FULL MEASURE: October 1, 2017 – Bucking the System via YouTube, posted on October 2, 2017
(Both parties in Congress are corrupt and seek their own benefits rather than ours. Please see also, Republican donors seek out Steve Bannon. — DM)
Posted tagged ‘Democrat establishment’
FULL MEASURE: October 1, 2017 – Bucking the System
October 3, 2017‘Collusion’ Collapses: Dem Congressional Espionage Ring Takes Center Ring
July 30, 2017‘Collusion’ Collapses: Dem Congressional Espionage Ring Takes Center Ring, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, July 30, 2017
In truth, the Russians “colluded” through GPS Fusion to harm, not help, Trump and the evidence of that is coming out. It’s time to repeal the Special Counsel law which has now been used twice to hamstring two Republican Presidents, has dubious constitutional authority, and will never result in the indictment of a prominent Democratic politician.
Under the Constitution there are three ways to deal with official corruption: the ballot box, impeachment, or criminal prosecution. Instead, in recent years we have tried two different means: the Independent Counsel law, now lapsed, and the Special Counsel law. Pepperdine Law Professor Douglas M. Kmiec explains the difference and argues that the features of the independent counsel, which the Supreme Court held constitutional, and the special counsel law that has not been challenged, are different, notably that the absence of outside supervision of the prosecutor and failure in both instances of the application of the Special Counsel act — the Plame case, and the Russian interference case now under Mueller — lack what the Court called a necessary predicate for such an investigation: a finding by the attorney general that there is reason to believe that a crime has occurred. That did not occur in the “collusion” investigation. In the Plame case, as I show, the major figures all knew there was no crime before they began the investigation.
In the case of the Independent Counsel investigation of Whitewater, you may recall the prosecutor said that they had reason to believe Hillary Clinton had committed perjury before the grand jury, but as prosecutors should not indict unless they believe a conviction is likely and the case would be brought before an Arkansas jury who would never convict Bill Clinton’s wife, no indictment would be sought.
Absent a dramatic shift in D.C. demography and political sentiment, you can be sure this would be the case should any special prosecutor find criminal wrongdoing by a prominent Democrat, especially Hillary Clinton. She has a ticket to ride (as she did when Comey absolved her of gross misuse of classified information). In contrast, any prominent Republican tried here already has a strike against him.
My online friend “Ignatz Ratzykywatzky” now describes what we have:
So Comey intentionally leaked his memo to cause Mueller to be appointed to investigate a plan by Putin to generate a fake scandal to fool dopes like Comey.
Top. Men.
But for the addition of a new player, GPS-Fusion, this case is remarkably similar in evolution and cast of characters to the Plame case. The genesis of the Mueller investigation was the recusal of Attorney General Sessions on the ground that he was too close to the subject of the investigation. It was on the same ground that former Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself in the Plame leak case. In both cases the media incited recusal.
On October 31, 2016 David Corn (who worked for the Nation during the Plame case and now for Mother Jones), wrote in Mother Jones “A veteran spy [David Steele of GPS Fusion] has given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump.” GPS-Fusion is a smear-for-hire operation. Among the smears created by this outfit of which we are now aware were a number against Mitt Romney, including the tape of his remarks about Obama supporters secretly made at a donors’ meeting; the false claim that the videos of Planned Parenthood negotiating for the sale of fetus body parts was “fake,” and attacks on the credibility of Venezuelan dissidents who had charged Venezuelan officials with graft and money laundering. In addition, they were working to get Russian sanctions via the Magnitsky Act lifted, having been hired to do so by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the woman who tried to entrap Donald J. Trump. Prior to David Corn’s article, GPS met with a Mother Jones “journalist“ according to Steele himself. And that journalist was most certainly the Democrat’s water bearer, David Corn. Steele’s group had shopped the story around and on January 19, 2017 BuzzFeed published the GPS dossier.
After BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier, individuals mentioned in the dossier sued Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence for defamation. In his defense, Steele blamed Fusion GPS for circulating his dossier among reporters without his permission. However, he admitted “off-the-record briefings to a small number of journalists about the pre-election memoranda in late summer/autumn 2016.” Steele’s defense contended that in October 2016, “Fusion GPS instructed him to brief a journalist from Mother Jones”, as Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross summarized.
