Democrats beginning to face their own stupidity

Because they control the House only, they will get nothing enacted unless they do deals but they have shown no willingness to do so.  With a typically Leftist belief in magic, they seem to think that their House bills will somehow fly into law, bypassing the Senate and President.

It's the same as their apparent belief that if you turn off all the coal-driven power stations, the sun will suddenly start shining day and night and the wind will suddenly start blowing 24/7.  Their indifference to reality is profound. They live in a childish make-believe world


House Democrats are eager to boast about all they’re doing with their new majority. The only problem? Most of it’s headed for Mitch McConnell’s dustbin.

From a sweeping health care package to ambitious proposals on gun safety, climate change and voting reforms, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her sprawling class of freshmen are quickly following through on the campaign promises that won them the House. But after they pass their proposals, that’s as far as they’ll go — a frustrating dynamic that lawmakers grudgingly acknowledge.

“I’m not sure that anything we do is going to reach the floor of the Senate,” said House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). “That’s the reality.”

McConnell (R-Ky.), faced with his own reelection and defending a tough GOP map in 2020, has no incentive to work with House Democrats on their domestic agenda.

A Senate blockade will deny Democrats tangible wins to tout on the campaign trail, while keeping vulnerable Senate GOP incumbents from having to take difficult votes. Republicans also are intent on shielding President Donald Trump from potentially awkward veto fights on legislation that polls well.

As Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) put it: “We are the firewall.”

“Most of that stuff is really easy for Republicans in the Senate to message against,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “We think a lot of the ideas over there are crazy. I don’t see many of our folks who have much problem messaging against most of what their agenda’s going to consist of.”

Gridlock in divided government is a longstanding Washington tradition, with the fast-moving House frequently stymied by the Senate. It’s not all bad for Democrats, who can help lay the groundwork for Democrats’ 2020 agenda and show voters what the party can do if it sweeps into power in the next election.

But it’s the latest reality check for House Democrats, who assumed power amid the longest government shutdown in history and saw their agenda frozen for weeks until a deadlock over Trump’s border wall was resolved.

When Pelosi and her deputies were finally able to turn to their big-ticket items, including passing a gun background checks bill and a sprawling anti-corruption package, they were overshadowed by caucus infighting and procedural stumbles.

Now Democrats — particularly the 60-plus freshmen — are encountering a new reality: It doesn’t matter what they do as long as Republicans control both the Senate and the White House.

“Right now, we are not doing anything — House and the Senate combined,” said freshman Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.). “I am frustrated that Mitch McConnell is a coward. Unwilling, unable to put legislation on the floor.”

Senate Democrats know this dynamic all too well, having seen McConnell stifle President Barack Obama’s agenda, not to mention his Supreme Court nominee in 2016. “He’s going to give it the Merrick Garland treatment,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of House Democrats’ agenda.

McConnell isn’t entirely unwilling to put liberal proposals on the floor, at least when he senses a political benefit. With the Democrats’ divided over the Green New Deal, McConnell put the measure up for a vote last week only to see 43 Democrats vote present — an awkward result for a blueprint endorsed by many Senate Democrats running for president.

Senate Republicans could also push for votes on “Medicare for All” or keeping the Supreme Court at nine justices to try and divide Democrats. Democrats say privately that the strategy of voting present is now viewed as the best way to deal with “gotcha” votes from McConnell.

But when it comes to the sweeping ethics and election reforms of HR 1 or other major progressive proposals, Democrats’ have little hope of getting Senate Republicans even on the record. That leaves relatively small-bore legislation as perhaps the only option for success in divided government, but there hasn’t been much focus on infrastructure improvements or other bipartisan ideas in either chamber.

Pelosi aides argue public pressure could force McConnell to act on bills passed by the House. “Public support for the For The People agenda was critical to our victory in November and it will be key to removing any obstacle in our way, including a Republican Senate,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

Some House Democrats’ frustration is focused not on McConnell but within their own caucus. “It’s time to move off the talking points and on to legislating,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, a moderate Democrat who hasn’t been shy about criticizing his party’s leadership. “I haven’t heard about anything that deals with the economy or some of the other issues.”

Schrader noted he and other members of the center-left Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter to Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in January, urging them to prioritize passing a transportation bill.

“I assume this is just playing to the left wing of our base and that we’ll move on to the infrastructure, prescription drugs,” Schrader added of the current agenda.

Other moderates are also hopeful leadership will soon move past what they see as pie-in-the-sky messaging bills.

“I wouldn’t call it frustration. I would call it anticipation,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “I’m very hopeful that on both transportation and infrastructure, and on health care costs, we might be moving into that phase.”

House Democrats have held multiple hearings on infrastructure and prescription drugs, a precursor, aides argue, to bringing legislation to the floor later this year.

Pelosi’s staff is in the early stages of talks with the White House and senior Senate Republicans on a potential prescription drug package. But even infrastructure — an idea that at its broadest unites Democrats, Republicans and Trump — comes with its own hurdles.

House Democrats are expected to pivot to their infrastructure package in late spring or early summer. But, as in past years, finding a long-term solution for highway and other transit investments will be difficult. Lawmakers have resisted raising the gas tax for 25 years.

In the meantime, House Democrats are about to see a repeat dynamic from eight years ago, when emboldened Republicans took the House majority and sent then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dozens of conservative bills. Reid let virtually all of them languish.

“When you’re in the House, you’re consumed” with your agenda, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a former House member. Then “you look at the papers ... and you go: 'No one’s talking about what we’re working on.' Because everyone knows it’s not going anywhere.”

Perhaps the best result for Democrats would be that inaction on their legislation puts pressure on GOP Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Susan Collins of Maine or Martha McSally of Arizona to break with McConnell and demand votes on campaign-finance reform or environmental bills. While a long shot, that would at least make the point that even if Democrats beat Trump, they need to capture the Senate as well.

“If all they do under McConnell’s leadership is block everything in a presidential turnout year, I think they really risk losing some of their seats like Maine, like Colorado, like Arizona,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “If they want to keep control of the U.S. Senate, they better deliver something.”

SOURCE 

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Embarrassing: Rachel Maddow Lies About Mueller Report as MSNBC Chyron Tells MSNBC Viewers the Truth

In a letter to lawmakers last Friday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr effectively destroyed all of the Democrats' talking points about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's soon-to-be released report into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he chastised Democrats -- like Rachel Maddow -- who willfully mischaracterized his summary of principal conclusions.

Many Democrats in Congress and in the media spent much of last week darkly hinting that the attorney general was engaging in some kind of cover-up to protect the president.

In his letter, Barr put their conspiracy theories to bed, explaining that "the Special Counsel is assisting us" in the process of making redactions that are necessary by law, such as "potentially compromising sensitive sources and methods," "material that could affect other ongoing matters," and "information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties."

The attorney general also stated that because the president was not asserting executive privilege, the White House will not even be afforded a "privileged review" of his report before it is released.

On her show Friday night, Maddow demonstrated that she either didn't read Barr's letter, or she refused to accept its contents because she continued to mischaracterize the process by which Mueller's "confidential report" was being made accessible to the public. Unfortunately for her, the person handling MSNBC's chyron Friday night did read the report, so it contradicted her false talking points in real time.

"It's hard to believe that they'd leave the newly appointed Attorney General William Barr to himself to personally pick through the report to try to figure out which mentions in this 400-page report might pertain to an open case," she declared. "They wouldn't leave that to Barr to do that. Mueller would have done that!" Maddow exclaimed as the MSNBC chyron informed viewers that Mueller actually was "assisting with redactions."

"Mueller's team would have done that as part of producing anything that they handed over outside their own offices," Maddow continued. "They've done that with every other document they have produced in the course of this investigation. You'd assume they'd be able to do that for this document too. But William Barr says, [exaggerated sigh] it's taking him a really long time because he's having to do all that himself."

"Barr: Special Counsel Is Assisting with Redactions," the MSNBC chyron meanwhile informed viewers.

Barr on Friday announced that he would be able to release a redacted copy of the report by mid-April -- which is not what most people would consider "a really long time."

SOURCE 

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The Democrats' Voting-Rights-for-Teenagers Scam
   
By Candace Owens

An overwhelming majority of Americans know that lowering the voting age to 16 years old is a very bad idea. Nonetheless, a majority of Democrats are convinced that they know better than the rest of us.

Earlier this month, 125 House Democrats voted in favor of the initiative, backing a failed proposal that would have severely weakened the integrity of our democratic election system. The measure was defeated, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently attempted to keep the idea alive, arguing that she supports giving high school sophomores the right to vote in national elections.

“I myself, personally, I’m not speaking for my caucus, I myself have always been for lowering the voting age to 16,” the lawmaker said. “I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school when they’re interested in all of this when they’re learning about government to be able to vote."

Even some of the most prominent Democrat candidates for president in 2020 — including Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar — are jumping on the bandwagon, publicly announcing that they are open to the idea of lowering the voting age to 16.

