Several things can be true at once - today's edition

To wit:

The Durham report shows confirmation bias in US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies during the 2016 - 2020 period, but delivers no bombshells.

Per New York Times analysis:

Mr. Durham delivered a report that scolded the F.B.I. but failed to live up to the expectations of supporters of Donald J. Trump that he would uncover a politically motivated “deep state” conspiracy. He charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either.

It's basically an unexciting rehash, replete with mentions of figures we're familiar with: John Brennan, Carter Page, Peter Strzok, John Podesta, Jake Sullivan, etc. 

The basic story remains the same. Two things came to the FBI's attention around the same time: the matter of Hillary Clinton's email server, and the Steele Dossier. The FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails was considered preliminary, but the one into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign was full throttle from the get-go. There was a lot of poor judgement all around, but very little that constituted prosecutable offense.

Trump and the Trumpists are already nonetheless howling that this is the "crime of the century" and that some kind of "long knives of the deep state" is the country's most pressing problem. 

Of course, the Very Stable Genius is trying to tie to, or at least draw parallels to, the whole matter with which the Durham investigation dealt, the supposedly rigged 2020 election, which was not rigged.

The post-American press also has confirmation bias and is using the report's prevalence in the current news cycle to deflect from very real questions about the Biden family.

Per Holman Jenkins's column today in the Wall Street Journal:

Even so, the news blackout can’t conceal the suspicious details unearthed by congressional investigators about Biden family bank accounts, shell companies and transfers from shady foreign actors. It can’t conceal that Mr. Biden may owe his presidency to a de facto U.S. intelligence agency operation to bamboozle voters about his son’s laptop.

That said, Trump's call to Ukrainian president Zelensky was clearly extortion - a conveyance of the message that already-Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon Zelensky helping to dig up Biden dirt - and it was right for Congress to impeach Trump over it.

The proliferation of special counsels and Congressional investigations over the past few years does not speak well for how we value integrity as a country.

Most Republicans either still drool over Donald Trump, are afraid of him, or are going to be willing to vote for him for president again because they can't see beyond the binary-choice framework.

Democrats show no sign of even easing up on their priorities: climate alarmism, identity politics militancy and wealth redistribution.

Partisans of both the Left and the Trumpist right will get all wonky about particulars of the Durham report's conclusions in order to play gotcha and keep us from seeing the spiritual-level root of our unhealthiness as a nation.

Barney & Clyde - Episode 17

Here it is. 

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 1 - He's Not Playing 5-D Chess... The Very Stable Genius's recent doozies 2 - When a Lefty Leader gets a clue and it doesn't go over well... Ecuadoran unrest in the wake of President Moreno trying to claw the country back to solvency 3 - Madam Bleachbit Unfiltered... How's that again, Hillary? 4 - Corporate America's left turn... the NBA kowtows to China and the Business Roundtable whets Fauxcahontas's appetite! Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com Comment here or at: https://www.facebook.com/barneyandcly... Please consider supporting us! https://www.patreon.com/barneyandclyde Links we referenced in this episode: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.p... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

Wednesday roundup

Just no. Who in the hell within the Hoosier BMV signed off on this?

Hoosiers will soon have a third option for gender on their driver’s license or state ID card.

The Times of Northwest Indiana reports that the Bureau of Motor Vehicles will be offering a ‘non-specified’ gender option to residents. The ID will be marked as an ‘X’ for those who identify as neither male or female.

Those looking to apply for the designation must provide a birth certificate or a signed physician’s statement confirming a permanent gender change.

At least five other states offer a non-binary option on driver’s licenses.

Richard Fernandez' piece at PJ Media on how grim things have gotten in Venezuela, and how post-American millennials still get excited over socialism even with such an apocalyptic picture of its end product in their faces, is jarring reading.

Great Ben Shapiro tweet:

An electronics company manufactured the microphone into which AOC is speaking. Why shouldn't they be held responsible for the stupid crap she says into the microphone?

Sarah Lawrence College is yet another example of a school administration taking exactly the wrong approach in dealing with a campus group of snot-nosed brats. If these punks with crania full of dog vomit weren't demanding anything beyond detergent pods, it might be possible to write them off as too ridiculous to have any impact. But, as you'll see, they are savages. And the school president is a shameful coward:

And here are the first three demands in their, ahem, laundry list:

 

1. Sarah Lawrence must commit to actualizing the value that housing is a human right.
   The College must provide winter housing to students at no charge. This housing must include a communal kitchen with dry goods from the food pantry available for all students.In the extreme case that housing cannot be provided to students during break due to housing probation, the school must provide a list of local low-cost, free, and/or accessible housing options for students.
2. The College will designate housing with a minimum capacity for thirty students of color that is not contingent on the students expending any work or labor for the college. This housing option will be permanent and increase in space and size based on interest.
3. All campus laundry rooms are to supply laundry detergent and softener on a consistent basis for all students, faculty and staff.

