Special elections are – well – special. Turnout is often different than in the general, for example. And this year they are especially special, because of the virus, which meant that these were almost entirely mail-in in California, and about half mail-in in Wisconsin.
Then again, mail-in at least theoretically would seem to favor the Democrats.
And yet, the GOP held into a red seat in Wisconsin and may have won a previously blue seat in California. I say “may have” because they’re still counting ballots, and even though it really isn’t close at all at the moment, we know the history of Democrats “finding” the requisite number of ballots marked “Democrat” and managing to squeak out a victory.
UPDATE 6:45 PM:
Garcia’s opponent Christy Smith concedes. I guess the Democrats couldn’t find enough car trunks with ballots in them. Or perhaps it just wasn’t worth their while, since this seat will be re-contested in November, and the House is dominated by the Democrats right now anyway.
I have gotten to the point where I no longer put any trust in the prognostications of scientists about COVID-19 and the comparison of various social policy tactics for dealing with it. These people have lost credibility – and I was already skeptical in the first place.
Some no doubt are well-intentioned and trying their best to do a good job. Others probably have a political agenda. But at this point I think even the first group simply doesn’t know. The country-by-country data gives us some information, to be sure – enough to bring me to the conclusion that there is no simple relationship between any of the rules and the outcomes claimed to be a result of those rules. But it doesn’t tell us what to do going forward.
Sweden is encouraging in terms of relaxing the rules, but the US is not Sweden. Georgia, likewise. But it still doesn’t tell us enough.
However, I also concluded a few weeks ago that we must go forward and open up the economy or the amount of human suffering as a result of the shutdown will be absolutely enormous, too. In fact, it already has been. Those at greater risk (like me) will have to make our own decisions about how and when we’ll venture forth. But the greater good requires that we end this stalemate.
We need to uh, observe with an open mind what went on in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school. The mortality per capita in Sweden is actually less than France, less than Italy, less than Spain, less than Belgium, less than the Netherlands, about the same as Switzerland. But basically I don’t think there’s anybody arguing that what happened in Sweden is an unacceptable result. I think people are intrigued by it and we should be, I don’t think any of us are certain when we do all these modelings, there’ve been more people wrong with modeling than right. We’re opening up a lot of economies around the, around the U S and I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying, Oh, we can’t do this, there’s going to be, the surge will admit that they were wrong…
…We can listen to your advice, but there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge and that we can safely open the economy and the facts will bear this out.
About two months ago I wrote a post entitled “Gone are the days: assuming the risk.” In it I wrote:
Of course, I wasn’t around in 1918. I wasn’t around when smallpox and tuberculosis or the Black Death killed far far more of the people on earth than any of the plagues of my lifetime have come close to killing. I cannot even imagine how terrible those things were; I don’t even want to imagine. And I doubt that people took them in stride at all. And I think a good part of the dread and fear now is that in the back of our minds – or for some people, even the front of our minds – we know that such catastrophes are still possible. Human beings know they are intensely vulnerable.
But COVID-19 is not shaping up to be that sort of event, and there’s no reason to think it will be. However, although many measures are prudent – handwashing, increased testing, hospital preparedness, some measure of social distancing at least for a while – the degree of fear I see and hear is far greater than anything I can recall in my lifetime around a medical event.
And COVID-19 still isn’t shaping up to be that kind of event. We have a lot more information now. It seems, though, that people have become less able to assume any risks at all, and more demanding of total or nearly total safety. Meanwhile, to achieve that safety, many advocate the continuation of measures that are bound to sink this country – not to mention causing people to die of or suffer from other diseases or phenomena such as domestic abuse or suicide.
Of course, some who advocate continual shutdown have other motives than near-total safety. Some on the left would like the economy to sink and are merely using the fear sparked by COVID to achieve those aims. And there are plenty of people who would like to use all of it to destroy Trump’s and the GOP’s chances of victory in November.