Despite Steele admitting that his dossier was never verified, and despite specific allegations in the dossier being disproven, Corn has continued to promote the dossier’s thesis, recently publishing an article claiming that “Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Sound Like the Steele Dossier”. In his recent piece, Corn argued that Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya vindicates Steele’s dossier:
Trump and his supporters have denounced the Steele memos as unsubstantiated trash, with some Trump backers concocting various conspiracy theories about them. Indeed, key pieces of the information within the memos have been challenged. But the memos were meant to be working documents produced by Steele — full of investigative leads and tips to follow — not finished reports, vetted and confirmed.
[snip]
But that media firestorm, based on nothing but unverified information — probably fed to GPS by the Russians — from a smear for pay outfit caused Sessions to recuse himself.
In the previous special counsel case – Plame — both Mueller, then head of the FBI, and Comey, then acting attorney upon Ashcroft’s recusal, were informed even before Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed that no one had deliberately “outed” her to punish her husband; that the information Novak published came from Richard Armitage, a Colin Powell underling and that it was absolutely inadvertent. And yet they used that to hamstring GW Bush and his administration and to convict Lewis Libby. That conviction is proving to be, as I argued at the time, a prosecution without a crime.
Last year, Libby sought and received a reinstatement of his law license and an investigation was held, with counsel confirming his innocence:
In the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Disciplinary Counsel’s Report readmitting Libby, the Counsel noted that Libby had continued to assert his innocence. As a result, the Counsel had to “undertake a more complex evaluation of a Petition for reinstatement” than when a petitioner admits guilt. But the Counsel found that “Libby has presented credible evidence in support of his version of events and it appears that one key prosecution witnesses [sic], Judith Miller, has changed her recollection of the events in question.” The reference to Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, involved her memoir,The Story, A Reporter’s Journey. In the book, Miller said she read Plame’s memoir and discovered that Plame’s cover was at the State Department, a fact Miller said the prosecution had withheld from her. In rereading what she called her “elliptical” notes (meaning hard to decipher), she realized they were about Plame’s cover, not her job at the CIA. She concluded that her testimony that Libby had told her Plame worked at the CIA was wrong. “Had I helped convict an innocent man?” she asked. Miller went on to note that John Rizzo, a former CIA general counsel, had said in his memoir that there was no evidence that the outing of Plame had caused any damage to CIA operations or agents, including Plame. That statement rebuts the prosecution’s closing argument that as a result of the disclosure of Plame’s identity, a CIA operative could be “arrested, tortured, or killed.”
Who paid for the GPS-Fusion smear job which was used to persuade Sessions to recuse himself and which led to the appointment of Mueller as special counsel? Well, that’s a mystery the Democrats are doing everything to hide.
What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility. [snip] We know that at the exact time Fusion was working with the Russians, the firm had also hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele compiled his material, according to his memos, based on allegations from unnamed Kremlin insiders and other Russians. Many of the claims sound eerily similar to the sort of “oppo” Mr. Akhmetshin peddled.
We know that Mr. [Glenn] Simpson is tight with Democrats. His current attorney, Joshua Levy, used to work in Congress as counsel to no less than Chuck Schumer. We know from a Grassley letter that Fusion has in the past sheltered its clients’ true identities by filtering money through law firms or shell companies (Bean LLC and Kernel LLC).
Word is Mr. Simpson has made clear he will appear for a voluntary committee interview only if he is not specifically asked who hired him to dig dirt on Mr. Trump. Democrats are going to the mat for him over that demand. Those on the Judiciary Committee pointedly did not sign letters in which Mr. Grassley demanded that Fusion reveal who hired it.
Here’s a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?
[snip]
If the Russian intention was to sow chaos in the American political system, few things could have been more effective than that dossier, which ramped up an FBI investigation and sparked congressional probes and a special counsel, deeply wounding the president. This is all to Mr. Putin’s benefit, and the question is whether Russia engineered it.
While the press has been promoting a ridiculous and ass backwards Russian collusion story, it has been sitting on a far bigger story: The likelihood that the Congressional Democrats financed and enabled the largest espionage ring in U.S. history. This story has been percolating on the internet for weeks with no mainstream media coverage. It got a tiny, misleading smattering of coverage this week when the FBI arrested Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s internet employee, for trying to flee the country after transferring almost $300,000 dollars to Pakistan.
Ignatz sums up the media U Turn:
“1. The wsj, nyt and wapo now all agree what wasn’t a crime didn’t occur.