So housing is a human right and thus, students should be provided free housing (demand #1) without working for it (demand #2). Students should also be given free detergent and fabric softener (demand #3) so maybe this is also a human right? Or maybe it’s an emanation from the penumbra of the right not to smell like marijuana and patchouli oil? They’ll work all of that out later. But for now, it’s simple: Tide pods for the people!

It’s worth mentioning that Sarah Lawrence College is one of the most expensive schools in the country with an annual tuition of $52,600 as of last year (ranking it 20th nationwide).

All of this would be amusing if it weren’t for some more disturbing demands that pop up later in the list. The protesters make it clear they want professors who are in strict ideological agreement with the principles of intersectionality:

• We demand that the College offer classes that embody intersectionality, as defined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and address the racial diversity of the LGBTQ+ community instead of centering whiteness.
• The aforementioned classes must be taught by professors who are a part of the culture they are teaching about.

Then the group singles out a conservative professor who wrote something they didn’t like. The group demands that he be put up for tenure review before a group made of of their members (despite that fact that he already has tenure) and demands he issue a public apology [Emphasis in the original]:

On October 16, 2018, politics professor Samuel Abrams published an op-ed entitled “Think Professors Are Liberal? Try School Administrators” in The New York Times. The article revealed the anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-woman bigotry of Abrams…We demand that Samuel Abrams’ position at the College be put up to tenure review to a panel of the Diaspora Coalition and at least three faculty members of color. In addition, the College must issue a statement condemning the harm that Abrams has caused to the college community, specifically queer, Black, and female students, whilst apologizing for its refusal to protect marginalized students wounded by his op-ed and the ignorant dialogue that followed. Abrams must issue a public apology to the broader SLC community and cease to target Black people, queer people, and women.

As Reason’s Robby Soave has pointed out, professor Abrams office door was vandalized after his article appeared in the NY Times:

Abrams’ office door was vandalized on October 16, hours after the op-ed’s publication. The perpetrators posted a sign on the door that read, “Our right to exist is not ‘ideological,’ asshole,” and was signed “transsexual fag.” Another flyer demanded that he apologize to residence life staff and the director of campus diversity, students of color, queer students, trans students, and other marginalized persons. Multiple messages instructed Abrams to “quit,” and one told him to “go teach somewhere else, maybe Charlottesville.”…

Several of Abrams’ colleagues met with [president Cristle Collins] Judd to discuss the vandalism and express their view that such acts could not be tolerated. Judd agreed, but did not pledge to take any further actions. These professors thought she seemed scared that the students might hold more protests, creating a public relations disaster, according to Abrams.

Professor Abrams spoke with President Judd to discuss the situation during which she told him he had created a “hostile work environment.” When they met in person, Judd suggested Abrams was back in the job market, despite the fact that he is a tenured professor. This is all starting to seem very reminiscent of what happened at Evergreen State College. President Judd may want to look into Evergreen’s subsequent enrollment numbers before she commits fully to backing the protesters.

Still, muckety-muck playpens for the unhinged colleges and universities are seen by some as essential to a worthwhile life. Jim Geraghty at NRO on the scandal involving two TV celebrities and a number of other wealthy west-coasters using outrageously unethical means to get their kids into prestigious schools.

Were those parents crazy? Or were they just astute about the risk-reward analysis and long-term benefits of getting into one of the top 25 schools, instead of one of the top 50 or top 100?

We’ve heard all the stories about the “Harvard mafia.” A few years ago, Ross Douthat wrote “elite universities are about connecting more than learning, that the social world matters far more than the classroom to undergraduates, and that rather than an escalator elevating the best and brightest from every walk of life, the meritocracy as we know it mostly works to perpetuate the existing upper class.”

A line that appears a little further up his piece is as apt here as there:

If you wanted to pour gasoline onto the fires of populism, this is how you do it!

His essential point:

Sure, all of those wealthy parents indicted yesterday stand accused of breaking the law. But they were also pretty obviously responding to incentives. If a society turns getting into one of the top 25 schools in the country into the Willie Wonka ticket, the Holy Grail, the alchemical formula — the one thing that parents believe will ensure their children will have a happy, financially comfortable, and successful life — then people will go to absurd and illegal lengths to get it.

Why didn't the FBI go after Madame Bleachbit in 2016?

 

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under questioning from Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe last summer that "the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information," the congressman alleged in a social media post late Tuesday, citing a newly unearthed transcript of Page's closed-door testimony.

Page and since-fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, who were romantically involved, exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, and Republicans have long accused the bureau of political bias. But Page's testimony was perhaps the most salient evidence yet that the Justice Department improperly interfered with the FBI's supposedly independent conclusions on Clinton's criminal culpability, Ratcliffe alleged.

"So let me if I can, I know I’m testing your memory," Ratcliffe began as he questioned Page under oath, according to a transcript excerpt he posted on Twitter. "But when you say advice you got from the Department, you’re making it sound like it was the Department that told you: You’re not going to charge gross negligence because we’re the prosecutors and we’re telling you we’re not going to —"

Page interrupted: "That is correct," as Ratcliffe finished his sentence, " -- bring a case based on that."