One of the most interesting things about the Flynn case is how the recent documents have merely repeated and/or verified things we on the right already knew or suspected. Now we have a more complete story. But it’s not as though the general outlines haven’t been fairly clear from the start – although ignored, covered up, denied, and/or lied about by the left.
Actually, they’re still being ignored, covered up, denied, and/or lied about by the left.
If you go back in time, you can find articles such as this one from December of 2018:
On Tuesday, attorneys for Michael Flynn filed a sentencing memorandum and letters of support for the former Army lieutenant general in federal court. The sentencing memorandum reveals for the first time concrete evidence that the FBI created multiple 302 interview summaries of Flynn’s questioning by now-former FBI agent Peter Strzok and a second unnamed agent, reported to be FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka.
Further revelations may be forthcoming soon following an order entered late yesterday by presiding judge Emmet Sullivan, directing the special counsel’s office to file with the court any 302s or memorandum relevant to Flynn’s interview.
Sound familiar? As they say, “the wheels of justice grind slow.”
More from that same 2018 article:
While Flynn’s sentencing memorandum methodically laid out the case for a low-level sentence of one-year probation, footnote 23 dropped a bomb, revealing that the agents’ 302 summary of his interview was dated August 22, 2017. As others have already noted, the August 22, 2017 date is a “striking detail” because that puts the 302 report “nearly seven months after the Flynn interview.” When added to facts already known, this revelation takes on a much greater significance…
Congress has been trying to get to the bottom of this question for months upon months…
“Did the FBI agents document their interview with Lt. Gen. Flynn in one or more FD-302s? What were the FBI agents’ conclusions about Lt. Gen. Flynn’s truthfulness, as reflected in the FD-302s? Were the FD-302s ever edited? If so, by whom? At who’s direction? How many drafts were there? Are there material differences between the final draft and the initial draft(s) or the agent’s testimony about the interview?”…
The most recent iteration of Sullivan’s standing entered in the Flynn case required Mueller’s office to produce “any evidence in its possession that is favorable to defendant and material either to defendant’s guilt or punishment.”…
Of course, this all assumes that the special counsel’s office still has copies of the initial 302s created, which might not be the case given that when Mueller’s “pitbull,” Andrew Weissmann, led the Enron Task Force, his team, among other things, systematically destroyed draft 302s.
Again – that was written in December of 2018, about a year and a half ago.
BARTIROMO: Let me ask you about this…And that is the so-called Flynn 302. Now, the 302s is a reference meaning that this is notes that FBI agents took after they met with Flynn.
Explain what you think is in the 302 of Flynn. And why have we not seen the exchanges, the notes that the FBI agents took after their meeting in January 2017, when they ambushed General Flynn? Where is the Flynn 302, Congressman?
(LAUGHTER)
NUNES: Well, the 302 is still missing, Maria.
So here is what we know. This report, when it was taken down, after that report was transcribed, we had people at the highest level, the FBI, come and brief us. Plus, we have other sources that also gave us the same information that the FBI agents essentially said, look, there’s nothing to see here, Flynn wasn’t lying.
And that’s what we were told on the record. So we knew this at the beginning of 2017. So you can imagine my astonishment when it began to leak out in the press that General Flynn was being busted for lying to the FBI, and that that’s what the Mueller team, the dirty Mueller team, that’s what they were going to bust him on.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
NUNES: And I told people at the highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ, I said, what are you doing here? Like, we have, on the record, from the highest-level people that he didn’t lie to the FBI…
If that’s what you’re using, if you’re going to drop the charges on Flynn’s son or whatever conspiracy theory they were pedaling against General Flynn they had no possible way to bust him or indict him for lying to the FBI, because then that means that the FBI had lied to us, OK?
Now, so what happened? What happened is that that report was doctored, Maria.
And that report, we know it was doctored, because the lovebirds, we have the text messages of them doctoring the report. But here is the problem.
BARTIROMO: That’s right.