2. Because they all know what was a series of crimes by the Dems, did occur, so now it’s time to move on to more important things… like not seeing Dems in handcuffs.”
The most detailed coverage of how the Awan brothers were hired, overpaid, and had access to all the Democrat’s communications and how Schultz protected Imran and kept him on her payroll even after the Capitol Police denied him and his three brothers further access to the Democrats’ computers was on the Daily Caller:
Should the press decide it’s past time to sit around promoting GPS Fusion smears and do some work?
1. Who coordinated the hiring of the Awan brothers by dozens of Democratic Congressman?
2. Why were they so grossly overcompensated (millions of dollars) for no work?
3. Were they kicking back money to the Democrats, doing “dirty” work for them, or blackmailing them?
4. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep the Capitol Police from searching her laptop they had confiscated from Imran Awan?
5. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep him on her payroll after the Capitol Police further barred him and his brothers from accessing Congressional computers?
6. Why did the Iraqi fugitive and Hezb’allah supporter Dr. Ali-al Attar “lend” them $100,000?
7. Who is paying Chris Gowan, a Clinton insider, to represent Imran Awan?
8. Why did the Awan brothers continue to have security clearances when they had declared several bankruptcies and were engaged in financial misdealing?
9. Why were the Awans broke when they were making so much money and living so modestly?
10. Why did eight members of the House Permanent Select committee on Intelligence issue a letter demanding the Awans be granted access to Top Secret information?
11.Were the Awans working for Pakistani intelligence and the Moslem Brotherhood?
12. To whom were the Awans sending data to on an offsite server?
Buckle your seatbelts. Draining the swamp is going to create a lot of waves.
The Russian Collusion Story: The Acme of Fake News
July 16, 2017The Russian Collusion Story: The Acme of Fake News, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, July 16, 2017
Richard Fernandez is one of the most brilliant authors on the Internet. This week he wrote:
Conventional wisdom posits the chief challenges facing the post-Cold War World are Global Warming and the decline of international institutions. But maybe that assurance is a species of Fake News. Suppose the most pressing problems in the next decade is finding new energy supplies to 1) keep the price of oil low enough to contain Russia (and Islamism); and 2) adapting to a disruptive information revolution no one can seem to control. Who will hand you that unconventional wisdom unless you come to it yourself.
He’s right, as I explain, but the significance of his observation is this: which of the two candidates — Hillary or Trump — was more likely to tap into America’s huge energy resources to contain both Russia and the Islamists? And when you answer that as you must — Trump — you can dismiss all the folderol about Donald J. Trump Jr’s, 15 minute meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer as evidence of “collusion” with Russia. As I further explain, the non-stop media promotion of some nefarious scheme between Russia and Trump does not pass even the most cursory forensic examination, proving once again in the age of fake news, you cannot remain a passive consumer of news. You have to bring to each story the good sense and diligence with which you handle your most important personal affairs.
A. Russia and Environmental Groups
As Fernandez explained:
The oil crash collapsed the ruble and forced a 27% reduction in the Kremlin’s military budget in 2016. With oil prices set to stay flat the Russians have to keep drilling and investing simply to stay level as the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies notes. The Kremlin doesn’t make any real spending money until world oil price gets above levels before the great oil crash of 2014, which may not happen any time soon.[snip] You would think this a Eureka moment: to contain oil prices is to contain Russia (and Islamism). But cheap fossil fuels are not everyone’s cup of tea. “Drill, baby, drill” is not popular on the left. Even though liberals understand the power of cheap energy — one of Hillary’s supposedly hacked emails even alleged anti-fracking and environmental causes were a Russian plot to depress oil production — to advocate it is bad progressive politics. This probably led the Saudis to Hillary’s camp in 2016. “According to Bob McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Group, countries in the oil-producing Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, are hoping for Hillary Clinton to become president.”
If you’re looking for collusion with Russia, it is not to be found in the Trump Tower meeting. Paul Mirengoff of Powerline details the Russian efforts through environmental groups — at best Stalin’s “useful idiots” — to tamp down US energy production.
Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, tells James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal:
If you connect the dots, it is clear that Russia is funding U.S. environmental groups in an effort to suppress our domestic oil and gas industry, specifically hydraulic fracking. They have established an elaborate scheme that funnels money through shell companies in Bermuda. This scheme may violate federal law and certainly distorts the U.S. energy market. The American people deserve to know the truth and I am confident Secretary Mnuchin will investigate the allegations.
