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10 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’

December 12, 2016

10 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’, Breitbart, Joel B. Pollak, December 12, 2016

podesta-and-putin-640x480

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to support a congressional investigation into whether Russian hacking affected the 2016 election. Republicans have nothing to fear from such an investigation, because they won the election fair and square.

No, Russia is not the friend that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several years pretending it was. But the idea that Russian hackers coronated Trump is only the latest left-wing opiate — after white supremacists and “fake news” — designed to dull the pain of electoral defeat, and postpone the reckoning that must occur if Democrats are to pose a significant threat as an opposition party at any time in the near future.

Here are just ten of the reasons the “Russian hacking” story is a sham — a left-wing twist on the red-baiting McCarthyism of the 1950s.

1. There is actually no new information leading the CIA to its conclusion. The New York Times reports: “The C.I.A.’s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency’s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.” In other words, someone only decided after Trump won that it the accusation was worth making.

2. The “evidence” that the CIA has gathered is inconclusive. The FBI also disagrees with some of the CIA’s conclusions about Russia’s motives. “While lawmakers were seemingly united on the need to present a strong bipartisan response, the FBI and CIA gave lawmakers differing accounts on Russia’s motives, according to The Post,” The Hill reported on Sunday.

3. The CIA is not making public claims that Russia hacked the election. Several CIA veterans, in fact, have urged caution about the leaked reports. As Newsweek reports: “‘I am not saying that I don’t think Russia did this,’ Nada Bakos, a top former CIA counterterrorism officer tells Newsweek, in a typical comment. ‘My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.’” Thus far there is not even a clear idea what the CIA’s conclusions are.

4. Despite left-wing “fake news,” there is no evidence Russian hackers actually distorted the voting process. The most that the CIA is alleging is that the Russians may have helped hack of the Democratic National Committee emails, as well as (possibly) the emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chaiman John Podesta. There is zero evidence Russian hackers messed with voting. Ironically, Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount has eliminated any doubt about the integrity of the results.

5. The Obama administration has a history of manipulating intelligence for political gain. The most under-reported scandal of Obama’s presidency was the CENTCOM scandal, in which it emerged that “senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) leaders manipulated intelligence assessments in 2014 and 2015 to make it appear that President Barack Obama is winning the war against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).” There is even more reason to doubt the truth of a selective leak about the election.

6. Julian Assange and Wikileaks have vigorously denied that the Russians were involved in Wikileaks’ disclosures. Of the Democratic National Committee emails, Assange said: “That is the circumstantial evidence that some Russian, or someone who wanted to make them look like a Russian, was involved, with these other media organisations. That is not the case for the material that we released.” Assange made similar denials about the Podesta email leaks later in the election.

7. The fact that the Russians might constantly be trying to hack U.S. systems, and might even specifically have targeted the election, does not prove that they succeeded. Nor does it prove that they tipped the election to Trump even if they had some effect. As pollster Frank Luntz tweeted: “Did Russia also hack Hillary’s campaign calendar and delete all her stops in rural Wisconsin, Penn., and Michigan?” Hillary Clinton lost the election for reasons entirely of her own making.

8. Foreign interference in elections is nothing new — and the Obama administration is a prime culprit. In 2015, the Obama administration made a strenuous and not-terribly-well-hidden effort to swing the Israeli elections toward the opposition and away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The State Department gave $300,000 to a “pro-peace” Israeli group, which then paid political activists whose goal was to unseat Netanyahu. In 1984, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) actually asked for Soviet help. Russian efforts to intervene would be bad, but not unique, either for Russia or for the U.S.

9. What would the consequences of allowing undue Russian influence in our elections be, exactly? Would we yield primacy in Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin? Would we give up our plans for missile defense? Would we make deep unilateral cuts in our nuclear arsenal in exchange for flimsy concessions ? Would we tolerate a Russian land invasion of a friendly, pro-Western country? Would we cede the Middle East to Russian hegemony? Because Hillary Clinton and Obama already did that.

10. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation for the “Russian hacking” story is that it is “fake news” that suits the left-wing media. It is not unknown for Russia to use false propaganda to affect public opinion in foreign countries. Nor is it unknown for the U.S. media to use bias, “fake news,” and outright lies to shift public opinion in this country. The current focus on Russian “hacking,” based on no new evidence and — again — zero evidence of tampering with the voting process.

Categories: 2016 elections, Obama and Russia, President Elect Trump, Russian hacking
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The Democrats’ Nauseating Putin Hypocrisy

December 12, 2016

The Democrats’ Nauseating Putin Hypocrisy, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, December 11, 2016

(Please see also, Renowned Russian Scholar Valery Solovei: ‘The New American Administration Will React From A Position Of Strength, And We Can Never Win In This Competition’. — DM)

The degree to which the Democrats have changed their tune on Vladimir Putin almost on a proverbial dime is either black comic or nauseating or both, depending on how you want to look at it. Whatever it is, it is a extremely obvious example of how party politics is conducted in our era (possibly always).

If your side does it, it’s diplomatic genius bound to yield peace in our time. If the other side does the exact same thing, it’s a horrendous mistake bordering on treason likely to cause a national calamity, if not global Armageddon.

If there were any decent, even semi-even-handed political science departments left in our country (okay, maybe there are one or two), what we might call the Democrats’ “Great Putin Flip Flop” would be a textbook case for classroom discussion.

Let’s start at the beginning, March 2009, but a few weeks after the first inauguration of Barack Obama, when a smiling Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov the red “reset” button, signaling the arrival of a supposed era of peace between the two countries.  The new administration was greeted with hosannas for their great symbolism from their loyal claque at the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, et al., who were oblivious, needless to say, that the word “peregruzka” printed in Cyrillic on the button, thought to mean “reset” in Russian by the linguistic geniuses in our State Department, was actually the word for “overload.”

