1.The video montage above is the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias” smoking gun for all time.
2. If the Democratic Party had competent and ethical leadership, this is what those leaders would do right now. They would thank Robert Mueller for doing a thorough, professional and objective job under difficult circumstances. They would say that that American needed to be assured that there were no illegal and wrongful efforts by the President, his campaign and his party to conspire with a foreign power to undermine a fair election. They would say that they look forward, now that the cloud hanging over the White House has been removed, and President Trump’s assertion that there was no wrongdoing has been confirmed, to working with President Trump in the spirit of cooperation and mutual concern for the national interests, without rancor or recriminations, and hope that he will do the same.
They would also, not publicly, instruct elected officials from their party to accept the conclusions of the report, to be gracious rather than bitter, to end what will now appear to be vindictive investigations, and to get on with the job of governing. This is a grand opportunity for them to regain the respect of the non-hate polluted public, and to behave like adults, patriots and statesmen for the first time since November, 2016.
If they don’t do this, and it is already obvious that they won’t, it will demonstrate that the party is cowering in fear of its most radical and irrational base, that it is following rather than leading, that it has neither integrity, honesty, decency, or the sense God gave a marmoset.
3. If the Republicans had competent and ethical leadership, they would publicly offer the Democrats the opportunity to be fair and gracious. They would urge the President and other high officials to eschew gloating. They would craft an apology to Mueller and his staff for often impugning their integrity by suggesting that the investigation was determined to “get” the President, and that the investigation was a “witch hunt.” They would agree with Democrats that as much of the full report as possible should be released, but also educate the public regarding why all of it cannot be.
4. Most embarrassing and unethical responses from Democrats:
- Beto O’Rourke, who appears to be an idiot…
This was yesterday. Yes, without reading the report, after one of the most experienced career prosecutors alive has determined that there was no evidence of “collusion,” this bozo says in public, that the President is guilty “beyond a shadow of a doubt” .
- Rep. Gerald Nadler (D-NY), whom people seem to forget was at the forefront of Democratic efforts to block Republicans from impeaching Bill Clinton, whose crime was a matter of record,went on TV to say,
“Obviously, we know there was some collusion. We know the president’s son and campaign manager were involved in a meeting with the Russians to receive stolen — what they thought was to receive stolen information — information stolen by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee as part of the Russian government’s attempt to help Trump in the election. That’s the way the email inviting them to the meeting put it.”
There it is again: the beating totalitarian heart of this whole inquiry. Without any evidence whatsoever except Hillary Clinton’s bitterness, “the resistance” decided that they just “knew” the President was guilty, and set out to find an impeachable crime he was guilty of while asserting as fact that such crimes existed. Nadler also appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace to endorse a current dishonest talking point from his party, saying,
“The Justice Department believes that, as a matter of law, the president — no matter what the evidence — can not be indicted simply because he is the President. If that is the case, then they can’t hold him accountable, the only institution that can hold a President accountable is Congress, and Congress therefore needs the evidence and the information.”
This is pure deceit. If Mueller found any evidence of a conspiracy with Russia that implicated the President, nothing stopped him from saying so in the report. Moreover, since any collusion had to involve Trump agents, the fact that no such agents were indicted rebuts Nadler’s tortured argument.
- Congressman Adam Schiff—no surprise here–also refuses to say “Never mind!” after asserting publicly as fact that the President conspired with Russia, and like Nadler, relied on the “The President can’t be indicted” smoke screen, saying.
“People should wait to determine just how incriminating it is.We know that the special counsel was not permitted to indict a sitting president, and we ought to see what evidence he produced both on the issue of conspiracy as well as on the issue of obstruction of justice.”
Translation: “We’ll drag this out as long as we can until we can come up with some other accusation that we can use to obstruct and harass the President with.”
4. Liberal journalist Glenn Greenwald has been a shining ray of hope in the unethically polluted muck of American journalism covering this story, relentless, merciless, and spot-on. Some notable tweets beyond what I highlighted earlier…
- Regarding the partisan lies pushed by ex-Obama intelligence chiefs Clapper and Brennan regarding the imaginary “collusion”: “Who would have guessed that if news outlets hired lifelong intelligence operatives trained in deceit, disinformation and propaganda, that they would end up misleading millions of their viewers? They turned themselves into CIA-TV & are now paying the price.”