To help Sec. Mnuchin conduct such an investigation, Rep. Smith, along with Energy Subcommittee Chairman Randy Weber, sent him a letter. They noted:
According to the former Secretary General of NATO, “Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called nongovernmental organizations – environmental organizations working against shale gas – to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas.” Other officials have indicated the same scheme is unfolding in the U.S.
Reps. Smith and Weber add that, according to public sources including a 2014 report from Republican staff on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “entities connected to the Russian government are using a shell company registered in Bermuda, Klein Ltd. (Klein), to funnel tens of millions of dollars to a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) private foundation,” which supports various environmental groups. Klein denies this allegation.
Regardless of the conduit for the money, the allegation of funneling appears to be substantial. Indeed, says Freeman, it appears to have been noted by none other than Hillary Clinton:
If a document posted last year on WikiLeaks is to be believed, Clinton campaign staff summarized in an email attachment Hillary Clinton’s remarks on the subject during a private speech:
Clinton Talked About “Phony Environmental Groups” Funded By The Russians To Stand Against Pipelines And Fracking. “We were up against Russia pushing oligarchs and others to buy media. We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you, and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia.” [Remarks at tinePublic, 6/18/14]
Freeman suggests that Mnuchin commence his investigation by speaking with Mrs. Clinton, who “obviously knows the terrain.” He also thinks John Podesta would be a useful source.
Podesta is invested in and acts for a “green energy company backed by the Russian government.”
B. The Media Has lost all Credibility, Serving as the semi-official newsroom for the Democratic Party
Just as Fernandez detailed the rise of Samizdat in Russia as the official press was uniformly distrusted, the growth on alternate media in the U.S. is disrupting the old news models .
Our trust hierarchies have collapsed. As with Soviet Russia, the “official” media sources are now distrusted as purveyors “fake news”. To fill the gap a peer-to-peer grapevine, similar to the “friends and family”, a samizdat is emerging to pick up the slack. Sonya Mann at Inc uses a startup to illustrate the growing division of society into trust groups. “Pax Dickinson wants to fund the revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets revolution, but one where hardcore right-wingers can economically secede from the parts of society they vehemently dislike. “We need parallel everything. I do not want to ever have to spend a single dollar at a non-movement business.
Nothing so illustrates why the media has deservedly lost all credibility than it’s unending, overdone effort to fit any action on the part of the President or those around him into a narrative of Russia somehow colluding with him to defeat Hillary. This week’s take was the short meeting his son held with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower last summer.
The clearest summary of the facts surrounding the meeting with Trump’s son last summer is to be found in The American Spectator. Scott McKay writes:
[Natalia] Veselnitskaya’s [The Russian lawyer’s] presence in the United States alone ought to be the source of suspicion that not only is the Trump-Russian collusion narrative suspect in this case but that the real inquiry ought to be into whether the encounter was a small part of a larger attempt to trap the Trump campaign.
The Russian lawyer wasn’t even supposed to be here. She had been denied a visa for entry into the United States in late 2015, but given a rather extraordinary “parole” by the federal government to assist preparation for a client subject to asset forfeiture by the Justice Department. That was in January. The client was Prevezon Holdings, a Russian company suspected of having been paid some portion of $230 million stolen by Russian mobsters. When Sergey Magnitsky a Russian lawyer representing a company that had been the victim of the theft, reported it to authorities in Moscow he was promptly jailed and beaten to death. The American response to this atrocity was the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned several individuals connected to human rights abuses. The Russian government retaliated by preventing American adoptions of Russian children.
But in June, she was permitted to fly back to the U.S., have the meeting with Trump Junior — at Trump Tower, no less — and then end up in the front row for a congressional hearing involving testimony from a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, then turning up at a D.C. showing of a documentary film on the negative effects of the Magnitsky Act, and later appearing at a dinner involving Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and former Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA) who is now a lobbyist for the Russians. The repeal of that legislation is a priority item for the Russians and a personal project of Veselnitskaya’s; it, rather than any Clinton dirt, was reportedly the primary subject brought forth at the meeting with Donald Trump Jr.
All of this without a visa! Not to mention Veselnitskaya didn’t file a FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) document before acting as a lobbyist for a foreign entity, as required by law. Neither, apparently, did Dellums. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a fascinating letterTuesday to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking them to please find out what in the hell Veselnitskaya was doing in this country last June.
