Archive for the ‘2016 elections’ category

DHS, FBI release joint report on Russian cyber activity

December 29, 2016

,DHS, FBI release joint report on Russian cyber activity, Washington ExaminerGabby Morrongiello, December 29, 2016

(A thirteen page PDF “Joint Analysis” is available at the link. — DM)

A joint report released Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI has shed light on how federal investigators concluded that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic political institutions in the presidential election.

Without mentioning either by name, the 13-page document illustrates how Russian civilian and military actors compromised the Democratic National Committee’s internal communications network and hacked thousands of emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton‘s campaign chairman, John Podesta, as well as other “U.S. government, political and private sector entitites.”

“These cyber operations have included spearphishing campaigns, targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure entities, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations leading to the theft of information,” states the report.

The report was released just hours before the White House imposed a series of new sanctions on Russian officials and institutions as part of its pledge to retaliate against Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election. It is separate from the “full review” of Russia’s hack-and-release operations President Obama requested earlier this month.

According to the report, the Democratic party appears to have been the victim of a spearphishing campaign in which hundreds of employees were tricked “into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain” hosted by Russian hackers.

Though U.S. intelligence officials insists the hacks were perpetrated by the Russian government, President-elect Trump has refused to accept such findings as fact.

“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” Trump told reporters late Wednesday when asked about the Obama administration’s plan to level sanctions against Russia for the election-year hacks.

 

For Obama Administration, Time to Put Up or Shut Up on ‘Russian Hacking’

December 29, 2016

For Obama Administration, Time to Put Up or Shut Up on ‘Russian Hacking’, PJ Media, Michael Walsh, December 29, 2016

(Please see also, Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference. Obama just did it, with no recitation of evidence, credible or otherwise. — DM)

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Barack Hussein Obama, in the waning days of his administration, is clearly preparing to do maximum damage to his country and its allies on his way out the door to a very comfy — and no doubt ungratefully activist — retirement. First, there was the stab in the back to Israel at the UN the other day; now, he’s threatening to “retaliate” against the Russians for “hacking” the American election:

The Obama administration is under intense pressure to release evidence confirming Russian interference in the presidential election before leaving office. The administration up until now has provided little documentation to back up its official October assessment that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election.

Nor has it corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump’s victory.

President Obama has ordered the intelligence community to produce a complete review of its findings before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The White House has said it will make as much of the report public as it can. But officials have warned that the document will contain “highly sensitive and classified information” and it is unclear how much concrete evidence it will be able to release.

Yeah, right. This is simply another shot across the incoming president’s bow — part of the “resistance” deracinated Democrats have promised in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s surprising (to them) — but thoroughly satisfying defeat in November.

Releasing any documentation of Russian interference would be a slap in the face to Trump, who has rejected assertions that the Kremlin was involved in the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) andHillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The president-elect and his team have treated any suggestion of Russian involvement as an attack on the legitimacy of his election, and Republican leaders in Congress have treaded carefully on the issue.

The firestorm ignited by the CIA’s assessment has spurred calls from both parties for the administration to provide proof of Russian meddling. In late November, seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House to declassify “additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election.”

As of last week, they had not yet received a response.

“If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that,” Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said earlier this month. “They should not be leaking to the media. If there’s evidence, let’s see it.”

How about that? What this episode shows is the near-complete untrustworthiness of the CIA under career hack John Brennan, and its politicization by Obama. It also reveals the extent to which mainstream newspapers — the Washington Post and the New York Times — are so addled by partisanship that they have willingly abrogated their ethics in order to smear the new administration. As I wrote in the New York Post on Dec. 13:

In the wake of their shocking loss, Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have mounted a frantic, and increasingly deracinated, campaign to deny Trump the fruits of his victory in the Electoral College and thus overturn the election by any means necessary, fair or foul.

The recounts failed, so now it’s on to the Russians. Unsourced speculation from “sources” inside the CIA says Russian agents hacked John Podesta’s emails from the Democratic National Committee, according to “bombshell” reports in the Washington Post and New York Times.

Except that was the same “bombshell” that Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said on the record in October. The same “bombshell” that had Joe Biden acting like John Wayne, saying the US was going to retaliate. “We’re sending a message. We have the capacity to do it. And the message — he’ll know it,” Biden said about Vladimir Putin on “Meet the Press.”

