According to Nate Silver…and the vast majority of others on The Left…like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton before her, one cannot simply disagree with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez on the grounds of her radical Socialist politics (or for that matter, her Masters in Economics notwithstanding, that she’s an educated idiot). No: any objection must be rooted in an “ism” or phobia which is exclusively characteristic of Conservatives. Take your pick: racism, sexism, misogynism, homophobia, transphobia or bulging-eyeballs-and-too-many-teeth-o-phobia…ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
It’s the ultimate avoidance mechanism for those unable to debate the facts of a given issue: label your opponent the practitioner of one of an increasingly long list of “isms” or phobias.
The truth can’t hurt if you’re able to convince the ignorant, unlearned and/or misinformed…no matter how many advanced degrees they’ve supposedly “earned”…
“…In a dissent joined by Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that the case “affects the rights of the States” and their ability to manage Medicaid. The circuit division “stems, at least in part, from this Court’s own lack of clarity on the issue” and “it is our job to fix it.”
Justice Thomas spared no feelings in rebuking the no votes. “So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’ That makes the Court’s decision particularly troubling, as the question presented has nothing to do with abortion,” he wrote.
“Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty. If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background,” he added. “The Framers gave us lifetime tenure to promote ‘that independent spirit in the judges which must be essential to the faithful performance’ of the courts’ role as ‘bulwarks of a limited Constitution,’ unaffected by fleeting ‘mischiefs.’”
Perhaps the Chief Justice wanted to avoid deciding a case certain to become embroiled in the politics of abortion. Perhaps Justice Kavanaugh thought the Chief might side with the Court’s liberals on the merits, so why take the case and lose?(Which doesn’t say much for either Roberts or Kavanaugh!) Or perhaps Justice Kavanaugh wanted to avoid a case fraught with gender politics so soon after his Senate ordeal.
The dodge is disappointing whatever the reasons…”
One ruling does not a SCOTUS career make; but Kavanaugh’s debut is less than heartening.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, courtesy of FOX News, Gregg Re relates how…
“In a lengthy court filing Tuesday, attorneys for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn alleged that then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed Flynn not to have an attorney present during the questioning that ultimately led to his guilty plea on a single charge of lying to federal authorities.
The document outlines, with striking new details, the rapid sequence of events that led to Flynn’s sudden fall from the Trump administration. The filing also seemingly demonstrates that the FBI took a significantly more aggressive tack in handling the Flynn interview than it did during other similar matters, including the agency’s sit-downs with Hillary Clinton and ex-Trump adviser George Papadopoulos.
While Flynn is among several Trump associates to have been charged with making false statements as part of the Russia probe, no one interviewed during the FBI’s Clinton email investigation was hit with false statement charges – though investigators believed some witnesses were untruthful.
…Explaining why Flynn was not warned about the possible consequences of making false statements, one of the agents wrote in the 302 that FBI brass had “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport.”
The tactics were apparently in sharp contrast to the FBI’s approach to interviewing former Trump aide George Papadopoulos, who also pleaded guilty to making false statements and was recently released from prison. In a court filing last year, Special Counsel Mueller’s team took pains to note that FBI agents who interviewed Papadopoulos on January 27, 2017 — just days after the Flynn interview — had advised Papadopoulos that “lying to them ‘is a federal offense'” and that he could get “in trouble” if he did not tell the truth.
The revelations in the court filing, if accurate, would also sharply differ from the FBI’s handling of its interview with then-presidential candidate Clinton in 2016, during the height of the presidential campaign.Clinton brought a total of nine lawyers to her interview — a number that fired FBI Director James Comey said was “unusual…but not unprecedented” in House testimony in September.
A scathing report released earlier this year by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General (IG) found that the FBI had taken actions “inconsistent with typical investigative strategy” by allowing former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson to sit in on the Clinton interview — even though “they had also both served as lawyers for Clinton after they left the State Department.”
In fact, the IG wrote, FBI officials fretted about how many FBI representatives should be at the interview, for fear of prejudicing Clinton against the agency if, as expected, she went on to become president.“[S]he might be our next president,” FBI attorney Lisa Page wrote, in urging that the number of people at the interview be limited to four or six.“The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear.You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?”
