Collusion: getting the dossier word out
One of the things about the dossier/collusion imbroglio is that its complexity makes it difficult (or at least labor-intensive) for people to follow. I doubt that most people take the trouble to do so, and therefore the MSM has the opportunity to shape perceptions through slanted and simplistic headlines.
But here’s a succinct summary (hat tip: commenter Barry Meislin):
CNN has never disclosed the close relationship between Evan Perez, one of the reporters on the Jan. 10, 2017 story, and his former Wall Street Journal colleagues who went on to start Fusion GPS, including the company’s founder Glenn Simpson. Nor did the Merriman Smith prize committee acknowledge how the dossier on which the leading lights of the news business have again staked their institutional credibility was disseminated to the public.
That story is now coming into focus with the recent release of seven government documents that together detail a working partnership between spy agencies and the press that helped a political attack meme go viral, even though the evidence on which it was based was demonstrably false. While this type of relationship””let’s call it collusion””may be routine in Third World countries, it does not bode well for the health of the American press, or our democratic institutions.
No it does not. But if this is happening, it’s best we learn about it.
…[T]housands of articles on the Trump-Russia collusion story have been spoon-fed to a pliant digital press by cabals of political operatives and ex-spooks. Lies, innuendo, wild conspiracy theorizing, and the insistent assumption of guilt have replaced old-fashioned rules of sourcing, objectivity, and basic plausibility. While the social cost of this radical departure from these century-old norms is likely to be high, it has acquired two main forms of justification, the twin pillars of the new press.
The first reason, popular on both the left and among the Never Trump coterie on the right, is the assertion that Trump is a dangerous fascist who is on the verge of overthrowing the rule of law in America, an emergency that, if real, might indeed call for extreme measures, like throwing the principles of evidence-based reporting out the window. The problem with this argument being that however obvious and galling the man’s flaws are, no evidence for the thesis that Donald Trump intends to do away with Congress and the courts and rule by his own Trumpian fiat exists, at least not on planet earth. The assertion that such evidence does exist is the province of lunatics, and of people who find it useful to goose them on social media, or take their money.
But powerful people looking to “cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil” nearly always justify their activities by saying they are dealing with a desperate emergency that requires desperate measures.
The column this week by Victor Davis Hanson is interesting because it describes what would have happened if Hillary had won the election.
He doesn’t even consider what things would take place if the intelligence agencies and the Democrats succeeded in over throwing Trump. It would be far worse.
The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic patience” would likely still govern the North Korea dilemma. Fracking would be curtailed. The – rather than “our” – miners really would be put out of work. Coal certainly would not have been “beautiful.” The economy probably would be slogging along at below 2 percent GDP growth.
China would be delighted, as would Iran. But most important, there would be no collusion narrative – neither one concerning a defeated Donald Trump nor another implicating a victorious Hillary Clinton. In triumph, progressives couldn’t have cared less whether Russians supposedly had tried to help a now irrelevant Trump; and they certainly would have prevented any investigation of the winning Clinton 2016 campaign.
In sum, Hillary’s supposedly sure victory, not fear of breaking the law, prompted most of the current 2016 scandals, and her embittering defeat means they are not being addressed as scandals.
If the author has what it takes to hit a bar this high, one would think he’d demonstrate it.
I mean, if one has DNA evidence proving your clients did not rape the victim, one wouldn’t waste time arguing about the hysteria of crowds. You’d demonstrate your clients innocence.
After that you got all the time in the world to deal with the idiot who took out full-page ads in the four daily NYC papers calling for the return of the death penalty.
Manju,
Please prove that you have stopped beating your significant other. Should be simple, eh?
But it’s a desperate emergency so who cares – or believes – what you might have to say in your defense.
It’s quite clear that the animus toward Donald Trump was so great as to cloud the thinking of a great many people. People who should be much more clear headed than they have proved to be.
I understand how it happens. Trump rubs many people the wrong way. He is not a smooth, focus group tested politician. He’s a Harry Truman or LBJ type who says a lot of crude things.
If you believed, as many here on this forum did during the campaign, that he was going to try to be a dictator, you might believe it your patriotic duty to try to thwart him. Especially if you have a position in government that makes that possible. And so we have experienced a concerted conspiracy to bring Trump down. The conspirators, when convicted of crimes, will still claim it was their patriotic duty and they did nothing wrong.
The unfortunate truth is that, in spite of the evidence of their plot, they are still going full bore and trying to succeed. And they might. So much depends on the mid term elections. Vote as if your life and liberty depends on it. Because it does.
Here’s the thing, Manju: The accused has no obligation to prove innocence. The accuser shoulders all responsibility to prove guilt, which, this side of the Salem witch trials, is expected to be in the form of, you know, this thing called evidence. Saying something doesn’t make it true.