And further, it turns out Veselnitskaya was connected to Fusion GPS, the Democrat opposition research firm which employed a former British spy who used Russian contacts to produce the infamous and debunked Pee Pee Dossier smearing Trump. Veselnitskaya hired Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson to work on behalf of Prevezon, the company she was allowed into the country to represent, in its efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act. Fusion then hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who drew on Russian sources to produce that dossier, and made him available for private briefings on the dossier with left-leaning media sources such as Mother Jones, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorkerand CNN in September.
Naturally, John McCain is involved — if that fact should produce his resignation, all of this will have been worth it.
By the way, there is Veselnitskaya’s social media account, which is decidedly more aligned with the Fusion GPS side of this equation than the Trump side.
And the meeting came about largely due to hyped-up promises made by a publicist for a Russian pop star who was connected to the Trump family from the Miss Universe pageant having been held in Moscow in 2013 — promises which don’t appear to have been fulfilled. If this whole thing doesn’t look like an old-fashioned dangle to you, then you haven’t watched enough spy movies.
If timelines are interesting to you, there is this — reportedly, the Obama administration sought permission to electronically monitor Trump Tower in early June, and the FISA court would not grant it. But in October, that warrant was given. [snip]
And once that meeting — which on its surface was a waste of everyone’s time — was had, the Obama administration now had something to sell to the FISA court to get that warrant — from which they snagged Mike Flynn and gave the Democrat party and the media a mechanism to shroud the Trump administration in what can best be described as a rather dubious scandal. Remember how Hillary Clinton was accusing Trump of being a Putin’s puppet at the October 19 debate?
C. Donald J Trump’s son had every reason to believe that there was evidence of Hillary’s collusion with Russia
If this seems farfetched, consider this Veselnitskaya was barred from entry to the US until Loretta Lynch granted her an excedptional “immigration parole” to appear in a judicial proceeding; a federal judge considered — but we can find no ruling — her motion on January 6, 2016,to extend her stay by a week, and then with no explanation of how this occurred, she was back in the US on June of that year where she met with Donald J Trump Jr and attended as a front row guest a Congressional hearing on the Magnitsky act which imposed sanctions on Russia.
To add a dash of extra color to the story the media reported that with the lawyer was a “former Russian counter intelligence officer”, Rinat Akhmetshin. He denies this.
“I am an American citizen since 2009 who pays taxes, earned his citizenship after living here since 1994, and swore an oath of loyalty to the United States of America,”
Kayleigh McEnany in The Hill characterized this as a “conspiracy theory desperately in earch of evidence”.
Bill Clinton had given a $500,000 speech in Russia. Clinton had given her approval in handing one-fifth of U.S. uranium to Russia, after which her foundation received $2.35 million from the Russian-controlled company. Suspiciously, Clinton did not disclose the transaction.
Likewise, Clinton campaign chief John Podesta sat on the board of a company that received $35 million from the Russian government alongside fellow board members Anatoly Chubais, a senior Russian official, and Ruben Vardanyan, an oligarch.
Given this context, why wouldn’t Trump Jr. be open to taking a meeting that offered evidence of incriminating Clinton dealings with Russia, particularly when most of the media refused to look into Clinton’s question-raising actions?[snip] We likewise know that several foreign countries known for their human rights violations — like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei, and Algeria — donated millions to the Clinton foundation, and yet few publications construed their “support” in a negative way.
Taken together, the micro story of Donald Trump Jr. seeking opposition research — much like Clinton allies did in their dealings with the Ukrainian government — does nothing in the way of proving the macro allegation that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in hacking the DNC and releasing Clinton’s illegally obtained emails.
The American people see through this leftist-purveyed Russia conspiracy theory. That’s why a full 56 percent want Congress and the media to focus on real issues, not Russia. If the left continues to concoct Russian collusion evidence, they can fully expect for the 2018 congressional elections to look a lot like the special elections in Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, and Georgia — Republican victory. Voters dismiss the salacious in favor of solutions, and as of now, the left have nothing besides an evidence-free smear campaign.
In any event, isn’t it curious that those who claim to consider a meeting to listen to opposition research, bought hook line and sinker the ridiculous-on-its-face Dossier concted by GPS against Trump, a far more likely piece of Russian intel disinformation? Or why they ignore DNC officials meeting with Ukrainian government officials for dirt on then Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Politico detailed the many ways the Ukrainians worked to help Hillary beat Trump. As you might guess, they indicated these efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.” Covering with the word “alleged” a smear without any evidence but for the mutterings of Crowdstrike, a private outfit which was the only investigation the DNC allowed , a misstep by the Comey FBI which let this pass.
