Monday, May 6, 2019

Investigating Election 2016 (10)

Lots has happened since the release of the Mueller Report.
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Monday, January 7, 2019

Investigating Election 2016 (9)

Articles investigating the actions of the FBI/DOJ/CIA during the 2016 presidential election. January, 2019:
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Saturday, October 6, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (8)

Articles investigating the actions of the FBI/DOJ/CIA during the 2016 presidential election. October, 2018:

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Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (7)

Articles investigating the actions of the FBI/DOJ/CIA during the 2016 presidential election. September, 2018:
What about Rod Rosenstein? On the one hand, he recommended Comey's firing for mishandling the Clinton email investigation. However Comey's firing precipitated the special prosecutor, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, Rosenstein signed the 4th FISA warrant, and he appears to have covered up serious misconduct within the FBI and DOJ by slow-walking and redacting documents required by Congress.


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Friday, August 3, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (6)

Further links related to: Was everything in the Carter Page FISA applications manufactured by partisans in the FBI/DOJ/CIA?

August, 2018:
On the curious case of George Papadopoulos, he was previously accused of being the key linchpin in the Great Russian Collusion Conspiracy. Now it appears he was lured to Europe by one Western spy (Halper) and introduced to a second Western spy (Mifsud) who spoon-fed him information. He was then introduced to a third Western spy (Downer) who then milked him for the same information. It sounds like they were much more than just "confidential informants".

Then, months later, he was questioned by the FBI on information that the FBI already knew every detail. The apparent reason for this was to intentionally entrap him in a false statements charge.

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Monday, July 9, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (5)

Links to important articles for July, 2018:
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Saturday, June 23, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (4)

Links to important articles for June 17 - 30, 2018:
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Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (3)

Links to important articles for June 3 - 16, 2018:
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Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Investigating Election 2016 (2)

Links to important articles for May 27 - June 2, 2018:
Interesting questions yet to be answered:
  1. Who is the mysterious Joseph Mifsud?
  2. What are his connections to MI6, the CIA and John Brennan?
  3. Was he directed to pass along certain information about supposed 'Russian dirt on Hillary' to George Papadopoulos?
  4. Why has he disappeared?
  5. Supposed associates of Mifsud (Stephan Roh and Thierry Pastor) are making public statements for him. What are their connections to intelligence agencies, if any?
  6. Who is the mystery woman Azra Turk who accompanied Stefan Halper in meetings with George Papadopoulos?
  7. Is she connected to MI6 or CIA?
  8. Was she directed to seduce and elicit incriminating statements from Papadopoulos?
  9. Why did the high-flying ambassador Alexander Downer take such an active interest in the no-name George Papadopoulos?
  10. What coordination was there between Downer's actions and the FBI/CIA/DOJ?
  11. What about Rod Rosenstein? Is he a lying, duplicitous weasel, or just a useful idiot?
  12. Why is Bill Priestap still working for the FBI?
  13. What did he know and when did he know it?
  14. What about the FISA applications? In the end analysis, was everything in them manufactured by investigators?
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Monday, May 21, 2018

Investigating Election 2016

Links to important articles for May 15-26, 2018:

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Sunday, April 9, 2017

2016 Election Retrospective

In has been about five months since the 2016 Presidential election. A lot of people are still asking themselves what happened? Here is Hillary's take:

On the other hand, here are a few additional ideas for consideration:
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Saturday, March 25, 2017

The Roots or Western Self-Destruction

Or, Who is Antonio Gramsci?

Today's political climate is more poisonous than ever. People say and do things and are then criticized by their opponents. Those on the receiving end of the criticism point out that their opponents say and do things which are far worse. Accusations of self-interest and bias and dishonesty are exchanged. And round and round we go.

But really the disagreements are not about whether a particular action is good or bad, or honest or dishonest, but rather we are seeing a clash of conflicting presuppositions. Opposing worldviews are fighting for supremacy, but largely without acknowledging their fundamental differences about the meaning of goodness and truth.

The following two articles explain the fundamental assumptions which have crept into the American and Western society over the last century, as will as their origin and purpose. 
Here is the short-list of what Eric Raymond calls "memetic weapons":
  1. There is no truth, only competing agendas.
  2. All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
  3. There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
  4. The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
  5. Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
  6. The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
  7. For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
  8. When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.
Each of these propositions is demonstrably false, meaningless or self-contradictory. However they still operate as very powerful forces in our culture for the following reasons.