Pelosi’s Democratic Party colleagues may share her views on the matter, but the American people most definitely don’t — one recent poll found that 74 percent of likely voters oppose lowering the voting age, with just 17 percent endorsing the idea.

To a large extent, that result simply reflects common sense. As a society, we’ve decided it’s in our best interest not to entrust 16-year-olds with a variety of privileges, such as getting married or watching R-rated movies. We don’t even give 16-year-olds full driving privileges — every single state imposes some sort of restriction on young drivers until they reach a certain age or amass a certain amount of driving experience.

There are also compelling scientific reasons to keep the voting age where it is. As we improve our understanding of childhood development and the brains of teenagers, it becomes increasingly clear that 16-year-olds simply lack the maturity, mental capacity, and decision-making skills to be thoughtful and informed voters.

According to a 2008 report from the University of California-Berkeley, most teenagers aren’t capable of processing information or controlling impulses in the same way as adults — a factor that largely explains the high crime rates among adolescents.

"For many teens, the output of their underdeveloped decision processing centers may be as mild as choosing a bag of cheese puffs for lunch or a new purple hairdo,” the report explains. “But some youngsters take bigger risks — such as stealing a car or trying drugs. More 17-year-olds commit crimes than any other age group, according to recent studies by psychiatrists."

More recently, scientists have claimed that the human brain may not reach full maturity until around age 30, suggesting that it would make more sense to consider raising the voting age than lowering it.

Besides, even if teenagers were capable of rational decision-making, they would still lack the life experience necessary to make fully-informed decisions. With extremely few exceptions, teenagers have never paid bills or taxes, or even worked a non-seasonal full-time job, detaching them from some of the most hotly debated policy issues in American politics.

Of course, the very qualities that cause nearly three-quarters of Americans to recoil from the idea of letting 16-year-olds vote are also what make them so attractive to Democrats. Someone who has never paid taxes, after all, probably won’t be very motivated to vote against tax increases, just as someone whose only experience in the workforce comes from part-time jobs probably won’t see any harm in raising the minimum wage.

The lack of impulse control plays right into the Democrats’ hands, too. Impulsivity is key to many of their flagship policy proposals, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. That’s because support for such measures invariably collapses once people look beyond tag-lines such as "free healthcare” and “save the planet” to consider the trillions upon trillions of dollars in new taxes and severe restrictions on individual liberty that those policies would entail.

Lowering the voting age is just a ploy by the Democratic Party to change the electoral system to favor them in 2020 so that they can avoid a repetition of their embarrassing defeat in 2016. Fortunately, the American people saw through this trick from the start.

SOURCE 

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Denying American Greatness
   
Everything that is wrong with the political left was on full display on MSNBC earlier this week. That’s generally the case just about every night on MSNBC.

But it was particularly outrageous Wednesday night when former Attorney General Eric Holder was asked about Trump’s slogan, “Make America great again.” Holder replied:

“When I hear these things about ‘Let’s make America great again,’ I think to myself: ‘Exactly when did you think America was great?’”

Of course, Holder’s rhetorical question was just his way of saying, “America has never been great.” Whatever period of time or example you might offer, Holder is ready to tell you why you’re wrong and where we fell short.

This is the left’s mantra. They deny America’s greatness by comparing it to some utopia that doesn’t exist and never did. If leftists like Holder think there’s a better country out there, I’m willing to pay for a first class one-way plane ticket!

In fact, I think we could break records with a GoFundMe page offering one-way tickets to any liberal’s workers paradise of their choice. Cuba, Venezuela, China – wherever they think the grass is greener, I’m willing to help them get there.

The truth is that America IS great compared to the other countries of the world, and I am willing to debate that with any one at any time.

After hearing about Holder’s remarks, Vice President Mike Pence gave Holder a brief history lesson, which he apparently never got in school. Pence posted four iconic pictures of American greatness on Twitter:

Washington crossing the Delaware River
American GIs raising the flag over Iwo Jima
Buzz Aldrin posing with the flag on the moon, and
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking on the National Mall.

Sadly, I suspect Holder will still fail the final exam.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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Fed-Up Constituents Beginning To Turn on AOC: ‘You Are Not a Princess’

Democratic freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rapid rise to prominence would be considered by many as uneven, at best.

Her “Green New Deal” was a failure when it reached the Senate, she has quickly amassed ethics complaints and has even feuded with her own party.

Despite it all, Ocasio-Cortez still seems to be a media darling and is often treated as something like a rock star by the establishment media.

That is not sitting well with her constituents.

As The Washington Times reports, some of the voters who elected Ocasio-Cortez to be their representative don’t feel particularly well-represented and are turning against her.

“I see her on TV a lot but not in the neighborhood,” waitress Barbara Nosel told The Times. “You are supposed to come to the people without the media. You are one of us. You worked in a bar. You are not a princess.”

Despite her foibles, the 29-year-old congresswoman still has supporters in her 14th Congressional District, though even her backers are not particularly enamored with her style and seem to be turning against her to a degree.

“I admire her oomph. She’s Puerto Rican. She’s fighting for middle America,” Iris Acosta, a retired teacher, told The Times. “I just don’t like her being too fast, in your face. Go a little slower, and she could do a lot.”

Others think that her lack of experience should dampen her rapid ascent to stardom.

“People are billing her as a superstar. I think she doesn’t have enough experience,” lawyer Manuel Fabian, a registered Democrat, told The Times. Fabian also expressed doubts about America’s willingness to become a full-blown socialist country.

“The Green New Deal looks good on paper, but I’m reluctant to give the government so much power, and I don’t think this country is ready to embrace a socialist platform and I don’t think we ever will be,” Fabian added. “But I’m willing to give her a chance. She’s got to learn the ropes.”

Political science professor Michael Miller said he believes that the spotlight may be too bright, too soon for Ocasio-Cortez.

“Most members of Congress toil in relative obscurity, so voters may never learn that the member has done something disagreeable. But with the spotlight on her and every action scrutinized, of course, it is more likely that the typical voter finds something to nitpick,” Miller said.

The trepidation and concerns over Ocasio-Cortez from her own constituents falls in line with a broader trend of voters not being thrilled with her. A national poll released by Quinnipiac University on Thursday found the freshman congresswoman decidedly polarizing.

“All is definitely not A-OK for AOC. Most voters either don’t like the firebrand freshman Congresswoman or don’t know who she is,” Tim Malloy, associate director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said. Ocasio-Cortez will be up for re-election in 2020. Time will tell whether her constituents vote her back in.

SOURCE 

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GOP Shifting Focus After Mueller Probe, Eyeing Obama Officials

About time

If some Capitol Hill Republicans have their way, key members of former President Barack Obama’s administration will get a taste of the same kind of scrutiny to which special counsel Robert Mueller subjected President Donald Trump.

“What did President Obama know and when? How did this hoax go on for so long unabated?” Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul tweeted Wednesday.

“We need every ounce of information about the people at the very top of our intelligence community that were promoting the inclusion of this fake dossier,” Paul said, according to The Hill, specifically citing former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for their roles in launching the initial investigation of the Trump campaign.

“A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report… Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP,” Paul tweeted.

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Earlier this week, Attorney General William Barr announced that Mueller’s investigation, which lasted 22 months, found no collusion between Trump and Russia.

Republicans say the nation needs to know what went on during the final weeks of the Obama administration to launch an investigation with such a shaky foundation.

“I’m going to get answers to this,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said, Politico reported. “If no one else cares, it seems that Republicans do. Because if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be front page news all over the world. The double standard here has been striking and quite frankly disappointing.”

He said he would focus upon how and why unverified information was used to launch investigations of Trump.

Graham said a full investigation is needed to determine “whether those who believed that the FBI and the Department of Justice were playing politics, that they wanted (2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary) Clinton to win and Trump to lose, that somebody can satisfy them. By any reasonable standard, Mr. Mueller thoroughly investigated the Trump campaign. You cannot say that about the other side of the story.”

 Lindsey Graham with Neil Cavuto suggested something's wrong with a system allowing the orchestration of spygate against Trump.

I shake my head because Graham knows as well as everyone else that this had been orchestrated from the top starting with former President Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has given his blessing to Graham’s efforts to investigate potential misconduct during the Obama administration.

“I think it’s not inappropriate for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over the Justice Department to investigate possible misbehavior,” the Kentucky Republican said, according to The Hill.

McConnell noted that the Democrat-controlled House has organized a multitude of investigations of Trump.

“The House is not going to miss an opportunity in … the coming months to look at what they perceive to be things that require oversight. The Senate is involved in the oversight business just like the House is,” he said.

Former FBI Director James Comey is likely to find himself under fresh scrutiny, said Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

“I think Director Comey is probably near the top. He’s the one who said that his intention of leaking memos of his conversation was designed to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. It just strikes me as some vindictiveness and animus toward the president motivating a lot of the action,” Cornyn said.