- “And as for the growing “isn’t-it-time-to-move-on-dot-org” sentiment: no way. This wasn’t some 2-week story. This was the single biggest story the US media fixated on for *3 years* & got the crux of it totally & completely wrong in a very damaging way. It’s accountability time.”
- On the “Barr is a Trump lackey and can’t be trusted to accurately summarize the report: “I hope I’m not putting this too harshly, but you have to be the world’s dumbest person to believe Mueller filled his report with incriminating collusion claims, but he – and his whole team – are sitting silently while his long-time friend Bob Barr lies about what’s in his report.”
- “Democrats began desperately trying to blame anyone but themselves for losing the presidency to a joke of a game show host & finally settled on a foreign villain & here we are, 2 1/2 years later, with all of it exposed as a scam but so much damage done.” (No, Glenn is no Trump supporter, no sirreee.)
- Focusing his fire on Rachel Maddow, whose low point was this:
“If you’re just going to let stuff like this go – unexamined, unacknowledged, and unaccounted for – don’t expect anyone to be remotely sympathetic to the fact that public trust in big media is nonexistent and politicians benefit by making journalists their enemies…In sum: if you have a cable show and refuse to put people on who do anything but nod their head madly at everything you say until they risk a sprained neck – all while excluding skepticism & dissent from your primary narrative – you’re likely to end up spreading deceit & scams.”
- “Also, to kill off one last point: Mueller didn’t refrain from indicting Trump because you can’t indict a President but because “the evidence does not establish the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
- On the so-called “conservative news media: “While standard liberals outlets obediently said whatever they were told by the CIA & FBI, many reporters at right-wing media outlets which are routinely mocked by super-smart liberals as primitive & propagandistic did relentlessly great digging & reporting. Sorry this is true.”
- And finally, this: “Check every MSNBC personality, CNN law “expert,” liberal-centrist outlets and
#Resistance scam artist and see if you see even an iota of self-reflection, humility or admission of massive error.”
Don’t worry, Glenn. I’m checking.
5. Since I bash them here so often, allow me to give credit to the New York Times for its unequivocal headline yesterday:
6. Worst journalism ethics watchdog ever. The ridiculous Brian Stelter, who perceives his role at CNN as a complicit spin artist to deny his empolyer’s and his profession’s incompetence and biases rather than to call them out, really outdid himself yesterday, writing,
Let me take this on. Partisans on the right are already claiming the end of the Mueller probe vindicates all of their prior positions. They are saying the media, the evil media, was wrong all along.
Donald Trump Jr. is tweeting out messages like this: “#CollusionTruthers.” Accusing the press of pushing a narrative against his dad. Junior is making a rookie mistake. Mueller’s assignment was to get to the truth about Russian interference.
Now, did many commentators and Democratic politicians allege collusion? Yes.
Did many journalists ask about it? Yes.
There is a giant difference between asking and telling. The job of the nation’s news media is to ask, to question all sides to scrutinize and report on opposing points of view and only take the side of truth and decency.The president’s kids and friends on Fox should be able to tell the difference between agenda-driven columnists and journalists trying to report. There is a big difference. There is difference between news and opinion.
Now watch that montage above, which could easily be days long, not minutes.
What a weasel. Stelter is the anti-Greenwald, an enabler of rotten journalism rather than a critic of it.
Ethics Alarms 
How does our country recover from this? Especially when the liars and actual soft coup conspirators are going to continue their drumbeat based on nothing, but the propagandized public perception they created from lies. In short, the lifeblood of roughly half of the electorate and its political leadership is now built almost exclusively on lies.
Their next move? Tap the vein of socialism to destroy the United States and demonize the Constitutionalists and capitalists who built everything around them.
I think they will use their control over the public schools and universities to indoctrinate their students with the narrative that the President is now completely out of control and needs to be stopped by any means necessary. Since all ‘legal’ means have been exhausted, extralegal means must be used. You can see from the comments of the press that ‘Trump is guilty’ and ‘Trump needs to be brought to justice’. This is the next logical step.
BRING. IT. ON.
We will not fire the first shot (or we, conservatives and righty types, would have already) but we damn sure will fire the last.
