Again, I wish everyone a Happy Easter and Passover.
We will be attending the funeral of a long time dear friend, leaving Savannah today and driving to Atlanta , returning late Tuesday and leaving Thursday for Passover in Florida.
Wishing all my friends a Happy Easter and Passover.
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Corbyn has been exposed:https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art
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Trump is catching on as Democrats persist in shooting their toes off. (See 1 below.)
And:
Barr brings a fresh approach. (See 1a below.)
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If we really care about the background of candidates seeking the presidency we will probably find enough evidence to eliminate more than half running as Democrats.
We know Warren lied about who she is. We know Harris elevated herself through her promiscuous relationship with California's former Speaker, Willie Brown. Now she wants to do to/for America what she did to/for Brown. Bito has a criminal record. Bernie became a multi-millionaire after serving the public. Booker thinks he is Spartacus and is prepared to save America like Superman.
None of the above ever ran a business.
Sen.Gillibrand mistreated her staff, Buttigieg attacked Lt. Gov Pence, who had nothing but praise for the Mayor of South Bend when he was Governor, because Mayor Pete thought, being gay, it was the thing to do.
The latest to announce, Swillwell believes his hatred of Trump qualifies him to occupy the Oval Office.
The other assorted announced candidates are: Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jay Inslee, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, ex-San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Rep. John Delaney, Miramar, Fla., Mayor Wayne Messam, author Marianne Williamson, former tech executive Andrew Yang .
When Trump ran he too lacked political experience but he had run a flourishing business, had been successful in various other entrepreneurial endeavors and had some ideas about what he thought might make America Great Again. He opposed the establishment, pledged to drain the cesspool and swampy terrain called Washington D.C. and wanted to rectify past negative trade agreements and eliminate Obamacare among other campaign promises.
Since becoming president, he has endured a biased press, hateful and constant opposition from the Democrat Party now controlled by a bunch of ill-informed radicals. Trump has taken a host of positive actions all the while conducting himself in a somewhat coarse and unorthodox manner.
Obviously, Obama's election lowered the bar because he had accomplished little that was meaningful prior to being elected and even less in eight years than most presidents yet, managed to create a cumulative deficit equal to all preceding presidents. He did receive The Nobel Peace Prize before taking Office. I do not remember why.
Apparently, we think so little of the Oval Office these days we no longer give much consideration to qualifications. Bush '41 was probably the most qualified of recent presidents if one considers the variety of government positions he held and his many accomplishments, followed by Eisenhower and Reagan.
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Dick
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1) As Trump soars higher, Dems reach their lowest point yet
Predicting what history will decide was significant is always dicey. But in the context of our fractured nation and the nonstop Washington tumult since 2016, events in the last three weeks have been nothing short of remarkable.
Against an enormous army of antagonists, political and cultural, academic and judicial, Donald Trump is enjoying some of the best days of his presidency. His power and popularity are expanding.
Meanwhile, Democrats and the left, including the media, have suffered one crushing blow after another. Their recent confidence that Trump was not long for the Oval Office is suddenly morphing into a panic that he could win a second term.
The worm began turning on the afternoon of Sunday, March 24, when Attorney General William Barr released his letter summarizing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller. There was no collusion with Russia, Mueller found, and no obstruction of justice, Barr determined.
The momentous victory for Trump vindicated his claims of innocence. The fog of accusations that he was an illegitimate president was destroyed by a news flash that left no room for ambiguity.
To grasp the significance, imagine the consequences if the report found he was probably guilty of one or both charges.
The left would have erupted in orgasmic joy. We would be discussing articles of impeachment and Republicans would have fallen in line. There would have been worldwide implications as America turned inward to face its crisis.
Yet it is now apparent that Mueller’s report, as great as it was for Trump, was just the start of a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of both the president and his tormentors. The bookend, at least so far, came last week with Barr’s stunning comment that “spying did occur” on Trump’s 2016 campaign and that Barr was obligated to review “the conduct of the investigation.”
“Spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said matter-of-factly.
Heart be still. Barr’s promise touches on the holy grail for those of us who believe there was an outrageous abuse of government power to try to tip the election to Hillary Clinton and then to topple Trump.