No proof was offered then, or now, that Russia was involved. But it’s not as though voters weren’t aware of the speculation before the election, as some Democrats and columnists claim.

So what’s changed? Now Democrats and their media allies are in panic mode, looking for something, anything, to try to change the results.

As I’ve been saying on Twitter since the election: don’t believe a word you read in the MSM until Jan. 20, because every single “news” story will be a naked attempt at propaganda. After the inauguration, of course, the same warning will apply; it’s just that, having failed to stop Trump from taking office, the media will be on to something else in order to sabotage him and his voters.

About That “Vote Trump” Church Burning

December 22, 2016

About That “Vote Trump” Church Burning, Hot Air, Jazz Shaw, December 22, 2016

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You probably recall the shocking story which headlined every major paper in the country and ran in a loop on all the cable news stations during the final week of the election. Some horrible, racist Trump supporter burned down a church in Mississippi, scrawling the words, “Vote Trump” across the side of the gutted building. It was clearly yet another example of the Basket of Deplorables who were supporting Trump’s bid for the presidency and one more reason for Americans to turn their backs on such hatred and intolerance. This was the picture which was literally burned into everyone’s retinas.

Well, yesterday they made an arrest in this tragic case of hatred but the story seems to be changing. (WREG)

Mississippi authorities have made an arrest in the burning of an African-American church spray-painted with the words, “Vote Trump.”

Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain says Andrew McClinton of Leland, Mississippi, who is African-American, is charged with first-degree arson of a place of worship.

McClinton was arrested Wednesday. Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, was burned and vandalized Nov. 1, a week before the presidential election.

That’s certainly awkward. If you read the Washington Post’s coverage of the story (which was nowhere near the front page, by the way) you’ll need to scroll down five paragraphs to discover that Mr. McClinton is African-American. He’s also got a rather impressive rap sheet and more than a decade of cumulative time in prison.

Here’s the interesting part: the local authorities who had initially been checking into this as a hate crime are now describing it somewhat differently. (Emphasis added)

We do not believe it was politically motivated. There may have been some efforts to make it appear politically motivated,” Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, who is also the fire marshal, told AP.

Absent some sort of statement from McClinton himself it’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s not too hard to read between the lines here. You can’t simply say that it’s “not politically motivated” just because it turns out to be a different political motivation than the one you originally suspected. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Now, I’m never going to deny that there is still some residual racism left in the country and it can even bubble up into politics. But what sort of room temperature IQ moron would think that the best way to get out the vote for Trump would be to burn down a black church? What sort of result was the arsonist expecting?

Oh, well… I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but if the other side is willing to take the time to burn down our church, maybe I should give this Trump fellow a second look!”

Compare that against the second possibility. If you really want to drive out the black vote against Trump, what better way to incite them to action on election day than torching the church and making it look like it was related to Trump? As I said, that’s unproven at that point but you can apply Occam’s Razor to the question for yourselves.

This would be less remarkable if it was happening in a vacuum, but as our friend Mickey White pointed out last night at Red State, this is turning into something of a pattern.

Remember that spike in hate crimes the media keeps reporting? They may need to begin a feature dedicated to corrections after this week. We’ve been following the story of Yasmin Seweid, a young Muslim woman arrested for lying to the police, after her story of a Trump inspired hate crime went viral. Adam Saleh a serial hoaxer claimed Delta airline discriminated against him for “speaking in Arabic, already other passengers are coming forward to discredit his version of events.

Just something to ponder going forward. When you see a story of some sort of racially motivated incident of violence which looks too incredibly overt and stupid to be true… maybe it’s not.

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin

December 22, 2016

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin, Town HallVictor Davis Hanson, December 22, 2016

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News outlets such as The New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer.

Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?

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President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field many questions from New York/Washington journalists.

What we know as “the media” never imagined a Trump victory. It has become unhinged at the reality of a Trump presidency.

No wonder the fading establishment media is now distrusted by a majority of the public, according to Gallup — and becoming irrelevant even among progressives.

Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal. But they at least hid their inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback.

When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory.