NUNES: The original report that was used to brief the United States Congress, that report is missing. It’s gone. Poof. It’s out of — we can’t find it.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable. And it was doctored. OK.
You may also recall that the public became more widely aware of the FBI’s method of “recording” interrogations, the 302, back during the “investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s emails. It was a shock to many of us who previously had been unfamiliar with the FBI’s use of the 302, which relies on the agents’ words. In this day and age of recordings of ordinary police interrogations, it is stunning that the FBI continues to employ the 302 instead, but it is exceptionally useful if the agency wants to retain the ability to exonerate someone like Hillary Clinton and frame someone like General Flynn.
In July of 2016 I wrote a lengthy post about 302s in the context of the Hillary investigation. In it, I quoted this article from June of 2011 which described the way the 302 works:
FBI procedure calls for agents to take notes during interviews and use them as the basis for a typewritten summary report, called a form 302. These 302s become exhibits at trial. Along with an agent’s own testimony, they serve as the primary record of an interviewee’s statement.
Because the substance of the reports is so important — and because the reports are inherently subjective — defense lawyers often seek to pick them apart. putting the agent on the defensive. This is particularly the case when defendants are charged with obstruction or lying to FBI agents…
The FBI’s policy allows for statements to be recorded on a limited, highly selective basis; such recordings must have prior approval from bureau chiefs. Former agents say this is extremely rare…
Those in favor of the current FBI approach to audiotapes allege that any blanket, one-size-fits-all policy would be a logistical nightmare for the already-taxed agency. Furthermore, recordings could reveal FBI interview tactics or strategies.
That last sentence takes on special significance in the light of the Flynn interrogation and subsequent coverup of documents, doesn’t it?
I’ve been thinking about talking to some of my liberal friends about the Flynn case revelations. I’m wondering if they’re even familiar with them, since their news source is the usual MSM. And if they are aware of the latest disclosures, I wonder what they think of them. Do they dismiss them as lies? Do they shrug them off as unimportant? Do they approve of them as justified? Or are they disturbed by the excesses and violations that occurred?
If I do get around to finding someone willing to talk about it in a relatively calm manner, I’m also going to try to explain how the MSM has been deceptive in its coverage in order to protect the Obama administration. And then I plan to ask the following question: During Watergate, what would you have thought if the press had been part of the coverup?
If any of you decide to do something similar, I’d be curious what responses you get.
If all this Chinese espionage, hacking and secrets theft is so widespread, how come it never came to prominence before? It's like it sprang fully formed from Zeus' forehead. If it is real the scandal is why the IC didn't sound the alarm.
We are learning more and more about how many people, countries, and institutions are sympathetic to China for political and/or financial reasons. For example, please see this chilling article about how beholden Italy is becoming to China, and about China’s plans for the rest of Europe, particularly its southern tier.
While it remains unclear what proof the FBI and DHS possess, it does seem extremely likely that Beijing is using cyber espionage to snoop on U.S. efforts against the coronavirus. Furthermore, it would fall in line with Beijing’s notorious lies and malfeasance during the coronavirus crisis.
The British think tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), which claimed that the G7 countries should sue China for damages in excess of $4 trillion over the coronavirus crisis, laid out a digestible timeline of the virus’s spread and China’s lies about the disease and failure to contain the spread…
According to unpublished, unconfirmed Chinese government reports seen by the South China Morning Post, the first recorded case of the coronavirus dates to November 17, 2019, weeks before The Lancet‘s claim that the first recorded case came on December 1.
Or was it earlier, perhaps back in October? I have no trouble believing that’s possible.
Plus, we have a story from Germany that the Chinese wanted WHO to delay announcement of a global warning on COVID.
The San Antonio City Council passed a resolution that designated the terms “Chinese Virus” and “Kung Fu Virus” as hate speech in response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
No doubt calling Lyme disease “hate speech” is next on the San Antonio agenda.