The document dump was part of a major release by House Judiciary Committee Republicans, who on Tuesday released hundreds of pages of transcripts from last year's closed-door interview with Page, revealing new details about the bureau's controversial internal discussions regarding an “insurance policy” against then-candidate Donald Trump. Fox News has previously reviewed portions of Page's testimony.

Timothy P. Carney (whose new book Alienated America is on my want-to-read-soon list) at the Washington Examiner on the upside of Tucker Carlson's remarks when Carlson was a guest on Bubba the Love Sponge years ago:

. . . the upside is that now we’re allowed to discuss the real harms of flippant attitudes towards sex and the sexualization of women.

If you tried to bring up those issues eight years ago, you would have been chased off the stage as a backwards prude dedicated to sexual repression. Consider that very recently — before we had a president who bragged about sexual assault — we had a president whose top asset on the campaign trail was rapper Jay-Z. Somehow, this seemed okay at the time. 

“You know I thug em, f--k em, love em, leave em,” Obama’s favorite fundraiser explained in "Big Pimpin,'" “Cause I don't f--kin need em."

"Put your two lips on my wood and kiss it, could ya,” Obama’s good friend Jay-Z explained on another occasion. 

The Obama White House also elevated vulgar sex columnist Dan Savage to be a crusader against bullying. Savage’s entire shtick was sexual depravity. 

Even today, our press corps accepts as one of its colleagues a White House correspondent from Playboy, literally a smut publication.

Pornographic depravity, reducing sexuality to materialistic hedonism — in a word, debauchery — has been aggressively tolerated by the media elites. Chastise that debauchery and risk getting branded a prude. Hell, social scientists have even promulgated bogus studies arguing that sexual conservatism kills kids.

But now that someone has dragged up Tucker’s old bawdy remarks, we’re allowed, finally, to speak the truth: Modern American culture needs to treat sex more seriously. Our public discourse is far too lewd, and its lewdness is detrimental.

The irony is that much of Tucker’s current critique of today’s elites lead us towards this truth. The Left’s elites are constantly bashing the morality of the 1950s traditional family and small town, and constantly attacking the institutions (most importantly church institutions) that preserve, defend, and build the family and community. Then those same elites go home to Chevy Chase and Park Slope for supper with their intact families and bustling Little Leagues. They retire in the evening to the life they spent their workday undermining for others.

These are the elites Carlson is dedicated to challenging. But it’s not their conservative lifestyles that need challenging. It’s their unconservative assault on the norms and institutions that have historically helped the regular guy make good life decisions.

So here’s a salutary, contrarian, and provocative move for Carlson: Apologize, but not on the Left’s terms. Instead, apologize for appearing to endorse sexual licentiousness that violates moral law. Maybe begin by saying that sex is properly reserved for marriage, and so the jokes he made about a teenager sleeping with his teacher were immoral. Also, grant that the talk he indulged of teenage lesbians was indecent in seeming to endorse a hedonistic concept of sexuality.

Great Ben Shapiro column at the Daily Wire entitled "Government Isn't the Social Fabric." This is something that occasionally comes up in LITD comment threads. It's sometimes asserted that "government" is an interchangeable term with "society" or "the people." It is not. They are distinct critters and that distinction is crucial to always maintain.

 

 

Wednesday roundup

A bombshell about Russia and Madame Bleachbit at Newsweek:

Moscow routed millions of dollars to the U.S. expecting the funds would benefit ex-President Bill Clinton’s charitable initiative while his wife, Hillary Clinton, worked to reset relations with Russia, an FBI informant in an Obama administration-era uranium deal stated.

In a written statement to three congressional committees, informant Douglas Campbell said Russian nuclear executives told him that Moscow hired American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to influence Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, among others in the Obama administration, The Hill reported on Wednesday.

Campbell said Russian nuclear officials expected APCO to apply its $3 million annual lobbying fee from Moscow toward the Clintons’ Global Initiative. The contract detailed four $750,000 payments over a year’s time.

“APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement,” Campbell stated.

A Kavanaugh accuser has admitted she flat-out fabricated her rape charge:

She admitted to the false allegation, and said she has actually never met Justice Kavanaugh.

“I was angry, and I sent it out,” she told investigators.

“In short, during the committee’s time-sensitive investigation of allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, Ms. Munro-Leighton submitted a fabricated allegation, which diverted committee resources,” Mr. Grassley wrote. “When questioned by Committee investigators she admitted it was false, a ‘ploy,’ and a ‘tactic.’ She was opposed to Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation.”

William Barr's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee went well. 

Parliament gives Theresa May's Brexit deal a big thumbs-down. Seems extricating one's country from a labyrinthine continent-wide union is as tricky as just abiding by its conditions of membership.

The collapse of Western civilization personified:

Meet Greg and Jody, a married couple in Britain.

Husband Greg is a woman, as is wife Jody.

27-year-old Greg identifies as male. She also identifies as step-dad — to 21-year-old Jody’s son, Jayden.