Some answers also might come to light through the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

“President Obama’s top spy chiefs appear to have been ringleaders in the illicit effort to overthrow President Trump,” the group said in a statement on its website.

“Now we want to know the details of their connections to the network. We have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking records of communications between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN around the time the Clinton-Democrat National Committee anti-Trump dossier was being pitched to key media outlets,” it said.

SOURCE 

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Trump Abruptly Cuts Direct Aid to 3 Central American Countries

The Trump administration says it is cutting direct U.S. aid to three Central American countries. The State Department said in a statement that it will suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Trump has made slowing immigration from those countries through Mexico a bedrock issue of his presidency.

The announcement comes as Trump threatens to shut down the U.S. border with Mexico overall over immigration.

Trump says he is likely to shut down America’s southern border next week unless Mexican authorities immediately halt all illegal immigration. Such a severe move could hit the economies of both countries, but the president emphasized, “I am not kidding around.”

Trump says that “could mean all trade” with Mexico. Trump has been promising for more than two years to build a long, impenetrable wall along the border to stop illegal immigration, though Congress has been reluctant to provide the money he needs.

In the meantime, he has repeatedly threatened to close the border.

But this time, with a new surge of migrants heading north, he gave a definite timetable.

SOURCE 

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Trump Admin. To Quadruple Number of Asylum Seekers Sent Back to Other Side Of Border

Border enforcement officials intend to quadruple the number of daily asylum applicants who are sent back to the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

As part of its multi-faceted attempt to clamp down on the massive amount of illegal immigration taking place at the southern border, the U.S. government plans to increase the number of asylum applicants who are pushed back into Mexico as they await their claims in court, according to a Trump administration official who spoke with the Associated Press.

There are roughly 60 asylum seekers a day who are sent back to Mexico at the El Paso, Calexico and San Ysidro ports of entry.

These individuals are permitted to return to the U.S. for their court dates, but with a backlog of more than 700,000 immigration cases, they may wait years for their cases to progress through the system.

Numerous immigration hardliners — including President Donald Trump — argue that many migrants are lodging bogus asylum claims as a means to enter the U.S.

“You have people coming, you know they’re all met by the lawyers … And they come out, and they’re met by the lawyers, and they say, ‘Say the following phrase: I am very afraid for my life. I am afraid for my life.’ OK,” the president said during a speech in Michigan on Thursday.

“And then I look at the guy. He looks like he just got out of the ring. He’s a heavyweight champion of the world. It’s a big fat con job.”

Immigration officials aim to return as many as 300 migrants a day by the end the week. However, the plan as so far been slow to develop.

In San Ysidro, for example, the Mexican government has been willing to take in up to 120 asylum seekers a week, but the U.S. has sent back only 40 per week during the first six weeks.

The entire effort is part of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which does not apply to Mexican nationals or children.

The plans come as the Trump administration has embarked on several different initiatives to curb illegal immigration.

Trump declared a national emergency, allowing him to allocate billions more in funding for a wall construction at the southern border.

The State Department on Saturday announced it will work to withhold around $700 million in financial aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for — as Trump argues — failing to stem the flow of illegal immigrants leaving their counties.

Trump has also warned he prepared to shut the U.S.-Mexico border down completely.

SOURCE 

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Trump Calls for Stripping Washington Post, NYT of Pulitzer Prize for Russian Collusion Reporting

President Donald Trump on Friday called on The Washington Post and The New York Times to be stripped of Pulitzer Prizes that the newspapers received last year for reporting on Russiagate.

The Post and The Times shared the 2018 Pulitzer for a series of reports on developments in the Russia investigation.

Many of the core allegations in the reports were undercut with the recent revelation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not find collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller wrote in his 400-page report, according to Attorney General William Barr.

According to Barr, Mueller also did not establish “that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate” conspired or “knowingly coordinated” with Russian efforts to use social media platforms to spread disinformation during the 2016 campaign or to hack Democrats’ emails and disseminate them online.

On Sunday, after Barr released the summary of Mueller’s findings, Donald Trump Jr. also blasted The Post and Times over their award-winning reports.

In announcing the awards in April 2018, the Pulitzer committee praised the Post and Times’ Russia reporting.

“For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration,” the committee said.

None of the 20 stories cited by the Pulitzer committee have come under particular scrutiny, but most furthered the narrative of collusion between the Trump team and Russia.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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This has been the best week of Donald Trump’s political life

If anyone has a reason to smile right now, it’s Donald Trump. The US leader just had one of the best weeks of his life — and it could change everything.

Dark clouds that have been hanging over the US President’s head for years were destroyed in just a couple of days.

Now, Mr Trump is effectively untouchable. Chances of impeaching him before the next election are pretty much at zero, and at the same time, the Pentagon has thrown a wad of fresh cash at his border wall.

Here’s what’s gone down this week.

MUELLER REPORT RULES IN TRUMP’S FAVOUR

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For almost two years, the biggest threat to the President’s administration has been a special counsel investigation into whether he colluded with Russia to influence the results of the federal election.

For many Democrats, impeaching the President rested on the results of this report. If he was found guilty, there may have been enough grounds to begin the impeachment process. Without that, not so much.

“The special counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or co-ordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Attorney-General William Barr wrote to Congress about the report.

This means the possibility of impeaching Mr Trump is now highly unlikely.

“In terms of the political consequences, the possibility of impeachment is at near zero,” Dr David Smith from the United States Studies Centre told news.com.au earlier this week. “Nancy Pelosi already said she wasn’t keen on impeachment unless there was bipartisan consensus. This makes it impossible for there to be any bipartisan consensus.”

While the President faces a separate legal investigation into hush money payments, this is unlikely to play out until he’s left office.

Democrats are still pushing for the actual Mueller report to be made public — particularly in light of Mr Barr’s letter noting that the report “does not exonerate” the President.

They are hoping the report can provide insight into how the investigation was conducted, and potentially pinpoint any evidence of obstructing justice on Mr Trump’s part.

But regardless, the verdict won’t change — and that’s very much a reason for the billionaire to celebrate.

STORMY DANIELS’ LAWYER ARRESTED

So, back to those hush money payments. Porn star Stormy Daniels alleged that she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006.

In January last year, it was revealed that Mr Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen had paid Daniels $US130,000 one month before the US election to keep her from discussing the alleged affair.

Last August, Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including a campaign finance violation, for his role in the transaction. It formed part of his three-year prison sentence.

Mr Trump has consistently denied that he ever personally directed Mr Cohen to make the payments — a move that would constitute an impeachable offence.

While it hasn’t been proved whether Mr Trump did direct Mr Cohen to do so, it hasn’t been great for the President’s reputation.

So it came as good news to him this week that Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has been charged with extortion and fraud.

Avenatti is facing up to 50 years in jail after he was charged with wire fraud, bank fraud and attempting to extort more than $US20 million ($A28 million) from Nike Inc.

The arrest came just one day after the Mueller announcement. US lawyer Nick Hanna said the timing of the two incidents was not related.

His charges would seem especially sweet to Mr Trump because the lawyer’s fame came from the affair.

He gained a huge Twitter presence, appeared at rallies, become a guest on late-night talk shows and was interviewed by US media networks like CNN and MSNBC dozens of times.

He also showed a willingness to match Mr Trump’s brash speaking style, matching the President insult for insult. He even once announced that he was considering a run for the Oval Office in 2020.

Avenatti was freed on $US300,000 bail and continues to deny the allegations. But that hasn’t stopped his opponents from making digs:

CONGRESS FAILS TO BLOCK NATIONAL EMERGENCY

Earlier this week, the US Congress failed in its attempt to block Donald Trump’s national emergency over the border wall.

The Democrat-controlled House tried to override the President’s first veto — which required two-thirds of the chamber’s support, or 290 votes — but ended with a total of 248 votes in favour versus 181 against, meaning it will not move to the Senate for consideration.

This all gives Mr Trump the power to move forward with one of the core issues of his presidential campaign: the border wall.

This was the core promise of Mr Trump’s campaign and he needs to fulfil it to keep his support base strong.

The outcome was expected, with Congress overriding a veto being a rare success. Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the vote wouldn’t be about getting enough votes, but about sending a message.

Still, the fight to get around Congress and secure more money for the border wall looks set to get easier for Mr Trump now.

PENTAGON GRANTS TRUMP $1B FOR BORDER WALL

At the beginning of the week, the Pentagon announced it had authorised the transfer of up to $US1 billion to build extra barriers along the US-Mexico border.

The shift in funds was justified under Mr Trump’s declaration of a national emergency.

The Democrats strongly objected to the move, with Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, issuing a letter that read: “We have serious concerns that the Department has allowed political interference and pet projects to come ahead of many near-term, critical readiness issues facing our military.”

But it didn’t matter. 91km of “pedestrian fencing” is now set to be constructed along stretches of the border in Arizona and Texas.