By the way, I always use COVID-19 or COVID or coronavirus to refer to the illness. It’s my preference to use the more scientific neutral terms whenever possible. But that’s my preference. The idea that using a place name to refer to a disease’s origins is some form of hate speech is a leftist absurdity. If people attack Asians in this country because of it, that’s a crime, but it’s not because of the labeling. The truth is that the disease originated in China and China has behaved absolutely abominably. And that’s not hate speech.
[ADDENDUM: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is now referring to COVID as the “European virus.” I kid you not.]
U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham is going “full throttle” with his review into the origins of the investigation into suspected Russia-Trump coordination in the 2016 election, with additional top prosecutors involved in looking at different components of the original probe…
How nice. Whatever does it mean? And in particular, how does the timing relate to the upcoming November election, whose hot breath I can already feel on the back of my neck?
Durham was appointed one year ago. That’s a long time, but thorough investigations take time. However, this one has a sort of Election Day deadline, because the timing of revelations and of decisions to prosecute or not to prosecute, and whom to prosecute, could be vitally important to what happens on that day and beyond.
That’s why the Democrats are working overtime to discredit such investigations before anything is even announced.
I wonder whether Durham is just going along on his own schedule with no recognition of how the timing relates to the huge political ramifications. I also wonder how much throttle he was opening up prior to this. Shouldn’t it have been “full throttle” right along?
[NOTE: My very first car was a 1965 Vovlo 122S (red) looking pretty much like this:
That car didn’t have power anything. To park it required muscle. Nor did it have a radio. But it was mine (a hand-me-down, but mine). I didn’t get it till I was in law school.
The point of all this reminiscing is that it had a throttle the driver could operate, a black knob on the left that could be pulled open or pushed close. Haven’t seen one of those in half a century.]
It’s easy to demonstrate what Todd did. So his method is quickly exposed, and he is shown to be biased and deceptive. So, why would he do something as blatant and easily-uncovered as this?:
(1) At this point, after the revelations concerning the Flynn prosecution and the recommendation by Barr that the case not be pursued, discrediting Barr is of the utmost importance to the Left, the Democrats, and the MSM (that list is redundant, I know).
(2) Todd is confident that the rest of the MSM will not point out his deceptions, and will also advance their own claims of Barr’s perniciousness in a myriad of ways, adding to the anti-Barr din.
(3) Todd knows that the corrections will come from the right, and that the vast majority of his listeners will not see those corrections.
(4) Todd has learned that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has time to get its pants on. That is especially true if the lie is promulgated by someone with a vast and trusting audience, and repeated by others.
(5) Todd is also aware that the much of his audience who do somehow manage to become aware of what he actually did and its deceptiveness won’t care, because they know that he’s expressing a Higher Truth in a Greater Cause.
There are thousands of Chuck Todds in the press today.
Why do we keep beating this dead horse? Yet, just another example of the duplicity of the MSM, the left, and the Dems. As we all know, the only ones who care about this are “us”. And as we all keep saying, the regular folks will never know about it. So let’s stop getting worked up over it. It’s going to to take a cataclysmic shift to change this situation, and I don’t see it happening. We should just stop wasting energy on this.
I also ask myself that question. But my answer is that some people on the right keep being puzzled by how blatantly and obviously the press lies, and this post is an attempt to answer why they do that and why they will continue to do that.
This post and others like it also are attempts to give anyone who might care to discuss journalistic lies with relatives and friends some information that could be part of that discussion. I’m mulling over doing that myself, and considering who I might discuss such things with so that I don’t waste my time. I think there are a few people I know who are open-minded and willing to have such a discussion without descending into screaming and insults. I’ve been planning my approach. It’s not easy, but I think it needs doing.
I may post on that topic in the not-too-distant future, if I come up with a plan.]
[NOTE: This is a repeat of what has become my annual Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]
Okay, who are these three dark beauties?
A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.
My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.
Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.
The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.
Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.
We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).
My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.
I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.
So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?
There are women performers in Russian and Ukrainian folk dancing. But they’re really just decorative window-dressing.