The couple says their 5-year-old enjoys dresses and hates “everything about being a boy.

Therefore, they’ve put Jayden on track to “transition” into a girl in just a few years.

And currently, they’re miffed. Greg told the Daily Record all about it:

“We’ve had people saying we’re using Jayden for attention and that she just wants to be a girl because I changed sex. It’s ridiculous. Jayden knows nothing about my past. She just knows me as dad.”

Greg said Jayden is “adamant she is a girl.” Furthermore:

“They say it’s cruel we let her wear a dress but is it not more cruel to do nothing when you’ve got a kid who’s so adamant she’s a girl she’s ripping her hair off and banging her head off the walls?”

Hmmm….

Philip Klein at The Washington Examiner is right that Nancy Pelosi actually stumbled upon a good idea: the president ought to just send a written State of the Union report up to Capitol Hill.

Monday morning roundup

Michael Graham, writing at CBS News, says that it looks like the Very Stable Genius is correct that there is no collusion to be found between his campaign team and any Russian actors. Lots of ambition-fueled incompetence, yes, but not collusion. But Graham also points out that, true to form, Trump does himself no favors with his always-in-bad-taste tweets.

Many are likely to think that if there was no collusion, then the entire story really was the "witch hunt" President Trump keeps telling them it is. He will have turned out to be right, no matter how many other things he did wrong.

I believe this is the reason Trump stepped on his own good news regarding the McCabe firing.  Why he didn't do what many (myself included) considered the smart move: Let McCabe's firing speak for itself.  Why he sent out his first-ever tweet attacking special counsel Robert Mueller using the key word: "collusion:"

"The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime," he wrote Sunday. "It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!"

Susan Wright at RedState on what sure looks like Jared Kushner's development company having mastered the art of weaponizing construction.

Andy Smarick at AEI on how Betsy DeVos's overall orientation is great - decentralizing the way education is handled in this country - but that she needs to do a better job of letting local and state-level people involved in that know she supports them.

The problem, however, is that the secretary seemed to imply that state education leaders are lacking the energy, vision, or courage to do what America’s schools need. It is a strange sales job for federalism that publicly questions the capacity of those to whom power would be handed.

In her speech, DeVos said, “For too long, many of you have operated — and in many cases, been forced to operate — as if your work was only accountable to folks in my office.” Here the secretary used an unfortunate and inaccurate trope about state education leaders, suggesting that they sit around waiting for direction from Washington. In truth, state superintendents and state board members are constantly dealing with a vast array of challenges, from improving funding formulas and teacher-preparation programs to reforming school-discipline policies and data systems, to managing delicate relationships with governors, legislators, local districts, advocacy groups, and more. All of this is done by state leaders who are passionate about helping students.

Elsewhere in the speech, DeVos asked, “What are you going to do to serve students in your state?” giving the impression that this wasn’t already their driving force. She also asked, “So, don’t you think it’s time to do something different? To try something new that enhances student achievement?” and argued that state leaders shouldn’t launch a “PR push” to defend their plans. Again, intentionally or not, the secretary implied unflattering things about state leaders — that they aren’t trying to do things differently and that they focus on optics.

Not only does this undermine the case for decentralizing power, it also serves to possibly alienate potential allies. State-level education leaders could be strong advocates for her push for K-12 federalism. This isn’t the first time DeVos’s comments have rankled those on the ground. Early in her tenure the secretary said teachers seemed to be “on receive mode;” and that “They’re waiting to be told what they have to do.” This charge of passivity frustrates essential players in America’s school system and can make others wonder why a decentralized approach to education would be wise.

The secretary deserves kudos for trying to redefine her office as one primarily focused on advocacy and the empowerment of others. Hopefully, in the future, her comments, while containing the “tough love” necessary, will build stronger relationships with and inspire more public confidence in those working in states and schools.

Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Sultan is coming to America for a whirlwind tour. He's scheduled to meet DJT and other major players in Washington and then head to Boston, Silicon Valley and Houston to court investors. This is a different kind of Saudi up-and-comer.

Madame Bleachbit composes a lengthy Facebook attempt at "clarifying" her universally panned India-trip remarks about white women's voting patterns.  It winds up being a double-down.

Post-America chose one kind of big baby over another

You probably know about Madame Bleachbit's self-immolation in India. Like a car wreck, it's the kind of thing you know you should turn away from but just can't. The bit about white women voting as their husbands and boyfriends told them to. The statement that she won the successful states and the Very Stable Genius won the failing states. Sure, it's shameful that she said this stuff on foreign soil, but it's not so much outrage that it evokes as pity. It's uncomfortable as hell to witness that level of self-embarrassment.

What strikes me is the absolute dearth of character between our choices as we turned the calendar page to November in 2016.

They had this much in common: They were big babies.

Trump, we've continued to have ample opportunity to know about. He can't stand the slightest hint of disrespect from any quarter. He'll pick Twitter fights with the most irrelevant figures over the mildest departures from unmitigated praise.