The Pentagon said the cash fund transfer would help “block drug-smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States in support of counter-narcotic activities of Federal law enforcement agencies”.

SOURCE 

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Epic projection:  Democrats accuse others of what they do

“This president is the first president in the modern history of our country who is trying to divide our people up based on the color of their skin, the country they were born in, their sexual orientation, their gender, their religion. And that is an outrage.”

That was Bernie Sanders, a Democrat candidate for president in 2020, at a CNN town hall event in late February. And as the Vermont Socialist explained, “our job is to bring our people together, not to divide them up.” This was not a new theme for Democrats.

In September of 2018 at the University of Illinois, POTUS 44  accused Trump and Republicans of knowingly dividing America by “appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us or don’t sound like us or don’t pray like we do.” As the previous president explained, “that’s an old playbook,” and he was right about that.

The greatest divider of modern times was Karl Marx, 1818-1883, author of Manifest der Kommunistischen Parte, the 1848 Communist Manifesto. Marx divided people into “bourgeois” and “proletariat.” In this class system, the bourgeoisie own the means of production, factories, business and so forth, which enable them to produce wealth. The proletariat are the workers, blinded by false consciousness from opiates such as religion. As Marx had it, the bourgeois capitalist bosses exploit the workers and this has been the model for the left ever since.

Feminists divide society into the classes of oppressive patriarchs exploiting women, who are all victims as a class. In this view, institutions such as marriage are prisons of patriarchy. In similar style, homosexual activists divide society into gay and straight people. In this view, the straight heterosexuals are defective “homophobic” oppressors, not partisans of different views on sexuality.

Racial theorists divide society into “people of color,” which implies people of no color. By some accounts, people of color dates from 1807 to designate anyone of any part African ancestry. The left currently deploys it to charge those pale skin shade, over which they had no choice, with “white privilege” that exploits the people of color. The Marxist exploitation model also divides society into a creditor class and a debtor class.

In this view, the privileged people of no color must pay reparations for slavery, abolished more than 150 years ago. Even the descendants of Union soldiers, and the people of no color who came to the USA after the Civil War, must now pay up.

This reparations demand is never applied to Cuba, where more than one million slaves landed, far more than the 388,000 in the United States, which has elected an African American president. Between 33 and 60 percent of Cubans have African ancestry but since the 1950s Cuba has been ruled by an all-white Stalinist dictatorship that holds many black political prisoners, put homosexuals into labor camps, and allowed no free elections.

Sanders charged that the president is dividing people by religion. The Democrat socialist is quiet about the Nation of Islam, which believes that the exploitive people of no color are the result of an experiment by a mad scientist named Yacub some 6,000 years ago. And in the NOI view, members of the Jewish religion are a satanic breed. This brand of hatred is obviously divisive but leading Democrats remain very chummy with NOI boss Louis Farrakhan, photographed with a smiling senator Barack Obama back in 2005.

Bernie Sanders also tags Trump for dividing people based on “the county they were born in.” Trump has no problem with Taiwan-born labor transportation secretary Elaine Chao. He does have a problem with people who break U.S. immigration laws and enter the United States illegally. Democrats want more of them, in their quest for an imported electoral college, and this further divides the country.

Bernie Sanders also believes that heath care is a right, which was the position of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where the socialist Democrat spent his honeymoon. The USSR’s Communist bosses maintained that health care was a substantive right, unlike merely formal, bourgeois rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and so forth.

So the presidential hopeful, who would have been the Democrats’ candidate in 2016 if Hillary Clinton had not rigged the process, is all-in on the socialist ideology. He’s basically an old Commie spouting the orthodoxies of the dreariest, most repressive regimes of modern times, perhaps of all time.

By implication, those who don’t agree with Bernie and the Democrats’ socialist Sanders Youth are dividing Americans, who seldom agree on politicians. The Nixon-Kennedy election of 1960, for example, was practically a dead heat.

When leftist politicians accuse others it is generally what they are up to themselves. Leftist Democrats such as Hillary Clinton divide the nation into the politically correct class and that basket of Islamophobic, homophobic, racist deplorables.

As POTUS 44 noted last year at the University of Illinois, the strategy of division is “as old as time. And in a healthy democracy, it doesn’t work.” It sure didn’t work for Hillary in 2016, so the Hawaii-born Harvard law alum, a composite character in his own Dreams from My Father novel, did get something right after all.

SOURCE 

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Jussie Smollet was great for Trump

I have said it before so I may as well say it again: No man in America has done more to help Donald Trump get elected in 2020, nor indeed done more to promote the fight for homophobia and white supremacy, than this self-indulgent, self-obsessed, delusional narcissist who was so utterly deranged as to think it was a good idea to do what he did and so utterly dumb to do it the way he did.

First, to the facts, as rare and irrelevant as they are these days: There is no question that Smollett arranged and paid for a racist and homophobic hate crime to be committed upon himself by persons he knew and paid to do it. We know this because the fake perpetrators confessed, the police had this and an overwhelming body of evidence, a grand jury indicted him and even the state’s attorney who inexplicably dropped the charges said the police were right.

Effectively the prosecutors just said “Yeah but nah” and let Smollett walk free, upon which he immediately proclaimed his absolute innocence — even though the very fools who let him walk free made clear the opposite was the case.

As a result this self-appointed black rights activist made liars of the black American police chief and the black police officers standing behind him, all of whom he had already tried to a make a fool of. He also incurred the righteous fury of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, best known for helping to elect the United States’ first black president.

All of these men are true heroes in the fight to advance African-Americans and Smollett shat all over them. But it’s even worse than that.

The key weapon in any racist’s arsenal, the white supremacist A-bomb, is that there is no racial disadvantage at all. That in fact all these claims of oppression and hate are coming from overprivileged douchebags who are trying to use this perception just to benefit themselves.

Most of the time this is rampant rubbish and it has no power when some skinhead or suit is just saying it because it’s obviously untrue. But get a clear-cut provable case of someone from the other side actually doing it and those bastards can hang their argument on it from here to kingdom come. To quote the great George Michael, who actually did do great things for gay people: “All we have to do now is take these lies and make them true somehow.”

And what did Smollett do? You guessed it. He took the lie and made it true.

This is the greatest free kick anyone anywhere could give any racist homo-hater and the state attorney’s office just ran up and planted it clean between the posts.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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It’s Not Collateral Damage To The Victims Of The Mueller Witch Hunt

Now that the Mueller investigation has cleared President Trump and demonstrated beyond any doubt that the entire affair was a hoax founded upon lies perpetrated by the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, Democrat political operatives and the Deep State political class embedded in the government, conservatives and other fair-minded Americans ought to demand that those whose lives and reputations have been shattered by this hoax be made whole.

We’re talking about those whom the establishment media and the vile instigators of the Trump – Russia collusion narrative have dismissed as “collateral damage” in the investigation.

Honest, hardworking patriotic men like Michael Caputo, who served in the Army, worked for conservative luminaries such as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and advised numerous Republican political candidates before signing-on to the Trump campaign.

Caputo was dragged through hell by the Mueller investigation and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence merely because he had lived in Ukraine and Russia and had done public relations and campaign work in those countries… and worked for Donald Trump.

Caputo was forced to liquidate his children’s college fund to pay his legal expenses for the “crime” of being associated with Donald Trump.

Likewise, longtime conservative pundit, bestselling author and media personality Jerome “Jerry” Corsi was threatened with what amounted to life in prison and mired in untold thousands of dollars of legal fees for the “crime” of exchanging email with Roger Stone and correctly predicting the Wikileaks dumps on Podesta and the DNC and trying get in touch with Julian Assange to confirm his hypotheses.

Corsi was never charged with any crime, although special counsel Robert Mueller's team offered Corsi a proposed plea agreement, which would have required him to admit to one criminal charge with two components: lying to investigators and obstruction of justice before congressional or grand jury proceedings.

Corsi refused to sign the plea deal. He then released drafts of his plea agreement and indictment, went on a media tour slamming Mueller's team and published a book detailing his experiences with the special counsel.

Corsi accused Mueller's team of trying to push him to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit.

"I went in there to cooperate with them. They treated me as a criminal," Corsi told CNN. In the end, Mueller concluded his investigation without ever bringing charges against Dr. Corsi.

But there are others who didn’t fare quite so well as Dr. Corsi, especially Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos.

Papdopoulos, the young energy policy expert and volunteer Trump advisor who was set-up by the Obama administration to give them a pretext to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign was arguably the most ill-used of all the figures in the Mueller investigation.

A neophyte in presidential politics, Papdopoulos was lured to London and set-up by Obama administration consultant Stephan Halper to pass along the bait that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Australian Ambassador, Alexander Downer.

Why and how the Ambassador found his way into contact with a junior figure like George Papadopoulos has never been explained, nor has the path of transmission of the information from Papadopoulos to Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus ever been disclosed.