The fact that after a year and a half of wholly inappropriate judicial fishing there is literally no evidence of actionable wrongdoing done by Trump himself anytime in the last several years is almost surprising; Trump must actually be a lot cleaner than I suspected. All they’ve been able to do is harass people who have come near Trump with procedural crimes and random charges on matters that have nothing to do with the mission of a “Russia collusion” investigation that never had legal merit to begin with. (Just imagine what would happen if we starting beating in doors of everyone who ever crossed paths with the Clintons, charging them with any random wrongdoing that can be scraped up, threatening their lawyers and their lawyers’ other clients, etc.) Basically, lefties would scream blue murder if the shoe were on the other foot, but since it’s Trump, it’s somehow justified.
That’s the worst fault of left. Something is good or bad; it’s not good or bad depending on who is doing it, or who it’s happening to, as lefties fervently believe.
This is what is so fundamentally disturbing about this whole situation. I don’t particularly like Trump, but I much less like the perversion of the legal system. Guilt is proved, by presenting actual evidence – not pronounced by accusers.
The Leftist meme that the United States is “the main obstacle to a stable and just world order” has become part of the Left’s essential dogma and thus “the erasure of the American Republic is [has become] the core agenda of the democrat party”.
The hard core Left and its agents in the Mass Media, Deep State and in Academia are completely committed to regaining power by any means necessary. Failing that, they’ll settle for America’s cultural, educational, financial, judicial and political destruction.
On every front the Left is cutting down all the pillars of American society. Never have so many fools and traitors in all but name existed in one nation.
The Left has brought us within sight of the precipice of societal dissolution.
Guilty, unworthy, etc. until proven innocent is a doctrine of the Pro-Choice Church, and several decades of warlock hunters. I wonder if the original witch hunts were carried out by female chauvinists with male chauvinist conspirators in order to reduce the competition a la Planned Parenthood.
CNN is stunningly corrupt. But there is an answer. CNN is owned by TimeWarner. ATT wants to merge with TimeWarner. Force TimeWarner to spin-off CNN as a condition of the merger. CNN would sink if it was a stand alone public company.
As most should know I was a Cruz partisan, but not a nevertruomp idiot because the Shrew Queen. I am surprised by djt so far. He is an odd warrior for the right. I wish him well. He faces entrenched obstacles but seems to possess the fortitude and energy to blast through.
1.
It’s the injustice of the proceedings—against the “small fry”, because of their connections to Trump and their former jobs in Russia.
Evidence is non-existent. Potential criminality is entirely circumstantial; and the proceedings are being drawn out so as to destroy those people involved.
And warn others.
2.
And it’s the injustice being committed by the lawmakers themselves (cf. Warner, et al.). The lawmakers.
The whole system has been corrupted, especially as it is supported by a Pravda-like media, acting as pit-bulls, but also more subtly, against their opposition.
Comparisons to “Salem” are certainly apt.
We’re entering “Darkness at Noon” territory, here.
(And could it be that the Left finally believes it can avenge itself of the perceived over-reaction of the anti-communist activities of the HUAC in the 50s? Though in many ways, it is clear that McCarthy—another crass individual—was not always tilting at windmills.)
It’s not everyday people see an entire nation or institution fall into corruption and evil. Future historians will need to read blog posts and journals to figure out what happened here and now.
Something is good or bad; it’s not good or bad depending on who is doing it, or who it’s happening to, as lefties fervently believe.
Chasid meant loyalty to one’s god, specifically in the Hebrew Torah texts. It was translated to the nearest Greek term, agape, which when translated to English means love.
To this day, most people believe the Old Testament law was summoned up as “love your neighbor as yourself”.
Rather it was “justice and service to your neighbor as to yourself”. Justice and righteousness as actual conducts, not get out of sin free cards from grace, were implicitly understood as part of the personal relationship of the House of Israel to YHVH. YHVH became the god of the Israelites and the House of Israel, Jakob, became the personal family and people of YHVH.
McCarthy’s latest offering.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/robert-mueller-questions-trump-decline-interview/
“I am assuming the authenticity of the questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President Trump. The questions indicate that, after a year of his own investigation and two years of FBI investigation, the prosecutor lacks evidence of a crime. Yet he seeks to probe the chief executive’s motives and thought processes regarding exercises of presidential power that were lawful, regardless of one’s view of their wisdom.
If Bob Mueller wants that kind of control over the executive branch, he should run for president. Otherwise, he is an inferior executive official who has been given a limited license – ultimately, by the chief executive – to investigate crime. If he doesn’t have an obvious crime, he has no business inventing one, much less probing his superior’s judgment. He should stand down.