If Barr keeps his word, the sunlight of transparency soon will shine on the rancid corruption of the Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence agencies under Barack Obama.
Turning the tables on the conspirators is absolutely necessary to hold accountable those who tried to rig the election. That accountability, if it is seen as honest and evenhanded, will prevent a repeat and begin to restore public trust.
Among the obvious questions that must be addressed are these: How did the unprecedented FBI probe of a presidential candidate get started if the allegations were instigated and paid for by the opposition? Who leaked scores of misleading investigative tidbits to the media in ways that suggested Trump’s guilt was all but certain?
It’s no exaggeration to say that Barr’s promise to investigate the investigators sets the stage for fundamentally changing the narrative from the one the media fed the nation for two years.
Even at this early stage, Trump looks stronger than ever and Dems are mad with frustration.
Many are furious with Barr, with some hysterics saying they want to remove him from office, as if somebody must be impeached. CNN, NBC and others are accusing Barr of doing Trump’s “dirty work” by daring to use the “spy” word, as if straight talk is too much for their tender sensibilities.
They are so in the tank against Trump that they denounce the search for truth because the truth might favor the president.
Those with the most skin in the game are the most at risk, starting with Jim “The Snake” Comey. The former FBI director, whose conduct makes J. Edgar Hoover look like a choirboy, claims he is confused, saying “I have no idea” what Barr is talking about.
James Clapper and John Brennan, the intelligence chiefs under Obama who came out of the closet as naked partisans, added their two cents of shock. “Stunning and scary,” Clapper said of Barr’s plans, and Brennan accused Barr of sounding like a “personal lawyer” for Trump.
Translation: we better lawyer up.
Meanwhile, Mueller, the would-be savior, is now a nobody, an afterthought in the Dems’ river of rage.
Other recent developments also favored Trump. The economy continues to roar and the crisis on the border that Dems said didn’t exist clearly does, with illegal crossers numbering more than 100,000 a month — and those are just the ones apprehended.
Trump is at least searching for solutions while Dems have closed their eyes and ears to a security and humanitarian nightmare, as if it is just an inconvenient distraction.
Trump was also a winner in the Israeli election, with his support of Bibi Netanyahu helping to lift the prime minister to victory.
While there is personal satisfaction for both men, the greater truth is that stability in Israeli politics removes any Palestinian fantasy that a dovish new prime minister would return to the lifeless land-for-peace formula. Arabs — and Iran — can either deal with Trump and Netanyahu, or waste more time and lives weaving their dream palaces.
Democrats, in reaction to the Trump-Netanyahu alliance, continued to move away from Israel. All the 2020 candidates skipped the AIPAC conference and Beto O’Rourke called Netanyahu a “racist.”
Finally, Rep. Ilhan Omar is proving to be a one-woman wrecking crew for the party as well as for the image of all American Muslims. On top of her anti-Semitism, Omar’s dismissive description of 9/11 as “some people did something” marks her as a heartless ingrate to the nation that rescued her family from civil war and possibly death at the hands of other Muslims.
The only question is whether party leaders will have the courage to stand up against her. Sen. Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are usually camera hogs, but ducked questions about Omar’s 9/11 reference and her claim that criticisms of her are anti-Muslim.
The only question is whether party leaders will have the courage to stand up against her. Sen. Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are usually camera hogs, but ducked questions about Omar’s 9/11 reference and her claim that criticisms of her are anti-Muslim.
They did, however, find time to criticize Barr’s plan to investigate the investigators, thus proving again that Democrats have the leaders they deserve.
Taking Idiot at his word
The scores of sordid criminal charges against Michael Avenatti wouldn’t be news if the media hadn’t turned him into a weapon against Trump. He appeared on CNN and MSNBC nearly 200 times to push his Stormy Daniels case — and to launch his presidential hopes.
Did anybody at those networks vet the guy? Did they ask former clients if he was honest?
Of course not. He was their useful idiot until he was no longer useful.
Warning ‘label’
Reader Evilio Herrera is fed up with Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, writing: “I’m tired of his ‘racist’ labeling. The man obviously has a complex. As a Latino American myself, the race card game has gotten old.”
