So here it is:
The speedy news cycle and the Horowitz Report
Have you noticed how fast the news cycle goes? Purposely so, with stories the press wants to bury but can’t quite bring itself to totally ignore.
Such as the Horowitz Report and Horowitz’s testimony. The MSM and the Democrats focused on it briefly right at the beginning, in order to highlight one small point: no evidence of bias found in the opening of the investigation. This was pitched as an exoneration, and the fact-findings that were the heart of the matter and that utterly condemned the FBI and exposed its repetitive anti-Trump wrongdoing were minimized or even ignored. Horowitz’s own testimony, which made clear that his report was no vindication whatsoever for the FBI but was a litany of “errors” that only went in one direction, has been overshadowed by breathless eagerness about the Democrats’ impeachment follies.
All of this is not accidental.
However, if you’re interested in reading a good summary of the major points made in the Horowitz Report, here it is.
It may make your blood boil, though. The lies told were pervasive, basic, and extremely disturbing.
Here’s something I had wondered about but not seen previously discussed: was there no FBI acknowledgement of the caution needed due to the unusual fact that Crossfire Hurricane involved the special circumstances of a presidential campaign and dirt delivered by the opposition? Was that situation treated the same as if they were dealing with a commonplace investigation and a commonplace target?
We [said the Report] were concerned to find that neither the AG [attorney general] Guidelines nor the DIOG [FBI’s Domestic Investigations Operations Guide] contain a provision requiring Department consultation before opening an investigation such as the one here involving the alleged conduct of individuals associated with a major party presidential campaign.”
Interesting.
While we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted OI in preparing the applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”
Emphasis mine in the following:
“The agents and SSAs also did not follow, or appear to even know, the requirements in the Woods Procedures to re-verify the factual assertions from previous applications that are repeated in renewal applications and verify source characterization statements with the CHS handling agent and document the verification in the Woods File.”
Fools and knaves. And they almost got away with it. Actually, for a while they did get away with it.
Melanie Phillips: the working class saved Britain
An interesting piece by Melanie Phillips:
The stakes in this election were enormous, not just for Britain but for the world. Labour is led by the most far-left leadership in its history, supporting terrorists abroad and incubating virulent antisemitism at home. If elected it would have wrecked Britain’s economy, attacked the State of Israel and posed a mortal threat to the security of Britain, its Jewish community and the west.
It was defeated by a seismic shift which may just have redrawn the British political landscape for ever.
What happened was something most people had believed was unthinkable. As I observed on my own blog in September, however, a tectonic shift was under way in the Labour heartlands.
The white working class, those blue-collar workers who had been tribal Labour supporters for generations, voted en masse for the Conservatives for the first time ever.
It’s not just Phillips saying this. A lot of British pundits have observed that certain areas, where voters have been Labourites for just about forever, flipped in this election. Whether this is a long-lasting change is anyone’s guess, but it’s certainly a significant one.
And the parallels to the voters in the Rust Belt who put Trump over the top are obvious. Will that change hold, as well, in 2020? And more importantly, will it last past Trump’s presidency if he is re-elected in 2020?
Here is Phillips again:
Astoundingly, economically shattered communities with very high levels of poverty and unemployment, even former mining towns whose inhabitants had voted Labour virtually from the time the party was invented, all voted on Thursday for an Eton-educated, plummy-voiced toff in preference to the leader of the Labour party.
Why? Because the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy. They are the very best of Britain. Time and again they have saved the country in its wars against tyranny by putting their lives on the line to defend what it stands for: their historic culture, institutions and values.
That’s why in the 2016 referendum they voted en masse for Brexit. And that’s why they felt so betrayed by the Labour party, which had been instrumental in stopping Brexit in parliament and trying to reverse the referendum result without admitting what it was doing…
It’s hard to exaggerate the anger by the Brexit-voting working-class at what they saw as an anti-democratic coup by Remainer Labour MPs who were determined to stop Brexit and spit in the eye of democracy.
