Monday, March 12, 2018


Pardoned Sailor Thanks Trump, Turns Around And Blasts Hillary, Obama And The DOJ

The recently pardoned former sailor prosecuted for taking photos of classified areas of a nuclear submarine is now speaking out about what he feels is a “double standard of justice” in America based on political affiliation.

Appearing Friday night on Fox News Channel’s “Watters’ World,” Kristian Saucier agreed with host Jesse Watters’ assertion that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to communicate sensitive information was a more serious offense than his — and one for which she was not prosecuted.

Saucier, who learned of his pardon by President Donald Trump earlier this week, is still under house arrest after serving a year behind bars.

In addition to his own example, he cited former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of an ongoing probe into Russia’s alleged influence in the 2016 presidential election, as evidence of the supposed bias.

“I think it’s blatant proof of the double standard of justice in this country and how the FBI and the Department of Justice were weaponized under the Obama administration to go after conservatives like myself and Gen. Flynn while letting unpatriotic liberals like Hillary Clinton and her aides skate,” Saucier said.

Speaking to Watters remotely due to the restrictions of his sentence, the former submariner said it was “very upsetting” to him and “should be upsetting for all American people that we are held to a different standard than crooked politicians.”

Saucier went on to criticize former FBI Director James Comey, who recommended in 2016 against prosecuting the Democratic presidential nominee.

At the time, Comey said that although investigators found “evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information,” his conclusion was that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

He went on to say that in “looking back at our investigations into the mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

Saucier said he saw things differently.

“I watched all of those speeches that Comey gave and it was while I was in my legal battles and I said, ‘Well, I know a prosecutor who would bring a charge against somebody for far lesser,'” he said.

While Comey determined there was no evidence Clinton acted with criminal intent, Saucier said that was not a factor in his case.

“There was never any argument that I had nefarious intent or I had intent to cause national harm,” he said. “That’s not a requirement for the law that they prosecuted me under, so it’s not the requirement for Hillary Clinton.”

If “gross negligence” is a sufficient standard for his own case, he concluded that it should suffice for the former secretary of state.

“I basically possessed classified images on an unsecured device — my cell phone — and that was breaking the law by unlawful retention of national defense information, which is exactly what Hillary Clinton did on a much larger scale with much more secure information,” Saucier said. “And nothing happened to her.”

SOURCE

*****************************
 
Even Bernie Sanders Is Fed Up with CNN, Sends Aggressive Message Right to Their Face

You know you’ve gone too far when even Sen. Bernie Sanders thinks you’re over the top. During a surprising moment of clarity on Friday, the 76-year-old senator and socialist took a shot at CNN — and even we have to admit that he has a point.

While being interviewed during a session with journalist Jake Tapper at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, the aging leftist called out the mainstream media for obsessing over largely irrelevant stories and tabloid controversies.

“Let me bring something up,” Tapper said, trying to steer the conversation after the interview was underway.

“Stormy Daniels,” Sanders jumped in.

Jake Tapper seemed surprised that Bernie brought up the adult film star who has claimed that she received “hush money” from Donald Trump over an alleged affair from over a decade ago.

“You keep bringing her name up,” Tapper prompted, according to the Washington Examiner. “Not as much as CNN does,” Bernie hit back.

Sanders then scolded CNN for its seemingly constant coverage of the Stormy Daniels “scandal,” when there were far more important issues facing the country.

“In this country, we have a lot of people who are in pain — single mothers, people who can’t afford college — they want to see something that reflects their reality,” Sanders declared.

The Vermont senator and former presidential candidate made it clear that he was no fan of Donald Trump, but pointed out that constantly pretending that Trump supporters were unhinged, racist radicals wasn’t doing the left any favors.

“Our job is to talk to people respectfully,” Sanders lectured CNN. “Not most (Trump supporters) are racist, sexist or xenophobes. They are hurting and want change — change to the middle class and not the 1 percent,” he pointed out. “Everyone in this room has to participate.”

This may be a once-in-a-lifetime moment, so brace yourself: Bernie Sanders is right.

His socialist philosophy and grasp of basic economics are dead wrong, but when it comes to admonishing the mainstream media for their obsession with non-stories and acting as if Trump voters are insane, he’s right on the money.

We saw time and again that outlets like CNN and MSNBC have receded into an echo chamber, increasingly detached from reality and the rest of the country.

Take their hysteria over Trump’s alleged “s—hole” comment, for instance: Almost every normal American uses such language once in a while, but CNN talking heads including Don Lemon blew a gasket pretending that it was the most appalling phrase they’d ever heard.

Amazingly, Sanders seems to understand something that even media “experts” fail to grasp: Donald Trump won the presidency not by luck, but because he spoke to a large swath of the public who felt abandoned, ignored and forgotten.