What is clear, based on what has been disclosed, is that the basis for the surveillance and interrogation of Papadopoulos was a closed loop system of false information being generated by Obama and Clinton connected operatives who then fed the information to Papadopoulos through Halper and then back through Downer to the Obama intelligence apparatus.

Again, after being threatened and swamped with legal bills, Papadopoulos pled guilty to the process crime of making false statements to FBI agents relating to contacts he had with agents of the Russian government while working for the Trump campaign. The guilty plea was part of a plea bargain reflecting his cooperation with the Mueller investigation.

However, after Papadopoulos pled guilty and served 12 days in prison, no other indictments or convictions have ever been attributed to Papadopoulos’ cooperation with the Mueller investigation.

Perhaps the most egregious “collateral damage” has been the bankrupting and recent indictment of longtime conservative political strategist, best-selling author, media personality, style and public relations guru extraordinaire Roger Stone.

Mr. Stone, who helped launch the Trump campaign, left any official capacity long before the set-up of George Papadopoulos and the Russian collusion narrative were put in motion.

Stone’s “crime” was exchanging emails about Wikileaks with Jerome Corsi and using his considerable skills at generating media buzz to promote the narrative that what had been leaked by Wikileaks before the election was just the tip of the iceberg of dirt Assange had on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

That some of Stone’s predictions were unsubstantiated or inaccurate mattered not to the Congressional committees that called Stone in, nor did it matter that Stone voluntarily appeared before Congress. What mattered were perceived inconsistencies in his recollections – and perhaps his vigorous advocacy of Donald Trump and his unwillingness to kowtow to Trump’s persecutors.

After a lengthy and financially debilitating dangling over the hot coals by Mueller’s team of angry Democrats, Mr. Stone was indicted on one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.

Again, as in the Papadopoulos case, these are all process crimes that would not have occurred had the unjustified Special Counsel investigation never taken place.

Caputo, Corsi, Papadopoulos and Stone are just four of the most prominent and obvious case of “collateral damage” from the Mueller investigation. Many others, such as former Navy officer Carter Page (who was surveilled but never indicted), longtime Trump staffer Hope Hicks and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have also been dragged through the mud and been forced to spend untold thousands of dollars to defend their freedom and their reputations.

Unlike Democrat and Far Left figures, such as Christine Blasey Ford, there is no million-dollar GoFundMe pot of gold at the end of the ordeal for Caputo, Corsi, Papadopoulos, Stone and the rest of those caught up in the hoax that became the Mueller investigation.

And that’s the vilest part of the Democrat strategy, first tried and perfected against former Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: Mire the target in legal fees that will punish them with bankruptcy if they are lucky enough to survive the gantlet of perjury traps Democrats set for them.

SOURCE 

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Why Democrats must go back to school on taxes

Try explaining marginal tax cuts to a room of 5th graders.

Once, on Ronald Reagan’s birthday, I tried to explain what the top rate was like before our 40th president took office. “Imagine doing some chores for your grandparents,” I said, “and your grandma gives you $10. Then, when you get home, your parents take $7 from you. That’s what the tax rates were like before President Reagan took office.

The students immediately said that wasn’t fair.

Even 5th graders get it.

The last time the top tax rate was 70 percent was back in the days when President Jimmy Carter talked about a country in a malaise. Now, socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen. Ed Markey want to bring that top tax rate back as part of the so-called “Green New Deal.”

AOC’s response when I tweeted about the fact that even 5th graders realized that wasn’t fair was to suggest that only a limited number of people would pay the tax. It reminded me of when former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” to spend.

Politicians in Maryland helped make that point years ago when they passed a “millionaire tax” presumably to soak the “rich.” Apparently, the targeted taxpayers decided to flee and revenue projections were not met. Eventually, the governor proposed a new tax on households making $100,000 or more.

Think about that: The income of a fire fighter and a nurse could easily exceed $100,000 (particularly on the East Coast). Hardly wealthy. Uncontrolled spending in Maryland eventually hurt the middle class. Sooner or later they ran out of other people’s money to spend.

History is full of examples like that.

Remember the federal budget deal in 1990 that increased taxes on “luxury” items?

So who got hurt by the tax? According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Yacht retailers reported a 77 percent drop in sales that year, while boat builders estimated layoffs at 25,000.” All of the fuss about sticking it to the rich really just ended up hurting the thousands of middle-class workers and their families who got pink slips.

The taxes also took in $97 million less than had been projected for the first year. Consumers were buying fewer of the “luxury” items — or at least not buying them in America. In effect, the socialist dream of taking from the wealthy ended up hurting sales, which lead to massive layoffs and revenue projections that missed the mark.

Conversely, tax reductions have consistently had a positive impact on the economy.

Tax rates were cut several times during President Reagan’s tenure and America enjoyed many years of economic recovery. Plus, revenues continued to go up.

Revenues also continued to grow under the tax cuts proposed by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s and during and around the Coolidge era in the 1920s. Liberals and many in the media (sometimes hard to discern which is which) mistakenly believe that lower taxes produce a reduction in revenues. History suggests otherwise.

But taxes are about more than just fiscal and economic policy. They are really about freedom.

Take Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax, for example. It’s not enough to just raise taxes on income, now they want to tax your savings, too.

To me, that is like telling a straight “A” student that she must share her grades with the other students. Rightly so, she would say this is not fair.

Instead of stealing from her, why not help each of the other students do better?

As President Reagan said, “the weakness in this country for too many years has been our insistence of carving an ever-increasing number of slices from a shrinking economic pie. Our policies have concentrated on rationing scarcity rather than creating plenty.”

Instead of fighting over who gets the last piece of shrinking economic pie, let’s help the people of our country produce a bigger pie so that everyone will have a chance to live a better life. That is a uniquely American idea.

We are blessed to live in the land of equal opportunity, but the outcome is still up to each of us. True freedom and prosperity do not come from the clumsy hand of the government. They come from people being able to control their own life and their own destiny through the dignity that is born of work.

As policy makers consider tax increases or tax cuts, I hope they will remember these simple facts. Lest they forget we celebrate the 4th of July and not April 15th, because, in America, we celebrate our independence from the government and not our dependence on it.

SOURCE 

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GOP launches path to nuclear option rules change in Senate

Senate Republicans took the first step Thursday toward triggering the “nuclear option” and cut down on the amount of time Democrats can obstruct presidential nominees.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a test vote next week on a change to Senate rules that would trim the 30 hours of debate allowed on each nominee once a filibuster is defeated.

That vote is expected to fail — and the GOP is then likely to use the nuclear option, a shortcut to change the rules by majority vote.

Mr. McConnell said he’s been forced into the move by Democrats who, he said, have blocked President Trump’s nominees “out of spite.”

“The Senate is going to do something about it,” he said.

The Kentucky Republican didn’t specifically mention the nuclear option on the floor, but did obliquely refer to it, urging Democrats to accept the rules change without having to resort to the more extreme option.

Mr. McConnell told colleagues earlier this month that Republicans have the votes for the nuclear option — though it does not appear any Democrats will back the normal rules change.

Some Democrats have said they agree that the Senate has gotten off track, but said they won’t approve any change that would help Mr. Trump — a standard that Mr. McConnell said is unsustainable.

“Fair is fair,” he said.

Republicans say Democrats have treated Mr. Trump unfairly by any yardstick.

They’ve had to face attempted Democratic filibusters on more than 120 of Mr. Trump’s nominees — easily swamping any previous administration’s total. Once a filibuster is surmounted, the rules call for up to 30 hours of debate to follow.

That means that if the full time is used, a single nominee can take more than a day’s worth of floor time, crowding out any other substantive legislative business.

Multiple times over the last two years the Senate has spent entire weeks approving four or five nominees.

Democrats acknowledge they’re treating Mr. Trump differently, but say it’s deserved because of the quality of his nominees.

The GOP’s rules change would still keep a maximum of 30 hours of debate on major nominees such as Cabinet-level positions, Supreme Court justices and circuit court judges. But other picks would only face a maximum of two hours’ additional debate once a filibuster has been surmounted.

The Senate experimented with a similar rules change in 2013, when Mr. McConnell led Republicans to join Democrats in lowering debate time for President Obama’s nominees. That experiment expired in 2015.

Thirty-five members of the Democratic Caucus who are still in the Senate voted for the change in 2013. Among them was Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, who is now Democrats’ floor leader.

On Thursday, he accused Mr. McConnell of changing his position to suit his own needs.

“Senator McConnell’s approach has always been to manipulate Senate rules when it helps him and then change Senate rules when the tables turn,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is just another step in his effort to limit the rights of the minority and cede authority to the administration.”

The only member of the Democratic Caucus to oppose the rules change in 2013 was Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent.

Ten Republicans who opposed that 2013 temporary rules change are also still in the Senate.