The men are the thing. And yes, they have ball bearings for knees, and springs in the soles of their feet.
I first saw this sort of dance when I was about nine years old, when during the Khrushchev “thaw” the Moiseyev Dance Company performed in New York. I will never forget my stunned delight. I didn’t think the human body was capable of such feats.
I’m still not sure it is. But seeing is believing:
NOTE: And by the way, this is professional, highly-trained and polished, mega folk dancing. I very much doubt it looked quite like this at village festivals. But it’s based on folk dance moves and forms, and “Moiseyev’s work has been especially admired ‘for the balance that it maintained between authentic folk dance and theatrical effectiveness.'”
Within moments of the Russiagate document release, the left and MSM chorused nearly the same thing almost in unison: this is a travesty of justice! And they weren’t talking about the wretched excesses of the state apparatus regarding the framing of Flynn, they were talking about Barr and the refusal to pursue the charges against Flynn. It’s a political vendetta! It’s the end of the rule of law! James Comey’s tweet, which I wrote about on Thursday, was a good example of this.
I’ve long thought that Obama has been a major player not only in Russiagate as a whole, but in the entire course of events, and in particular the media and Democrat spin, of the Russiagate-related reaction since he left office. I just don’t think he’s the type to walk away from politics or from protecting his legacy. Although he likes to play golf and relax, too, he’s still deadly serious about the same agenda he had as president. He may or may not be the sole and undisputed leader of the Resistance, but he’s certainly a very big – and still-respected – player in it.
For example, back in November Obama publicly warned the Democrat candidates not to go too far left. And although he was careful not to mention any particular candidate by name, it was clear who he was talking about:
In what seemed a rebuke of Warren and Sanders’ stances, Obama, who is still held in exceptionally high regard by Democratic voters, spent considerable time during his speech counseling against adopting left-wing populism as a party platform.
His implicit message was: don’t show your left hand so openly; dissemble like I did.
Also, there are indications that Obama was influential in coaxing candidates to drop out when they did, or at the very least to endorse Biden after dropping out, in order to stop Sanders (see also this).
Now we have the “leak” of a “private” phone call between Obama and some-bunch-or-other of those who worked in his administration. In an article written by none other than Michael Isikoff, who had his own role in Russiagate as one of the first to write about the infamous Steele dossier, Obama’s call gets across the ex-president’s opinions about the recent revelations regarding Flynn.
And guess what? It’s all about the violation of the “rule of law” – not the egregious and audacious violations committed by Obama’s own minions, of course, but the decision by the DOJ to cease pursuing any of the fake ginned-up charges.
Obama, that putative “expert” (that quotation mark key on my computer is getting quite a workout) on constitutional law, had this to say:
Former President Barack Obama, talking privately to ex-members of his administration, said Friday that the “rule of law is at risk” in the wake of what he called an unprecedented move by the Justice Department to drop charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn…
“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said in a web talk with members of the Obama Alumni Association.
“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
Perjury? A first-year law student knows the difference between lying to the FBI – in a matter in which there is no evidence of any crime whatsoever, and the target is not allowed to have a lawyer or be read his rights or even informed he’s being interrogated as a target – and perjury. Obama knows it, too, so why did he use the word? He probably thinks it’s a good talking point because it sounds really bad, and he doesn’t think most people will care about the finer points.
Or maybe he’s just forgotten all the law he ever knew. But I go with: tactical lie.
The Obama statement is curious on various levels. First, the exhaustive search may have been hampered by the fact that Flynn was never charged with perjury. He was charged with a single count of false statements to a federal investigator under 18 U.S.C. 1001. I have previously wrote that the Justice Department should move to dismiss the case due to recently disclosed evidence and thus I was supportive of the decision of Attorney General Bill Barr.
