not mention in the letter to which it is responding, while failing to respond to the ones we do.
I cannot speak for other members of our informal group. But I, for one, still believe that the Executive Committee should make access to FAR form data available to an outside researcher who will follow agreed-upon protocols, and should name a politically-balanced task force to investigate and make recommendations to the Committee for how the current imbalance on law school faculties might be improved.
In the end, this not about us. I, for one, am very happy with my position at Georgetown and how I am treated by my colleagues. This is about the quality of the legal education we provide our students. Imagine how political progressives would react if all, or nearly all, constitutional law courses were taught by political conservatives. Without some semblance of political balance–especially in their public law courses–students on the left, right, and center are deprived of information about the legal and constitutional positions that are now being debated in courtrooms and in Congressional committee hearing rooms–positions they may one day be asked to advance of respond to in litigation.
Indeed.
IT ISN’T ABOUT WHAT YOU NEED, IT’S ABOUT WHAT THEY WANT: Donor conference proves that NGOs involved in abortion don’t need the American taxpayer.
AND KIM DU TOIT IS STILL TRYING TO RECOVER FINANCIALLY: Terminal medical care is expensive and they had a long time of it. If you enjoyed/enjoy his blog, consider helping. I did.
KIM DU TOIT IS BLOGGING: In Splendid Isolation and explaining why he left South Africa. As you go over and read that, remember that the Zulus and the Boers arrived in that particular region at practically the same time from different directions. (Historical fact.) And yet, somehow, the skin color of those who own a piece of land is the most important fact. (And also, as a piece of data, at least back when I had lots of friends there, the Zulus are, as a rule conservative. As to what conservative means there now, who knows?) The other day I was talking to #2 son about how we never hear of anything going wrong in South Africa and yet it keeps bleeding people. So, there you have it.
TELL THE UN TO TAKE ITSELF OFF OUR SHORES AND STOP FINANCING THIRD-WORLDER’S TEMPER TANTRUMS: They’re as failed as the League of Nations. Good intentions are not enough for what it costs us, and the idiocy they foster. Trump Admin, Congress Seek to Slash U.N. Funding in Wake of New Anti-Israel Action.
SNOBBERY IS THEIR FOOD AND DRINK:Food, Virtue Signalling, and Narcissistic Supply
BECAUSE IT’S GRAFT AND CORRUPTION ALL THE WAY DOWN: Why Democrat Cities are so Violent.
THIS IS MY VERY SHOCKED FACE: Women’s March joins forces with anti-capitalist extremists. Of course, if you’re an innocent, you might think it didn’t START OUT that way.
WELL, NONE OF THE THINGS THEY KEEP PREDICTING COME TRUE: No one is being put in camps, no legal immigrants are being thrown out because of being insufficiently white, women have not been ordered to go back home and make sammiches. So all the left has is Stupid Outrage.
OH, PFUI, THAT’S NOT NEW:The hot new apartment amenity: sex.
TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING FUN: THE DVD FORMAT TURNS 20 THIS MONTH.
I was an early adopter. But then, I was quite happy to begin replacing my laser disc collection. Speaking of which, a look back at how the Criterion Collection paved the way for the DVD.
March 2, 2017
THEN THERE’S THE HAT. THE HAT ALONE IS A BIG WIN. Trump’s Newly Confirmed Interior Secretary Rode A Horse To His First Day Of Work. “Zinke, a pro-gun former Navy SEAL, will lead a federal department which oversees around a fifth of the nation’s land.”