Let me explain that common Americans are TIRED of this bullshit. Despite how horrific the consequences, if blood in the streets is coming, then get it over with. Smug progressives have outworn their welcome.
After watching a lachrymose Rachel Maddow let down her weepy guard, I must confess a certain perverted satisfaction at seeing today’s The Today Show on NBC.
Kristen Welker’s devilishly gleaming Now We’ve got Him! eyes and the smug smirk she sports when she’s been told to indicate that they are on the trail of something big?
They were conspicuously absent during her report this morning.
There’s an interesting story on CNN’s website.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/24/politics/mueller-doj-subpoena-trump/index.html?no-st=1553476262
They report that a confidential source informed them that Mueller and the DOJ “deliberated seeking a subpoena for Trump.” They seem to think that’s the news. But of course, we already knew, or at least assumed, that they considered issuing a subpoena. The real news in the story, which CNN didn’t seem to understand was important, was that:
In other words, Mueller didn’t subpoena Trump because his team thought the evidence against Trump was so flimsy, and the legal theory being advanced so tenuous, that they didn’t need to talk to Trump after all.
Of course, that’s just an anonymous source talking, but it’s consistent with what Barr said in his summary — that he and Rosenstein agreed that the case for obstruction was weak, in large part because there was no underlying crime and Trump knew that there was no underlying crime.
And, of course, that’s the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn:
1. Trump knew that there was no collusion with Russia. He therefore knew that Michael Flynn did not have any information to give to Mueller about collusion. Thus, he suggestion that Comey should go easy on Flynn could not have been intended to obstruct the investigation of collusion.
2. As for the firing of Comey, again, the facts were that Trump knew that there was no collusion to find, that Comey had repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target of the investigation, that Comey was not even part of the team investigating Trump, and that firing Comey didn’t in any way delay or obstruct the investigation, which continued full steam ahead despite the firing.
3. Trump’s denunciations of the investigation as a partisan witch hunt and his repeated public claims that there had been no collusion — the third part of the Democrats’ claim of obstruction — have turned out to be entirely true.
It has to be said — in defense of truth — that if an entire establishment, an entire nation, came under the sway of a political ‘witch-hunt’ of this scale, what does that say about the Nation itself and the people within that nation?
If they have been subject in this specific instance to a huge and system-wide deception of such a grand scale, does it not stand to reason that deception is built into the system?
In this instance, it is their side (the progressive factions, the Deep State in collusion with Media and huge economic interests) that are perpetrating this, and we always see clearly when the enemy is doing wrong and can always name it and label it.
But what if there are other levels of deception here? Is it not possible that underneath this one there are others? How could that be examined?
We have observed a massive and concerted campaign — something extraordinary, almost unreal — be carried out before our eyes. But some huge percentage of the population not only believed what *they* established as truth but will likely believe again some similar story. Thus, here, the issue is:
Perception-Manipulation and the Construction of Views for Political Purposes.
I would suggest — in that same excruciating, backwards-bending, almost saint-like humbleness for which I am famous — that a great deal more focus needs to be applied in order to grasp and perceive the level of Perception-Management that is part-and-parcel of the System we live under.
No? You don’t think so?!?
Oh.
Oh well. It was just an idea!
::: crawls away in shame :::
Presumption of guilt is far too common. too many people presume guilt, especially when it is the guilt of a Designated Villain®™.
and this led to a significant proportion of the population supporting a criminal inveastigation based on nothing more than a fairy tale made up by sore losers.
This ideology, this presumption of guilt, is as damaging to human civilization and morals as is Communism, National Socialism, and militant Islamism. This leads people to ignore or defy exculpatory evidence.
this was illustrated in the Kern County sex abuse cases. Not even the combined actions of the Catholic Church, the Williamsburg Orthodox Jewish establishment, or Penn State’s Spanier administration did one trillionth of the damage to the cause of punishing child sexual abuse, that Ed Jagels did.
I wrote in a comment on another post that
“Compare the public outrage against Ken Anderson to the public outrage against George Zimmermann. Compare the number of people who tweeted Ken Anderson’s address with those who tweeted George Zimmermann’s address. Compare the number of news organizations who altered video and audio to make Ken Anderson look guilty to the number of news organizations who altered video and audio to make George Zimmermann look guilty.