In Madame Bleachbit's case, it's the classic caricature of anyone to her right as desperately invested in preserving some kind of order that has it in for all the demographics we loosely call minorities, or those who purport to champion them on a demographic basis. This goes back to her Today show appearance the day after the Lewinsky scandal broke, blaming her husband's predicament on a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." She routinely talks like some smug women's-study professor at Unitarian coffee hour.

It's kind of interesting to be watching Rex Tillerson's farewell speech to the State Department as I write this. There's clearly emotion in his voice, but he's comporting himself with dignity and decorum. There's not the slightest hint of either bluster or whining.

You can conduct yourself that way when you're motivated not by power but by service. This is not to put Tillerson on any kind of pedestal. Per the post below, I have strong policy differences with him. But he wasn't driven up the wall by any threat to his catbird seat.

We had presidential candidates to choose from to whom that position was was likewise an opportunity to see their principles acted upon. It pains me to say that we were so far gone that we actually admired the power-lust that was the most prominent trait of the two final contenders.

The dodging-a-bullet metaphor doesn't apply here. We got hit with one kind of projectile rather than another.

Wednesday roundup

Tell us how you really feel, Michelle. Michelle Malkin on Orrin Hatch's retirement announcement:

He began his occupancy in 1976, when all phones were dumb, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was cutting-edge, the very first Apple computer went on sale for $666.66, the Concorde was flying high, O.J. Simpson was a hero, Blake Shelton was a newborn, the first MRI was still a blueprint, and I was a gap-toothed first-grader wearing corduroy bell-bottoms crushing on Davy Jones.

She takes note of all the media outlets speaking of Hatch's "statesmanship" and then enumerates the reasons she's not having any of it:

Hatch joined with his old pal Teddy Kennedy to create the $6 billion national service boondoggle and the $8 billion-a-year CHIP health insurance entitlement.

He preached about the "rule of law," but was an original sponsor of the open-borders DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout, and, despite claiming to oppose it, he voted to fully fund the unconstitutional Obama amnesty during the lame-duck session.

He crusaded for "fiscal conservatism," yet voted for massive Wall Street bailouts, 16 debt ceiling increases totaling $7.5 trillion, and scores of earmarks totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for porky projects. He ends his four-decade reign as the Senate's top recipient of lobbyist cash.

And for the past two years, Team Hatch allies have spearheaded a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign, squeezing donations from corporate donors and pharma and tech lobbyists to subsidize a "Hatch Foundation" and "Hatch Center" to commemorate the Hatch legacy.

"Statesman" isn't a titled earned by mere length of service. It's not a cheap status conferred like an AARP card or IHOP senior discount. A politician who notches decades of frequent flyer miles back and forth between Washington and his "home" state, enjoying the endless perks of incumbency, does not acquire statesmanship by perpetual re-election and political self-aggrandizement.

Between and among the several Congressional committees looking into how the FBI handled the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, they've concluded, based on solid evidence, that it was badly botched.

William Murchison at The American Spectator points out that "animal spirits" (a term coined by John Maynard Keynes) are by definition not quantifiable.

The Times quotes economists who say you can’t prove X rollbacks cause Y growth. The trouble here is that computerized calculations cannot account for human emotions: excitement, say; the hunch in the darkness; the lightbulb that goes on unexpectedly.

Capitalism is the human brain and human heart, in all their compartments and facets: seeing, trying, hoping, hanging on. A certain type of human mentality, with too little anchorage in the imagination, doesn’t get this whole free-market business. It believes in control, direction, supervision — serviceable enough commodities, given the human bent for recklessness and malice. Zero regulation savors of driving on ice and without speed limits. Needless scolding by regulators suppress the growth of jobs and wages. Somewhere there’s a fruitful middle way toward which we may be moving — eight years later than we should and could have been.

On the subject of the post immediately below this one, Michael Ledeen at PJ Media provides some details that can enhance our understanding of what the protestors are up against:

The regime is trying to undermine the legitimacy of the protests, and they are using a particularly ugly stratagem. They have released 3,000 of the most violent prisoners, and ordered them to infiltrate the protest; 1,500 of them are supposed to be in the front lines, and to assault the protestors head-on, helping the Basij and RGs. The other half are supposed to identify protesters, spread chaos in the crowds, and provoke violent action to justify a major clampdown.

And, of course, there is the DJT tweet about the size of the button on his desk compared to the one on Kim's desk. Those of us who continue to harbor grave reservations about Trump have so far been able to discuss two separate realms: the good policy-level moves on the one hand, and the bluster fromDJT we see in his tweets and hear at his rallies. There now appears to be a confluence. Sad!

The current juncture in the Mueller investigation in a nutshell

Dan McLaughlin at NRO:

This entire story is the perfect storm of an aggressive and devious foreign regime, a Republican nominee of low character surrounded by inept and naively cynical amateur advisers, and a Democratic nominee who was heedlessly reckless with national security out of partisan paranoia. Secretary Clinton exposed herself to what amounted to easy Russian blackmail, and everything else that happened followed from that.