Second, there is ample precedent for this motion even though, as I noted in the column calling for this action, such dismissals are rare. There is a specific rule created for this purpose. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a) states the government may dismiss an indictment, information or complaint “with leave of the court.” Moreover, such dismissals are tied to other rules mandating such action when there is evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or fundamental questions about the underlying case from the view of the prosecutors. I wrote recently about the serious concerns over the violation of Brady and standing court orders in the production and statements of the prosecutors in the case.
Third, there is also case law. In Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22 (1977) which addressed precedent under Petite v. United States, 361 U.S. 529 (1960) dealing with the dangers of multiple prosecutions. There are also related cases in Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S. 121 (1959), and Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959). The Rinaldi decision involved a petitioner convicted of state offenses arising out of a robbery, who believed that the government should have moved to dismiss a federal offense arising out of the same robbery under the Department’s Petite policy. The Court laid out the standard for such motions. The thrust of that controversy concerned double jeopardy and dual jurisdictions. However, the point was that the rule is key in protecting such constitutional principles and that courts should be deferential in such moves by the Department: “In light of the parallel purposes of the Government’s Petite policy and the fundamental constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy, the federal courts should be receptive, not circumspect, when the Government seeks leave to implement that policy.”
There are also lower court decisions on this inherent authority. For example, in the D.C. Circuit (where the Flynn case was brought), the ruling in United States v. Fokker Servs. B.V., No. 15-3016 (D.C. Cir. 2016) reaffirms the deference to prosecutors on such questions. The Court noted that this deference extends to core constitutional principles…
Fourth, there are cases where the Department has moved to dismiss cases on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct or other grounds touching on due process, ethical requirements or other concerns. One that comes to mind is United States v. Stevens where President Obama’s own Attorney General, Eric Holder, asked the same judge in the Flynn case to dismiss that case. That was just roughly ten years ago. As with Flynn, there was an allegation of withheld evidence by prosecutors.
If Turley was Obama’s law professor and Obama his student, Obama would be getting a solid “F.” But Obama is no longer in school; he’s now the mostly-respected ex-president, speaking regretfully of all the sad things that have been happening under Trump’s watch, and lamenting the abandonment of the Obama-type “rule of law.”
Obama is a sanctimonius, arrogant, dangerous, viper.
What really is without precedent – at least in the US, although not in certain countries usually referred to as “banana republics – is the way in which Obama used the DOJ and the FBI and the entire state apparatus to spy on and destroy an incoming president of the opposing party. Watergate was a tea party compared to this.
And indeed, as Obama pointed out (and he should know) “when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”
Obama also managed to add this:
In the same chat, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama also lashed out at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.”
Can you imagine any previous president saying something like that about a successor? I’ve been around a long time, and I never heard anything of the sort until Obama. There was an unwritten rule, one that ex-presidents of both parties followed, not to say anything particularly bad about a successor, even though the ex-president might be sorely tempted. And another rule was for ex-presidents to throw away partisanship during a crisis.
But Obama thinks such rules were meant to be broken – by Obama.
Last night, when I looked at the comments to that Yahoo article, I didn’t see any that supported Obama. They’re all on the order of “you’ll get yours, you lying POS.” But I am certain that plenty of people are buying what Obama and the MSM are selling.
And here’s an audio of that fortuitously “leaked” “private” call:
The last passage on the tape is fascinating, too. Obama says:
So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency that I do. Whenever I campaign, I’ve always said, ‘Ah, this is the most important election.’ Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like it’s the most important election. This one — I’m not on the ballot — but I am pretty darn invested. We got to make this [a Democratic victory] happen.
“Pretty darn invested” – well, that’s certainly an understatement. He’s “pretty darn invested” indeed; seeking not just to protect his legacy, to be able to tell President Joe Biden what to do, to have Biden choose as aides and cabinet members the old Obama crew and implementing the old Obama agenda (only carrying it further than Obama ever had time for), but also to protect himself from further revelations at the hands of Barr and Trump. If Biden is elected, all of the investigations into Obama’s role will be dropped like a radioactive potato.
When there are indictments this summer the Fake News can’t ignore that.