The horrible truth is that society and the mainstream media are more interested in railroading people for real or imagined crimes than punishing prosecutors who railroad people who railroad people for real and imagined crimes. Hell, there were more people who wanted Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to be prosecuted for murder than those who wanted Ken Anderson to be prosecuted for misconduct.
Is it any surprise we have prosecutors who have the same mindset as those who wanted to get Zimmermann and Nakoula, due process be damned?”
The above explains Ed Jagels.
The above explains Ken Anderson.
The above explains why so many people support the Mueller investigation.
And sadly, it explains much, much more.
Interesting perspective. Thank you.
You are welcome.
I believe Charles Mackay explained much of what we are seeing in 1841 in his great book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. His chapter “The Witch Mania” seems particularly pertinent and were he writing today he could add a chapter on “The Russian Collusion Mania.” His choice of the word “delusions” in the title is very apt. A delusion is a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that persist despite evidence to the contrary.
At this time, any individual who still truly believes the Russian collusion narrative is delusional. When one who has delusional beliefs is confronted with evidence contrary to their belief, the response is not to accept the external reality but to further elaborate the belief system. Jack presents many example of Democrats and reporters who are doing exactly that in a frantic effort to explain why their beliefs are factual. We are in a time when the “madness of crowds” is endangering our nation. As Mackay said, “Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.”
Our nation is in for a long haul. As Mackay also aptly observed, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
I wonder Beto’s statement rises to the level of actual malice?
Also, given the chain of emails, Nadler flat out lied. I don’t think he can claim it was an honest mistake unless he’s willing to admit to incompetence.
1. Video
Wow. I haven’t watched TV news in years, but that was just damning.
2. Competent and ethical Democrats
“Competent” and “ethical” are two words that do not apply to the leadership of either party, but particularly toward the Democrats.
That is, unless you think being led off a cliff effectively is “competence.”
3. See 2. above
4. Beto O’Moonbat and the Democrat clown car
What the hell does “beyond a shadow of a doubt” mean? That’s no legal standard I know of, and yet we continue to hear it seriously expressed as one. To be fair, it was by an idjit, but still…
Nadler has been determined to beat the impeachment drum since 2016. This is nothing new, and to expect him to do anything else is a form of insanity in it’s own right. He’s saying exactly what the people who voted for him want to hear. I suppose that’s one way of “correctly” representing your district, even if most people would say that it’s devoid of any basis in ethical leadership.
Schiff is doing the same thing. He’s become such a joke of a human being it’s impossible to take anything he says seriously.
Eric Swalwell deserves an honorable mention here, too. He just keeps trying to swallow his leg and any notion of sanity and leadership along with it.
4. Glenn Greenwald
I loathe him, but he is doing God’s work on this one. Too bad it only matters to those not afflicted with TDS, which probably excludes at least a third of the country.
6. Brian Stelter
Yeah, well, look at a) who he works for and b) what network is most prominently featured in the montage above.
How do you absolve yourself of such treachery? Sackcloth and ashes? That may be a start, but Stelter would surely be fired if he did. He values his job more than the truth, which is true of many in the media and frankly, the public at large.
We need to keep track of how many in the media who join Greenwald wind up with a pink slip, and I expect that several will.
Even as you praise the Times, which was fair for actually doing journalism, we have this disaster which is getting major run on Memorandum, probably do to Leftists.
Consider:
This is either a) a complete failure to read Barr’s actual memo, which they went to the trouble to link, or b) an objective lie. As you all may know, I have determined that Hanlon’s Razor, for my part, may no longer be applied to the Left, and the Times editorial writers are manifestly included.
Barr’s memo simply argues that the statute in question, specifically 18 U.S.C. §1512 (c)(2), cannot be read in such a way as to interfere with the President’s lawful exercise of his discretion by placing his subjective motivation as the determining factor in criminal obstruction. This seems self-evident to any person not cognitively impaired by stage 4 TDS, but it is apparently not obvious to the author of the editorial, a Georgetown law professor named Neal Katyal.
It almost serves no purpose to read anything beyond this. The piece is rife with sophistry and whataboutism, and is the kind of toxic silliness disguised as intelligent thought that the Left seems incapable of purging from their thinking.
Yes, they should.
But given the treatment of Ken Starr by the Democratic leadership and spokesholes, they are ethically estopped from criticizing Republicans if they refuse to do so.