The mainstream-media narrative in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald, the Castroite, communist assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was a product of right-wing Texas hatred was completely crazy — but largely unquestioned.

That old monopoly over the news, despite the advent of cable television and the internet, still lingered until 2016. Even in recent years, Ivy League journalism degrees and well-known media brand names seemed to suggest better reporting than what was offered by bloggers and websites.

Soft-spoken liberal hosts on public TV and radio superficially sounded more news-like than their gravelly-voiced populist counterparts on commercial radio and cable news.

Yet the thinning veneer of circumspection that had supposedly characterized the elite liberal successors to Cronkite and Brinkley was finally ripped off completely by a media meltdown over Trump.

Journalists such as Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times and Christiane Amanpour of CNN said that they could not — and should not — be neutral reporters, given their low opinion of Trump.

When the press is unashamedly slanted, even its benefactors want even more partiality — media heartthrob Barack Obama included.

In his last press conference as president, Obama attacked pet journalists for reporting on WikiLeaks’ release of John Podesta’s emails, supposedly at the expense of his own legacy and Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments.

The WikiLeaks trove certainly proved another disaster to the media — but only because it revealed that mainstream journalists conspired with the Clinton campaign.

CNN’s Donna Brazile leaked possible debate questions to Clinton. One op-ed columnist, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, even asked Clintonites for research to help him attack Trump.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush sent a story to the Clinton campaign team to be audited before publication. He begged to keep his collusion quiet and admitted that he had become a “hack” for such journalistic impropriety. Thrush may have been rewarded for his predictable left-wing bias, recently being hired by the New York Times as a White House correspondent.

Last week, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman grotesquely suggested via Twitter that Trump might welcome another 9/11-like attack, given that such a human catastrophe supposedly helped win support for George W. Bush.

Recently, another Politico reporter, Julia Ioffe, used Twitter to relay a news story about the possibility that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, would get an office at the White House. In her tweet, Joffe suggested that Trump was either having incestuous relations with his daughter or skirting nepotism laws.

Politico fired Ioffe — sort of. She had already announced that she was moving from Politico to the Atlantic.

Yet the Atlantic announced that it would not rescind her hire — suggesting that her political bias, despite the accompanying unprofessionalism and uncouthness, could almost be interpreted as a plus.

In today’s media, all of this progressive distortion serves as an insurance policy for lapses of personal integrity like those of Thrush and Joffe.

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams sermonized about the so-called “fake news” epidemic. Williams failed to remind us that he was removed as NBC’s evening news anchor for serving up all sorts of fake details about his supposedly brave trips abroad in search of edgy news stories.

After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the co-hosts of the show “CNN Newsroom” collectively put up their hands in “hands up, don’t shoot” solidarity — echoing a narrative of police murder later proved to be completely false by a lengthy federal investigation.

Decades-long journalistic one-sidedness was apparently tolerable when there were no other news alternatives. Mainstream-media monopolies once were also highly profitable, and long-ago liberal news people were at least well-mannered.

All of those assumptions are no longer true. News outlets such as The New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer.

Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?

The Times Tales from the Far Side

December 21, 2016

The Times Tales from the Far Side, Washington Free Beacon, , December 21, 2016

(Please see also Are Europe’s ‘Extreme Right’ Parties Really So Extreme? — DM)

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President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks plan on moving the country “far to the right,” and not just any far right but the “Israeli far right,” according to the latest reports from the New York Times.

The Grey Lady introduced readers to David Friedman, Trump’s nominee to serve as ambassador to Israel, with the ominous warning that he is a “hard-liner” who could “could end up undercutting the security of Israel and the United States,” as one “left-leaning” expert told the Times on Dec. 15. Friedman was described in the first paragraph as a “bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right.”

“Far right” has become a staple of the New York Times lexicon since Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton. The paper has used the term in connection to Trump 158 times since Election Day, tying him to everything from Europe’s rising nationalist parties to a Klu Klux Klan stabbing and profiles of internet-based white nationalist trolls. The term “far left” was used in connection to President Obama, by contrast, 431 times over the past eight years.