The questions, reported by the New York Times, underscore that the special counsel is a pernicious institution. Trump should decline the interview. More to the point, the Justice Department should not permit Mueller to seek to interrogate the president on so paltry and presumptuous a showing.
…
The list of questions elucidates that Mueller is pursuing the legally suspect theory that legitimate exercises of presidential prerogatives can become prosecutable obstruction crimes if undertaken with an arguably corrupt motive. This theory is specious on at least two grounds.
First, it would empower a subordinate executive official (an unelected bureaucrat who serves at the president’s pleasure) to second-guess the chief executive’s every action and judgment – not just to investigate a patent, serious crime but to question what the president was thinking even when his actions were within his constitutional authority. The president is answerable to peer branches and to voters, but not down his chain of command. If an order is lawful, it is not the captain’s place to question the general’s motives.“
What I see emerging, like many here, is that the corruption in he government is far worse than most of us realised. The apparent collusion with the Obama and the Clinton campaign to ensure Trump’s defeat is shocking – Instead of Nixon’s dodgy plumbers, Obama and Clinton had the top levels of the FBI working against Trump both before and after the election. While unsurprised that a Justice Department controlled by one political party would manage not to bring criminal charges against the obvious successor of their own party, I am surprised by those same officials shifting seamlessly into lawfare mode against the new president and triggering a Special Counsel. Insurance policy indeed, and we haven’t gotten to Clapper and Brennan who may have been and still are up to all sorts of nefarious things. It was a commonplace by, at least, the 50s that no president would replace J Edgar Hoover because he had too much dirt on everyone, or that LBJ knew all his congressional colleagues sins and used them to get his way. We can wink and call LBJ a great parliamentarian, but if the three letter agencies are doing it to our officials – elected and otherwise – then the foxes are running the henhouse.
“…then the foxes are running the henhouse.”
Or the inmates the asylum….
Indeed, if the tipping point has been reached—IF—then America, or at least significant swaths of it, has been, it would seem, “fundamentally transformed”.
Which would mean that Obama is one of the most—perhaps THE most—successful president in American history.
(Of course, the usual suspects have been making that claim all along…. And, of course, suborning the FBI, the DOJ, the IRS and other various govt. agencies, as well as being given complete backup by the media, does help….)
The question is, can the genie be made to get back in its bottle, and if so, how might that be done?….
I guess denying Clinton her divinely-ordained destiny may be considered the first step….
(Continued)
…considered the first step….
But beware the Democratic Party’s desperate “counter reformation”, which is what we are currently witnessing.
How much do you get paid for this, manju? I can’t believe it is much over minimum wage.
FOAF. If he has a conscience, he’d have to be paid a millionaire’s ransom.
Instead of Nixon’s dodgy plumbers
Felt and the FBI’s dodgy plumbers, to be exactly accurate.
….had the top levels of the FBI working against Trump both before and after the election.
Top levels of FBI was ousting Nixon too.
Which would mean that Obama is one of the most–perhaps THE most–successful president in American history.
Whenever conservatives said that Hussein had failed, I would point that Hussein succeeded, just not at helping the US Constitution and USA.
His goals are different, so what would seem like “failures” would be successes if you move the goal post to the actual goal line. It’s not a miss then but a score. People were just blind to it because they still had faith that the “media” would communicate at least part of the truth, if not all of it. This reliance on outsourcing truth and the press to some elite aristocrats is a very bad American habit.
I would like very well to hear some of the rest of the brethren speak, if I had entirely got over being angry and had patience to sit and hear. I think, however, that I shall be able to calm and control my feelings, though I do not expect to become entirely settled until the affairs around me are settled.
It is a pretty bold stand for this people to take, to say that they will not be controlled by the corrupt administrators of our General Government. We will be controlled by them, if they will be controlled by the Constitution and laws; but they will not. Many of them do not care any
more about the Constitution and the laws that they make than they do about the laws of another nation. That class trample the rights of the people under their feet, while there are also many who would like to honor them. All we have ever asked for is our constitutional rights. We wish the laws of our Government honored, and we have ever honored them; but they are trampled under foot by administrators.
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Liars have reported that this people have committed treason; and upon their lies, the President has ordered out troops to aid in officering this Territory: and if those officers are like many who have previously been sent here (and we have reason to believe that they are, or they would not come when they know they are not wanted), they are poor, miserable blacklegs, broken-down political hacks, robbers, and whoremongers–men that are not fit for civilized society; so they must dragoon them upon us for officers. I feel that I won’t bear such cursed treatment, and that is enough to say; for we are just as free as the mountain air.