And, given the state of our culture, we probably shouldn't expect a better choice next time.

The dossier

The bottom line, when you put together the fact that Marc Elias represented both the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and was clearly used, by virtue of being the one to pay for the Fusion GPS opposition research, as cover for Dem dirt-digging that would evade proper scrutiny by mainstream media outlets (even though it was so salacious as to invite disbelief without further, proper investigation), is that the Clinton machine enlisted the help of a hostile foreign government in discrediting a duly elected US president.

It seems to be a story distinct from the Uranium One tangled web, but it seems that Dems were banking on trying to foment some kind of Trump-Russia collusion story to deflect from their own deep Russia involvement.

And the common element is the endangerment of US national security.

I can't stand Donald Trump, but we clearly dodged a bullet when the author of What Happened lost the presidential election last year.

To pardon or not to pardon

Bruce Bialosky at Townhall says the new administration should forego any more prosecutorial activity regarding Madame BleachBit:

I am choking as I am writing this and you may choke as you read it, but Trump should put a stake into the heart of any investigation into the Clintons.  Sure they will get away with it again and walk away with their $100 million of graft, but for the sake of the country we need to move forward and make America great again.  Let these grifters fade into oblivion.  I thought about making a deal with them to shut down the Clinton Foundation, but no one will contribute to it anyway since they cannot buy influence. 

But Andrew McCarthy at NRO reminds us that where MBB fits in the layers of wrongdoing is an important consideration:

Among the salient factors considered in pardon decisions are (a) where the offender under consideration fit in the pecking order of conspiratorial activity and (b) how similar offenders are typically treated. To be sure, Hillary Clinton is a special case: A prosecution against a major party’s most recent presidential candidate (which may also implicate her husband, the former president) would roil the nation and could complicate its governance. Still, we are talking about serious crimes, and Mrs. Clinton is the most culpable participant. Is the plan to pardon everyone involved, or should Mrs. Clinton get a pass while her minions face the anxiety and costs of potential legal jeopardy? 

After all, the Clinton machine was rather extensive.

Of course, as McCarthy points out, if the Most Equal Comrade does the pardoning, it's moot.

A recipe obviously founded on intentional decline

Stephen Moore at Townhall on the five worst features of Madame BleachBit's economic policy:

1. Raise the Minimum Wage to $12 or Even $15 an Hour: She might as well call this the Teenage Job Elimination Act. Even using the methodology of the liberal Congressional Budget Office shows that a $12 minimum wage would reduce the number of starter jobs by as many as 770,000. Seattle recently raised its minimum wage to $11 and is headed to $15. An independent assessment by the University of Washington finds that so far the law has had the "negative unintended consequence" of fewer hours worked and fewer jobs. Is this what we want for the nation?

2. Hike Income Tax Rates: There is virtually no economic philosophy that holds that raising taxes will help the economy. But Hillary Clinton is going to give it a try -- to the tune of $1.5 trillion sucked out of the economy.

3. Subsidize 500 Million Solar Panels: We tried these green-energy handouts under Barack Obama and they were a failure. (Remember Solyndra?)

4. Offer Free College Tuition: It's one of the greatest financial scandals in America today -- the exorbitant fees that universities and colleges are charging students. Some colleges now cost an annual $60,000 for room, board and tuition, and the average cost is near $30,000. But if the students and the families aren't paying these costs, taxpayers will, and costs will spike even higher. Universities will raise their tuitions, as they have every time the government provides more subsidies through Pell Grants. A better idea would be to require every school to freeze tuition for four or five years as a condition of receiving any federal aid. Purdue University has done this. Why not require schools with billion-dollar-plus endowments to use some of that money to lower the tuition for families?

5. Increase Social Security Benefits: Clinton wants to fatten benefits to certain senior citizens, and she wants to raise the tax on Social Security to "pay for it." Really? The system is already tens of trillions of dollars in the red, according to the Social Security Administration's own actuaries. Are we now going to increase the outflow and make even bigger benefit promises? Clinton would also apply the payroll tax of 12.4 percent on wages of up to $250,000 (up from about $110,000 today), which would be one of the biggest tax increases of all time. Let's rein in the entitlement programs, not expand them.

Madame BleachBit seems bent on making collective realization of LITD's First Law of Economics - the money has to come from somewhere - as painful as possible.

The sum total of the above five "ideas" is an acceleration of the hobbling of post-America that has been the overarching vision of the regime that has been gripping the nation's throat for the last eight years.

Those post-Americans who still cherish freedom must wage total war against it.

 

 

 

Doug Band's 2011 memo

12 pages of searing truth about what the Clinton machine is about:

Longtime Clinton aide Doug Band wrote the memo in 2011 to justify himself to lawyers at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett who were reviewing his role and conducting a governance review of the Clinton Foundation at the insistence of Chelsea Clinton. In an email two weeks earlier, also published on WikiLeaks, Ms. Clinton said her father had been told that Mr. Band’s firm Teneo was “hustling” business at the Clinton Global Initiative, a regular gathering of the wealthy and powerful that is ostensibly about charitable activity.

