[American Thinker] The idea is floated frequently that the still nameless Russian collusion scandal is "worse than Watergate." It may well be, but that comparison overlooks a more useful parallel.
The gold standard of government conspiracy remains the investigation into the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off the south coast of Long Island. The ensuing cover-up involved many of the same players as in the Russia conspiracy and for the same immediate goal: to secure a presidential election for a Clinton.
As with the Russia scandal, not all the collaborators in the TWA 800 case were equally motivated or equally powerful. The White House drove the conspiracy through its Justice Department. The CIA executed it without conscience. The FBI grudgingly yielded to the CIA. And the New York Times dutifully reported what the FBI whispered in its reporters' ears.
[Right Scoop] From the sounds of this things are about to get juicy. According to former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo, there were other Obama agencies that had infiltrated the Trump campaign (watch video).
#2
Maybe the Agriculture Department didn't. Maybe...
The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security muddled historical jurisdictions and authorities hammered out in past legal decisions. It only needed an administration with a totalitarian mindset to expand and weaponize that ambiguity...
Excerpt:
[PJ] Walking down Oslo's parade street, Karl Johans Gate, Snegirov took note of the ugly concrete objects that are intended to foil vehicular jihadists of the sort who terrorized Nice's Promenade des Anglais in 2016 and London Bridge last June. He followed this, however, with a sobering reflection: such efforts notwithstanding, Norwegians have been brainwashed into a tolerance toward Islam that will ultimately "overwhelm and sink" it.
In one telling anecdote, Snegirov described a type of conduct I've witnessed repeatedly in Norway: he's on a train from Hamar to Oslo on which all the seats are taken; although a number of able-bodied males (including young men in military uniforms) are seated, none of them stands up to offer his seat to any of the several elderly women (some of them weighed down by massive backpacks) who are forced to stand. But then a Pakistani man boards the train, and a red-bearded Norwegian immediately "jumps up ... and invites the Muslim to sit down." The Pakistani says no, but Redbeard insists. After the Pakistani sits, Redbeard stands with his back to the door, his facial expression making it clear that he feels he has "done a good deed."
[National Review] His voters knew what they were getting, and most support him still. Why exactly did nearly half the country vote for Donald Trump?
Why also did the arguments of Never Trump Republicans and conservatives have marginal effect on voters? Despite vehement denunciations of the Trump candidacy from many pundits on the right and in the media, Trump nonetheless got about the same percentage of Republican voters (88‐90 percent) as did McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, who both were handily defeated in the Electoral College.
Here are some of reasons voters knew what they were getting with Trump and yet nevertheless assumed he was preferable to a Clinton presidency.
1) Was Trump disqualified by his occasional but demonstrable character flaws and often rank vulgarity? To believe that plaint, voters would have needed a standard by which both past media of coverage of the White House and the prior behavior of presidents offered some useful benchmarks. Unfortunately, the sorts of disturbing things we know about Trump we often did not know in the past about other presidents. By any fair measure, the sexual gymnastics in the White House and West Wing of JFK and Bill Clinton, both successful presidents, were likely well beyond President Trump’s randy habits. Harry Truman’s prior Tom Pendergast machine connections make Trump steaks and Trump university seem minor. By any classical definition, Lyndon Johnson could have been characterized as both a crook and a pervert. In sum, the public is still not convinced that Trump’s crudities are necessarily different from what they imagine of some past presidents. But it does seem convinced, in our age of a 24/7 globalized Internet, that 90 percent negative media coverage of the Trump tenure is quite novel.
2) Personal morality and public governance are related, but we are not always quite sure how. Jimmy Carter was both a more moral person and a worse president than Bill Clinton. Jerry Ford was a more ethical leader than Donald Trump ‐ and had a far worse first 16 months. FDR was a superb wartime leader ‐ and carried on an affair in the White House, tried to pack and hijack the Supreme Court, sent U.S. citizens into internment camps, and abused his presidential powers in ways that might get a president impeached today. In the 1944 election, the Republican nominee Tom Dewey was the more ethical ‐ and stuffy ‐ man. In matters of spiritual leadership and moral role models, we wish that profane, philandering (including an affair with his step-niece), and unsteady General George S. Patton had just conducted himself in private and public as did the upright General Omar Bradley. But then we would have wished even more that Bradley had just half the strategic and tactical skill of Patton. If he had, thousands of lives might have been spared in the advance to the Rhine.
#1
Unfortunately, NeverTrumpers and Dims couldn't get past the first 100 words without throwing up their hands. They need to get to the last paragraph.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/22/2018 15:23 Comments ||
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#2
Pretty much sums it up for me and the rationale for my vote.
#5
To be honest, I didn't really so much vote FOR Trump. I voted AGAINST Hillary. I would have crawled the two miles to my polling place to vote against that evil witch.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
05/22/2018 17:18 Comments ||
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#6
naked, over broken glass
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/22/2018 19:08 Comments ||
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#7
I voted against Mrs. Clinton last time. I’ll vote for President Trump next time, or Nicki Haley.
h/t Instapundit
[TheRightScoop] Mark Levin explained on the first hour of his show tonight how the appointment of Robert Mueller by Deputy AG Robert Rosenstein is unconstitutional. And I’ve got all the audio from his first hour for you to listen to below.
To sum it up the main idea in a couple of tweets..
On @marklevinshow, a novel theory‐ Mueller’s appointment is unconstitutional because he was never confirmed by the Senate, as a US attorney would have been...
‐ Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) May 21, 2018
Citing the Appointments Clause, Levin argues Mueller has been acting as a "principal officer," like a US attorney, and not an "inferior officer," as an assistant US attorney...
#1
At this point, what difference does it make? Seriously, someone should have pointed that out a year ago. Nowt that the investigation is running on fumes seems a little late.
HT Insty
The scenario anticipated more than a year ago in King vs. King has advanced to the semi-finals. The Russian collusion affair, which began with the incoming president on the defensive, has now become a set of simultaneous offensives with each side trying to jail the other. "President Trump on Sunday said he would 'demand' a Justice Department investigation into whether the FBI 'infiltrated' his 2016 presidential campaign," USA Today reported.
I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!
This demand follows revelations that an FBI operation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane ran "at least one government informant" against the Trump campaign in counterintelligence fashion. Andrew McCarthy writes:
The FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, [in contrast to the Clinton campaign, he adds elsewhere] decided to open a counterintelligence investigation. With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans ‐ Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.
This implication was quickly denied. "Former Director of Intelligence James Clapper said Thursday night on CNN that it was 'a good thing' there was an FBI informant spying on the Trump campaign."
Clapper admitted the FBI "may have had someone who was talking to them in the campaign," referring to President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He explained away the possibility of an FBI informant spying on the campaign as the bureau was trying to find out "what the Russians were doing to try to substantiate themselves in the campaign or influence or leverage it."
Obama's Director of National Intelligence then went on to say, "So, if there was someone that was observing that sort of thing, that's a good thing."
The invaluable timeline of the investigations compiled by Sharyl Attkisson seems to confirm what Lee Smith of Tablet Magazine has already suggested: that the roots of domestic spying predated the Trump candidacy. He notes that "Obama officials vastly expand[ed] their searches through NSA database for Americans and the content of their communications. In 2013, there were 9,600 searches involving 195 Americans. But in 2016, there are 30,355 searches of 5,288 Americans." see link for hyperlinks to the referenced articles. Well worth it
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/22/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