‘Bandwagon’ stuck in park
A headline in The New Yorker says Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2020 campaign has “stalled.”
Wrong. She hasn’t stalled. She was never moving.
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1a) Russiagate and the Media’s News Denial
A U.S. attorney general points the press’s nose toward the real story.
By Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
When you’re not thinking with your brain, you’re thinking with the brain of your milieu. Virtue signaling is almost a non-descriptive term if you ask any psychologist or, increasingly, an economist: People are intensely social animals. Everything we do is about display. This also played a role in the media freak-out over Russia.
That said, I suspect at least one major news organization in this country will soon decide it can no longer afford to be dragged against its will to acknowledge the doings of U.S. intelligence agencies in the 2016 election. It will want to get on top of the story.
To be sure, grossly illegal things were done—such as intelligence leaks. But the real story, once it’s pieced together starting with James Comey’s original intervention in the Clinton email case, will be a concatenation of ill-advised, bumptious, politically loaded decisions whose consequences America hasn’t owned up to yet.
A piquant moment was revealed by Fox anchor Brett Baier when he asked Mr. Comey last year if he had seen Obama intelligence chieftains John Brennan and James Clapper since leaving office. Mr. Comey at first equivocated and then quickly amended his statement to acknowledge that the three had dined together just two days earlier.
They are now in the soup together, but quite possibly in the soup because of the one Comey intervention that his colleagues didn’t endorse—his odd decision to reopen the Hillary investigation before Election Day. Pollsters tell us this single act might have elected Donald Trump.
It will be argued late into the night, but it strikes me as entirely legitimate for the FBI to be concerned about Russian trawling of minor and outré Trump associates. If the premise was the Steele dossier, though, this may be worse than embarrassing. Understand something about the Mueller investigation: It consisted largely of asking the FBI what it already knew. The U.S. government has vast intelligence resources; it’s always open season on foreign nationals like Christopher Steele. So the FBI likely knew early on a great deal about the (non)credibility of his sources and claims.
Bottom line: It’s plausible, perhaps even likely, that we will find our intelligence community used exceptionally flimsy intelligence to do what it wanted to do anyway in two seminal instances: the Clinton email case (about which I’ve written ad nauseam) and the Trump collusion investigation.
My argument for years has been that readers can repose a high degree of trust in brand-name news organizations to spell names correctly, quote sources accurately, nail down discrete facts.
You can’t trust their thinking. I have 50 examples at hand but take Chuck Todd of MSNBC, who accuses William Barr of spreading a “factless conspiracy theory” because the attorney general acknowledged this week that the FBI had spied on the Trump campaign.
A synonym for spying is “foreign intelligence surveillance”—the name of the court to which the FBI appealed four times to spy on a Trump campaign associate. This is a fact. Mr. Barr did not say such spying was unwarranted. A conspiracy theory is what MSNBC promoted on its air for two years with the Trump collusion story.
What exactly is wrong with Mr. Todd’s brain? He confuses two basic categories: good/bad and true/false. He believes he’s speaking in the journalistic language of true/false, but he really means: While it may be false that Trump colluded with Russia, this is a pro-Trump talking point so it’s bad to dwell on it. And while it may be true the FBI spied on the Trump campaign, this is also a pro-Trump talking point so it’s good not to acknowledge it.
Judgment is teachable. Long ago, in relation to the Enron debacle, I pointed to the work of Harvard’s Max Bazerman and Northwestern’s David Messick, who theorized how systematic reasoning errors can lead to unethical business judgments. Journalists, don’t lie to yourselves: Their advice applies to your work too.
Our industry needs to grow up by starting to police its reasoning as rigorously as it does its facts. Unfortunately, many who are employed today, when you come down to it, wouldn’t really have much to say if not armed with the trope du jour. We hire the wrong people. This problem is only getting worse at places like the New York Times and Washington Post due to the kind of “advance the narrative, ring up the clicks” journalism that prevails in the marketplace today.
Yet I have confidence the U.S. media will finally face up to the unanswered questions of the 2016 election for a simple reason: If they can’t blame the Trump presidency on Russian meddling, then it will please them eventually to revert to one of their earlier story lines and blame it on Mr. Comey.
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