The nuclear option was used by Democrats in 2013, when they triggered it to reduce the threshold for overcoming a filibuster on most nominees from 60 to only a simple majority. That paved the way for Mr. Obama to stack an important appeals court in Washington, D.C., with his nominees.

GOP senators then used it in 2017, finishing Democrats’ work by applying the majority standard to Supreme Court picks. That paved the way for the confirmation of Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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Trump’s been boosted by good fortune, but there are traces of genius

GREG SHERIDAN, writing from Australia

It is tempting to say Donald Trump is a lucky politician. And there is some truth in this. His margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election was so slender in the critical midwest states he won that no one could have predicted it. And no one did, including Trump’s own campaign.

Like most lucky generals Trump also has a big hand in making his own luck. He and his campaign chose the key battleground states that could just conceivably deliver him the presidency and he out-campaigned Hillary Clinton in all of them. To win all of them so narrowly is statistically astonishingly improbable, but Trump is the master of the improbable.

Similarly, one reason Trump has an excellent chance of re-election is that the recession the US seems to be heading for could come after the 2020 presidential election. In any event it should be quite mild. The yield curve inversion indicates it’s coming but there are no massive structural imbalances in the US economy.

Here again, Trump has made a lot of his own luck. I don’t mean the tax cuts and business deregulation that have helped spur the US economy on. They are big policy commitments and should yield long-term growth dividends. I mean instead the way Trump has bullied the Federal Reserve into keeping interest rates low. He is not the first political leader to make cyclical economic policy serve political timetables.

But nothing so perfectly embodies the fusion of Trump’s luck with the undeniable trace of political genius — it’s not too strong a word — that is emerging in Trump as the report of the independent counsel Robert Mueller into allegations of criminal collusion during the 2016 campaign between Trump and Russia.

The element of luck is not Mueller finding no collusion. That, presumably, just reflects reality. The element of luck is the way most of Trump’s enemies, in the Democratic Party and in large slabs of the media, so wildly, insanely, overhyped everything to do with the Russia collusion idea.

Trump is immensely lucky in his enemies. But he creates his own fortune because he drives his enemies crazy. As a result they exercise appalling judgment in their attacks.

I think as President, Trump is a mixed grill. He is a better president than I thought he would be. During the election campaign I followed the debate about whether they should support Trump in a number of US Christian journals. It was a conscientious and serious debate. They recognised Trump was not one of them and would certainly not lead America’s moral revival. But they faced a binary choice: Trump or Clinton. Clinton, they felt, would appoint Supreme Court judges who would abridge their religious freedom and she would support social programs and values they opposed. So most backed Trump, with reservations.

He has delivered good outcomes and bad outcomes. Among the good are four of particular consequence. One is excellent Supreme Court justices and similarly good choices across all the federal courts to which the president can appoint judges. Two is tax cuts and business deregulation. Three is increased defence spending. Four is calling out China on trade and other malpractice, though this could have a bad effect on Australia if a US-China deal results in Beijing buying commodities from the US it would otherwise buy from us.

Democrats, and Trump’s opponents generally, have had relatively little to say on these issues. Instead they’ve concentrated on Trump’s obvious character flaws and the equally obviously seedy nature of some of his associates. Because Trump’s very existence as President contradicts everything they think and, more importantly, feel, they have invested in and created all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories against Trump.

I have come to the view that the independent counsel institution is a corruption of due process that almost always does more harm than good. The Mueller investigation was set up in the hysterical atmosphere that followed Trump’s sacking of James Comey as FBI director. The instant conspiracy interpretation was that Trump sacked Comey because Comey was too vigorously investigating allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia.

It turns out, according to Mueller, there was no such collusion. This takes the wind out of the sails of all Trump’s critics. And because so much of what the Trump critics said was so overblown, so ridiculous, so extravagant and now we can say plainly so wrong, even the credible criticisms they make of him can now be discredited.

This was already so for Trump’s supporters, who won’t hear a word against him. But Mueller had a lot of credibility with independent voters. In his re-election bid, Trump will need some independent voters to add to his base. The Mueller exoneration means it should be much easier for Trump to sell his re-election message to those independents.

Those who think independent counsels are a good thing in general, and Mueller was especially good, will point to the numerous convictions or confessions Mueller obtained. But these fall entirely into two categories. The first, and most pernicious, are process convictions. Mueller has convicted some people and charged others with lying to him. In other words these are alleged crimes that would not have been committed if Mueller’s inquiry had not been called into existence.

The second category of convictions are for tax avoidance and the like among Trump associates, at times when they had nothing to do with Trump’s presidency.

There are some allegations against Trump, such as his paying hush money to a woman he had an affair with, that are simply not grave enough to threaten any presidency. This precedent was established when Democrats forgave Bill Clinton for lying under oath because he was “only” lying about an affair.

Bob Woodward’s book Fear is much more balanced about Trump than its critics allow and is sharply critical of the disrespectful, clumsy and partisan way some of the intelligence agencies dealt with Trump. A former CIA boss, John Brennan, accused Trump of “treason”. Brennan now looks a complete fool. Polls do not show these collusion issues rank seriously with voters. If Democrats focus on them they will strengthen Trump. That Mueller could not find sufficient evidence for even so elastic a charge as obstruction of justice, but nonetheless apparently makes some negative comments about Trump anyway, just shows how dysfunctional the independent counsel mechanism is. If it’s not indictable, it’s up to the political system to sort out, not unelected officials.

This is an enormous win for Trump. The next election is unpredictable, but I put Trump slightly better than even-money odds.

SOURCE 

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Israel's Golan sovereignty should have been recognized years ago

by Jeff Jacoby

DURING A White House meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, President Trump signed a formal proclamation that the United States recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. In so doing, the president acknowledged a longstanding fact of life, bolstered a vital American ally, promoted stability in a deeply unstable neighborhood, and upheld the oft-ignored but crucial distinction between acquiring territory through aggression and acquiring it through lawful self-defense. Good outcomes all, extending the Trump administration's already exemplary record when it comes to the Middle East.

Trump's policy shift didn't sit well with everyone, of course. Those angrily denouncing it included the dictators and terror-sponsors who rule Iran, Turkey, Russia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority. A few reflexively anti-Trump editorial boards chided the president for a "pointless provocation" that will "damage US diplomacy." Tellingly, though, there was barely any protest from most Arab governments, which in recent years have come to value Israel as an ally against Iran and its proxies. As a CNN headline put it, "Trump's Golan Heights announcement met with a shrug in the Arab world."


Mr Trump gets a rare smile from PM Netanyahu

Trump's announcement is being described as a pro-Netanyahu campaign ploy, but no matter who wins Israel's upcoming election, the Golan will remain part of Israel. Which is why even Netanyahu's political foes applauded the American announcement. Benny Gantz, the retired general hoping to become Israel's next prime minister, publicly thanked Trump for his proclamation.

The president's signature changes nothing on the ground. Israel has held the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights — a plateau that towers over the Sea of Galilee and much of northern Israel — since the 1967 Six Day War. That war, recall, was one of blatant aggression against Israel: Syria joined Egypt and Jordan in an assault that Syria's Defense Minister Hafez Assad had labeled "a battle of annihilation" to "explode the Zionist presence" in the Mideast.

But Israel declined to be annihilated or exploded. It repelled its invaders and seized the Golan Heights, from which Syria had been shelling Jewish farms and towns for more than 20 years. In the aftermath of the war, Israel offered to return the territory in exchange for peace. Damascus refused to negotiate. It tried to recapture the Golan Heights in a massive armored invasion in 1973. Israel repelled that threat too.

Thus, Israel has ruled the Golan Heights for 52 years (1967-2019) — more than twice as long as the 21 years of Syrian rule that began in 1946. The contrast between the two eras could not be more open-and-shut, as Michael Doran, a former senior director at the National Security Council, testified before Congress last year:

"The last 70 years constitute the laboratory of real life, and its results are incontrovertible," Doran told the House Oversight Committee during a hearing on US-Israel relations. "When in the hands of Syria, the Golan Heights promoted conflict. When in the hands of Israel, they have promoted stability."

Nonetheless, Israeli and US leaders well into the 1990s kept trying to entice Damascus to make peace with its Jewish neighbor in exchange for a return of the Golan. In his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu used a secret back channel to communicate with Syrian President Bashar Assad about a land-for-peace deal.

Fortunately, nothing came of those efforts. Syria's implosion in 2011 plunged the country into a hellish civil war that eventually included Iran, Russia, the Islamic State, and Hezbollah. If Israel hadn't retained the Golan Heights, the plateau would likely have been captured by Iran or ISIS, and Israel might well have faced an unspeakable existential nightmare. Instead, the Golan Heights remained an oasis of stability and decency amid the savagery of the Syrian war. Israel even made use of the territory to provide medical care to thousands of Syrian civilians.