These working-class voters also believe in hard work, responsibility and their own human dignity. They feel patronised and demeaned by welfare dependency, and have absolutely no time for the metropolitan liberals’ social agenda.
So there was a sense of betrayal as well as an anger at how far the left had gone. Plus, the left grievously insulted its own voters. Sound familiar?
[NOTE: A great deal of Phillips’ essay goes on to discuss the voting of Britain’s Jews. Some of what she says seems confusing. For example, after mentioning how frightened Britain’ Jews were of Corbyn, she then says (without presenting any evidence) that “most British Jews voted Remain.” I have looked at exit polls and seen no evidence of that, nor does Phillips offer any. But one thing is pretty certain: Britain’s Jews did NOT vote for Labour and Corbyn, whatever other party they may have voted for. I wrote a piece prior to the election based on polls that indicated that “94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour.”
Britain’s Jews don’t determine anything much in terms of their voting behavior, either, because there are very few of them. Just to give you a little example of what I mean, New York City has about three times as many Jews as all of Britain put together, as far as we can tell.]
[ADDENDUM: Apparently when Ms. Phillips wrote that “most British Jews voted Remain” she was referring to the original 2016 referendum vote. Regarding this recent vote from last week, I found some statistics indicating that British Jews had deserted the Labour Party by 2017 and in the recent election as well, voting Conservative instead.
Although Jews had voted about 2 to 1 for Remain in the 2016 referendum on the subject (according to this poll), by 2017 Corbyn and Labour had already come to alarm them. They were drawn to the Conservative Party from then on:
…67% of Jews voted for the Tories in the 2017 election, and a recent Survation poll finds that 64% will vote Conservative next month. Labour garnered only 11% of the Jewish vote in 2017 and Survation says support for Labour will slump to 6% this time.]
Another glimpse into the fevered brain of Hank “Guam” Johnson
And it’s not a pleasant place:
[NOTE: If you’ve never read my April Fools’ Day parody about Hank Johnson’s Guam remarks, please take a look. I have to say that, when I looked at that Guam post just now, I laughed all over again.]
A little stroll down memory lane on the MSM and the dossier
[Hat tip: Ace.]
SUPERCUT — Media to Americans: Of course the Trump dossier is true! pic.twitter.com/R2uOijnMeJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 13, 2019
How many of these people will ever apologize and/or correct? I rarely watch their shows so I don’t know for sure, but my money would be on “none of them.”
Impeachment theater du jour: in a move that should surprise exactly no one…
…the House Judiciary Committee votes along party lines to approve the two impeachment articles:
“There was an abuse of power at the Department of Justice, there was an abuse of power at the FBI,” Gohmert said in remarks after the vote. “This is a sad day for the country.”
He added, “America needs to hear from the witnesses and we didn’t get to hear from them here. This was a kangaroo court.”
Will the GOP ever get to call witnesses? That depends on what McConnell decides to do in the Senate. Of course, first the House will have to vote to impeach, but I believe that will happen, with enough “ayes” to form a little cushion but allowing quite a few of the vulnerable Democrats in swing districts to vote “no” in an attempt to preserve their re-election possibilities. Of course, voters who don’t favor Trump’s impeachment and yet who might vote to re-elect these Democratics in swing districts because they voted “no” probably don’t take into consideration that electing a Democratic majority is what ensured the impeachment in the first place.
As for McConnell, here’s what he said last night:
The gist of it is that there will be no removal, and how much of a trial will occur will be a decision that’s coordinated between McConnell and the president’s lawyers.
What will the British left learn from the UK election?
A defeat such as this one can certainly make a party think. If Labour is to ever win again in the UK – and you’d better believe they deeply desire to do so – something will have to change.
Maybe the change will be events, or demographics. But other change or lack thereof will depend on what the new leadership on the left decides is the proper course correction, as well as personalities. For example, how much of their resounding defeat comes from Jeremy Corbyn having been an abominable and especially far-leftist candidate? Will the lesson they end up learning be to run someone smoother and more appealing, whose leftism is more cleverly hidden?