Friedman is not the only Trump cabinet nominee who threatens the balance of American politics. On Dec. 5 the paper stated that Trump’s “Cabinet Picks Portend a Shift Far to the Right.” As evidence of these far right tendencies, the paper cited that many of the president-elect’s nominees “have long records opposing the current administration on social programs, wages, public lands, veterans and the environment.”

The Times pointed to Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, fast food restaurateur Andrew Puzder, as an example of the shift away from the center. Puzder “has been extremely critical of the Obama administration’s labor policies, including its push for a higher minimum wage and for new overtime rules for workers.”

The Times does not say that the Democratic Party platform’s embrace of a $15 minimum wage—more than double the current rate of $7.25—originated from one of the most liberal wings of the party: union powerhouse Service Employees International Union. On Nov. 22, a federal judge appointed by Obama blocked the new overtime rules because they are “contrary to the statutory text and Congress’s intent” of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The article does not say if the Obama administration’s policies—such as his efforts to “shut down fossil fuel production”—constitute a turn to the “far left.”

Trump’s nominees stand in stark contrast to those of President Obama, who according to the New York Times has never nominated anyone from the far left to a cabinet position or federal court. Dating back to Obama’s Nov. 4, 2008 election victory, the Times has used the word “far left” to describe “nominee” in about 140 instances, according to Lexis Nexis. The use of the term was more likely to help readers navigate photo captions—82 times—than provide context as to a politician or prospective Democratic cabinet member’s political leanings. The Times obituary 0f communist dictator Fidel Castro, for example, employed the phrase just once: “REVOLUTIONARY: Far left, Fidel Castro in 1968.”

The rare appearance of “far left” in the New York Times typically comes in the form of a quote from Republican politicians, rather than a news or headline writer’s copy. The paper’s journalists work hard to provide important context for its readers. When New Jersey Republican Steven Lonegan called now-Sen. Corey Booker “a far left liberal extremist,” Times reporters added that Booker “is frequently criticized in his own party for his moderate views.”

The paper used “far left” twice while covering the nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. When she cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a near party-line vote—Sen. Lindsey Graham was the only Republican to vote for her—the Times reported that “Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, complained of Ms. Kagan’s ‘strong commitment to far left ideological beliefs.’”

Grassley would have known more about Ms. Kagan had he read the June 18, 2010 edition of the New York Times, which featured a 2,500-word profile of her roots titled, “The Kagan Family, Left Leaning and Outspoken.” Readers discovered that she came from a “New York family whose intellectual dynamism and embrace of liberal causes provide a window onto the social milieu and culture that shaped her.” Her father tied himself to a tree once; her brother’s “involvement in radical causes’ [was] an inspiration for her senior thesis on the Socialist movement in New York.”

Far left appears in the article one time: “TOUGH TEACHER: Elena Kagan’s mother, Gloria, far left, with her class at Hunter College Elementary in 1979.”

Kagan now has a more leftwing record on the court than liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to the Washington University School of Law’s Supreme Court Database.

Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms

December 21, 2016

Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms, Washington Examiner, December 21, 2016

(Will we ever stop calling them “liberals?” They are leftists or Democrats, not liberals. The term “liberal” has been perverted into what it is not. — DM)

liberalspowerA crop of liberal writers are aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

“Democrats had a knife, and the GOP had a gun,” writes New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, remarking in particular on what he views as disgraceful Republican abuses of power in North Carolina. Having lost the governorship, the GOP used the lame-duck period to pass laws taking power and patronage away from the victorious Democratic governor-elect.

Leonhardt’s broad point about general Republican excess is being made by many a liberal writer. It is a revisionist history put succinctly by Greg Sargent, a liberal blogger at the Washington Post, that the “GOP shreds our norms in [the] quest for power and Dems don’t.”

This is a deeply ignorant or mendacious view of political history.

We do not defend the Republicans’ North Carolina caper; we already criticized it in this space. But it is stomach-turning to see liberal horror that Republicans should resort to the same tactics Democrats used with gusto. If anything is more irritating than hearing partisans justify their behavior with “tu quoque” arguments, it is seeing a crop of liberal writers aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades.

The last two times North Carolina’s legislature moved to strip powers from its governor, it was Democrats doing the partisan stripping and Republicans being stripped. It was also an abuse then, and North Carolina Republicans cried foul, not that anyone seems to remember their protests now. Gov. Pat McCrory and legislative Republicans were thoroughly and mercilessly schooled in the art of political warfare by their Democratic adversaries, and finally brought a gun to the gunfight.