The Partial Truth

Each of these propositions may have some partial truth in particular circumstances. For example, the West truly does have a history of racism and colonialism. But that is different than saying the West is largely characterised by, or built upon, or identical to racism and colonialism.

Thus a specific fact in certain circumstances is exaggerated to the extent that it becomes a falsehood. And the fact that there is some kernel of truth in there somewhere gives the exaggeration great power in the minds of some. The additional fact that there are millions of counter-examples to demonstrate that the generalization is false is only considered a rationalization, or an attempt to gloss over the hard truth.

Societal Acceptance

Everyone craves societal acceptance, and these propositions are largely embraced by society's famous and powerful people. Most entertainers, media personalities, prominent athletes, college professors, government bureaucrats, and business tycoons either promote or cooperatively accept these propositions. And anyone who wants to get along, must go along or face ostracism.

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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Trump Turns the Tables


The Ancient Laws of Unintended Consequences - Victor Davis Hanson
Finally, after Democrats, Obama officials, and the media massaged the leaks from surveillance of Team Trump, in Samson-like fashion, Trump pulled down the temple on everyone — by tweeting groundbreaking but unsupported accusations that a sitting president of the United States and his team were the catalysts for such unlawful tapping. Apparently, he reckoned that the liberal conversation would therefore turn defensive rather than accusatory. If the progressive media and intelligence agencies were hand-in-glove leaking damaging rumors about Trump, and if none were yet substantiated, then the issue reversed and turned instead on a new question: How were they trafficking in confidential intelligence information if not from skullduggery of some sort? No wonder that some smarter observers backtracked from the Russian-Trump collusion charges of the past six months, given that the leaks were less likely to be credible than they were criminal. The accusers have become the accused. And who would police the police?
The media and the anti-Trump Republicans decried Trump’s reckless and juvenile antics as unbefitting a president. Perhaps, but they may have forgotten Trump’s animal cunning and instincts: Each time Trump impulsively raises controversial issues in sloppy fashion — some illegal aliens harm American citizens as they enjoy sanctuary-city status, NATO European partners welch on their promised defense contributions, Sweden is a powder-keg of unvetted and unassimilated immigrants from the war-torn Middle East — the news cycle follows and confirms the essence of Trump’s otherwise rash warnings. We are learning that Trump is inexact and clumsy but often prescient; his opponents, usually deliberate and precise but disingenuous.
Emphasis added to original. Read the whole article through the link above.

Also, here is a good summary of the articles confirming that the Obama administration had not only surveilled Trump and his associates, but also unmasked the identities of US citizens and illegally leaked that information to the press:
12 Pieces Of Proof: The MSM Knew Obama Spied On Trump and LIED To Cover It Up - John Nolte
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Saturday, February 4, 2017

Life's Rich Pageant

I recently watched A Shot in the Dark (1964). It has been a long time since I've seen it, and I had completely forgotten this scene. 

Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) is investigating a murder, and the victim is laying face down on the floor. The accused murderer is Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer). Clouseau is questioning Maria, but having fallen into a fountain, he is soaked to the skin.
Maria: “You should get out of these clothes immediately. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia, you will.”
Clouseau: “Yes, I probably will. But it’s all part of life’s rich pageant, you know.”



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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Some Election Humor

The bicycle race

The hockey rink



 



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Monday, December 5, 2016

Who is Steve Bannon?

The political Left is in the middle of a freakout over Donald Trump winning the presidential election. Some of the reactions are completely unhinged. Others are more measured, intentional, and strategic.

Take, for example, the current demonization of Steve Bannon, the President-elect's chief strategist (google it). This is an excellent example of rule #13 from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
In the online Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel let's Mr. Bannon speak for himself.

Steve Bannon on Politics as War - Kimberley A. Strassel
Nor does he profess to care that Democrats and the media are portraying him as a “cloven-hoofed devil,” as he puts it. “I pride myself in doing things that matter. What mattered in the campaign was winning. We did. What matters now is pulling together the single best team we can to implement President-elect Trump’s vision.