I don’t know tons about politics in the UK, but I know that many people say that the Tories are not really conservative by US standards, and that Johnson is no Thatcher. That seems true. Others are saying that Johnson might go back on his Brexit pledge. I don’t see that happening; it’s the foundation of his campaign and the biggest promise he made to voters. The only possible problem there is if a large enough number of Parliament members in his party turn out to be secret Remains and end up blocking his efforts to Leave. I also very much doubt that will happen, although a few might do so. His margin of victory is too great, and the message the voters sent too clear.
But have the “elites” in the UK learned their lesson – don’t thwart the will of the people or they will turn you out next time they get a chance? I doubt it very much.
Jeremy, we hardly knew ye
And what we did know we didn’t like.
So Corbyn says buh-bye as party leader:
Boris Johnson’s gamble on a snap election looks set to have paid off with the Tories likely to win a sizeable majority, according to an exit poll.
Political theater, political meat: impeachment vs. Horowitz
There are two big competing political dramas going on at the moment.
One is the impeachment effort. I’m tempted to put the word “impeachment” in scare quotes, because the grounds are absurdly weak. But since a very real impeachment might end up receiving enough “aye” votes to pass, I’ve decided to omit the scare quotes and let the word stand alone for the most part.
The other drama is IG Horowitz’s report and testimony describing the excesses and outrages involved in the pre-impeachment attempt (known in FBI parlance as Crossfire Hurricane) to take down President (originally candidate) Trump.
The first drama is almost wholly run by the Democrats and is surpassingly boring at this point. I speak not just for myself but for much of America, which has tuned it out. It’s not boring in the sense that it’s a political misuse of a grave process. It’s boring because there’s no there there in the charges, but mostly because everyone knows that there is no chance of an actual removal and that it is mere theater, full of sound and fury, and signifying the ill-will and ruthlessness that we already know characterizes the Democrats today. The only real question at this point, as far as I can see, is how many Democrats will be allowed to vote against it – thus making the vote “no” the only bipartisan thing about it.
The Horowitz Report/testimony is a bit different, although the MSM is determined that their spin on both will dominate the airwaves. Horowitz will not cause anyone to go to jail, or maybe even be fired. But his report has described a situation that just a few short years ago would have been almost impossible to believe, the stuff of a far-fetched movie, and yet has now become sadly real and all-too-believable.
If you had said just twenty or so years ago that the following would happen, you’d be considered to be in tinfoil territory: that the FBI would engage in a vast effort to frame a political candidate and then president, with strong impetus from and cooperation by the party opposing that candidate (a party in power when the effort to frame him begins), that this effort would involve many agents and many activities and would catch some innocent people in its web, that the leaders of the FBI and many leaders in that opposition party would lie repeatedly and blatantly about it, that the MSM would fully cooperate in the lie and coverup, and that nearly half of the American people would either be convinced by the lies or would yawn about the whole thing.
Yet here we are.
I believe that the value of Horowitz’s testimony, for those Americans who actually manage to listen to (or read) a significant portion of it, is that it tells us how far this has already gone. As I’ve said before, every single American should be shocked at what has been revealed, and determined to make sure it never happens again and that those who did it will pay. But I have no illusions that those things will come to pass.
What I do think is that some people – perhaps lower-downs such as Clinesmith, who changed an email’s content in order to help frame Carter Page – will be charged and perhaps even convicted. But this will leave the larger problem untouched. It’s a problem that commenter “KyndyllG” described very well in a comment this morning [emphasis mine]:
A vast mass of my school and work acquaintances hold all of the leftist thought about orangemanbad as literal, gospel truth; they would sooner accept that water is not wet than question any part of it. And it’s not just that it’s obvious truth that cannot be questioned by anyone with a functioning brain, they assume that anyone who even considers anything to the contrary, much less believes it, is not just wrong but absolutely evil: stupid, racist, bigoted, sexist, Nazi orangemanbad supporters and defenders…
I saw this really kick into high gear around the beginning of the “Punch a Nazi” era. It was chilling. Some of these people posting social media memes glorifying attacking real or imagined Trump supporters were people I’d known for 20 years. To see chubby, balding middle-age parents who had never been in a physical altercation in their life (I know because I went to school with them) suggesting figuratively or literally that one should go around attacking people who might have voted for a President they don’t like, was down-the-rabbit-hole stuff. I suddenly saw what happened in Germany in the 1930s. These are people who have actively dehumanized political opponents. There is no such thing as rights or due process of the law for us. They are not interested in whether proper process was followed during what was obviously a politically motivated travesty of justice; they honestly couldn’t care less if every rule in the book was broken. It’s all good when you’re going after Trump and his untermenschen.
