Both David and I called this one…
Well, to be honest, it wasn’t all that hard to call….
.Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama in 2009 failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would, its ex-secretary has said.
Geir Lundestad told the AP news agency that the committee hoped the award would strengthen Mr Obama.
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So, as we said at the time, the award was given based on political wishful thinking and not the actual results.
I wonder how many people are going to be chastising the Nobel committee for being racist as they did so many people who said that it was going to go down exactly this way.
Roger Simon notes the firing of McCabe and says in part:
.Forget Watergate. It will be the distant past once the inspector general’s reports—there apparently will be more than one—start to come out. This will be the “Gate of Gates.”
From the FBI and across the intelligence agencies an astonishing number of people are going to find themselves accused, one can safely predict at this point, of some atrocious behavior in a free republic. And it will not just be the small change of Peter Strzok (the dimwitted director of counter-intelligence) and his gal pal Lisa Page. It will include—on one level or another—James Comey, Loretta Lynch, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and, almost inevitably, Barack Obama, not to mention others known and unknown.
…
All these people’s reputations will be damaged forever for the pathetic purpose of getting Hillary Clinton elected president and later for their determination to manipulate the FBI and intelligence agencies to wound as severely as possible Trump’s presidency. That they didn’t stop to think that they might be wounding America at the same time is extraordinarily selfish and nauseating.Further, that a Russia collusion investigation was employed by these people for their nefarious purposes is darkly ironic because their technique itself reeks of Stalin’s NKVD.
…
Democrats, who are all over Twitter at the moment defending McCabe, are making a huge mistake. They will be embarrassed when the details come out. The Office of Professional Responsibility is not a partisan adjunct of the Republican Party or anything close. Furthermore, it was the Democratic Party that called for the inspector general to investigate. He was appointed by Obama. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
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Hmmm.
Several points here.
First, that it’s been amusing in the extreme to watch the people who until recently have considered and have spoken openly of Trumps use of Twitter to be sophomoric, now suddenly making use of the service in an apparent mood of desperation…. Apparently recognizing that they themselves are now under the magnifying glass.
As Roger suggests, the Russia collusion investigation has proven itself repeatedly to be a total sham, invented and carried out for political purposes… And the animals that Roger mentions, are scared to death. That fear tells me that Simon is right… McCabe’s firing is the opening Salvo, and they know it.
And mind you, this is just speculation, but it’s my feeling that it’s no accident, the similarity of the tactics being employed in this case, and Stalin’s NKVD, as Roger mentions. Wounding America? Isn’t that precisely what a good Stalinist would have in mind? And what does this say about the Clintons and about Obama? What does this say about the people leaping to the defense of McCabe?
Understand, as I’ve said in these columns many times Trump was never my guy, and I still have problems with him. It seems to me, however, that there’s a goodly number of people who have been mocking those of us concerned about the Deep state and it’s overtly Stalinist tactics who are about to be shown a rather healthy dose of reality… It’s something that I would never have predicted prior to the last election.
It seems to me that that alone is worth the price of admission to the Trump circus.
And by the way… In my estimation, if there’s enough evidence to fire McCabe for his actions while in his office, there’s enough evidence for criminal charges… Which means he won’t have to worry about his pension. His housing and meals will be covered by the government, just a different branch.
Well, it’s a start.
And of course the media immediately leaps up in defense of McCabe. Don Surber notes this one and dispatches it;
For example, NBC News reported,“When McCabe’s wife, Jill, ran for the state Senate in Virginia in 2015, she accepted a donation from a political action committee controlled by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a friend and supporter of Hillary Clinton’s — and that became the basis for a series of Twitter attacks from Trump.”
It quoted a Trump tweet — “Problem is that the acting head of the FBI and the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H for wife!
“The NBC said Trump was “erroneously claiming that McCabe had a role in facilitating the contribution.”How does NBC know he had no role in that $700,000 payout to Mrs. McCabe? I want proof from NBC that McCabe was clean.
You you know that’s the interesting part… Whenever money flowed to Hillary Clinton it was always wrapped in plausible deniability.
Addendum, 30 minutes later: I see Glen Reynolds is noting the same thing, including the peice from Don. Guess I’ve got to put him higher on my morning tour of the net.
And by the way, I’m watching and waiting for Surber to get the boot from Blogspot for actually being conservative. After all, that kind of censorship is the new norm.