If Israel had seized the Golan Heights as an act of aggression, it would arguably have no right to keep the land even after all these years. But in 1967, Israel was the target. It seized the Golan in a defensive war against an enemy explicitly bent on "annihilation." Syria forfeited its sovereign right to the territory when it was defeated by its intended victim. To claim otherwise is to claim that a belligerent aggressor should lose nothing for waging an unlawful war. That would be folly. By endorsing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, the Trump administration is sending a message of deterrence to would-be warmongers. It's a message that should have been sent years ago. Better late than never.

SOURCE 

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Assume the Left Lies and You Will Discover the Truth

Reflections on the Trump-Russia collusion lie

Dennis Prager
   
From the beginning, I repeatedly said the charge that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election was a lie. The president’s description of it as a “witch hunt” was accurate.

I regularly acknowledged that I was putting my credibility on the line by stating that it was all a hoax. But how did I know that? After all, I wasn’t privy to any confidential intelligence.

One answer is I used common sense. The Trump-Russia collusion charge and the Donald-Trump-is-an-agent-of-the-Kremlin charge struck me — and tens of millions of other Americans — as absurd. Vladimir Putin’s influence on the 2016 election was negligible, and as president, Trump has been harder on Russia — in supporting Ukraine’s anti-Russian government, in fighting Syria’s pro-Russian government and in confronting Iran’s pro-Russian regime — than Barack Obama was.

But the biggest reason I never believed the Russian collusion charge was that the charge emanated from the left. And the left lies about everything. Truth is a liberal value, and truth is a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. People on the left say whatever advances their immediate agenda. Power is their moral lodestar; therefore, truth is always subservient to it.

The left wanted to undo the 2016 presidential election from the day Trump won. So they made up the Russian collusion story. This was obvious to every conservative — except for “Never Trumpers,” who, with regard to Trump, have been indistinguishable from the left and were therefore as prepared as any leftist to believe the Trump-Russia collusion tale. We conservatives knew that a) the left wanted to invalidate the election and b) the left lies when it is in their interest to do so. So we knew the collusion charge was a fabrication.

We also suspected that the collusion hoax may well have been an effort to divert attention from the real crimes here: American intelligence agencies’ being used to spy on a presidential candidate for the first time in American history; getting Clinton off the hook for her illegal use of a private server while secretary of state; her use of that office to enrich herself and her husband; and her destruction of the evidence once her hidden emails were subpoenaed.

If you always doubt a leftist claim, you will almost always be closer to the truth. I employed that rule in concluding the collusion story was a fraud, and it served me well.

Name the issue and you will likely find a left-wing lie. The left claims our universities are saturated by a “culture of rape.” Not only is that a lie, but deep down, leftists know it’s a lie. The proof? Every left-wing parent who speaks about the “culture of rape” on college campuses sends his or her daughter to college. As no parents would ever send their daughter to an actual rape culture, left-wing parents who send their daughters to college know it is not really a rape culture. They say it is a rape culture solely to buttress the feminist argument that American males are misogynists and to provide young women with the highest status in the left-wing value system: victim.

Although I haven’t been a student or taught at a college in many decades, that’s how I knew American colleges were not rape cultures. I knew it because the left said they were. Again, just assume the left is lying and you will be close to arriving at the truth.

How do I know there are only two sexes? The most obvious reason is, again, common sense. But the second most powerful reason is the left denies there are only two sexes and claims there is no such thing as sex, only subjective “gender.” Last week, a writer for the left-wing magazine The Nation defended the victory of two high school male-bodied trans women who defeated all the female-bodied women in a Connecticut track competition — because, in his words, “trans women are in fact women.”

Now, we all know trans women are not in fact women, that they are biologically men who regard themselves as women. And in private life, I have no problem treating trans women as women if they look and dress female and take on a female name. But it is completely unjust to have them compete against born females in sports. They are not in fact women; they consider themselves women despite the facts. Again, assuming the left is lying to advance its agenda leads one to truth.

When the left tells us the Earth has 12 years left because of global warming, I assume they are not telling the truth. One bit of proof is that almost no one on the global-warming-will-destroy-life left advocates the safest, cheapest and most practical non-fossil-based source of energy: nuclear power. If they really believed life was existentially threatened by fossil-based fuel, they would be building nuclear reactors as fast they could make them. One reason I haven’t believed man-made global warming will destroy the Earth is that the left does.

So, while the latest left-wing lie — Trump-Russia collusion — is now exposed, there is little to cheer about. Without missing a beat, the left — the Democratic Party, the media and academia — will move on to another lie.

And there will be no soul-searching on the part of the media or the rest of the left.

Why won’t there be? Because no leftist acknowledges the collusion story was a lie.

Truth has never been a left-wing value. Like “gender,” it is whatever you want it to be.

SOURCE 

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House fails to overturn Trump’s veto

It didn't even get to the Senate

The House of Representatives failed in a vote to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a resolution that would have blocked Trump’s national emergency declaration on the southern border to build the wall, with a vote of 248 to 181, well short of the 287 votes that would have been needed to send the measure to the Senate.

So, that’s it. Trump’s emergency declaration stands, and the $6.7 billion of uncommitted military construction funds and other funds Congress had allocated will be put towards the wall.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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In praise of the Roman Catholic clergy

I suppose that what I am about to say will be a voice crying in the wilderness -- ignored by everyone.  But I feel I should say it -- particularly in the light of all the justified horror over priestly pedophilia.  My basic point is that a significant minority is not the whole and I want to talk about those priests who have remained godly men.

I am particularly concerned that the foul deeds of a few may lead to victimization of innocent priests.  Like most Australian conservative writers, I suspect that we have already seen a grievous instance of that in the conviction of Cardinal Pell -- who added to his sin of being a priest the even greater sin of being an outspoken conservative.  He doesn't even believe in the great Leftist global warming hoax!  Unforgiveable!  And that he was doing important work in a senior position at the Vatican also put a target on his back

So the Left were out to "get" him for years, with a constant blizzard of unsubstantiated accusations hurled at him so when even a very weakly substantiated accusation of pedophilia against him came before a jury they appear to have decided that there is no smoke without fire.  It seems very likely that the court of appeal will exonerate him.

So am I a Catholic apologist?  Am I writing to defend my own faith?  As Margaret Thatcher famously once said:  "No, no and no"  For starters, I am in fact the most thoroughgoing atheist you could meet.  I agree with German analytical philosopher Rudolf Carnap that no metaphysical statement is meaningful. If you want to know why, read Carnap.

Secondly, I was baptized into the Presbyterian church and I was a strong evangelical Christian throughout my teens.



A Prime Minister of Australia once called the Premier of my home State a "Bible-bashing bastard".  I was of that ilk before a study of philosophy re-oriented me.  So I have NO Catholic background.

I do however rejoice that I have a religious background.  Billy Graham once said that there is a God-shaped hole in everyone. For some people (Muslims?), Satan occupies that hole but the hole is there. Putting it less colorfully, man (including women) is a religious animal and never to have experienced religious commitment is to have missed out on an important part of life. Putting it most prosaically, the old anthropologist's maxim holds true: You have to become part of something to understand it.  And because of my religious background I do have an empathy for and an understanding of religious people, Christians in particular

And that is fundamental to the simple thing that I want to say:  There are God-filled people in all religions, a small minority from whom the love of Christ and the assurance of eternity shines out almost visibly. They stand out vividly to me when I encounter them.  And among the spirit-filled men I have met most have been Catholic priests.

I could name some but to avoid embarrassment I will name just one -- one now deceased.  I am thinking of Father Brady, of the Little Kings movement in Brisbane.  He was an elderly man when I met him, one of the last Irish priests in Australia, but he wore that unmistakeable smile of serene happiness and assurance which told you of his inner peace and willingness to help.  I could see the love of Christ shine out from him. It was unmistakeable to me.  I recognized it immediately.

That is all I want to say.  Some of the best men I have met have been Catholic priests.  The ill deeds of the criminal few should not dim the devoted, lifelong and sometimes inspirational lives of the many.

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The Real Threat to Our Republic: The Democratic Party

It seems like only three years ago that liberals were accusing Donald Trump of not committing to accepting the election results if he were to lose — as everyone expected him to. Oh, wait, that was three years ago. In fact, there were a lot of things being said by liberals three years ago that are amusing to look back on today, such as this gem from Jason Silverstein, national politics reporter at the New York Daily News:

Even if Donald Trump wins the popular vote for President in November, it is entirely possible — and even Constitutionally acceptable — that we could be spared from his leadership. For that, we can thank the Electoral College.
“We take for granted every four years that the Electoral College will vote accordingly to the winners of each state's popular vote,” Silverstein said, but "there is nothing in the Constitution, federal law or electoral history” that says that’s how it has to work. “The Electoral College has the freedom to override the people's choice — in part, to expressly stop someone like Trump from taking over.” To Silverstein, the Electoral College was designed to stop Trump, not enable him to be president. The scenario he then presented, that rogue Electors could simply ignore the popular vote in their state and not cast their ballots for Trump, was a ridiculous pie-in-the-sky scenario, but is a fascinating look into how the left fantasized that the Electoral College could “save us” from Trump. In fact, Silverstein’s scenario may have inspired anti-Trumpers to harass and threaten Electors to do just as he envisioned… you know, to preserve the Republic, or something.