He continues: “How can you take anything seriously from a media apparatus—paid the amount of money you people are paid—that systematically missed something that was so obvious, that missed Brexit, that missed the Trump revolution? You’d have thought they’d have learned their lesson on November 8.”

Slight pause. “They clearly haven’t.”

Here are a few things you’ve likely read about Steve Bannon this week: He’s a white supremacist, a bigot and anti-Semite. He’s a self-described Leninist who wants to “destroy the state.” He’s associated with the “alt-right,” a movement that, according to the New York Times, delights in “harassing Jews, Muslims and other vulnerable groups by spewing shocking insults on social media.”

You’ll have seen some of Breitbart’s more offensive headlines, which refer to “renegade” Jews and the “dangerous faggot tour.” You maybe heard that Breitbart is gearing up to be a Pravda-like state organ for the Trump administration.

Mr. Bannon is an aggressive political scrapper, unabashed in his views, but he says those views bear no relation to the media’s description. Over 70 minutes, he describes himself as a “conservative,” a “populist” and an “economic nationalist.” He’s a talker, but unexcitable, speaking in measured tones. A former naval officer, he thinks in military terms and likes to quote philosophers and generals. He’s contemptuous of the media, proud of Breitbart, protective of the “deplorables,” and—at least at the moment—eager to work with everyone from soon-to-be White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

At first Mr. Bannon insists that he has no interest in “wasting time” addressing the accusations against him. Yet he’s soon ticking off the reasons they are “just nonsense.”

Anti-Semitic? “Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America. I have Breitbart Jerusalem, which I have Aaron Klein run with about 10 reporters there. We’ve been leaders in stopping this BDS movement”—meaning boycott, divestment and sanctions—“in the United States; we’re a leader in the reporting of young Jewish students being harassed on American campuses; we’ve been a leader on reporting on the terrible plight of the Jews in Europe.” He adds that given his many Jewish partners and writers, “guys like Joel Pollak, these claims of anti-Semitism just aren’t serious. It’s a joke.”

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Sunday, November 13, 2016

Post-Election Protests

After the election results were settled, Hillary Clinton gave a very gracious concession speech, and likewise Barack Obama and Donald Trump apparently had very cordial meeting at the White House.

However, since then there have been widespread protests in various cities across the U.S. The theme of these protests has been "Not My President". Who are the participants of these protests, and what has motivated them to take to the streets? Is it an organized attempt to de-legitimize Donald Trump's presidency before he even takes office?

Links at Instapundit.
Also:
  • Violence on the Left - John Hinderaker
  • Democrats: Vicious, Violent, Anti-Democratic - John Hinderaker 
  • Inside The Anti-Trump Protest Movement - Blake Montgomery 
    Along with the anarchists, core organizers of the protests have included the ANSWER Coalition, a group with roots that trace back to supporting the Soviet invasion of Hungary in the 1950s, and the Socialist Alternative, a Trotskyist group on the other side of those forgotten Communist civil wars. Those groups’ organizing muscle has long made them important, if controversial, elements of the US left (they were central to protests against the Iraq War in 2003), and they now find themselves marching with Bernie Sanders supporters, civil rights advocates, and thousands of Democrats shocked at Trump’s election.
Who is ANSWER?
And finally, a quote from the great Tom Wolfe:
Marshall McLuhan once said that moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity. I think that's quite true these days.
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Election 2016 - Inciting Violence

The media narrative is that Donald Trump and the Republican Party incite violence, creating fear in the hearts of a wide variety of American citizens. But let's face it, only one candidate and one political party has actually intentionally incited violence in this election.

Rigging the Election - Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies -- Project Veritas

Also:
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Election 2016

I'll admit to being something of a political junkie. And this election has probably been a once-in-a -lifetime event. The political newcomer -- scorned by the media, and fashionable society, and the intellectual class, and the Washington bureaucracy -- comes from behind on election night to win against all odds.

The post-election fallout has been tremendous. Half of the electorate is going through the seven stages of grief. The other half has generally had a more subdued reaction: surprise, relief, schadenfreude, etc.