The IG report further noted: “Witnesses told us, and contemporaneous emails show, that the FBI and Department officials who attended Clinton’s interview found that her claim that she did not understand the significance of the ‘(C)’ marking strained credulity.(FBI) Agent 1 stated, ‘I filed that in the bucket of hard to impossible to believe.’“
But not James Comey. No,…Jimmy knew…
…on which side his bread was buttered!
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel notes the Special Counsel shouldn’t count his chickens before they’re sentenced:
“Robert Mueller has operated for 19 months as a law unto himself, reminding us of the awesome and destructive powers of special counsels. About the only possible check on Mr. Mueller is a judge who is wise to the tricks of prosecutors and investigators. Good news: That’s what we got this week.
Former national security adviser Mike Flynn a year ago pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Flynn’s defense team this week filed a sentencing memo to Judge Emmet Sullivan that contained explosive new information about the Flynn-FBI meeting in January 2017.
It was arranged by then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (now terminated and disgraced), who personally called Mr. Flynn on other business, then suggested he sit down with two agents to clear up the Russia question.Mr. McCabe urged Mr. Flynn to conduct the interview with no lawyer present—to make things easier.
The agents (including the infamous Peter Strzok) showed up within two hours. They had already decided not to inform Mr. Flynn that they had transcripts of his conversations or give him the standard warning against lying to the FBI.They wanted him “relaxed” and “unguarded.” Former Director James Comey this weekend bragged on MSNBC that he(“HE”…the guy who earlier this week couldn’t recall his own name!) would never have “gotten away” with such a move in a more “organized” administration.
The whole thing stinks of entrapment, though the curious question was how the Flynn defense team got the details. The court filing refers to a McCabe memo written the day of the 2017 meeting, as well as an FBI summary—known as a 302—of the Flynn interview. These are among documents congressional Republicans have been fighting to obtain for more than a year, only to be stonewalled by the Justice Department. Now we know why the department didn’t want them public.
They have come to light thanks to a man who knows well how men like Messrs. Mueller and Comey operate: Judge Sullivan. He sits on the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and as he wrote for the Journal last year, he got a “wake-up call” in 2008 while overseeing the trial of then-Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.Judge Sullivan ultimately assigned a lawyer to investigate Justice Department misconduct.
The investigator’s report found prosecutors had engaged in deliberate and repeated ethical violations, withholding key evidence from the defense. It also excoriated the FBI for failing to write up 302s and for omitting key facts from those it did write. The head of the FBI was Mr. Mueller…”
Anyone who tells you Robert Mueller is anything but a creature of the Washington swamp…
…is either selling something or themselves an amphibian.
Since we’re on the subject of swamps, also courtesy of the Journal, Dan Henninger notes the bureaucratic bogs and mires of Big Government aren’t confined to this side of the pond:
“Maybe Donald Trump should export red MAGA caps to France and the United Kingdom. Make France Great Again. Ditto England. The photos this week of a shell-shocked Emmanuel Macron and beyond-beleaguered Theresa May show what a heavy lift renewed greatness has become for once-great nations.(Let’s not forget Angela “Asylum” Merkel!) How come?
With all due respect to the glories of 18th-century France, the only measure of greatness that concerns us now is the period after the devastation of World War II. Europeans rebuilt their economies from rubble and did so quickly. At the same time, they erected a welfare system to ensure social well-being, an Enlightenment idea.
It took Europe’s leaders about 40 years to see that welfare spending was eroding the growth of their postwar economies. So in 1992 they produced the Maastricht Treaty, which both mandated measures of fiscal discipline on profligate members—not least France—and created an institution called the European Union. The fiscal discipline largely failed, but the rules-making institutions of the EU flourished.
It is possible to draw a straight line from Maastricht to the mayhem this week in London over Brexit and in Paris over gasoline prices.