4. I still think Robby O’Rourke scraped the bottom of the barrel by militating for the destruction of the Union: “We are owed the facts, and if we do not receive them, 243 years in there’s nothing that guarantees a 244th.” This from a guy purporting to run for President of that Union? Is he running for President of the Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, Freedonia? A supposedly viable presidential candidate is saying this? Someone with this mentality and emotional makeup shouldn’t be elected high school sophomore class treasurer.
By the way, I’m changing my EA handle to Otro Guillermo. I’m half Irish but I went to school with lots of Cuban refugees and I grew up near Cuba.
Another entry for the Night Gallery, this particular piece is titled “The Pundit Who Shouted Russia at the World”
“The ’80s called and they want their foreign policy back.”
That Rachel Maddow furrowed brow needs to go into the broadcasting hall of fame It may warrant an entire wing of its own.
My friend Ethics Bob, who used to comment here until be edged into retirement, inexplicably argued that she was a trustworthy journalist. I wonder if he still thinks that. He also didn’t think she was smug. That was even more amazing to me. She might be the most smug talking head I’ve ever seen.
America has been described as an ideologically-driven nation. When previously a nation would invade or occupy another nation for territorial reasons, America defines itself as operating from what has been called a tyranny of values. It does not just invade and occupy, its adventures turn into ideological crusades.
The basis of its self-assumed right corresponds, I will suggest, to a national characteristic. You might think it was an aspect of the national personality. It is a complex topic but most every intelligent person, and even some less so, can easily notice and understand this motive.
To wage such ideological campaigns involves the crafty and even devious use of propaganda and establishing ‘vile enemies’ who do terrifying things (‘gas their own people’ was a good one, as was ‘toss the babies out of incubators’). Pick any recent adventure — even going back to the Spanish-American War, and you will find this use of propaganda.
I suggest that this has backfired extraordinarily in our present. You-all have noticed that the “Left” has been and still is waging a slander campaign against Trump. They have been using exactly the same technique-set, the same tool-kit, that America has regularly to use and is using now. By creating an ‘evil man’ with ‘evil activities’ they create an enemy as in the Three Minute Hate. And they do this as a subterfuge to hide their other intentions. You could cite the recent Venezuela episode to illustrate this on the international sphere.
You have special rights to undermine or to overthrow a Nation if you so choose, when you choose, but you have to concoct a ‘good’ reason in order to trick decent people to go along with it. That is how propaganda works in a semi-totalitarian state. Just recently you have gotten quite a taste of *your own medicine* and it is a bitter taste it leaves behind.
The use of the machinery of the State, and its various servitors in the Media System — with known and demonstrated ties to the American Intelligence Establishment — is regularly used to dupe and trick people through the use of crafty lies in order to allow power- and financial-factions to have their way. It has nothing to do with any high value nor with democracy.
The same thing is now going on, yet it appears an internal affair. Those ‘chickens have come home to roost’ is what I am implying. It is inevitable. Or, this shows what happens when corrupt power has its way in external affairs and they creep back into internal affairs.
Ideologically-driven campaigns (Americanism, in the Americanopolis, is an affair of ideology, because they deal in emotional, moral tropes, are designed to create and foster disorder and confusion. To rile people up to hyper-emotional extremes because in that state they are more easily manipulatable. Their initial purpose is to create distrust, fear & loathing toward established power and they do this by manipulating perception. It does not matter of what they say is untrue, part true or largely true. It is ideological warfare and its purpose is to undermine trust and security.
See? That was not so hard now was it?
If you are constantly looking at the surface, you will not see what goes on under the surface. If you stare only at the shadows that pass before your eyes while your perception is chained in an established direction, you will not be able to turn around to see the Projectors.
[Two minute hate]
We still luv ya!
On Mueller’s integrity, I’m not sure how much of an apology is warranted. Two years of this fishing expedition, no evidence of collusion, and yet he writes that in his report that it doesn’t “exonerate” the President of obstruction of justice. That little poison pill is now the hook on which the #Resistance are hanging their pussy hats.
Speculating… it’s a bone tossed largely to Rosenstein, who was needed in rectifying the situation, even though he was complicit in several aspects of it (the Comey firing memo, the FISA warrant applications).
Or maybe I’m just being paranoid.