Poor innocent Chelsea. Bill and Hillary must never have told her what business they’re in. If she had known, she would never have hired a blue-chip law firm to sweep through the hallways of the Clinton Foundation searching for conflicts of interest. Instead of questioning Mr. Band’s compensation, she would have pleaded with him never to reveal the particulars of his job in writing.

But she didn’t, and so Mr. Band went ahead and described the “unorthodox nature” of his work while emphasizing his determination to help “protect the 501(c)3 status of the Foundation.” That’s the part of the tax code that has allowed the Clinton Foundation to remain tax-exempt on the premise that it is dedicated to serving humanity. 

Mr. Band graciously copied John Podesta, then adviser to the board, who would eventually become Hillary’s campaign chief. His helpful reply was to suggest that Mr. Band “strip the defensive stuff out” and later “go through the details and how they have helped WJC” [William Jefferson Clinton].

The Band memo reveals exactly what critics of the Clintons have long said: They make little distinction between the private and public aspects of their lives, between the pursuit of personal enrichment, the operation of a nonprofit, and participation in U.S. politics.
Mr. Band writes that he and his colleague Justin Cooper “have, for the past ten years, served as the primary contact and point of management for President Clinton’s activities—which span from political activity (e.g., campaigning on behalf of candidates for elected office), to business activity (e.g., providing advisory services to business entities with which he has a consulting arrangement), to Foundation activity.” 

This excerpt and all the potential conflicts it describes, plus Chelsea’s warning about business “hustling” at foundation events, would seem more than ample cause to trigger an IRS audit of the foundation. For that matter, why aren’t the IRS and prosecutors already on the case? Any normal foundation has to keep records to show it is separating its nonprofit activity from any for-profit business. 

Mr. Band’s memo confirms that donors were not seeking merely to help the sick and the poor. He explains that the Clinton Foundation had “engaged an array of fundraising consultants” over the past decade but “these engagements have not resulted in significant new dollars for the Foundation.” In other words, it wasn’t working as a conventional charity.

Mr. Band then explains how he and his Teneo partner Declan Kellyhad to carry the fundraising load, and did so by packaging foundation solicitations with other services such as a meeting with Bill Clinton, $450,000 speeches or strategic advice. Many of the donations, from U.S. companies like Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical and foreign firms like UBS and Barclays, occurred while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

Why exactly were donors writing checks? The Band memo makes clear that donations untied to additional Clinton or Teneo services weren’t all that appealing to potential supporters. This is significant, because the large grant-making foundations in the U.S. are almost entirely run by Clinton voters. So you know they weren’t turned off by the brand name. They’d contribute more if they thought they were also buying goodwill and influence with a current Secretary of State and a potential future President. 

As the WSJ op-ed excerpted above points out, there's surely even more, and should Madame BleachBit be the next president  dictator of post-America, it makes her ripe for blackmail from all kinds of parties in this world that have her number.

 

A retired CIA officer's take on Madame BleachBit's conduct

A guy with years of experience in the field says it was criminal as hell:

I have worked in national security my entire life. Most of that has been in the intelligence community surrounded by classified information. For twenty years, I worked undercover in the Central Intelligence Agency, recruiting sources, producing intelligence and running operations. I have a pretty concrete understanding of how classified information is handled and how government communications systems work.

Nobody uses a private email server for official business. Period. Full stop.

The entire notion is, to borrow a phrase from a Clinton campaign official, “insane.” That anyone would presume to be allowed to do so is mind-boggling.

That government officials allowed Hillary Clinton to do so is nauseating.
Classified and unclassified information do not mix. They don’t travel in the same streams through the same pipes. They move in clearly well defined channels so that never the twain shall meet. Mixing them together is unheard of and a major criminal offense.

If you end up with classified information in an unclassified channel, you have done something very wrong and very serious.

Accidentally removing a single classified message from controlled spaces, without any evidence of intent or exposure to hostile forces, can get you fired and cost you your clearance. Repeated instances will land you in prison.
Every hostile intelligence agency on the planet targets senior American officials for collection. The Secretary of State tops the list. Almost anything the Secretary of State had to say about her official duties, her schedule, her mood, her plans for the weekend, would be prized information to adversaries.

It is very difficult, in fact, to think of much of anything that the Secretary of State could be saying in email that we would want hostile forces to know.
As we wait for more information on the latest revelations, let’s quickly note what we already know Hillary Clinton did.

While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email address for official business. Instead of using a State Department account, she used a personal email account, housed on a private server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York. The Department of State exercised zero control or oversight in this process. No government security personnel were involved in protecting them.

When the House Select Committee on Benghazi asked to see these emails, the Department of State said they did not have them. Clinton’s lawyers then went through all the emails on her server. They turned over 30,000 emails they decided were work related and deleted all of the rest.

How they made the decision as to which emails to share and which to destroy remains unknown. Active government officials not were involved in this process.
Hillary says she did not use the account to transmit classified information. This has been proven false. The FBI found over 100 messages that contained information that was classified when sent, including numerous email chains at the level of Top Secret/Special Access Programs. They don’t get any more highly classified, it’s the virtual summit of Mt. Everest. One theme pertained to the movement of North Korean nuclear assets obtained via satellite imagery. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this is extremely sensitive information.

The FBI found another 2,000 messages containing information that should have been classified at the time it was sent. How much more classified information may have been in the tens of thousands of emails, which Clinton’s lawyers erased, is completely unknown.

Hillary Clinton supporters like to ask rhetorically, “Well, what about Colin Powell?” Nice try, but using your own private email address which received 2 emails determined to be classified later, is nothing like deliberately operating a home brewed server, and then see it handle thousands of classified e-mails.
It’s like asking, "what about the guy who received a stolen apple?" while equating his actions to those of bank robbers who stole $10 million.

Add to what Secret Service personnel have said about her flagrant breach of protocol, add to Uranium  One, the Russian-government-backed firm that now owns 20 percent of post-America uranium reserves, add to the lies told to the Benghazi dead's parents, add to the "agreement" with Iran which was a complete farce, and the term "unfit" surely has to arise in the mind.

 

Well, now, how do we get two such different explanations of FBI discontent with director Comey?

Ed Klein at the UK Daily Mail says it's because respect from rank-and-file agents - and Comey's own wife - went seriously south when he didn't recommend that the DoL indict Madame BleachBit:

The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn't recommend an indictment against Hillary,' said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.

'Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,' said the source. 'They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.'According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice. He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.

'He's been ignoring the resignation letters in the hope that he could find a way of remedying the situation,' said the source. 'When new emails that appeared to be related to Hillary's personal email server turned up in a computer used [her close aide] Huma Abedin and [Abedin's disgraced husband,] Anthony Weiner, Comey jumped at the excuse to reopen the investigation.'The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him,' the source continued. 'And that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state.

Grant Stern at the Huffington Post, relying in large part on information gleaned from the tweets of Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald,  seems to have this idea that folks at Comery's agency were upset that Comey's detailed outlining of the criminality of Madame BleachBit's behavior but not recommending indictment was the egregious element in the matter and what politicized the department.

LITD's estimation is that Stern has the flimsier case.

Especially given that Klein's account is corroborated by former US attorney Joseph diGenova:

DiGenova made it clear to Breitbart News that he believes that Comey has now painted himself into a corner, primarily by botching the first investigation so thoroughly and now by incurring the wrath of the Clinton campaign, with no clear pre-election exit strategy.

He has obviously succumbed to pressure, he folded like a cheap suit by sending a letter because of the manifestly improper decision that he made originally to not prosecute. He shouldn’t say anything further, in light of his statement. If they conclude the investigation in the next few days and he comes out publicly and says there’s nothing there, I don’t know what will happen inside the Bureau. The place is seething right now. Some of the more senior former FBI officials are absolutely livid.

You may have seen former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom’s comments, in which he was just extremely critical of Director Comey. I would hope that we don’t hear anymore from Comey, but at this point he appears to be under some mental stress and he may very well top it and say something additional about it, but then that will show the investigation he’s now conducting was just not through again. So it’s hard to say what he’s gonna do, I think the guy’s in some sort of downwards spiral.

This seems far more plausible and substantiated.

Of plausible explanations and rank demagoguery

David French at NRO articulates the tortured denial of what has transpired so far that is behind the Left's sudden impulse to turn on Comey:

The Clinton campaign is on the attack — and so is virtually every lefty pundit, writer, and activist in America. Comey’s interfering in the election. Comey is irresponsible. Comey is losing his mind. Comey is partisan. Let’s be clear, they’re all saying this without any knowledge at all regarding the content of the emails in question.

To simply assume that they’re no big deal means assuming that a man with a reputation as a straight shooter, but who previously bent over backwards (including applying a made-up legal standard to the facts) to recommend against prosecuting Hillary Clinton, has now suddenly changed his nature and his priorities and is now bending over backwards to try to cripple her before an election — without any meaningful legal foundation.

While anything is possible, this scenario strikes me as most unlikely — and inconsistent with the man’s reputation and past practice. The more likely scenario is that the FBI uncovered emails that raised sufficient alarm to put Comey in a seemingly impossible position. Wait until after the election to disclose this additional investigatory work, and you risk being seen as deliberately withholding material information to assist Hillary Clinton — especially since the additional work was taking place before election day. Disclose, and he faces exactly the firestorm he faces today. At least disclosure reflects the reality as it exists today. 

Indeed. This is a guy who earned the disgust of legions of agents in his own bureau in July when, after an eighteen-minute litany off Madame BleachBit's criminal behavior, ended his press statement by declining to recommend that the DoJ indict her. Are we really to believe he has all along, or even just recently, been a shill for some sort of nefarious right-of-center forces? Doesn't wash.