It is not that the liberals don’t like the Second Amendment. Rather, they hate the very concept of any right presumed to endowed by the creator.
One, from Daily Wire:
A history teacher at a California high school who dared to question her school’s participating in the hyper-political pro-gun control National School Walkout has been placed on leave.
Julianne Benzel said she opened up a discussion in her classroom about the politics of the protest and was subsequently told to stay home on Wednesday because the administration disagreed with her views.
Two, from Mike LaChance, Legal Insurrection:
The progressive left’s views on gender are not compatible with science. We covered this story in a recent quick take but more details have become available. A student named Lake Ingle was recently ejected from a religion class by a feminist professor for arguing that biologists only recognize two genders.
The student would have been better off to avoid the term gender, except when used to refer to nouns, and stick to question of sex.
Three, more via Mike LaChance, Legal Insurrection:
Saying ‘God bless you’ after sneeze listed as microaggression on college’s anti-oppression guide
Saying “God bless you” after someone sneezes is listed as a microaggression on a lengthy “anti-oppression” guide posted online by Simmons College.
I wonder how long it will be before the thought police come after “Bless his heart?” The phrase both assumes the existence of a divine deity and a specific sex of the second person. How horrible.
I observe Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing performance in India. Justin Trudeau should be sending Hillary Clinton a case of champagne at the very least for taking the “embarrassing performance in India” spotlight off of him.
.If you look at the map of the United States, there is all that red in the middle, places where Trump won. What that map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that own two thirds of America’s Gross Domestic product. I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. You don’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian American succeeding more than you are, whatever that problem is, I am going to solve it.
Well first of all, no, you’re not going to solve anything. …Primarily because the American people don’t want you in that position, and secondly your proposals wouldn’t solve anything to begin with.
Moreover, did she just tell us all that she does rather well among the rich, and not so well among working-class people? How is it that she claims to be the “guardian of the working class”, then? If the Democrat Party is so very proud of supposedly supporting the working class as they claim, why is the point of pride here that they do better among the rich?
Of course she didn’t stop there…
.We do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married, white women. And part of that is an identification with the Republican Party, and a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.
So let me understand this…
The Woman that likes to present herself as a fighter for all women is telling us that the reason she lost was that women were too weak to think for themselves? Yeah, that’s going to go over large.
I mean, she did everything but suggest that the reason that blacks sat on their hands to the large degree that they did was because she wasn’t black like Barack Hussein Obama… A suggestion that was made by the New York Times just about a week ago and I wrote about here.
Okay, look, I have no doubt in my mind is that they think these are the problems the Democrat Party faced. After all, when you only have a hammer in your toolbox, everything is a nail. When you only have sexism and racism and identity politics in your tool kit, this is the kind of fantasy that you come to when your politics blows up in your face.
In the end, everything she said here is what she’s been accusing conservatives of for decades. She has been successful in one afternoon in proving everything conservatives have been saying about the Democrat Party forever.
In the end, everything she said here is what she’s been forever accusing conservatives of. She has been successful in a single afternoon in proving everything conservatives have been saying about the Democrat Party.
In one press conference. That’s a magnificent accomplishment. But I doubt it’s going to connect her with very many people that aren’t already in her base.
I have my arguments with Jonah Goldberg, but I think he gets this one right.
.For years, I’ve been writing that the great myth about Hillary Clinton is the notion she shared even a fraction of her husband’s political skills. There is no transitive property to marriage. If Bill Clinton could play the xylophone, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have gained the skill when she said, “I do.” So it goes with politics. Bill Clinton would never dream of saying anything like this. Having risen in Arkansas politics — not an over-performing state GDP-wise — he understood how to talk to working-class voters in ways Hillary never learned in 40 years of standing next to him sagely nodding.
So, what’s wrong with what she said? Well, nearly everything, starting with the fact that she probably believes all of it. It shows that she really doesn’t like large swathes of the country. She has a Manichaean view that says people who voted against her are backward, racist, sexist, and kind of dumb. I didn’t love the slogan “Make America Great Again,” and Lord knows I didn’t like Trump’s campaign style. But for millions of decent Americans, Trump’s program was optimistic. “We’re gonna make America great again” may sound unequivocally racist to the race-obsessed, but that’s not how everyone who liked it heard it. How easy and comfortable it must be to think that anyone who voted against you is against “black people getting rights.”