To both groups I'd like to say it's only an election. Life will go on, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Also, the presidency was never intended to be an all-powerful monarch. So while the president does hold a lot of inherent authority over the executive branch, and is able to veto legislation, and nominate Supreme Court justices, that authority must also balanced out by the other branches of government.

Finally, the solution to most of America's problems are best addressed through the human spirit, and are thus best approached by inspirational or persuasive means rather than legal or authoritarian means.

On the lighter side -
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Sunday, October 16, 2016

On Trump

The best thing I've read about this election -

 Trump and the Emasculated Voter - David Gelernter
Some conservatives have watched their evaluations of Donald Trump’s character drop so low in recent days that on this vital question they no longer see a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Accordingly, they are forced back onto politics and policy; and naturally Mr. Trump wins in a walk. If conservatives who argue that Mr. Trump is worse than Mrs. Clinton had a case, it would be a relief to vote for Mrs. Clinton or for no one. But they don’t, and one is therefore forced for the good of the nation to vote for Mr. Trump.

In his Mr. Nauseating video of last weekend, Mr. Trump showed us that he had all the class and cool of a misbegotten 12-year-old boy. Yet the video taught us nothing; no one had ever mistaken him for anything but an infantile vulgarian. This week’s allegations of actual abuse are different. If these stories are true (and I don’t know why they shouldn’t be), there is nothing to be said for Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be said for Mrs. Clinton either. If we don’t take both facts into account, we are not morally serious.

Mrs. Clinton has nothing on Mr. Trump when it comes to character. She lies (“Wipe? Like with a cloth?”—cute and charming Mrs. C.) the way basketball stars shoot baskets—constantly, nonstop, because it’s the one thing she is best at and (naturally) it gives her pleasure to hear herself lie—swish!—right onto the evening news. And her specialist talent of all is the verbal kick in the groin of a Secret Service man or state trooper who has the nerve to talk to her as if she were merely human. She is no mere rock star; she is Hillary the Queen. She is so big, and you are so small, she can barely even see you from up there. What are you? A macromolecule?

I’ll vote for Mr. Trump—grimly. But there is no alternative, no shadow of a responsible alternative.

Mr. Trump’s candidacy is a message from the voters. He is the empty gin bottle they have chosen to toss through the window. The message begins with the fact that voters hear what the leaders and pundits don’t: the profound contempt for America and Americans that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama share and their frightening lack of emotional connection to this nation and its people.

Mr. Obama is arch, patronizing, so magnificently weary of having to explain it all, again and again, to the dummies surrounding him. Mrs. Clinton has told us proudly how thoroughly she prepared for the first debate and has prepared to be president. For her, it is all a matter of learning your lines. Her whole life has been memorized in advance. Mr. Obama is at least sincere. Mrs. Clinton is as phony as a three-dollar bill, as a Clinton Global Initiative.

Mr. Obama has governed like a third-rate tyrant. He’s been a stern baby sitter to an American public that is increasingly getting on his nerves. ObamaCare and the Iran treaty are his big achievements. That the public has always disliked them, and hates them worse as it knows them better, strikes him as so unspeakably irrelevant; he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Do you ask 6-year-olds if they like going to school? Luckily, a few grown-ups have been set over the public to keep it in line.

Mrs. Clinton couldn’t agree more. Policy is for smart people, who are people of the left by definition—leftists having scored all those big successes over the years in foreign policy, race relations, policing, restarting wounded economies, making unsecured loans, running school systems and so on. On topics from Keystone to Guantanamo, Mr. Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t give a damn what people think—he no longer even tries to explain to the citizenry. Do your homework! Understand?

Yes, leadership sometimes requires that you take an unpopular position and make it popular. We are told that Mr. Obama is working on his “legacy” instead, as if that makes him farsighted instead of irresponsible and insanely vain. Presidents are supposed to run the country, not worry about their reputation in coming centuries.

Trump voters have noticed that, not just over Mr. Obama’s term but in recent decades, their own opinions have grown increasingly irrelevant. It’s something you feel, like encroaching numbness. Since when has the American public endorsed affirmative action? Yet it’s a major factor in the lives of every student and many workers. Since when did we decide that men and women are interchangeable in hand-to-hand combat on the front lines? Why do we insist on women in combat but not in the NFL? Because we take football seriously. That’s no joke; it’s the sad truth.