Republicans win a few elections and suddenly it is shocking — shocking, we tell you! — that they deploy gerrymandering just as Democrats did for decades. Trump wins an election, and suddenly liberals worry that presidents might govern with pens and phones, and change national immigration policy by fiat.

Suddenly, “obstructionism” is no longer considered a legitimate excuse for a president to announce that his agenda is too important to wait for democratic constitutional processes. Suddenly, liberal writers fear rather than cheer the possibility that a president might start a ruinous and illegal war on his own personal say-so.

When you’re told everything in the political landscape is unprecedented and horrible, you are not hearing a good faith argument. You are hearing the symptoms of defeat. Beginning next month, Democrats will have less power at national and state levels than they’ve had since the Great Depression. They’re losing influence over policy across the map, and it’ll take a lot of political rehab for them to get over it.

If we live in “a new normal in which the America we knew and loved is gone,” perhaps it’s because these people were enjoying liberal abuse of power too much to apply the constitutional brakes when they had the levers in their hands.

Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What?

December 21, 2016

Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What? American ThinkerSelwyn Duke, December 21, 2016

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message.

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“The Russians hacked the election!” say Democrats trying to discredit Donald Trump’s presidency. Of course, their statement is deceptive, referring only to the theory that the Russians provided Wikileaks with the campaign season’s revelatory Democrat emails.

Not surprisingly, the Fake (establishment) Media has embraced the theory, which is probably the best argument for its falsity. In addition, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange denies Russian involvement. So does Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said “I’ve met the person who leaked them [the emails]” and that the individual is an “insider” representing Democrats angry over “the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Senator Bernie Sanders.” Moreover, both FBI director James Comey and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said there’s “no credible evidence” Russia influenced Nov. 8’s outcome, according to reporter Ed Klein. Yet whatever the truth, the more important matter is that the issue is being used as a distraction and a tool for disruption.

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message. Consider an analogy: Imagine it came to light that a Capitol Hill restaurant’s kitchen was filthy and vermin-infested. Would the health department’s course of action be dictated by whether the information came from a disgruntled employee or an investigative reporter who illegally gained access to the kitchen? If the latter, would Washington Democrats still eat there?

As a reminder, the Wikileaks emails contained damning information showing direct collusion between the mainstream media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, including evidence that a CNN figure gave Clinton debate questions ahead of time, thus disadvantaging primary-season opponent Sanders. They contained other dirt on the Democrats as well. Is anyone but Clinton and her apologists upset these truths came to light?

Of course, our systems must be made safe from intrusion by foreign actors, but this gets at an important point: it will reflect better on the Democrats if the Wikileaks source is a leaker. After all, whose systems were supposedly hacked and under whose watch would it have occurred?

Answers: the Democrats’ systems and the Obama administration.

The New York Times recently ran a painfully long article about how “how Russian cyberpower invaded the U.S.,” calling it “The Perfect weapon.” But the piece mainly illustrates how Democrat and administration entities exhibited the perfect storm of incompetence. The Times writes of how its examination “based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.”

In contrast, there reportedly was also a hacking attempt by Russia on the Republicans. It apparently didn’t work, however, because they actually secured their systems.

So here’s the Democrat complaint, translated: “We were too incompetent to secure our systems — or react promptly to a perceived threat by a hostile foreign actor — and as a result damning truths about us were revealed. We’re such victims!”

Taking the above together with Hillary Clinton’s use of a “home brew” server to send classified emails, and that the FBI stated there appeared to be hacking attempts on it, a question is raised:

Were these people ever qualified to be at the nation’s helm, in charge of national security?

In the 1997 film Liar Liar, Jim Carrey plays a shyster lawyer who, after a birthday wish made by his son comes true, is suddenly incapable of telling a lie. Objecting to the opposing counsel’s argument in court but robbed of his verbal legerdemain, he responds to the judge’s question as to why he objected by saying, with the only argument he could honestly muster, “Because it’s devastating to my case!”

 


That is essentially the Democrats’ gripe regarding the quite true Wikileaks revelations. Objection overruled.