In any event, Legal commentators on both sides of the aisle have confirmed there was nothing illegal about the meeting. I suppose we can’t expect much more of a press corps so stupid it mistakes the Star Spangled Banner for France’s La Marseillaise, and Bastille Day for the 100th Anniversary of the U.S. entry in WW I.
You’ll just have to work harder in the face of such ignorance and bias to find out what you need to know.
The Murder of Seth Rich – A Basic Primer for Corporate Media Hostages
May 30, 2017The Murder of Seth Rich – A Basic Primer for Corporate Media Hostages, Canada Free Press, Doug Hagmann, May 30, 2017
(I pondered for a while before posting this, but since the “Seth Rich conspiracy theory” has more basis than the “Trump is Putin’s puppy conspiracy theory,” I decided to post it for whatever it may be worth.
Had a Trump campaign official, who had favored one of Trump’s opponents, been murdered in comparable circumstances and alleged to have had damaging information about Trump, might the media and law enforcement officials have been more interested in having a complete investigation? Judicial Watch is now looking into the Seth Rich murder. — DM)
This weekend, my neighbor asked me what I knew about the murder of Seth Rich. Instead of answering him, I asked him what he knew about it, which admittedly was not much. He only heard about it from a drive-by media report and couldn’t understand why a shooting during an “attempted robbery” almost a year ago in Washington, DC was being discussed.
It was then I realized that not everyone, even those seemingly knowledgeable about current events, understands the potential significance of this incident. It was then I decided to write this most basic report intended for those who are just learning of the murder of Seth Rich, and explain why it is of such importance.
I also hope to convey why there is such opposition to the investigation and discussion of this tragic event, and why there is such vitriol levied against anyone who is searching for answers to what many want to dismiss as a “botched robbery.”
The following is a very basic introduction of the case compiled from limited releases by official sources, my personal interviews with investigative journalists on my radio show, the Hagmann Report and my own investigation. First, here are the most basic facts.
Subject & Incident Profile
Victim: Seth Conrad Rich
Address: 2113 1st St.
Washington, DC 20001
Age: 27 DOB: 1/3/1989
Prior Address: 1222 Euclid, Washington DC 20009
Employer: Democratic National Committee (DNC)
Position: Data Analyst
Parents: Joel & Mary Rich, Farnam St, Omaha, NE (Douglas County)
Date of Crime: 10 July 2016 Time: 0419 hours
Location of crime: Southwest corner of W Street & Flagler Place NW, Washington, DC
Incident Type: GSW (Gunshot Wound(s)) – The victim was reportedly shot twice in the back with a small caliber handgun.
Metropolitan Police Public Incident Report (CCN #16113797; Issued 10 July 2016 at 0710):
“CIC reports the sound of gunshots at 2134 Flagler Pl. NW. Upon arriving to the scene, the decedent was laying in the Southwest corner of the intersection of W St. and Flagler Pl. NW. The decedent was conscious and breathing with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back. The decedent was transported to local area hospital and was pronounced dead by attending physician at 0557 hours.”
The public incident report listed the following [capitals/punctuation in source document]:
Responding officer: Jody O’Leary (#7859) – MPD. Assisting officer: ROBERT WINGATE ROBINSON (#7634) (Body Worn Camera), Derek Tarr (#9237) (Other Officers At Scene): Shea Ellis (#9499) (Other Officers At Scene), Benjamin Velez (#6631) (Body Worn Camera), Mark Lee (#6141) (Body Worn Camera).
Motive for the shooting
The motive for the shooting, according to subsequent statements by or on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Department or the Rich family, was that the shooting was a “botched robbery” attempt. This despite that nothing was reportedly taken from the victim. The victim also reportedly sustained pre-mortem wounds to his face, hands and knees in what was described as defensive wounds.
Also according to reports, the victim was conscious upon the arrival of police, although he allegedly provided a previous address to authorities. It is unclear whether the responding officers, as is customary in a shooting, asked the victim who shot him or a description of the shooters. No BOLO alerts were sent out as a result of the initial contact with police.
The preceding information concludes the public information either provided by or admitted to by public officials. Numerous important factors and relationships have been left out by police and public officials.
Mr. Rich reportedly sustained two gunshot wounds from a small caliber handgun. One wound was alleged to be a “through and through” wound, while the other bullet reportedly struck his liver. He was transported to an unidentified hospital where he allegedly died a few hours later.
His murder might have gone as just another statistic and testament to the violence that plagues our inner cities, except for nagging questions about the activities of Seth Rich prior to his murder, combined with other oddities that involve departure from standard operating procedure by the MPD.
On March 17, 2017, GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman announced the creation of the Profile Project and announced a $105,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the Rich murder. As reported by investigative journalist Liz Crokin, Burkman is now claiming that the MPD is thwarting his efforts through non-cooperation.
While other people and groups have added to the reward that now totals well over a quarter of a million dollars, conspicuously absent is his own employer – the DNC.
In the face of accusations of departure from police department SOP and other oddities, the Rich family spokesman, Brad Bauman, has been vitriolic in his condemnation of anyone asking questions about the murder of Seth Rich.
Family spokesman Brad Bauman happens to be a Public Relations crisis manager with the Pastorum Group in Washington, D.C., a firm with progressive ties. In his role as a communications consultant, Bauman offers “strategic communications advice to Democratic candidates and labor unions,” according to his public profile page on LinkedIn.
The real problems with this case, however, have yet to be addressed.
Trouble at the DNC
In the matter of the murder of Seth Conrad Rich, the core issue exists in the growing body of evidence that strongly indicates that Mr. Rich, though his position as a data analyst at the DNC during a hotly contested primary election, might have discovered fraudulent and perhaps criminal activity that could affect the outcome of the party nomination (from Bernie Sanders to Hillary Rodham Clinton).
Subsequent reports verified that Seth Rich was an ardent supporter of then-DNC candidate Bernie Sanders. By virtue of his job description, Rich was positioned to have access to data that could prove poll tampering in favor of Clinton. Concurrently, his importance to anyone conspiring to maintain the specific narrative of foreign interference rose exponentially, if not unexpectedly, should his alleged discovery be exposed. Should such alleged tampering be made public, it would obviously have devastating consequences to those “fixing” the polls.
Accordingly, Mr. Rich might well have found himself in a very lonely and unenviable position of possessing information which, at the very least, is vital to the integrity of our election process. Specifically, this information would be most problematic for those conspiring to assure the party nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
This situation is further clouded and exacerbated by constant media allegations of “hacks” of our election process by foreign entities, specifically the Russians, which has become and continues to be the official account of the DNC and supporters of Hillary Clinton. While these alleged hacks reportedly both pre-date and postdate the murder of Seth Rich, he has nonetheless become a key subject of interest due to his position with the Democratic National Committee and the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.
It is important to note that on June 14, 2016, about a month before Seth Rich was murdered, The Washington Post reported that “Russian hackers” obtained DNC communications, and reportedly had access to DNC computers for approximately one year before discovery and lockdown. It is also vital to note that this information did not come from the FBI or any law enforcement agency of the United States government, but from the private cyber security firm CrowdStrike, which was called in to handle the DNC breach despite the FBI offering its services which were curiously rejected.
These odd rejections were verified by former FBI Director James Comey himself during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 10, 2017. Comey testified that the FBI made multiple requests, but was denied direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s email servers and other “hacked devices” as part of its probe of Russian hacking.
It was within this environment of alleged poll fixing and reports of Russian intrusion into the DNC computers that Seth Rich found himself. Having direct access to the DNC computers and perhaps finding irregularities that could impact the outcome of the primaries, it is conceivable that Seth Rich might have been long on critical information but short on trusted friends.
Anyone who has spent any time in Washington knows that trust within the beltway is a rare commodity. Consider then, the predicament of a young man from Nebraska at the moment he realizes that he possesses evidence of fraudulent and criminal activity at the highest levels of the DNC.
Seth Rich & Wikileaks
For the last decade, Wikileaks has existed and received millions of leaked documents that exposed, among many things, the machinations of the powerful and those in power. The methods used to provide information to Wikileaks have consisted of electronic transfer as well as the transfer of information through handoffs of portable storage devices.
Is it possible that Seth Rich reached out to Wikileaks to expose the possible and alleged fraud within the DNC?