Did we invite the federal bureaucracy to take charge of school bathrooms? I guess I missed that meeting. The schools are corrupt and the universities rotten to the core, and everyone has known it since the 1980s. But the Democrats are owned by the teachers unions, and Republicans have made only small-scale corrections to a system that needs to be ripped out and carefully disposed of, like poison ivy.

The Emasculated Voter to whom no one pays any attention is the story of modern democracy. Instead of putting voters in charge, we tell them they’re in charge, and it’s just as good. That’s the Establishment’s great discovery in the Lois Lerner Age.

Enter Mr. Trump. People say he became a star because he just happened to mention an issue that just happened to catch on. But immigration is the central issue of our time. Trump voters zeroed in because they saw what most intellectuals didn’t. What is our nation and what will it be? Will America go on being America or turn into something else? That depends on who lives here—especially given our schools, which no longer condescend to teach Americanism.

The liberal theory is that, other things being equal, all human beings have an equal right to settle in America. For liberals this is too obvious to spell out. But it is also too ludicrous to defend. Does all mankind have a right to camp in your backyard, eat in your kitchen, work at your office and borrow your best jogging outfit? We fail in our duty if we don’t think carefully whom we want in this country, who would be best for America.

Furthermore, we know that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But that’s got nothing to do with immigration; freedom of religion means freedom for American citizens—what else could it possibly mean? We must not tamper with Americans’ religious life. We must not admit, as possible future citizens, anyone we don’t choose to; anyone we don’t think will be good for America. Not to admit Muslims is bad policy but it does not violate freedom of religion and the American people have a perfect right to discuss and debate it.

Hold on, some of my fellow conservatives say. Never mind Hillary. Trump would be dangerous. He would further endanger our national security and world position. He might start unnecessary wars. He might even push the nuclear button. These are important objections, but after thinking them through I’m unable to take them seriously, either in political terms or psychological ones.

Mrs. Clinton is right at home in the Oval Office and thinks she owns it. She holds herself entitled to supreme power, as her friends are entitled to fancy positions with enormous salaries and her followers to secure government jobs or ample government funds, as the case may be.

But forget psychology. Ordinary politics says that Mr. Trump will not do crazy things or go off half-cocked, because Republicans in Congress will be eager to impeach him and put Mike Pence in charge. That was the subtext of the vice-presidential debate, though Mr. Pence himself (probably) didn’t intend it. When it’s my turn, you can all relax. Democrats, obviously, will be eager to help when the task is removing a Republican.

Impeachment is Trump-voters’ ace in the hole. It’s an abnormal measure, but this is an abnormal year. Impeachment has temporarily dropped out of sight because of special circumstances. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton but got burned in the process; Mr. Obama, as the first black president, was impeachment-proof. Any other president would have encountered serious impeachment talk on several occasions, especially when he ignored Congress and the Constitution and made his own personal treaty-in-all-but-name with Iran.

But Mr. Trump will not have Mr. Obama’s advantages—to say the least. Mr. Trump will be impeachment bait. So will Mrs. Clinton. Even some Democrats have had enough.

Nothing can stop Mr. Trump from shooting off his mouth, but that’s all right. I want America’s enemies off-balance and guessing. For eight years it’s been Humiliate America season—buzz our ships, capture and embarrass our men, murder an American ambassador—a resoundingly successful attempt to spit in our faces and tell each one of us to drop dead. Thanks, Mr. President. Enough is enough. You know that Hillary is Obama Part III. We can’t let that happen. Parts I and II have brought us close enough to catastrophe.

That is the problem for those whose integrity or nobility won’t allow them to vote for Mr. Trump despite their dislike of Mrs. Clinton. There is only one way to take part in protecting this nation from Hillary Clinton, and that is to vote for Donald Trump. A vote for anyone else or for no one might be an honest, admirable gesture in principle, but we don’t need conscientious objectors in this war for the country’s international standing and hence for the safety of the world and the American way of life. It’s too bad one has to vote for Mr. Trump. It will be an unhappy moment at best. Some people will feel dirty, or pained, or outright disgraced.

But when all is said and done, it’s no big deal of a sacrifice for your country. I can think of bigger ones.

— Mr. Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale.
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