The issues that Bernie and conservatives believe are the most important may vary dramatically — thank goodness for that — but his call for the media to start covering real stories is appropriate. CNN may hate being called “fake news,” but it’s a label their own coverage helped create.

SOURCE

*******************************

Bob Woodward: Many reporters have 'become emotionally unhinged' covering Trump

Veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward says some journalists have "become emotionally unhinged" while covering President Trump, urging them to keep their personal politics out of their work.

“A number of reporters have at times become emotionally unhinged about it all, one way or the other,” Woodward told Newsweek in an interview published Thursday, citing cable news networks Fox News and MSNBC as examples.

“You will see those continually either denigrating Trump or praising him,” he added. “I think the answer is in the middle … it’s important to get your personal politics out.”

Reporting from Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal eventually led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974.

This isn't the first time the 74-year-old legend has appealed directly to reporters to keep personal feelings out of their work.

"We need to calm it down and listen more," he told The Atlantic in March 2017. "Be on the surface respectful, but never stop the inquiry.”

"I worry, I worry for the business, for the perception of the business, not just Trump supporters, they see that smugness … I think you can ride both horses, intensive inquiry, investigation, not letting up … at the same time, realize that it's not our job to do an editorial on this," Woodward also told Axios last year.

SOURCE

********************************

Black Man Blows the Lid Off the Real Reason the Left Keeps Calling Trump Racist

For the eight years of the Barack Obama presidency, the mainstream media played along while liberals accused vast swaths of America of “racism” for declining to go along with the myth that American institutions were built to oppress blacks.

But Shelby Steele, a black man and respected conservative author, just published a message that all Americans need to hear — especially after the social justice warriors, Black Lives Matter marchers, and “woke” racial rioters unleashed during the Obama era.

And it explains everything about why the lies the media and the American left keep telling about President Donald Trump won’t really work.

“Our new conservative president rolls his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all — liberal and conservative alike — know that he isn’t one,” Steele wrote this week in The Wall Street Journal. “The jig is up.”

That’s the heart of the matter. Not even liberals really believe their own lies anymore about Trump or Republicans in general — if they ever did.

Steele’s essay is headlined “The Exhaustion of American Liberalism.” In just under 1,000 words, it describes why the left continues to bang the “racism” drum when it comes to critics

“America, since the ’60s, has lived through what might be called an age of white guilt,” Steele wrote. “We may still be in this age, but the Trump election suggests an exhaustion with the idea of white guilt, and with the drama of culpability, innocence and correctness in which it mires us …

“White guilt is a mock guilt, a pretense of real guilt, a shallow etiquette of empathy, pity and regret.”

And it was in large part a reaction to that “mock guilt” that led to the election of Barack Obama, one of the most manifestly ill-equipped men ever to hold the nation’s highest office.

For the Democrat political machine, of course, Obama was just another horse to ride on the path to power.

But for many white Americans, the Obama candidacy was a chance to finally absolve themselves and the country of the “original sin” of slavery and racism. So they took a chance on a guy they never heard of, steeped in the corruption of Chicago Democrat politics, and hoped for the best.

That ended in disaster and scandal — an economy in the toilet, record numbers of Americans on food stamps at home, the rise of dictators abroad with contempt for the United States. And all Democrats offered was more of the same in the candidacy of the hate-mongering Hillary Clinton.

So Americans turned to the alternative in one of the greatest upsets in the country’s political history.

The left started accusing Trump of “racism” long before his victory in November 2016, and it’s only intensified since then.

But as Steele points out, liberals are fighting in a battle that passed a half-century ago. The country has changed, and Americans know it.

Democrats and the “progressive” left love to describe conservative resistance to Obama as “racism.” But resistance to suicidal domestic plans (Obamacare, normalizing “transgender” mental disorders) and humiliating appeasement in foreign policy (the Iran nuclear deal) isn’t racism, and even liberals know it.

But they don’t know any other way to fight. As Steele writes:

“Today’s liberalism is an anachronism. It has no understanding, really, of what poverty is and how it has to be overcome. It has no grip whatever on what American exceptionalism is and what it means at home and especially abroad. Instead it remains defined by an America of 1965 — an America newly opening itself to its sins, an America of genuine goodwill, yet lacking in self-knowledge.”

Thanks in part to justifiable and welcome progress the country has made in racial equality, America isn’t lacking that self-knowledge anymore.

Steele’s op-ed blew the lid off the real reason Democrats call Trump and his supporters “racists.” It’s a game they’ve played for 50 years now, and it’s a game they’ve won doing it.

But Trump’s election changed that. And, as Steele put it, “the jig is up.”

SOURCE

*****************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCHPOLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************


No comments: