Occupy Democrats

Thanksgiving Trump Derangement, A Clinical Study

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

A good friend and widely- (and justly) admired lawyer who has been displaying his Trump Derangement symptoms on his Facebook page all year just provided an excellent example of the malady with his Thanksgiving post.

He re-posted the following Occupy Democrats “X” entry attacking J.D. Vance for his speech to the troops this week, as if anything issued by that extreme partisan propaganda outfit is reliable, fair, or trustworthy:

Then my friend, a lawyer, someone who knows as well as anyone that hearsay is unreliable and that biased sources will make you look foolish, wrote:

“If this is accurate it is one of the most bizarre rants by an American politician that I have ever read or heard about. What other American vice president has ever taken on and dumped all over in such crass language the most sacred symbol of one of our most important national holidays? I guess it’s remotely conceivable that Vance was trying to be funny, but if so it seems he needs major schooling on how to amuse an audience of soldiers desperately sick for home at Thanksgiving. MAGAS? Any thoughts on this? Are you proud of this man?”

Never mind that Occupy Democrats is infamous for its distortions of reality to demonize Republicans. Never mind that the video of Vance’s remarks are easily accessible on YouTube. Never mind that a good lawyer like my friend would never dive in with an opinion after writing “If this is accurate” when he had every opportunity to determine on his own whether it was accurate or not. He wanted the biased assessment of Vance’s speech to be true, because he wants to believe the worst about President Trump and anyone who supports him, and he knows that nobody on Facebook, save, perhaps, me, and I have a sock drawer to organize, will call him out on his unethical post.

I did watch the speech, which is posted above. The bit about turkeys was a small segment of the speech as whole. It was not a “rant.” His point was that Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with a roasted turkey out of tradition rather than because it is the yummiest main course imaginable. Of course he was trying to be funny, and because we can’t hear the audience reaction, it is impossible to tell if his routine worked (I could give him a few tips on his delivery) but so what? That was a minor section of the speech. Nor was he using “crass language.” Vance ad libbed “You’re full of shit!” to the soldiers raising their hands as part of the gag, and anyone who believes using the common if vulgar phrase in front of military personnel will be regarded as crass doesn’t know that audience.

But this is Trump Derangement! Neither Trump nor anyone connected to his Presidency gets or is owed good will or the benefit of the doubt. Everything that is said or done or suggested by the President or his supporters is presumed to be terrible, and the Trump Deranged don’t want to be bothered by context, facts or perspective. Their minds are made up. I am watching previously fair, wise and rational people debase themselves without even realizing it, because, you see, the President is “deeply evil.”

Occupy Democrats Is Just As Incompetent And Unethical As Its Memes Always Indicated…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

That tweet of signature significance isn’t the topic of this post, but it is relevant. [Thanks to comment-master Humble Talent for passing it along.] This progressive group, much like the equally dim Move-On.org, represents shrill far-left ideological cant without nuance, facts, standards or restraint. All of my Facebook Friends who were addicted to posting disinformation and propaganda memes by Occupy Democrats have unfriended me by now I think; it’s too bad, because some of them once had functioning minds, but it’s just as well. Meanwhile, the always evident ethics and intellectual rot underlying OD is finally being recognized.

Occupy Democrats’ campaign finances over several cycles show that the group spent most of the money it acquired from charitable contributions— $577,000 of a total $797,000 raised this cycle—on “fundraising consultants,” with no—that’s zip, nada, zero— contributions going to candidates.

A quarter-million dollars of what the group raised over this past election cycle, did flow into the coffers of Blue Deal LLC, which is owned by Occupy Democrats’ founder Omar Rivero and his brother, Rafael.

Oh! So Occupy Democrats is like Black Lives Matter, then!

A scam.

Continue reading →

Comey’s Letter Ignites A Public Seminar On Spin And Disinformation

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

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From the New York Times (Note: the officially declared Trump  reviling/Clinton-favoring  Times is still a solid source on the matter of Hillary’s e-mails, because it broke the story about her private server in the first place.):

WASHINGTON — The presidential campaign was rocked on Friday after federal law enforcement officials said that emails pertinent to the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server were discovered on a computer belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide.

In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said the emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, which law enforcement officials said was an F.B.I. investigation into illicit text messages from Mr. Weiner to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, is married to Huma Abedin, the top aide.

Mr. Comey’s letter said that the F.B.I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, which is tightly controlled by the government. Senior law enforcement officials said that it was unclear if any of the emails were from Mrs. Clinton’s private server. And while Mr. Comey said in his letter that the emails “appear to be pertinent,” the F.B.I. had not yet examined them.

That’s it, as of this morning. Anything else, at this point, is speculation or disinformation. However, this is undeniable: whatever was found on the computer was considered relevant enough to the question of whether Hillary Clinton knowingly violated federal law and endangered US security in her machinations to avoid FOIA scrutiny of her private dealings to mandate re-opening the investigation, which had been, as the Times notes, closed.

It seems fair to assume that this is all we will know until the election, which means that Hillary Clinton will face the verdict of voters while under FBI investigation. That isn’t good for her, but boy, does she (and the Democrats) deserve it. The Clinton way, as we learned from Whitewater and the other controversies during Bill’s administration, is that when one of their seamy deals provokes suspicion, the game plan is to deny, deny, stonewall, confuse, muddle the story, muddy the water, barely cooperate with authorities, count on the “friendly journalists” to assist, run out the clock, and wait for the public to become so frustrated and bored that the cry of “Let’s move on!” is effective. We have seen this time and time again, because it has worked. This time, her lies and delaying tactics backfired, and left the sword dangling over her head for all to see far too long. Now everyone will have to wonder if Clinton will be declared a felon while in the White House. I’d say that’s extremely unlikely, but you never know, especially with this bizarre election script.

What’s going on here?

What’s going on here is that James Comey played it by the book, and by book I mean the District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct governing the ethical conduct of all lawyers within its borders, including Comey.

Rule 3.3 in all jurisdictions (except California, but it has an equivalent rule) requires  lawyers to correct any material representations of fact or law that they have presented in a “Tribunal,” which is defined as an “ajudicative body,” usually a court. Congress and congressional committees are not adjudicative bodies for the purposes of 3,3. However, the most obscure and infrequently cited rule in all of legal ethics, Rule 3.9, says this:

Rule 3.9 – Advocate in Non-adjudicative Proceedings

A lawyer representing a client before a legislative or administrative body in a nonadjudicative proceeding shall disclose that the appearance is in a representative capacity and shall conform to the provisions of Rules 3.3, 3.4(a) through (c), and 3.5.

I have met few lawyers in the government or out of it that have ever read this rule. I know for a fact that lawyers who testify before Congress almost never “disclose” that. However, lawyers—ethical ones, anyway—will correct misleading testimony as Rule 3.3, though 3.9, requires. That’s what Comey did.

It is disgraceful that the FBI’s investigation into a matter bearing on the fitness of a Presidential candidate was closed prematurely and that its recommendation to the Justice Department in the matter was based on incomplete evidence, resulting in the current uncertainty. Nonetheless, once new evidence was uncovered that agents felt could change the results of that investigation, the Bureau had no choice. It had to investigate, and Comey had to correct his testimony that the investigation of Clinton’s conduct was over. It’s not.

Now Democrats, partisan agents of the Clinton campaign and corrupted journalists are giving a spectacular public seminar on how they spin, and, if we pay attention, a demonstration of who is interested in truth and whose function in life is to mislead the public. Continue reading →