The real issue of course, is this…
Not only do I not doubt for a minute that she believes this garbage, so too does the majority of today’s Democratic party. This is who they are.
Just another day under a Democrat government…
The Joseph Percoco verdicts reveal how doling out cash has become the unquestioned premise of running New York.
At the risk of being obvious, the reason that so many high schoolers are advocating disarming America, is because they haven’t been taught by the teachers who are currently leading them around by the nose, the consequences of being disarmed.Ask me again why I have problems with government-run schools.
Look, guys, let’s not pretend that the Democrats didn’t pour everything they had into that race… Including Soros dollars.
And the best they could do with all of that was a virtual tie?
Unless you want to hand our entire cellular network over to the Communist Chinese, this is a good move.
Well now, this gets interesting.
.Much of the political commentary since the presidential election has focused on two groups of party switchers: those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 and those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump voters who previously voted for Mr. Obama are the subject of intense fascination because they are viewed as providing critical insights into the racial and class dynamics that helped determine the outcome of the election. On the other side, many analysts see Romney voters who flipped to Mrs. Clinton as an illustration of how the Democratic Party now survives in significant part by appealing to more upscale voters.
Frustratingly, however, these perspectives play down the importance of a crucial group of disaffected voters: those who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 but then failed to go to the polls in 2016. Because this group is disproportionately young and black, this erasure is racially tinged.
The trouble of course is that the New York Times has got this one all wrong. I suppose there’s nothing new about that, particularly. But let’s break this down..
The first part of their analysis that can be discounted totally is the rather knee-jerk racism. This argument is to be expected. It’s reflexive among the left these days because they haven’t got anything else to bring to the table.
The fact is that if race was so much the issue, Obama wouldn’t have been elected twice. There simply aren’t enough blacks in the Electoral pool to elect him on their own, so clearly there was enough whites who voted for him. Race and racism doesn’t even enter the picture on this one… It’s almost as if the New York Times is unwilling to admit that we now live in a post-racial society. That point aside… Let’s do a quick overview of the actual balance on this thing.
The real reason so many people transported between Romney and Clinton is because policy wise, there really wasn’t all that much of a difference as I have described previously.
The centerpiece of this though, is the largely unspoken frustration of the leftists at the New York Times that so many people that voted for Obama didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton. It amazes me that they still haven’t figured this one out.
I don’t have it to hand just now, but I commented at some point immediately following the election, that a re-election of Donald Trump was at the very least somewhat questionable because of my feeling at the time that Donald Trump got elected for two reasons. First, he wasn’t part of the establishment, and second, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.
But, here’s the thing… Hillary Clinton will not be running in the next election. The people who sat on their hands after watching their primary process be interfered with by someone whose lack of Ethics made even the staunchest of Democrats cringe… it’s not a scenario that’s going to be happening again. The primary motivation for so many Democrats sitting on their hands was Hillary Clinton and her corruption. The reason for the large number of people voting for Donald Trump? Again, he wasn’t Hillary Clinton.
But, Hillary Clinton will not be running for president again, so barring any unforeseens, the lack of response from the Democrat rank-and-file cannot be depended on in the next cycle…
Nor can large amounts of crossover voting for Trump that occurred, be counted on, again because of Hillary Clinton and her corruption will not be there.
That said, I suggest the Republicans who sat on their hands and didn’t vote for Donald Trump are not as likely to be sitting on their hands in the next cycle, either.
So, the future race of Donald Trump versus an as-yet-unnamed Democrat seems likely to come down to the factor of motivation.
And that factor, dear reader, comes down to what Donald Trump manages to do between now and then. That’s because the only things that the Democrats have to run on at this point are 2nd Amendment issues, and illegal aliens. Both of those issues are being driven at this point by Panic, and outright untruth.
As Hillary Clinton’s loss in the most recent election demonstrates, fear and loathing of anything to the right of Fidel Castro can only be stretched so far.
I noted the tax proposal the Democrats put forward and wondered why it wasn’t being ballyhooed by the Press.
Roger Simon seems to have a handle on why we haven’t seen anything from them about it. Apparently they recognize that it’s all stable carpeting, too.
It’s mind? Perhaps not. It’s soul? That is perhaps another matter.
I keep waiting for this Pope to explain patiently to us all how abortion is a sacrament of God.