Trump Wins Electoral College After Clinton Loses The Most Defections Of “Faithless Elector”

December 20, 2016

Trump Wins Electoral College After Clinton Loses The Most Defections Of “Faithless Elector”, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, December 20, 2016

(A good wrap-up of the Electoral College results and Democrat machinations. — DM)

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The Clinton supporters have been campaigning hard to convince electors to switch their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. It was a remarkably hypocritical stance for Clinton who repeatedly called Trump failure to promise to abide by the election results as “horrifying” and unAmerican. Clinton maintained that shocked demeanor all the way up to election night when she found herself the loser. She then broke from tradition and refused to concede that night before her supporters. Her campaign then supported challenges in various states and actively sought to convince electors to switch their votes. Well the results are in and it is rather surprising: Of the 10 electors who did not vote for their designated candidate, eight were actually Clinton electors who refused to vote for her. Only two Trump electors switched and neither voted for Clinton.

Four of the electors who were set to vote for Clinton were in Washington state. Of those, three voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the fourth voted for Native American tribal leader Faith Spotted Eagle. They each will face $1,000 fines.

The two electors who did not cast their votes voted for Kentucky Sen. Ron Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

In the meantime, Bill Clinton went public with an interview to continue the spin that his wife lost because of FBI Director James Comey and “fake news.” Once again, he did not point to the fake news that was so decisive in the election since the Wikileaks emails were not fake but real news. However, Clinton added that Trump won because “he does know is how to get angry white men to vote for him.” The problem is that white males could not and did not secure the election for Trump. According to the New York Times, Clinton carried only 54 percent of the female vote against Donald Trump. However, nearly twice as many white women without college degrees voted for Trump than for Hillary and she basically broke almost even on college-educated white women (with Hillary taking 51 percent). Trump won the majority of white women at 53 percent.

Other Clinton supporters have explained the results by denouncing women as slaves to their “internalized misogyny. So it is either “angry white males” or self-hating women that toppled Hillary Clinton. Of course, there could be a more obvious answer: people really did not like Hillary as a leader regardless of her gender. It may be that the large numbers of women refused to vote for Hillary simply because she was a woman. Clinton and Trump were the most unpopular politicians ever to be nominated for president and over 60 percent of voters viewed Clinton as fundamentally dishonest. None of that stopped the DNC from engineering her victory over Bernie Sanders who presented precisely the populist campaign that many voters were looking for. Clinton had the Democratic establishment and many allies in the media — everyone agreed except the public. That was enough . . . until the voters had their say on November 8th.

What is striking about this story is how leading Democrats still refuse to acknowledge that the party was seriously out of touch with the electorate. Indeed, after securing her own reelection as minority leader, Nancy Pelosi promptly announced that voters really do not “want a new direction.” Yet, after a huge effort to get electors to move against Trump, most moved against Clinton. The sentiments are not likely to pass despite the coordinated effort to blame Comey or white males or self-loathing women. Few people outside of the Clinton core supporters are buying the spin. The question is how steep this learning curve will be for a party that has continued the same leaders on the same course after the electoral defeat.

Voters Not Fooled by Democrats’ Dangerous Immigration Agenda

December 20, 2016

Voters Not Fooled by Democrats’ Dangerous Immigration Agenda, Front Page MagazineMichael Cutler, December 16, 2016

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A growing majority of Americans have had it with the duplicitous conduct of the political elite of both parties.  There is a new sheriff in town and the Democrats, must accept that Americans are not as dumb as they hoped we are.

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One of the most treasured hallmarks of America’s democratic electoral process is that following every election the transference of political power is done peacefully.  It is also expected that the candidate that loses an election will concede the results of the election and congratulate his/her opponent and wish that person success.

However, members of the Democratic Party and others, such as Presidential candidate Jill Stein, were so upset with the outcome of the election that they have made a series of false, outrageous accusations.

In so doing they not only attacked Donald Trump but our most prized democratic traditions.

The inflammatory and vitriolic statements made by various Democratic politicians, on all levels of government, were followed by violent demonstrations around the United States and on college campuses spurred on by the false accusations.

