EVEN HOAXES ARE AN EXCUSE FOR MORE INDOCTRINATION AND MORE LEFTY HIRES: Syracuse U. faculty want more diversity courses following campus ‘hate’ incidents.
Archive for 2019
December 16, 2019
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Hallmark Caves to Wokescolds Who Will Never Watch the Channel. “Over the weekend, the Hallmark Channel came under fire for its lack of wokenicity. The company committed the unpardonable sin of acquiescing to its loyal fan base rather than appease the outrage mob who never watched the channel, but were demanding it change anyway. For a brief while, anyway.”
MIGHT AS WELL ASK THE CROWS NOT TO CAW: Rand Paul tells liberals: ‘Quit yelling at us.’
Sen. Rand Paul, a strong supporter of President Trump, has a solution to liberal cries for civility: “Quit yelling at us.”
Challenging accusations that Trump has sparked a wave of anger in the country, the Kentucky Republican said that it’s mostly Democrats and liberals who are aggressive. In a famous assault case, he was attacked by an angry neighbor while cutting grass and just last month faced “yelling and screaming” from the only two other people in a Santa Barbara, California, restaurant.
“Somehow in their broken brains, they think it’s Trump’s fault, that incivility is coming from Donald Trump,” he said. “And yet, have you seen one conservative go up to a liberal in a restaurant yelling and screaming at them? I haven’t seen any of that,” he said.
Yelling at people from a position of feigned moral superiority is one of the big payoffs of leftism. They’re not gonna give that up easily. But nobody else has to listen to them.
The Horowitz report is simply the endnote to three years of rank criminality that have led to the firings, retirements, reassignments, and demotions of most of the FBI’s top Washington echelon: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, William Priestap, James Rybicki, James Baker, along with Josh Campbell, James Turgal, Greg Bower, Michael Steinbach, John Giacalone, and Kevin Clinesmith. Comey, McCabe, and Clinesmith were criminally referred to the Justice Department by various inspector general reports, respectively for leaking, deceiving federal investigators, and altering a document presented to a FISA court.
Page and Strzok were both fired from the Mueller investigation. Their texts—including, one assumes, an entire corpus of exchanges that remains missing and was apparently destroyed by FBI employees—are a repository of conflicts of interest, unprofessionalism, and unadulterated hatred of Trump and his supporters. Clinesmith, who likely committed a felony by doctoring an email submitted to a FISA court, openly cheered on “le (sic) resistance.”
But we’re told that Trump is the threat to the sanctity of our institutions. Related:
Some copy-editor at the New York Times has a sense of humor.
“The president and his allies have turned investigations into a political tool for use against their enemies,” reads the headline over a “news analysis” by James B. Stewart.
Well.
The Democrats began publicly laying the foundation for impeaching Donald Trump before he was sworn in as president, the FBI under the Obama administration used counterintelligence powers to investigate the rival party’s presidential campaign and falsified evidence to get permission to continue the investigation, etc., but when Trump et al. point out that the inspector general has found serious misconduct on the part of the FBI, it’s “The president and his allies have turned investigations into a political tool to use against their enemies.” It’s the new “Republicans Pounce!” headline.
I do not think that you would need to be an admirer of President Trump or a partisan Republican (I am neither) to understand, as all mentally normal people do, that the impeachment itself is the trophy example of a weaponized investigation being used for political purposes.
Indeed. Plus:
In the now-forgotten days of October 2016, the great rhetorical demand among Democrats was that Donald Trump and Republicans promise that they would “accept the results of the election.” This was always a little mystifying, inasmuch as it raised the question of what they might do instead — raise an army? But that rhetoric was premised on the assumption that the Republican candidate was going to lose in 2016. Since then, it has been Democrats who have steadfastly refused to accept the results of the 2016 election.
And it’s been very damaging to the country and the Constitution.
HOW DO WE SPREAD THIS TO THE REST OF THE GOVERNMENT? Opponents warn of staff exodus as US breaks up lands bureau. Trump should move as much of the government as he can to the most unappealing rural parts of deep-blue states. This will bring them some economic development, encourage federal workers to quit, and at no risk of tipping red or purple states over into blue.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loans A Lot Like The Subprime Mortgage Debacle, Watchdog Says. When I first wrote on this we had just crossed the $1 trillion mark. Now we’re at $1.64 trillion.
But you can’t say you weren’t warned.
WHEELS TURNIN’ ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND: This former bank robber was just sworn in as a lawyer — by the same judge who once sent him to prison.
MEDIA VULT DECIPI: Will Hurd: ‘Media Was Lied To’ About FISA Abuse, Steele Dossier. Ergo decipiuntur. “Tapper said he agreed with Hurd’s assessment, though CNN has been at the forefront of defending the Steele dossier and the FBI’s use of the document to spy on Page.”