No wonder Lavrov has such a quizzical look on his face in the all the photos. (Imagine what the reaction of the press would have been had Trump’s putative secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, done something similar. Media lynch mob?) Much more important, however,  was the extreme ignorance of the Russian character, from the Czars through Lenin and Stalin and on into the present, evinced by such a naive, almost childish, “reset.” Throughout the East, of which Russia has always been a signal part despite intermittent yearnings for the West, a powerful leader has always been the center of national and tribal life.  Silly, symbolic gestures like “reset” buttons are seen as weakness, not compromises or attempts at global comity. They are something to exploit.

Barack Obama, however, went on undeterred. The U.S. president, in South Korea in March 2012 for a nuclear security summit, was caught on open mic with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev confidentially informing the Russian president, as if Medvedev would be so stupid as not to know, that  “after my election, I will have more flexibility.” Obama wanted that news conveyed to Medvedev’s boss Putin so the true Russian president would give Obama some “space.” Only Barack clearly didn’t realize Vladmir was a capo di tutti capi and would behave like one — not, say, a Republican senator from a swing state who could be swayed with a “chummy presidential phone call.”

We all know how it turned out.  Putin read Obama well. Within a couple of years Russia had retaken the Crimea, destabilized Ukraine, and, making matters so bad that even the namby-pamby John Kerry has admitted it was a mistake, Obama’s red line on Assad’s use of chemical weapons had been crossed with our president doing absolutely nothing about it, allegedly in order not to offend dear Vlad, who was making him “promises.”  The Russian air force was reputedly going to help us extinguish ISIS  — or what Obama for reasons unknown insists on calling ISIL — but ended up somehow misfiring and hitting our quasi-allies in the field, helping rend them at this point virtually non-existent, while Assad is now marching into Aleppo and has Syria, forever a Russian client, practically all to his despotic self again.

And then there’s the little matter of Iran, also a client of Russia when Putin wants it to be, financing as much mayhem as it can from Iraq to Yemen and beyond (they are believed to have camps in Venezuela), arming the terrorist thugs of Hezbollah, all with unbelievable sums of money donated by Obama for an inexplicable and unwelcome nuclear deal hardly a single American understands and about which Vladimir Putin knows far more than any member of the U.S. Congress (which never had a chance to vote on it anyway).

Has any American president done more for Russia for less reason?  (At least FDR united with Stalin to defeat Hitler.)

Obviously not, although the same media claque (aka court eunuchs) aren’t even mentioning this as they all go into a full-tilt attempt, with CIA help, to malign Donald Trump as the next American president selected (but not apparently elected) by the hackers of the Russian Republic.

Do I believe Trump actually was the Russians’ preference? That would be mighty optimistic on their part. How could they do better than Obama, considering the last eight years?  And why not just as well elect a weakened Hillary? My guess is, if (big if) they were the instigators of the hacking of the embarrassingly cyber-incompetent DNC  (what is wrong with these people — it’s 2016), they were equal-opportunity hackers, anxious to create confusion and finger-pointing (they succeed with that), rather than specific results that would be hard to control.

This would be consistent with Russian/Soviet behavior over generations.  For those who have not read it, one of the best places to understand this is Disinformation, a remarkable book by sometime PJ Media contributor Ion Pacepa, one of the highest-ranking defectors from the East.  (He once ran Romanian intelligence under Ceausescu.) Mandatory reading on a similar topic is Whittaker Chambers’ extraordinary memoir Witness, with its stories of the Soviet infiltration of our government way back to the 1920s.

The question we should all be asking about the CIA’s sudden revelation of online tampering with our election by the Russians is how come it took our intelligence agencies so long to figure this out?  That’s assuming it’s all not a “false flag” operation, as John Bolton is alleging. (I wouldn’t bet against him.)  Nevertheless, why are we so permeable to anyone and everyone? Why did John Podesta fall for a phishing scheme most fourteen-year olds would have avoided? What’s wrong with our cyber-defenses? Didn’t we invent the Internet? Al Gore, where are you?

Well, we know.

But let me ask one last question whose answer should be evident to any sentient being not a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. Who do you think would better understand and deal with Vladimir Putin — Barack Obama or Donald Trump?

Yes, the KGB  and its successors know the difference between a community organizer and a CEO.  Don’t we all?

Categories: 2016 elections, Obama and Russia, Putin, Russia and US elections, Trump and Russia
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Obama, Russia, The Election, and A Visitor From Mars

December 11, 2016

Obama, Russia, The Election, and A Visitor From Mars, PJ Media, Claudia Rosett, December 10, 2016

(But Obama says his Administration is the most transparent in history.

You can see right through him. — DM)

So, as chance would have it we are currently hosting a newly arrived visitor from Mars, who has been avidly following the headlines. Having studied our world for some time, he is intrigued by the news, as reported first by the Washington Post on Friday: “Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House.”

This is the story in which U.S. “officials” told the Post it is “now ‘quite clear’ that electing Trump was Russia’s goal.” Earlier in the week, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz, President Obama “instructed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of the pattern of malicious cyber activity related to our presidential election cycle.” Obama wants this report completed and submitted to him before the end of his term, Jan. 20 — now less than six weeks ahead.

Since this story broke, we have been trying to field questions from our inquisitive Man from Mars, who seems oddly disinclined to take things at face value. (We think our visitor is a he, so I’ll proceed on that assumption, though we have not inquired about gender identification).

I’m sharing below some excerpts from our chat. For convenience, I’ve abbreviated “Man from Mars” as MFM. Our replies, I am attributing simply to “Us.”

MFM: This is shocking news about Russia, but surely meddling in America’s elections is not new. What were the findings of the deep-dive report produced at speed by the Obama administration, its concerns leaked in advance to the press, over the effects, starting early in his first term, of the IRS targeting conservative groups?

Us: There was no such report. There were congressional hearings in which a prominent witness from the IRS took the Fifth. There were tussles over destroyed hard drives, emails not turned over, or some turned over long after the deadlines, and this year brought news that the targeting may still be going on — see Kim Strassel’s May 19 column in the Wall Street Journal on the “The IRS’s Ugly Business as Usual.”

MFM: But wasn’t Obama deeply worried that this targeting might silence a lot of conservatives, skew public debate and warp America’s political process?

Us: Nah. In 2014, Obama in a TV interview dismissed it all as nothing worse than “bone-headed decisions,” saying there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.” So much for that.

MFM: OK. But what about the deep-dive report Obama demanded, urgently, prior to the 2012 presidential election, to shed light on his own administration’s lies about the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi. You remember, all that “messaging” about an ad hoc mob, and blaming the “video.” That sure looked like Obama was trying to mislead the American public in order to bolster his campaign line that “the tide of war is receding,” plus his administration’s claims that leading-from-behind in Libya was a success. I mean, there were four Americans murdered, including — as I discern from your Earth records — the first American ambassador killed on the job in 33 years. Obama, who had the authority to send help directly to Benghazi, never did. What does Obama’s urgently ordered, in-depth and surely impartial report tell you about what Obama himself was doing that night?

Us: Get real. Obama was hardly likely to order an all-out urgent investigation of himself and his team, especially during the final weeks of his reelection campaign. He was already booked to go to Vegas, he needed his sleep. Anyway, by the morning after the Benghazi attack, the damage was already done. So — as somebody-or-other told Congress — “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

MFM: Right-o. I can see that a president needs his sleep. But I’m still puzzled over these latest news stories that imply President Obama thinks Russia is an enemy trying to subvert the United States. Yes, but…wasn’t Obama a buddy of Vladimir Putin?

Us: Well, yes. But only for the first six or seven of Obama’s eight years in office. There was Obama’s chummy 2009 “Reset” with Russia — you remember that mislabeled red button Hillary Clinton presented to Russia’s foreign minister. Obama threw in, as a bit more swag for Putin, the gift of shelving missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. And when NATO missile-defense plans became a sore point with the Kremlin during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, there was that open-microphone moment in which Obama was caught promising Putin’s sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, “After my election I will have more flexibility.” To which Medvedev replied, companionably, “I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.” Pretty friendly, actually. But, hey, dude, that was like four years ago.

MFM: Fair enough. But wasn’t there a bit more to it?

Us: OK, yeah, but let’s not get too bogged down in the past. There was Obama’s 2013 red line in Syria over chemical weapons, which he erased by way of basically turning over the Middle East to Putin — and, of course, to Iran. And of course there was the case that same year of Edward Snowden, the guy who fled the U.S. with a trove of National Security Agency secrets. After a quick sojourn in Hong Kong, Snowden washed up as Putin’s guest in Russia, where Putin has not gotten around to sending him back. Obama apparently didn’t like that, but he didn’t let a transient thing like wholesale plundering of the NSA, or Moscow’s asylum for the plunderer, interfere with buddying up to Moscow to clinch the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

MFM: Well, at least when Putin snatched Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Obama made him give it back.

Us: Umm, actually, no, he didn’t. Russia now owns Crimea, has roughed up more of Ukraine and seems to be eyeing the Baltics. Though Obama did impose sanctions on Russia, which Putin didn’t like.

MFM: And those sanctions, of course, stopped Russian aggression and put Putin back in his box?

Us: Would you like more coffee?

MFM: Thanks. You Earth people have such nice customs.

Us: Coffee’s even better with sugar, not salt. Try it.

MFM: Wow. Who knew? Which brings me to just a few more questions. In the stories this week about the urgent report Obama has ordered — following up on conclusions reached secretly with “high confidence” by U.S. “intelligence agencies” that Russia acted covertly to promote Donald Trump over Hillary — why are all the official sources anonymous? I see a couple of officials quoted by name, commenting on the need for such a report, including Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, who had breakfast recently with some reporters. But the whole thing seems based on specifics which the press has attributed only to anonymous “officials briefed on the matter,” or officials “who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”

Us: Look, this is delicate stuff. The intel guys have to worry about exposing sources, and there are clearly big secrets involved. Check out the cloak-and-dagger stuff in the penultimate paragraph of the Washington Post story, telling how administration officials briefed select members of Congress, in ” a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information.” That ought to tell you just how extremely secret and classified this stuff is.

MFM: Call me an idiot, but how secret is an assessment that has details of its contents leaked to one of America’s major newspapers, including the sweeping conclusion that, as one nameless “senior U.S. official” told the Post, “Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected.” Isn’t Obama, with his concerns for the integrity of state secrets, trying frantically to stop these anonymous officials from leaking these secrets to the press? Haven’t people lower down the food chain gone to prison for leaking classified information?

Us: Yes, but as you say, those jailbirds were lower down the food chain. Maybe Obama doesn’t know who exactly is leaking this information to the press. As you say, they’re anonymous.

MFM: Give me a break. If these anonymous officials have it right about Russia’s cyber abilities, I’d bet the Russians already know who these same anonymous officials really are. Surely Obama could find out. If he can’t find out direct, maybe he could order U.S. intelligence to steal the information from the Russians? Can’t he order up another urgent report, to get to the bottom of who’s leaking some of the state secrets that inspired him to order up the original urgent report?

Us: Enough already. You may know plenty about Mars, but you’ve got a lot to learn about White House politics under Obama.

MFM: Speaking of Mars, we Martians love conspiracy theories. There’s lots here that we don’t know, but all this leaking seems tilted toward delegitimizing the victory of Donald Trump, even before he takes office. I mean, how does someone defend himself, when accusations are all over the headlines, conveyed by anonymous officials, while the actual basis for these stories is officially secret? Is that what Obama meant when he promised to run the most “transparent” administration ever?

Us: Give it a rest. U.S. elections are sacred to our democracy, and if anyone — and we mean anyone — tries to fiddle them, we have to get to the bottom of it.

MFM: Calm down. I’m just curious. If the Russians did try to intervene, by hacking and flooding the public with emails humiliating to Hillary and the Democrats, but not to Trump, then did Trump have any control over this? Wasn’t it the responsibility of Obama to protect the country, and the election, from any such intrusions?

Us: You’ve been reading too much fake news. Obama’s a busy guy. He’s been trying for years to control the level of the oceans. He can’t cover everything.

MFM: And if the Russians, emboldened by Obama’s reset and flexibility and vanished red lines, did actually try to tip the 2016 American election, did they succeed? Did it make a difference?

Us: Look, please stop with the questions. We’re just the little guys here. Normal Americans. We don’t have time to read reams of emails dumped out by anybody. We come home tired from our day jobs. Or we’ve been reading about the wealth and fashions of the liberal elite, and the fat pensions of the federal bureaucracy, while we work the part-time night shifts, and look for any extra income we can scrounge up.

I’ll tell you what we read during the recent presidential campaign. We read the letter that arrived a week before the election, from our health insurance company, informing us of the double-digit rate hike slated for our premiums, yet again. We read about the terrorist attacks — in Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando — inspired or linked to ISIS, the “JV team” that was expanding its murderous reach while Obama was still boasting about killing Osama bin Laden. We listened to Obama exhorting people to vote for Hillary, in order to cement and extend his legacy. We listened to Hillary denouncing tens of millions of Americans as “deplorables.” Did Russia make her do that?

MFM: Don’t ask me. I’m from Mars.

Us: We get it. But watch out. If you keep asking questions like these, someone’s going to report you as part of a Russian plot. Speaking of… enough with the coffee. It’s gonna take more than caffeine to get through these next six weeks. Ever tried vodka?

Categories: 2016 elections, Clinton e-mails, Clinton unsecured server, Democrat National Committee, Hillary Clinton and Russia, Obama and Russia, Russia and the election of Trump, Russian hacking
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Requiem for a Narrative

December 9, 2016

Requiem for a Narrative, Washington Free Beacon, , December 9, 2016

President Barack Obama gestures during a U.S. counterterrorism strategy speech at MacDill Air Force Base Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

President Barack Obama gestures during a U.S. counterterrorism strategy speech at MacDill Air Force Base Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

At a dinner in Washington earlier this week—one packed with well-meaning folks who really, really wanted this year’s election to have gone the other way—I heard a speaker cite Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art by way of consoling the audience. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” the poem famously begins. The speaker hastened to remind the room that, later in the poem, we are informed numerous times that losing “is no disaster.” With that in mind, those who didn’t like the election’s result should buck up and dive back into the fight, and so forth.

It didn’t seem like the time or place for me to point out that the poem’s declarations that losing isn’t a disaster are clearly ironic. It also didn’t seem the time to note that among the most important reasons why so many people supported Trump was that they were conscious of a series of painful disasters, the existence of which the Obama administration, abetted by a friendly press, refused to acknowledge. The nature of our politics today—and perhaps immemorially—is that every ambitious mayor or governor of a state feels the need to create a narrative of success: build a stadium or bridge that he can slap his name on, massage the crime statistics to show civic healing, and call it good.

If the reality matches the narrative, so much the better—but you won’t find too many politicians admitting that things haven’t improved, or that they have actually grown worse. Obama and his aides certainly weren’t big on admitting shortcomings, and after the electoral wipeout they have just suffered, it looks like their most lasting impact will be to have discredited the word “narrative” among a large portion of Americans. That’s something, I guess.

For years, Americans were told that after the financial panic in 2008, the president’s policies had put us on a steady course to a strong economy. But in much of the country, people looked around them and thought, That just doesn’t seem right. Especially in those parts of the country hit the hardest by the transition from the Industrial Era to the Information Age, people asked a number of questions. If the economy is doing so great, why are my adult children not moving out? If the unemployment rate is declining, why are so many prime-age males not working? And doesn’t it matter that the quality of jobs for non-college graduates is so obviously worse than it was a generation ago? Why, instead of working, are so many people dependent on public benefits and falling prey to addiction?

All of these questions had answers—but looking to the Obama White House for clarity about the uncomfortable tradeoffs their policies involved was a fool’s errand. Take, as an example, the crusade against coal, pushed by activists and coastal liberals for whom shutting down these companies was a clear and uncomplicated good deed on behalf of Mother Earth, of which the only real victims would be the greedy energy executives. The miners could retrain, or get “green jobs,” or something.

Well, a lot of the coal companies did shut down, or all but shut down. Many of the owners cut their losses and moved on—capital may be inconvenienced, but it generally does not suffer. The workers just lost their jobs. The economy in places like southeastern Ohio wasn’t exactly ready to absorb them, and as for retraining—well, you give that a try when you’re 45 years old. The availability of welfare and disability payments is a bitter replacement for the dignity of an honest, decently paid job. The only good news in some of these regions for much of the last eight years was the fracking revolution, a phenomenon that generally occurred in spite of the president’s best efforts.

We were also told, again and again, that things were going well abroad. The tide of war was receding. Afghans and Iraqis were taking the lead. Osama bin Laden was dead, and al Qaeda was on the run. And people again thought, That just doesn’t seem right. As recently as this Tuesday, President Obama was still at it, telling troops assembled at MacDill Air Force Base (side note: polls suggest that a plurality in that room must have voted for Donald Trump) that, a few bumps in the road notwithstanding, things were going pretty well out there.

Characteristic of the head scratchers in Obama’s speech was this howler: “No foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland.” Elsewhere in the speech the president cited the “homegrown and largely isolated individuals” who killed Americans in Orlando, San Bernardino, Boston, and Fort Hood, and who were “radicalized online.” Never mind the fact that the Fort Hood terrorist exchanged a dozen or so emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric who worked so hard to encourage American Muslims to murder their fellow citizens, or that al Qaeda and ISIS were actively calling for such attacks, and providing instructions for how to carry them out in their online magazines.

People listen to this sort of hairsplitting, and they think, that just doesn’t seem right. One hears the president, during the same speech, praise the campaign against the Islamic State as “sustainable,” and one can’t help but wonder, since when did we want a military effort against a trumped up gang of women-beating thugs like this to be “sustainable”? Swift, yes; crushing, sure; but “sustainable?” How about “victorious”? How about “over”?

“Fake news” is becoming a catch-all explanation for Democrats to explain Hillary Clinton’s loss. Voters didn’t trust Hillary, and didn’t appreciate the great deal they were getting from Obama, because of right-wing lies. The problem with this explanation is that it was hardly necessary for Russian troll farms to sow distrust about the Obama administration, when the administration (not to mention the Clinton campaign!) was itself such a relentless and strategic purveyor of half-truths and convenient omissions. For eight years, the word from the top just didn’t seem right—and the lack of trust such habitual semi-honesty engendered is why the left is very much the author of its own disaster.

Categories: "Fake news", 2016 elections, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Reality vs Narrative
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CNN documentary: Republicans are racists for opposing Obama

December 8, 2016

CNN documentary: Republicans are racists for opposing Obama, Washington Times, Bradford Richardson, December 8, 2016

(Why certainly! Just like Hillary lost because everyone who voted for Trump — a racist, misogynist antisemite who hates women and Hispanics  — is anti-feminist and anti-everything else good. Despite the vileness of Trump’s election, no Democrat would even consider demanding recounts or otherwise challenging the legitimacy of Trump’s terrible un-democratic election or erecting obstacles to his absurd agenda. — DM)

obama-jpeg-3ad0d_c0-229-5472-3419_s885x516President Barack Obama during a U.S. counterterrorism strategy speech at MacDill Air Force Base Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

A new CNN documentary about President Obama speculates that Republican opposition to the first black president’s big-government program was rooted in racial animus.

True to Mr. Obama’s legacy, “The Legacy of Barack Obama” finds plenty of time to bash Republicans.

“Did race play a role in the brick wall of Republican resistance to Barack Obama?” former Obama adviser and CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria asks at the outset of the documentary, which aired on Wednesday.

The two-hour primetime exposé, first reported by NewsBusters, features a who’s who of liberal pundits – many of them former Obama White House officials – who wholeheartedly agree that racism was a driving force behind Republican resistance to the president’s efforts to grow the size of government and centralize power in Washington, D.C.

After delving into Mr. Obama’s upbringing, the documentary cuts to a joyous scene at the president’s 2008 acceptance speech.

“It seemed like a fairy tale beginning but at precisely the moment the first couple began swaying on the dance floor, the central crisis of the Obama presidency was already taking shape,” Mr. Zakaria narrates.

“Within half a mile of where Obama and Michelle are dancing and celebrating their great victory, his Republican opponents are wining and dining and plotting his downfall,” says The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, adding that “15 of the most powerful Republicans in Washington made a pact that night” to undermine Mr. Obama at every turn.

“It’s indisputable that there was a ferocity to the opposition and a lack of respect to him that was a function of race,” says David Axelrod, a CNN political commentator and former chief strategist to the president.

And CNN political commentator Van Jones, a former top environmental official in the Obama administration, says he can’t think of a single thing congressional Republicans and Mr. Obama agreed on over eight years. But he can think of one thing – and only one thing – that explains the discord.

“You have to have an extraordinary explanation for this level of obstruction,” Mr. Jones says, evidently not referring to philosophical disagreement between liberalism and conservatism about the size and scope of government.

Although the documentary hints at racism around every corner of the bicameral legislature, it does not actually accuse any lawmakers of being racists.

“David Axelrod says, at least one powerful Republican was personally disrespectful to Obama,” Mr. Zakaria feebly alleges at one point.

Bringing the evening to a race-baiting crescendo, Mr. Zakaria recalls an incident in which Mr. Obama said a police officer “acted stupidly” by arresting a black Harvard professor who tried to force his way into his home after finding the door jammed.

The CNN anchor notes that the timing of the controversy coincided with fierce Republican opposition to Obamacare, which passed without a single GOP vote.

Suddenly, Mr. Zakaria remarks, “Rage over ObamaCare was turning to race.”

Categories: 2016 elections, CNN, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Racism
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The collapse of the political left

December 8, 2016

The collapse of the political left, Washington Examiner, Michael Barone, December 7, 2016

Trump’s victory means the left can’t jam its policies down on the whole nation—and gives it the incentive to develop policies acceptable not only to its own base but with voters among whom it fell agonizingly short this year.

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It’s been a tough decade for the political left. Eight years ago a Time magazine cover portrayed Barack Obama as Franklin Roosevelt, complete with cigarette and holder and a cover line proclaiming “The New New Deal.” A Newsweek cover announced  “We Are All Socialists Now.”

Now the cover story is different. Time has just announced, inevitably though a bit begrudgingly, that its Person of the Year for 2016 is Donald Trump. No mention of New Deals or socialism.

It’s not surprising that newsmagazine editors expected a move to the left. The history they’d been taught by New Deal admirers, influenced by the doctrines of Karl Marx, was that economic distress moves voters to demand a larger and more active government.

There was some empirical evidence in that direction as well. The recession triggered by the financial crisis of 2007-08 was the deepest experienced by anyone not old enough to remember the 1930s. Barack Obama was elected with 53 percent of the popular vote—more than any candidate since the 1980s—and Democrats had won congressional elections with similar majorities in 2006 and 2008.

Things look different now, and not just because Donald Trump was elected president. It has been clear that most voters have been rejecting big government policies, and not just in the United States but in most democratic nations around the world.

Leftist politicians supposed that ordinary voters with modest incomes facing hard times would believe that regulation and redistribution would help them. Evidently most don’t.

The rejection was apparent in the 2010 and subsequent House elections; Republicans have now won House majorities in ten of the last 12 elections, leaving 2006 and 2008 as temporary aberrations. You didn’t hear Hillary Clinton campaign on the glories of Obamacare or the Iran nuclear deal, and her attack on “Trumped-up, trickle-down economics” didn’t strike any chords in the modest-income Midwest.

Republican success has been even greater in governor and state legislature elections, to the point that Democrats hold governorships and legislative control only in California, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island. After eight years of the Obama presidency, Democrats hold fewer elective offices than at any time since the 1920s.

Things look similar abroad. Britain’s Conservatives, returned to government in 2010, are in a commanding position over a left-lurching Labour party. France’s Socialist president, with single-digit approval, declined to run for a second term. European social democratic parties have been hemorrhaging votes, and got walloped in Sunday’s Italian referendum. In Latin America and Asia, the left is declining or on the defensive.

Overall history is not bending toward happy acceptance of ever-larger government at home. Nor toward submersion of national powers and identities into large and inherently undemocratic international organizations. The nation-state remains the focus of most peoples’ loyalties, and in a time of economic and cultural diffusion, as Yuval Levin argues in his recent book The Fractured Republic, big government policies designed for an age of centralization have become increasingly dysfunctional.

Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have noticed this, at least until some time between nine and ten o’clock election night. Shrewder center-left politicians who have shown they know how to win elections have. Bill Clinton urged his wife’s campaign managers to put her out in rural areas speaking to voters’ concerns. The thirty-something geniuses she installed in her trendy Brooklyn headquarters knew better.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking in Washington this week, said, “We have to pay attention to culture and identity,” and argued that in response to Islamist extremism, “Political correctness can’t get in the way.”

Such advice suggests that a sharp shift in current leftist strategy, which includes “identity politics” appeals to minorities at home and obeisance to the wisdom of supranational entities like the Paris climate changeconference and the European Union.

What’s missing in that is a concentration on the interests of one’s own citizenry. To the left that smacks of nationalism, which some seem to regard as only a baby step away from Nazism.

It’s not. The United States Constitution was designed to provide a framework in which rights are guaranteed and voters in states can choose policies in line with their different backgrounds and beliefs.

Trump’s victory means the left can’t jam its policies down on the whole nation—and gives it the incentive to develop policies acceptable not only to its own base but with voters among whom it fell agonizingly short this year.

Categories: 2016 elections, Big Government, Media, Political left, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Socialism
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Why Are Leftists Such Pansies?

December 7, 2016

Why Are Leftists Such Pansies?, PJ Media, Andrew Klavan, December 6, 2016

Never mind the college snowflakes who can’t even hear an idea they disagree with without retreating to a safe space. What about the adults? The New York Times, a former newspaper, now reads like a 12-year-old girls’ sleepover after a mouse got in. It’s embarrassing. “How to Cope With Trump?” “Trump’s Threat to the Constitution?” “Trump’s Agents of Idiocracy!”

I have no problem with the left making its case. But the whining! The weakness! The hysteria! It’s like being stuck on an airplane with a crying baby. Grow up. Or at least stick your thumb in your mouth and keep it down. You’re making so much noise it’s hard for me to enjoy your suffering.

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Many times we accuse our political opponents of crimes of which we ourselves are equally guilty. Neither the left nor the right has a monopoly on dishonesty, hypocrisy, or hyperbole. But there is at least one unpleasant trait that seems to reside almost exclusively in the hearts of leftists: a puling hysterical weakness in the face of setbacks and defeat.

I think President Barack Obama is the worst president of my lifetime: an incompetent ideologue who made the world and the country worse. The economy is not as bad as it was directly after the crash, but it is much, much worse than it would have been had it not been weighted down with Dodd-Frank regulation and the anvil of Obamacare. Racial tension is worse, the national spirit is worse, the wars in the Middle East are worse, our nation’s place in the world is worse, our federal institutions are more politicized and corrupt — all because Obama simply did not know how reality worked and would not change his mind.

I knew all this was true or would be true by 2012, and when Obama was reelected over Mitt Romney, a much wiser, more adult, and steadier hand, I was dismayed. I was saddened. I was even distraught.

But I did not become a sniveling, whiny, self-obsessed pansy. I did not, that is to say, behave like leftists are behaving now.

I did not cry. I did not protest. I did not demand a recount. I did not urge electors to betray the voters. I did not say Obama was not my president. I respected the will of the people, even though I found it hard to respect the people whose will it was.

But the left? Never mind the college snowflakes who can’t even hear an idea they disagree with without retreating to a safe space. What about the adults? The New York Times, a former newspaper, now reads like a 12-year-old girls’ sleepover after a mouse got in. It’s embarrassing. “How to Cope With Trump?” “Trump’s Threat to the Constitution?” “Trump’s Agents of Idiocracy!”

The guy hasn’t even done anything yet!

In the Washington Post, Stephanie Land writes a piece headlined, “Trump’s Election Stole My Desire to Look for a Partner.”

Once it was clear that Donald Trump would be president instead of Hillary Clinton, I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to gather my children in bed with me and cling to them like we would if thunder and lightning were raging outside, with winds high enough that they power might go out. The world felt that precarious to me.

Crikey. What a weakling. What a wimp.

Everything Trump does, every move he makes, is greeted with cries of despair or panic. He’s supposed to ask China’s permission before he takes a call from Taiwan? For crying out loud, have some respect for your country if you can’t have some respect for yourself.

And how about California Democrat Congress-weenie Zoe Lofgren, who held a forum to discuss the possibility of replacing the Electoral College during which she said, “Rational people, not the fringe, are now talking about whether states could be separated from the U.S…”

Honey-bear, you’re a California congresswoman. You don’t know any rational people.

The Electoral College must be gotten rid of. The news must be censored. The election must be overturned.

I mean, really, why are they such pansies?

Here’s my guess. A right-winger turns on his favorite television show and has his favorite character tell him his favorite candidate is demonic. He turns on the news and hears “journalists” edit out stories of Democrat malfeasance while emphasizing Republican corruption. He goes to the movies and has his political beliefs insulted and derided. His favorite singer hates him. His professor excoriates him. His employer would fire him if he knew what he thought.

It makes you tough. It makes you smart. It makes you educate yourself as to why you believe what you believe and what the arguments for and against it are.

A leftist? He floats in a candy-cane cloud of self-congratulating self-reinforcement. Hollywood, the news media, academia, they all tell him: “You’re smart. You’re good. You’re right. You’re nice. You’re going to win the election. Anyone can see that. How could you lose? Anyone who disagrees with you is bad, stupid, mean, wicked.”

No wonder these people whine and cry when things don’t go their way. Spending their days in a pink haze of bias, how could they ever have seen it coming?

I have no problem with there being two sides to an argument. I have no problem with the left making its case. But the whining! The weakness! The hysteria! It’s like being stuck on an airplane with a crying baby. Grow up. Or at least stick your thumb in your mouth and keep it down. You’re making so much noise it’s hard for me to enjoy your suffering.

Okay, it’s not that hard.

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrats, Leftists, Media and Donald Trump, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton
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RIGHT ANGLE: Is Italy Next Out of the E.U.?

December 7, 2016

RIGHT ANGLE: Is Italy Next Out of the E.U.?, Bill Whittle Channel via YouTube, December 6, 2016

Categories: 2016 elections, BREXIT, European Union - disintegration, Italy
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California Dreaming?

December 4, 2016

California Dreaming?, Power Line, Steven Hayward, December 4, 2016

(Can the rest of us take up a collection to speed California on its way? — DM)

It’s hard to single out the most delicious example of the post-Trump liberal freak out, but the din about California secession has to rank high on the list. Among other obvious things, California provided Hillary Clinton with her entire margin of victory in the popular vote—without California, Trump wins the popular vote in the other 49 states handily. (Without California and the five boroughs of Manhattan, Trump’s popular vote victory starts to approach a landslide.)

ca-sucession

California certainly is out of step with the rest of the nation (especially the fact that, with about 13 percent of the nation’s population, it has over 20 percent of the nation’s total welfare caseload. Progressive government that works!) Last week in Washington I ran into California’s GOP party chairman, Jim Brulte, who is trying to rebuild the GOP from the ground up, working to elect Republicans to local offices around the state with some success. But he admitted that California must now be regarded as a center-left state (at best). I asked Jim if he thought Proposition 13 would still pass today? He admitted, “I’m not sure.”

There’s talk of a ballot initiative to propel the idea of California’s secession. I’m all for it. If California left the union, Republicans would essentially run the nation forever. Like South Carolina, et al. in 1860, California can’t secede of it own will; it will require the consent of the other 49 states, either through Constitutional amendment or an act of Congress (I’m not at all clear on this question, but haven’t had time to study the matter closely).

Quite aside from the constitutional question, I wonder whether the secessionist hotheads have pondered a few basic questions:

  • The other 49 states will not consent to California seceding unless California assumes its proportionate share of the national debt. Are Californians up for assuming roughly $2.5 trillion in sovereign debt? And just how would that debt be transferred? Will the foreign holders of U.S. sovereign debt accept a swap for California’s obligation? Which leads to the next question.
  • Will California have its own currency and central bank? Or will it use the dollar? Or peg the California Peso to the dollar somehow? (By the way, if you’ve ever driven into California, you know that it has border inspection stations for agriculture in place, so the infrastructure for trade and border control is already in place! (/sarc alert)
  • Will California maintain its own army, navy and air force? If so, I imagine the other 49 states will want California to pay for the federal military bases and equipment that it wants to keep for itself—add another $1 trillion to the secession tab. They could skip this expense by having a mutual defense treaty with the U.S. Or perhaps they’ll enter into a mutual defense treaty with Mexico. (More /sarc alert.)

But hey, California, we’re constantly told, is the sixth largest economy in the world. Should be easy, no? On second thought, I’ll bet some California liberals will reconsider, and come up with a slogan like, “Stronger Together.” Oh, wait. . .

Categories: 2016 elections, California, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, Secession, Trump Derangement Syndrome
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America moves right, Jewish groups move left

December 4, 2016

America moves right, Jewish groups move left, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, December4, 2016

On January 20, the Republican Party will control the White House, both houses of Congress, at least 33 governors’ offices, and over two-thirds of state legislative bodies, including 25 states where the governor is a Republican and the GOP is the majority party in both branches of the state legislature. The Democrats will have similar control in four states. The other states will have mixed party governance. One would need to go back to the 1920s to find a time of similar dominance by the Republican Party. In but eight years, the Democrats have lost a dozen Senate seats, 66 House seats, near 1,000 state legislative seats, 13 governors’ offices, and the presidency.