FBI Director Comey was blamed for causing Hillary to lose the election because he had made public statements about Hillary’s missing e-mails and illegal use of a private e-mail server to receive and transmit highly classified national security information.

Stein sought a recount of the votes in three key states. This costly effort failed to disclose any voting irregularities committed on behalf of Trump.

Now the most recent claim of the Democrats is that Russia hacked the U.S. electoral process to insure that Trump would win the election.

It is impossible to discuss computer security and not raise the issue of Hillary and her outrageous national security transgressions, through the use of her private and non-secure server as well as her non-secure digital devices, that created huge national security vulnerabilities for the United States.

Our government may not ever fully discover the extent of the damage this may have done to America’s intelligence gathering operations and may well continue to hobble those efforts for years to come.

Nevertheless this fact has been entirely ignored by the mainstream media.

Chuck Schumer, the newly anointed Minority Leader in the Senate, immediately jumped in front of the television cameras (actually he is rarely far from those cameras) and complained bitterly about Trump’s purported connection to Vladimir Putin.  He was almost immediately joined by Republican senators Graham and McCain.

The mainstream media referred to this triumvirate as a “Bipartisan effort,” ignoring the obvious connection that these three have as members of the “Gang of Eight” that attempted to ram Comprehensive Immigration Reform” down the threats of Americans.

We will get to the immigration connection momentarily but first it is extremely important to note that on December 14, 2016, Fox News reported that although the House Intelligence Committee had scheduled a hearing on December 15, 2016 to delve into the claims that Russia had hacked into the U.S. elections, incredibly the intelligence agencies have refused to provide any witnesses for this hearing.

It is unfathomable that representatives of our intelligence agencies would refuse to provide testimony or evidence on a matter of such potential seriousness as the alleged interference by Russia in our elections, unless there is no evidence.

Accusations without corroboration is properly called slander.  The accusations about Russian interference into the election of Donald Trump now create the appearance of yet another smear campaign against America’s President-elect.

The conduct of the Democrats is obviously attributable to the outcome of the election.  But adding to the consternation of the Democrats is Trump’s promise to address the immigration crisis that has lit the Democrats’ hair on fire.

Donald Trump made building a wall to secure the U.S./Mexican border the rallying cry of his campaign.  He has also promised to enforce America’s immigration laws to prevent the entry and continued presence of criminal aliens and make certain that American workers get the jobs being taken by foreign workers, including high-tech workers.

This stands in stark contrast with the policies of the Obama administration and promises made by Hillary during her campaign.

For nearly eight years the Obama administration has issued illegal executive orders to gut the enforcement of our immigration laws.  The consequence of the administration’s immigration policies including the release of criminal aliens has resulted in more crimes committed against more victims across the United States.

In fact, at one recent Congressional hearing into the administration’s policies of releasing violent criminal aliens from prison, Congressman Lamar Smith asked the rhetorical question, “President Obama: Accessory To The Crimes Committed By Illegal Aliens?

The Obama administration flooded the United States with thousands of refugees who cannot be vetted, playing “Immigration Roulette” with national security and public safety.  Hillary Clinton promised to admit even more such refugees.

The lack of border security is more than conjecture.  The most reliable metric for determining how secure or insecure our nation’s borders are is the price and availability of heroin and cocaine.  The supply of these poisons has never been more plentiful and the prices have never been lower.  Inasmuch as these substances are not produced in the United States every gram present in the United States was smuggled into our country.

Drug smuggling goes hand-in-glove with alien smuggling.  Transnational drug gangs from around the world set up operations in towns and cities across the United States to control the flow of drugs into the United States and to make certain that all proceeds of this extremely violent criminal enterprise are successfully sent back to their home countries and into the bank accounts of criminal as well as terrorist organizations.

This is not the only “price” America and Americans pay, however.  There is a clear nexus between narcotics and violence.  The drug trade also deals in human suffering and carnage.

Former Speaker of the House Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill Jr. famously stated that “All politics is local.”  In point of fact, all law enforcement is also local.

When the federal government fails to secure our nation’s borders and enforce our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States, the stage is set for massive quantities of narcotics to be smuggled into the United States.

However, the daily enforcement of our criminal laws are not only a vital mission for federal authorities but for local, city and state police departments as well.

The DOJ tracks crime statistics but ultimately murders, rapes and muggings occur on streets in our towns and cities.  So do drug transactions.

“Sanctuary Cities” further encourage massive numbers of illegal aliens to enter the United States who are secure in the knowledge that by setting up shop in such cities, their violations of our borders and immigration laws will go unreported to federal immigration authorities.

Where transnational criminals and international terrorists are concerned, these violations of our borders and our laws are anything but “victimless” crimes.

As I have noted in previous articles, ‘sanctuary city’ mayors should be given an MVP Award by ISIS and drug cartels.

Speaking of local crime and local politics, Donald Trump was not the only Republican to win his election.  Across the United States nearly two-thirds of the governors are now Republicans.

The Republicans control both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Clearly the majority of Americans are not “buying” what the Democrats are peddling.  Yet the Democratic Party refuses to accept these cold hard facts.

At the beginning of the Presidential campaign, on July 2, 2015 a young woman by the name of Kate Steinle was gunned down by an illegal alien, Francisco Sanchez, a citizen of Mexico who had been previously convicted of seven felonies and, as the the Los Angeles Times reported, was previously deported five times.

Reportedly, Sanchez admitted that he lived in San Francisco because of its “sanctuary” policies.

This case ignited a national firestorm highlighting that San Francisco is a “Sanctuary City” that had refused to honor an ICE detainer.  Consequently Sanchez was allowed to roam freely when he should never have been released from custody.

Rather than learn from this tragedy, it has been reported that San Francisco City Supervisor David Campos wants millions of dollars to defend illegal aliens from deportation.

To political leaders, such as Campos, the bodies of the victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens are mere “speed bumps” to his political goals.

While the Steinle murder drew national attention, similar crimes are committed every day across the United States, often on multiple occasions.

Abraham Lincoln sagely observed that “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

A growing majority of Americans have had it with the duplicitous conduct of the political elite of both parties.  There is a new sheriff in town and the Democrats, must accept that Americans are not as dumb as they hoped we are.

Democrats Threaten, Harass Electors: Where is the Outrage?

December 19, 2016

Democrats Threaten, Harass Electors: Where is the Outrage?, Power Line, John Hinderaker, December 18, 2016

(In the highlighted paragraph, it seems very likely that Mr. Hinderaker meant “Obama administration.” — DM)

The Democrats’ ongoing campaign of harassment against Republican members of the Electoral College is a scandal. It shows a complete lack of regard for our democracy. Politico describes how bad the situation has gotten:

In the aftermath of a uniquely polarizing presidential contest, the once-anonymous electors are squarely in the spotlight, targeted by death threats, harassing phone calls and reams of hate mail. One Texas Republican elector said he’s been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails. …

There have been ad campaigns targeting electors and op-eds assailing their role. One Democratic member of Congress has called to delay the vote for president while an investigation of Russian involvement in the election is underway. Two others have pleaded with electors to consider Russia’s role when deciding how to vote. Progressive groups are preparing protests across the country at sites where electors will meet to cast their ballots. Personal contact information for many electors has been posted publicly — and it’s been used to bury them with massive email campaigns. …

Last week saw the release of a video of celebrities like Martin Sheen pleading with Republican electors to vote for someone other than Trump. On Saturday, Unite for America — the group behind the video — began sending personalized versions to electors in which Sheen and more than a dozen others call them out by name.

This is insanity. The election is over, and Trump won. The United States slid down the slope toward becoming a banana republic during the Trump administration, and if electors were bribed or threatened to overturn the result of a presidential election, the process would be complete.

Meanwhile, those who rely on the Democratic Party press for news may not even be aware of the Democrats’ disgraceful behavior. A reader writes:

I cannot find a single news report or, indeed, ANY reference at all in the New York Times that any of this harassment of electors has occurred. None, zero, nada.

Proof, as if any were needed, that the real news is what is not reported; everything else is propaganda. And the Times is the agitprop organ of the liberal establishment’s Inner Party, shamelessly and unhesitatingly so. Intentional spiking of reports unfavorable to the image and, supposedly, as the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record,” to the history of the Party is standard operating procedure for the MSM.

Where is George Orwell when you need him?

Where, indeed?