By now, a commentators’ consensus has emerged that the cause of these troubles is the people living in cities, towns and villages across Europe who feel the past 25 years have benefited everyone except them. This global revelation sank in, of course, only when the reviled Donald Trump succeeded to the U.S. presidency after appealing to these presumably forgotten men and women.
What are known as “the political elites” aren’t happy with any of this.They believe that the postwar political and economic institutions created by people like them produced widespread well-being—which was true for a while—and that the path forward now requires giving them a chance to fix things for the forgotten.
They flatter themselves. The hero of global economic growth the past quarter-century isn’t them.It’s the microchip.
Every historic burst of progress since the Industrial Revolution has depended on innovation, and I don’t mean political innovation. That hasn’t happened since John Locke. The microchip—it is a banality to point out—has been a historic multiplier of productive possibilities. New ideas about what, where and how to do business exploded everywhere, leading to more new ideas, which created the global economy, a fantastic achievement for a tiny electronic device.
Some people, however, believe they came up losers in this economic revolution, and they are in revolt…”
Which is cause for as much concern in contemporary Progressive circles as it was in 18th-century France:
Turning back to the swamp on the western shore of the Atlantic, Marc Thiessen, the WaPo‘s sole voice of reason, suggests that…
“Good news for the incoming House Democratic majority! They have something President Trump really, really wants: money to build a border wall. Trump is desperate for this money. Mexico won’t give it to him. Only congressional Democrats can. Without their consent, he can’t deliver on one of the key campaign promises he made during the 2016 election.
There’s a name for this in classic negotiating strategy. It’s called “leverage.”Good negotiators use leverage (something they have, which their adversary wants) to obtain what are called “concessions” (something their adversary has, which they want). The result is what experts call “compromise.” This is how the civilized world gets things done.
But in a fit of pique, Democrats are throwing away their leverage, insisting that they will never — under any circumstances — give Trump the wall he so desperately wants. The reason? Because he wants it and they despise him.
There is a name for this in negotiating strategy as well. It’s called “insanity.”
It would be one thing if Trump was demanding that Democrats make some great moral compromise. But he is not. Democrats say they are for border security. They may think that a wall is a costly and inefficient way to secure the border, but there is nothing inherently wrong with a wall. In 2006, 26 Senate Democrats — including Sens. Charles Schumer, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — votedfor the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which required the Department of Homeland Security to build two layers of reinforced fencing along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Is there some profound moral difference between a fence and a wall?No…”
Thiessen has it right: the primary source of unreasoned opposition to anything Trump is a burning, unreasoned hatred for anything Trump. And which has, at its core, an abiding antipathy for The Donald personally.
Obama’s policies and patent and repeated prevarication may have caused Conservatives to view him with a certain distaste, but it never approached the venom and vitriol with which so many not personally impacted by anything he’s ever done hold for Trump.
Speaking of The Donald, as one Louis Casiano reports at FOX News…
“After all, it’s not like our hopelessly corrupt governments or MS-13 will try to take it!”
“Two groups of Central American migrants marched to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana on Tuesday with a list of demands, with one group delivering an ultimatum to the Trump administration: either let them in the U.S. or pay them $50,000 each to go home, a report said.
Among other demands were that deportations be halted and that asylum seekers be processed faster and in greater numbers, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The first group of caravan members, that included about 100 migrants, arrived at the consulate around 11 a.m. Alfonso Guerreo Ulloa, an organizer from Honduras, said the $50,000 figure was chosen as a group.
He said the money would allow the migrants to return home and start a small business “It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told the paper. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.” …”
“Stolen from Honduras”: like what…bananas and chambermaids?!?
Seriously: as if the same oppressive governments and/or cutthroat gangs who supposedly forced these unfortunates to seek asylum in the first place are going to let them keep the cash? What banana boat does Señor Ulloa think we fell off of?!?
Which in our book, makes him a likely terrorist, an assessment his attempted invasion of the United States only validates.
Still, this is almost as inspired a plan as Macron asking private companies in France to pay their workers bonuses so he won’t have to cut taxes!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
And though we remind you there are only 11 shopping days left until Christmas, better yet you remember, amidst all the gifts, all the food, all the cheer…
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.