The president-elect, Donald Trump, won 24-25% of the Jewish vote, according to the national exit polls and a J Street survey. Democrat Hillary Clinton won either 70-71% of the Jewish vote in these same surveys. The margin for the Democratic nominee was the second smallest for any Democratic nominee with Jewish voters since 1988. Only the 2012 Obama vs. Romney race among Jewish voters was closer (69% to 30%).

When the national popular vote total is finally complete (California, supposedly our most technologically advanced state, takes longer than any other state by a matter of weeks to complete its tally), Clinton will have won the popular vote by about 2%, while getting trounced in the Electoral College 306-232 (a 14% margin). Exit polls and final polls before Election Day showed Clinton winning by 4-5%. Given what some analysts are calling “shy Trump voters” who did not want to reveal their support for Trump to pollsters, it is certainly possible that Trump exceeded the percentage of support reflected in the exit poll or J Street survey among Jewish voters. In any case, it is safe to assume that Jewish voters were far more supportive of the Democratic nominee than almost any other group, which occurs in every presidential election.

What is clear since election day is that several major Jewish organizations have chosen to identify with those who seem panicked by the election results, particularly the election of Trump. Charitable organizations rely on contributions, and if two-thirds to three-quarters of Jewish voters went for the Democrat, it is not surprising that many Jewish organizations reflect this partisan split among their members and donors. Nonetheless, there is “a new sheriff coming to town,” and typically, most major Jewish organizations look forward to working with the new president on their issues of concern, rather than going to war with him during his presidential transition.

In the past few weeks, the Anti-Defamation League, led by former Obama staffer Jonathan Greenblatt, was one of the first organizations of any kind to aim fire at Trump’s naming of Breitbart executive chair Steve Bannon as an in-house adviser. The ADL leader was quick to label him an anti-Semite and a leader of the “alt-right.” Most of those scurrilous charges have been walked back after the ADL was hit with pushback by those who have worked with Bannon or for him, and knew him far better than his critics, with several Jews among his leading defenders. But it was clear that the ADL wanted to be early out of the box to show it was not at all concerned with striking a partisan pose, and was part of the team on the left who were committed to making life miserable for Trump, even during the transition period before he took office. Today, the ADL is playing the role of victim, claiming it is under attack from the Right for doing its job.

Accusing Republicans of bigotry is nothing new at this point, and has become part of the standard campaign fare by Democratic candidates and those on the left. A major reason why Hillary Clinton was defeated was the near total emptiness of her campaign in making a case for why she should be president, as opposed to electing her so as not to have Trump in office, due to his temperament, and of course, alleged bigotry. In the weeks since Trump selected Bannon, mainstays of the major media , such as The New York Times and major networks, have given a lot of coverage to a collection of a few hundred white racists meeting at a convention in Atlanta. Clearly, guilt by association was the order of the day — white-power racists equals Bannon equals Trump.

The Bannon selection, which does not require Senate ratification, drew attacks from predictable Jewish groups on the left — J Street, the National Council of Jewish Women, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, and Uri L’Tzedek (the Orthodox Jewish social justice movement), among others. But a collection of groups associated with the Conservative movement was similarly harsh in attacking Bannon — the Rabbinical Assembly, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Cantors Assembly, the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs issued a joint statement of condemnation.

Just days after the Trump victory and the Bannon pick seemed to create a certainty of a dystopian future for many American Jews and their organizations, a Minnesota congressman, Keith Ellison, had his name put forward as a candidate for the next leader of the Democratic National Committee. Remarkably, with the exception of the Zionist Organization of America and a few other politically conservative Jewish groups, most Jewish groups held their fire on Ellison, and seemed to think all was well regarding Ellison and Jews and Ellison and Israel. After all, New York Senator Chuck Schumer immediately endorsed him for the job. That Ellison once had ties to the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, and had called Israel an apartheid state, seemed to be of no great concern. Greenblatt’s first comment was that he had contacted the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota on Ellison, and they gave him a clean bill of health.

Greenblatt subsequently told The New York Times that he thought Ellison was “an important ally in the fight against anti-Semitism” but held a posture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “on which we strongly differ and that concern us.”

Now, as other groups have continued digging into Ellison’s’ unsavory history with regard to Israel, the ADL has reversed course, and now argues that he is disqualified for the job. Greenblatt seemed disturbed that Ellison, in a 2010 speech to a Muslim group, had echoed the Stephen Walt-John Mearsheimer thesis that Israel controlled U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: “The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people,” Ellison said in the recorded speech to his supporters. “A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes.”

Why the did the testimony by Jews who worked for Bannon or with Bannon, and knew of his support for Israel and Jewish causes, including establishing an office in Jerusalem for Breitbart, count for nothing with the ADL and its allies among Jewish organizations, but the presumption about Ellison was that all was well until the anti-Semitic stench got too large to ignore? In one case, the person in question was guilty until proven innocent, and in the other, the reverse.

How will the Democratic Party now deal with the DNC nomination? Will Ellison withdraw his name, or stand and fight, backed by the Sanders/Warren wing of the party for whom Israel is at best a minor issue or annoyance? Rumors were that President Barack Obama was not enthusiastic about Ellison as DNC chair from the start. But the Democrats seem to have concluded after having suffered their third decisive beating in the last four election cycles, that the solution to re-energize the party was to move even further left, and to solidify their identity-group politics and pandering. Jews and Jewish groups will soon find out that they are nowhere near the front of that line, despite their rush to join in the anti-Trump chorus.

Categories: 2016 elections, Jewish left in America, Keith Ellison, President Elect Trump, Steven K. Bannon
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