Others believed that the Electoral College system gave Hillary Clinton an advantage from the start. “Even before candidates were decided in the 2016 presidential election,” explained MSNBC political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald, “Democrats started with a major advantage – thanks to changes in the Electoral College – over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.” Of course, once Trump won the election without winning the popular vote, Democrats’ attitudes toward the Electoral College changed drastically. What they had counted on to keep Trump out of the White House had suddenly put him in. The last time this happened was, of course, the 2000 election, where Bush’s narrow margin in Florida gave him an Electoral College victory without winning the national popular vote.

Democrats are pointing to these two elections as reasons why the Electoral College is outmoded, racist, homophobic, transphobic, something-phobic, whatever. The national popular vote is the only truly democratic way to choose our president, they now say. Democrat presidential hopefuls are embracing this idea, and blue states across the country are entering into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in the hopes of, essentially, overthrowing the Electoral College system. To “preserve” our Republic.

The problem with their position now, besides the obvious, is that when it comes to the Electoral College, it’s not the system they have a problem with, it’s that's the system doesn’t work for them. The last time a Republican won both the national popular vote and the Electoral College vote was in 2004, when George W. Bush defeated John Kerry. But Democrats didn’t simply concede defeat when it was obvious they’d lost fairly.

Bush won Florida easily in 2004, but the results in Ohio were a lot closer, and John Kerry was urged to contest the results in Ohio over allegations of voting “irregularities” statewide. He did not. No number of recounts in Ohio could have resulted in flipping the state and the national popular vote. The only purpose of challenging Ohio was to overturn the Electoral College results. A recount in Ohio only netted Kerry about 300 votes statewide, but that didn’t stop Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) from filing an objection (on behalf of a group of Democrats in Congress) to the counting of Ohio’s electoral votes, and delaying certification of the 2004 presidential election results. This was only the second time in history such a challenge occurred. Nothing came of the challenge, as we know, but it’s also interesting to note that even now, John Kerry believes that the election was stolen from him.

The Democrats’ attitudes toward the Electoral College have nothing to do with the merits of the system, but the merits of the results. If they lose, the system is rigged and undemocratic. If they win, the system has proven itself to work. Democrats have a history of wanting to change the rules for their benefit. Senate Democrats were more than happy to use the filibuster to block President Bush from nominating judges to the courts, but took that power away from Republicans when they used it to block Barack Obama from nominating judges, citing a “broken system.” Democrats don’t believe in the sanctity of rules or law and order, they believe in winning at all costs. They won’t be happy in a system that doesn’t allow them to win 100 percent of the time.

Democrats the mentality of four-year-old children. They have to win every time, otherwise, it’s not fair. The Electoral College isn’t a threat to our Republic, the Democratic Party is.

SOURCE 

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Russiagate -- a Bright, Shining Lie

By Patrick J. Buchanan

"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia ... to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign."

So stated Attorney General William Barr in his Sunday letter to Congress summarizing the principal findings of the Mueller report.

On the charge of collusion with Russia, not guilty on all counts.

After two years of hearing from haters in politics and the media that President Donald Trump was "Putin's poodle," an agent of the Kremlin, guilty of treason, an illegitimate president who would leave the White House in handcuffs and end his days in prison, we learn the truth.

It was all a bright, shining lie.

Reeling from Trump's exoneration, big media are now scurrying to their fallback position: Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice.

But Mueller was not obstructed. No one impeded his labors.

As for Trump's rages against his investigation, they were the natural reaction of an innocent man falsely accused and facing disgrace and ruin for a crime he did not commit, indeed, a crime that had never been committed.

The House Judiciary Committee may try to replicate what Mueller did, and re-investigate obstruction. Fine. This would confirm what this whole rotten business has at root always been about: a scheme by the deep state and allied media to bring down another president.

The Mueller investigation employed 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents. It took two years. It issued 2,800 subpoenas. It executed 500 search warrants. It interviewed 500 witnesses. And it failed to indict a single member of Trump's campaign for collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Which raises this question:

If Mueller could find no collusion, after an exhaustive two-year search, what was the compelling evidence that caused James Comey's FBI and Barack Obama's Department of Justice to believe that such collusion had occurred and to launch this investigation?

Sunday, after Barr's summary of the Mueller report became public, Trump aired his justified anger: "It's a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it's a shame that your president has had to go through this. ... This was an illegal takedown that failed."

Is there not truth in this?

Millions of Americans still believe what is now a manifest falsehood — that their president collaborated with Putin in cheating Hillary Clinton out of the presidency. The legal bills of Trump, his family, his campaign aides and his White House staff must be huge. Careers, reputations have been damaged.

The nation has been distracted and bitterly divided over this since Trump's first days in office. He has had a cloud over his presidency since he gave his inaugural address. Any ability the president had to fulfill his campaign pledge and negotiate with the largest country on earth, Russia, a superpower rival, has had to be put off.

Is it unfair to ask: Who did this to us?

Who led the Justice Department into believing Trump conspired with the Russians? Why did it take two years to discover there was no collusion? Who gave Putin and the GRU this victory by helping to tear our own country apart?

Our establishment is forever demanding apologies. Where are the apologies for the outrageous accusations that Trump was guilty of something next to treason?

Sen. Joe McCarthy did not do a fraction of the damage to the reputations of Dean Acheson or George Marshall that the elite media have done, unjustly and maliciously, to the reputation of Donald Trump.

Years after French Artillery Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of colluding with the Germans in the late 19th century, and was sent to Devil's Island, evidence against another officer emerged.

Soon, it was Dreyfus' accusers who were in the dock of public opinion.

That needs to happen now. The instigators of this investigation, launched to bring down a president, have damaged and divided this nation, and they need to be exposed, as do their collaborators in the press.

The roots of Mueller's investigation go back to the Clinton campaign's hiring of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He had sources in Russian intelligence who provided him with the contents of his infamous dossier. This was delivered to a grateful cabal at the FBI, which used it as the basis of a FISA court warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.

The dirt in the Steele dossier, much of it false, would be secretly shared with Trump-haters in the media to torpedo his candidacy; then, when Trump won, to destroy his presidency before it began.

Now that Trump has been exonerated, the story of how his accusers, using the power of the state, almost murdered a presidency with lies, propaganda and innuendo, needs to be brought out into the sunlight.

For democracy dies in darkness, and this can't happen again.

SOURCE 

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Mueller Report a Damning Indictment of Media

The fact is that after nonstop allegations and insinuations that Trump was a Manchurian candidate and a puppet of the Putin regime, there appears to be no evidence whatsoever to back up those claims.

This, after devoting almost endless airtime to the issue.

A NewsBusters report found that: “From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (the last night before special counsel Robert Mueller sent his report to the Attorney General), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of ‘collusion’ coverage.”

As The New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote on Friday, the release of the report would serve as a “reckoning” for Trump, Mueller, and the media.

The result comes as vindication for some in the media like Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist, and a few others who remained skeptical of all the rumors and poured cold water on the rush to indict the president on what seemed to be flimsy charges from the outset.

But for the rest of the who perpetrated the collusion narrative, this isn’t working out so well.

Of course, this indictment in the minds of viewers won’t cause media figures to retreat in shame. But it will likely further deepen Americans’ distrust of the media establishment.

From BuzzFeed’s publishing of the Steele dossier to CNN’s botched story (later retracted) that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials,” the media has made numerous errors that turned out to be drive-by hits. These errors received little mainstream attention as reporters moved on to new stories—a new attempt at “resistance” reporting, as former ABC host Ted Koppel called it.

This coverage fueled the wild fantasies of progressive activists around the country: bizarre viral Christmas songs and stories of elderly critics attempting to stave off death to see the Mueller report, to name just a couple.

All for nothing.

Trump is now 2-0 against the media—first, beating Hillary Clinton after reports said it could never happen, and now, coming out on top in the Mueller report.

Trump takes a lot of flak for his attacks on the press, but it’s clear that the media itself has done the most lasting damage to its own credibility, only ensuring that Trump’s criticisms leave a mark.

As Matt Taibbi, a journalist who published a scathing critique of the media, wrote:

“This has been a consistent pattern throughout #Russiagate. Step one: salacious headline. Step two, days or weeks later: news emerges the story is shakier than first believed. Step three (in the best case) involves the story being walked back or retracted by the same publication.”

Taibbi wrote that the “sheer scale” of this media failure will have ramifications for years to come.

“We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction,” he wrote.

Is there any doubt that this is true?

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL 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)

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