20 years ago I have probably would’ve been chastised for saying such a thing. These days it doesn’t seem all that much of a stretch, does it?
- Your feelings are largely irrelevant.
- You cannot be whatever you want to be.
- Gender gender studies are complete waste of time money and effort.
- The idea that you have a right to something simply because you exist is complete hogwash.
- You have the absolute right to live as you please, assuming that it infringes on nobody else’s rights. You do not have the right to demand everyone else to accept your choice.
- If you live in the United States you’re already in the 1%.
The BBC has released an article suggesting that the North Korea strategy being put forward by the Trump Administration is working. At least, so claims vice president Pence.
I’m unclear about this, in many aspects. But one thing I’m convinced of there is definitely multiple Dimensions to all of this that most people are not accounting for… Including the Trump Administration.
One major aspect most people are not accounting for is China.
Witness if you will, the Chinese Premier is setting himself up as dictator for life. We know that North Korea is basically a client state of China and China has been less than happy with North Korea lately, and particularly unhappy with the little gargoyle. North Korea believes that China has turned its back on the long-standing goal of world socialism, because of the 1978 reform in which China started accepting investment from the West. Still, 90% of North Korea’s trade is with China. China has been rather forgiving over the years of North Korea when they can’t pay their debts to the Chinese. That has started to show signs of change.
I have my doubts that the Chinese take the nuclear threat from North Korea very seriously, at least any more than the rest of the world does. What I do see however is if the North Korean government collapses which seems likely, the refugee problem along the 800 some-odd mile border between North Korea and China will suddenly become a refugee area… Of a scope that would even make the Syrians wince.
The relationship between North Korea and China lately has not exactly been warm. The decades-long treaty between the two is now being viewed by Beijing as being outdated and in the end, worse than useless.
Within the last year China has become increasingly critical of Kim Jeong Un, and the relationship between the two has been turning rather Frosty.
China, meanwhile is in the midst of a massive military buildup, obviously intending to project power throughout the Pacific basin. The Chinese leadership has indicated that they, or rather he, wants a world-class Navy by 2030, and they appear to be well on their way toward attaining that goal.
China’s relationship with North Korea has always been as some would say, a marriage of convenience. Obviously, they started to view it as an inconvenience, particularly given the world pressure to rein in its puppet.
I’ve even seen charges that North Korea has been hacking Chinese computers via malware and ransomware.. interestingly enough a trick the Chinese taught them.
Question: Is there a sense in the mind of the little gargoyle that China is not going to be his protector for much longer? Is there a sense in North Korea that China itself is becoming unstable?
Could his sudden willingness to negotiate in fact be recognition that he may end up disappearing at the hands of the newly anointed Chinese emperor for life?
It seems clear that without some serious changes in diplomacy and attitude on the part of North Korea they are about to lose their only friend in the world… China.
North Korea has been Sheltering from the world outside for Generations now.
With all of this going on it’s no great mystery that now suddenly the little gargoyle wants to talk to the United States. They clearly see that their shelter isn’t going to work for them anymore.
Karen Mallard, evidently a blonde to the roots despite her Miss Clairol, proves she is too stupid to hold public office and may have hidden urge to commit suicide by cop, from Kimberly Kaye, Legal Insurrection:
Karen Mallard, a Democrat Congressional Candidate from Virginia Beach posted a video of herself sawing off her husband’s AR-15 in protest gun of violence after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
Video:
Illegally shortening the barrel of an otherwise legal firearm is all the excuse the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobago and Firearms to go Fearless Fosdick, that is shoot first ask questions later. Just ask the late Vicki Weaver, from History:
In the second day of a standoff at Randy Weaver’s remote northern Idaho cabin atop Ruby Ridge, FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi wounds Randy Weaver, Kevin Harrison, and kills Weaver’s wife, Vicki.
Randy Weaver, an alleged white supremacist, had been targeted by the federal government for selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) informant. On August 21, 1992, after a period of surveillance, U.S. marshals came upon Harrison, Weaver, Weaver’s 14-year-old son Sammy and the family dog on a road near the Weaver property. A marshal shot and killed the dog, prompting Sammy to fire at the marshal. In the ensuing gun battle, Sammy and U.S. Marshal Michael Degan were shot and killed. A tense standoff ensued, and on August 22 the FBI joined the marshals besieging Ruby Ridge.