Actually, they could. But I agree that they won’t. What they’ll actually do is call it a politically motivated lynching, the worst miscarriage of justice in American history. And whether they succeed in getting this Orwellian message accepted by the majority of the American people depends on how closely the public is willing to dig, because they’ll have to go to sources on the right to get the actual story.
Here in the USA we have the massive 24/7/365 propaganda machine that is the media that many folks listen to and believe they are hearing objective news. The power and influence of propaganda can not be under estimated. I will speculate that more folks watch/listen to the media than read websites such as this…
I have no doubt that Neo’s uber liberal friends are well educated, but as she herself states, she has no illusions that they will alter their views based on new and INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS.
Why?
Is it because they have heard for 3 solid straight years from the media that Trump is a Russian stooge and a sick joke?
Would NEO’s liberal friends hold this same opinion if the media supported Trump as they did Obama?
IMHO they would all be in love with Trump if the media fell in love with him, as they did with Obama .
I know my liberal acquaintances would be tripping all over themselves with praise for Trump if the media supported him…
Such is the power of propaganda; it’s like hypnosis and most bizarre of all, the level of one’s education or accomplishments seems to have zero affect on one’s susceptibility to it.
Very well put, particularly that last sentence, which expresses the mystery of it all. I’ve been thinking about the “why” of it for at least fifteen years, and have not penetrated its secrets. The conclusion I’ve come to, however, is that personality and some sort of basic intelligence is much more important than book learning. In fact, the latter can be very counterproductive. And by “personality” I mean the willingness and drive to question what you hear and even what you believe, the stubbornness to keep following a trail, the courage to go against what all the people you know might think and believe, and a basic ability to be logical and to evaluate evidence and data.
And here’s a comment from “Snow on Pine” that’s more specific to the agency malfeasance revealed during the last few days:
Notice that all of this manipulation of the law, all of these “irregularities,” all of these lies were backed up by meetings, and discussions, and paperwork–which means that there was a whole supporting cast of people at these two law enforcement agencies who had to have at least some knowledge of what was going on–some inkling of how “irregular” and crooked all of this was.
Yet, as far as I can see, no word of this leaked out; these “irregularities,” these massive multiple railroad jobs, this attempted coup, triggered no whistle blowing, and no protests.
This says to me that this corruption is not confined to just these few high profile actors—to the surface, to the skin–but that this cancerous tumor has burrowed deeper, into muscle and bone.
Frankly, given all that has been revealed by just these 6,000 pages, with much more–and supposedly much worse, to come–I don’t know how these agencies as they exist, with such deep corruption, can actually be “reformed.”
I generally agree with everything that “Snow” says there, troubling and depressing though it may be. But I do have one – perhaps small – point of disagreement, which is that there were some leakers. At least one, anyway. That’s how John Solomon got his information, information which was widely derided in the MSM and on the left, of course.
I suggest you read today’s piece by Solomon in its entirety, but at the moment I want to call your attention to this part:
Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.
The story that source told me that day — initially I feared it may have been too spectacular to be true — was that FBI line agents had actually cleared former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia only to have the bureau’s leadership hijack the process to build a case that he lied during a subsequent interview.
In fact, my notes show, the source used the words “concoct a 1001 false statements case” to describe the objections of career agents who did not believe Flynn had intended to deceive the FBI. A leak of a transcript of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador was just part of a campaign, the source alleged.
The tip resulted in a two-and-a-half-year journey by myself and a small group of curious and determined journalists like Carter, Catherine Herridge, Greg Jarrett, Mollie Hemingway, Lee Smith, Byron York, and Kimberly Strassel to slowly peel back the onion.
Who was this source? And note that the person who actually contacted Solomon was a middleman for the source, an “intermediary” for someone much higher up.
Nor does Solomon say this person was the only source on whom he relied.
I would never underestimate the courage it takes to spill the beans like that, because (as Chuck Schumer so helpfully stated): “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
We are in very deep waters here, make no mistake about it.