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE, THE NEW YORK TIMES? Newsweek Parrots the Mullahs’ Line.
WHAT ENTITLEMENT LOOKS LIKE: Dems: Trump Reaching Out to Black Voters is “Voter Suppression.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. An apology to Carter Page.
After he was acquitted in a major fraud trial, former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan asked, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” The trial was ruinous for Donovan, personally and financially, and the question was a fair one. Donovan, however, at least received a trial. Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has never been given a fair hearing, let alone a trial, to clear his name. As the two political parties spin the results of a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, one matter remains unaddressed. Someone needs to apologize to Page.
I do not know Page and have had only one conversation with him that I can recall. Indeed, my only impression of him was shaped by the image, repeated in endless media segments, of a shady character who was at worst a Russian spy and at best a Russian stooge. Page became the face and focus for the justification of the Russia collusion investigation. His manifest guilt and sinister work in Moscow had to be accepted in order to combat those questioning the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians. In other words, his guilt had to be indisputable in order for the Russia collusion investigation to be, so to speak, unimpeachable.
Ultimately, special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy by Trump associates or the campaign with those Russians intervening in the election. However, Horowitz found that the FBI never had any real evidence against Page before beginning its investigation, codenamed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Soon after the investigation was opened, it became clear that Page had been wrongly accused and was, in fact, working for the CIA, not the Russians. Page himself later said he was working with the CIA, yet the media not only dismissed his claim but was very openly dismissive while portraying him as a bumbling fool.
Horowitz found that FBI investigators and lawyers had determined that the allegations involving Page fell short of a case for probable cause to open a secret warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those investigators were then told by the eventually fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to look at the Steele dossier, which was actually funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton campaign denied repeatedly that it funded the dossier but finally admitted doing so after being confronted by media with new information.
Despite warnings about the credibility of Steele and red flags over the unreliability of the dossier, Horowitz found that “FBI leadership” used the dossier to justify its application for a FISA warrant. Democratic members of Congress and a wide array of media outlets have long told the public that the dossier was just one part of the FISA application. That is false. Horowitz states that the dossier played the “central and essential role” in securing the secret surveillance of the Trump campaign, including four investigations with both electronic surveillance and undercover assets.
Early on, Horowitz found that an unnamed government agency, widely acknowledged to be the CIA, told the FBI that it was making a mistake about Page and that he was working for the agency as an “operational contact” in Moscow. Indeed, he was working as an asset for the CIA for years. While it was falsely reported that Page met with three suspicious individuals there, he had no contact with two of those individuals. More importantly, Page did the right thing and told American officials about being contacted by the third person, because he felt they should know.
It gets even worse.
I love how the CIA is hanging the FBI out to dry here. But the FBI will have an incentive to point out John Brennan’s involvement.
ON THIS DAY IN 1899, Noël Coward was born. My favorite Coward quote: “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
MAYBE THEY SHOULD GET THEIR OWN PEOPLE ON BOARD FIRST: Top Democrats Make Case for Republicans to Endorse Trump Impeachment.
TO BE FAIR, IF THEY WERE WISER, THEY’D SEE A LOT OF THINGS: “If the Democratic members of Congress were wiser, they’d see the tsunami coming.”
I HOPE WE LOADED ‘EM UP WITH DISINFORMATION BEFORE WE DID: U.S. Secretly Expelled Chinese Officials Suspected of Spying After Breach of Military Base.
REMINDER: Donald Trump was elected to break the elite. Of course they want to impeach him. “Trump’s supporters have known since election night that this day would eventually come. After all, his sworn enemies have been openly promising it since before he was sworn into office! They’ve used words like ‘resistance,’ ‘coup,’ ‘insurance policy,’ and ‘impeachment’ so often that, now that they are actually doing it, the American people — and Republicans especially — are offering a collective yawn.”
IN THE EMAIL FROM ANNA FERREIRA: Christmas at Blackheath.
Agnes Rawlins would never dream of showing a melancholy face to her brother’s guests. She may be a spinster, and treated little better than any common housekeeper, but she is responsible for bringing Christmas cheer into the dark and rambling Blackheath Manor, and she does not shirk her duty, even when she has little reason to celebrate.
William Marlowe, Viscount Claridge, has reluctantly accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas season at Blackheath. It’s not his first choice- how anyone could wish to spend time in the gloomy manor house is beyond him- but when he meets the kind and gentle lady of the house, he find that Christmas at Blackheath might not be so bad after all. (A clean Regency romance.)
FREEING UP SPACE EXPLORATION WOULD BE THE BEST WAY TO INCREASE SPACE EXPLORATION: The Constitution and Regulating Outer Space.
IT’S A GOOD SIGN: Why more and more young Americans are becoming entrepreneurs.