This is not an accident. Nor is it something they arrived at on their own. It is what the left wants and has encouraged, with the full assistance of the MSM.
The UK votes today
And the issues are big: Brexit, as well as whether the radical leftist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will get to be its leader, or whether it will be Brexit-intent Boris Johnson.
UPDATE 7:25 PM: So far it’s looking good for Brexit and Boris.
Protecting the military on their own bases
One of the most perplexing, frustrating, and anger-provoking policies of recent years is the apparent disarming of the military while on base and going about their business. With the rise in attacks from terrorists, it makes our military personnel into sitting ducks. Why was it police who ended up stopping the shooting, after several people had been murdered?
After the Pensacola killings, there are calls to reverse this policy, pronto:
A group of U.S. Navy instructor pilots asked top military brass for permission to arm themselves in the wake of the shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla., where a Saudi military pilot gunned down three American sailors and wounded eight others.
One of the shooting victims was the captain of the U.S. Naval Academy rifle team, an “excellent marksman,” according to his brother.
“It’s so stupid that on a military base, the shooter was allowed to roam free for so long,” according to one instructor pilot. “In a gun fight, that’s an eternity.” The pilot, like others interviewed by Fox News, did not want his name used because he was not authorized to speak with the media.
One of the pilots said Navy brass denied their request to arm themselves on base…
One pilot called base security at NAS Pensacola and other Navy bases “mall cops,” because protection on the base has been outsourced to private security and many were “fat and out of shape.”
“I have zero confidence the guy I show my ID card to at the gate could save me,” one pilot added. Fox News spoke to three Navy instructor pilots Tuesday.
It’s an opinion shared by many across the military, including the U.S. Army; more than a dozen soldiers and an unborn child were gunned down at Fort Hood in 2009.
“We trust 18-year-old privates in combat with grenades, anti-tank missiles, rifles and machine guns, but we let service members get slaughtered because we don’t trust anyone to be armed back here in the United States,” a senior U.S. Army officer told Fox News.
Insane, it seems to me.
I tried to get a handle on when this policy began, and so far (in what admittedly has been a brief search) I can’t discover the answer. Here’s Snopes’ answer, for what it’s worth. It maintains that Bush I began the policy but it wasn’t really a change from previous policy and it didn’t really disarm the bases because guards and other security personnel were still allowed to be armed.
The real question, I suppose, is why the Navy didn’t have enough armed guards around – and when did such a policy of outsourcing military protection to clearly inadequate private companies begin?
Remember the Schiff memo vs. the Nunes memo?
Remember back in the early days of 2018 when there was the clash of the dueling memos on Russiagate and the role of the FBI and the FISA court applications? The Nunes memo was criticized by Democrats even before it was released, and afterwards Adam Schiff released his own memo that contested what Nunes had asserted.
And of course the MSM trashed Nunes (for example: the memo is “a joke and a sham”) and lauded Schiff. Now we have the Horowitz Report that represents an examination of some of the same facts that Nunes and Schiff were duking it out over, and Nunes is completely vindicated and Schiff should slink away in shame along with most of the MSM.
Of course they won’t.
But Mollie Hemingway has done the work of going back and comparing the two memos in the light of the Horowitz Report. Nunes was right and Schiff was wrong, period.
But the bulk of Hemingway’s article is detail after detail of the MSM coverage of Nunes’ memo. It makes for stunning reading – more proof (as though we needed any more) of what the MSM has become, a spin machine and organ of the left.