I do not lift my voice against the great and glorious Government guaranteed to every citizen by our Constitution, but against those corrupt administrators who trample the Constitution and just laws under their feet. They care no more about them than they do about the Government of France; but they walk them under their feet with impunity. And the most of the characters they have sent here as officers cared no more about the laws of our country and of this Territory than they did about the laws of China, but walked them under their feet with all the recklessness of despots.
I do not want to be angry, nor to have my feelings wrought up; but I cannot keep quiet under the continued outrageous tyranny of the wicked.
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Admit of corrupt administrators sending troops here, and what would be the result? All hell would follow after. I naturally dislike to have any trouble, and would not, were I not obliged to; but we are obliged to defend ourselves against the persecution of our oppressors, or have our constitutional rights rent from us, and have ourselves destroyed.
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The Government of our country will go by the board through its own corruptions, and no power can save it. If we can avert the blow for another season, it is probable that our enemies will have enough to attend to at home…………….
They say that their army is legal, and I say that such a statement is as false as hell, and that they are as rotten as an old pumpkin that has been frozen seven times and then melted in a harvest sun. Come on with your thousands of illegally-ordered troops, and I will promise you, in the name of Israel’s God, that you shall melt away as the snow before a July sun.
———– Territory of Utah War of 1857 vs Democrat President Buchanan of the United States of America
Maybe the Democrats didn’t teach that in our US history class and textbooks….
http://jod.mrm.org/5/226 Primary source citations are there. In the days of pre online research, we would have had to send photographic copies of this through the mail which might take a few weeks. Now I can just scroll through digitized copies.
Learn to control yourselves; learn to be in the hands of God as clay in the hands of the potter; and if he will turn our enemies away, praised be his name. But if it should become a duty to take the sword, let us do it
We have the knowledge of those things; and we have the greatest reason to be thankful of any people upon the face of the earth. If others ought to do right, we more. Be full of love and compassion to your fellow beings, full of kindness, such as human beings can possess, for that is our business. The only business that we have on hand is to build up the kingdom of God and prepare the way of the Son of Man.
This isn’t the first time the USA has fought against minority enclaves like the Red Indians. It is merely the first time a territory/State has been involved in an outright state of war with the United Federal States of America and survived or even won the conflict. No other territory, not even Kansas Vs Missouri slave raiders, faced the Union army itself. The outright secession of the Southern slave states for power over blacks and whites, didn’t happen until some odd years later. At that time, Utah was still partially occupied by 2000 troops or a division. The Union had to recall them, but they did not really make it in time to counter Lee’s strike from Virginia. How convenient that much of the Union’s professional army manpower was stationed to occupy and over the Territory of Utah when secession broke out. If I had a suspicious military Art of War mind (and I do), I would think this was a stratagem by some genius mortal or immortal.
Here’s another tid bit of history we might never have been told from Demoncrat written and published and sold textbooks.
Birth: Oct. 11, 1811
Nelson County
Kentucky, USA
Death: Apr. 16, 1890
Attica
Harper County
Kansas, USA
2nd. Lieutenant CO. G.
10th Ind. Cavalry
Nathaniel GRIGSBY. Son of Reuben Davis GRIGSBY Sr. & Nancy BARKER. Born 11 October 1811 in Nelson Co., KY. Died 16 April 1890 in Attica, Harper Co., KS. Buried in Attica, Harper Co., KS. He was a Civil War veteran, a 2nd Lieut., of Company G, 10th Indiana Cavalry. He was a farmer.
Nathaniel was a dear friend of Abraham Lincoln.
WENT TO SCHOOL WITH LINCOLN’S, BROTHER TO AARON GRIGSBY WHO MARRIED ABE LINCOLN’S OLDEST SISTER. VISITED IN WHITE HOUSE.
“Through this inscription I wish to enter my dying protest against what is called the Democratic party I have watched it closely since the days of Jackson and know that all the misfortunes of our nation has come to it through this so called party therefore beware of this party of treason.
Put on in fulfillment of promise to Deceased. Reprinted as posted on one side of the monument of N. Grigsby.”
You can look up the pictures online. That’s on his Tombstone.
Why I don’t trust the enemedia, item #103496728.
Good to see that most of you understand why the accused don’t have to prove their innocence. It’s very very hard to prove the negative.
So next time someone claims that they can, as the author of the article Neo cites does, your antennas should go up…especially if the author doesn’t show you the money.
Beacause if he doesn’t, he’s probably BSing you. And indeed, he is:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/03/the-unsupported-claim-that-james-clapper-tipped-jake-tapper-about-the-dossier/?utm_term=.4aecd6a03a97
Barry Meislin: Amen, brother. Way to go!
Off-topic, I note today Julie Keene, who used to comment here as a disguised “conservative liberal” (my words) is posting rabid, gloves-off Leftist comments on the WSJ.