According to published reports by at least two sources, the answer is yes. One source is Rod Wheeler, the DC private investigator hired by a representative of the Rich family to investigate his murder. Another is the infamous hacker Kim-Dot-Com. One might also consider Julian Assange of Wikileaks himself, although not directly, but by his offering a $25,000 reward on August 9, 2016, less than one month after Seth Rich was murdered.
Considered in totality, there appears to be sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that Seth Rich did, in fact, communicate with Wikileaks at some point prior to his murder. Direct evidence in the form of forensic analysis of his computer devices and cell phones, however is presently non-existent. Why? There appears to be a problem locating his electronic devices, as both the DC police and the FBI deny custody.
The Russian Conspiracy Theory
The primary component that is used to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election of Donald Trump is foreign interference of our election process, specifically by Russia. To this day, this unproven conspiracy theory is repeated ad nauseum by the corporate media without any authenticated proof from any government law enforcement agency.
The primary source of this narrative is the private cyber security firm CrowdStrike as referenced by the June 14, 2016 report in The Washington Post and picked up by other media outlets. CrowdStrike was hired and paid for by the DNC in June 2016, essentially making the Russian hacking account a paid product of the DNC.
All told, there were at least four-(4) separate hacks into the DNC computers: the Democratic Caucus “hack(s),” the Podesta email “hack(s),” the DNC “hack(s)” and the Clinton Foundation “hack(s).” Included in the above is the strange account of the Awan brothers, three highly-paid Pakistani nationals who were employed as IT specialists shared among House Democrats. Working under Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the Awan brothers are at the center of controversy in a series of thefts discovered early this year.
Also overlapping this period was the FBI investigation into the handling of classified emails by Hillary Rodham Clinton and staff. On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey held a press conference at the conclusion of his investigation, where he accused Clinton of serious mishandling of classified information contained in emails and computer documents, but stopped short of recommending any referrals to the Department of Justice.
As one can see, there exist numerous problems with computer security, both party data and government equipment and information. The Seth Rich case, however, surrounds the DNC polling data that might have given the party’s nomination to Hillary Clinton rather than Bernie Sanders.
The importance of exposing the information possessed by Seth Rich is two-fold and very significant. Obviously, it would expose the false Russian hacking narrative that has been used to delegitimize the Presidency of Donald Trump, and also expose the “rigging” of the DNC nomination process.
Just the Beginning
There is more – much more – about this. There is much more information that will break this week about this case. For now, however, I am going to print this explanation for my neighbor, who is a hostage of the corporate media.
Perhaps this will help your neighbor when the murder of Seth Rich arises in conversation in the coming days. And I suspect it will.
Trump Won Fair and Square. Get a life.
November 20, 2016Trump Won Fair and Square. Get a life. Dan Miller’s Blog, November 20, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Democrats, the lamebrain media (but I repeat myself), academics (Opps! I repeated myself again) and others who should know better are protesting — often violently — against Trump’s victory. Trump Derangement Syndrome is upon us.
Trump won fair and square. He did not rely on non-citizens or others who are barred from voting. As President, he intends, with the help of Congress, to make changes in U.S. policy. Horrors!
Reflections via Gilbert and Sullivan
Thank Zeus that Hillary won’t be the Monarch of the Sea President of the United States. The Monarch of the Seas, as depicted by G&S, certainly behaves and sounds like Hillary.
Here is Hillary on the day after her defeat.
Here’s how less-than-normally-judgmental Hillary supporters and Never Trumpers see Trump:
So much for Gilbert and Sullivan.
Here are Hillary’s supporters:
Here’s another meltdown. The linked article had a video, but YouTube says “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” I wonder why. Oh well. This is how Jonathan Turley describes it:
In an appearance on MSNBC (which seems at times to be moving through the stages of grieving of Kübler-Ross), McInstosh insisted that the problem was with sexist, self-hating women: “Internalized misogyny is a real thing and this is a thing we have to be talking about as we go through and see.” She added “We as a society react poorly to women seeking positions of power. We are uncomfortable about that and we seek to justify that uncomfortable feeling because it can’t possibly be because we don’t want to see a woman in that position of power. As we go through these numbers, as we figure out exactly what happened with turnout, it seems to be white college-educated women . . . We have work to do talking to those women about what happened this year and why we would vote against our self-interest.”
And then there are these no less delusional “feminists.”
Daniel Greenfield wrote at Front Page Magazine about the Trump Derangement Syndrome.
#NotOurPresident on Twitter quickly gave way to riots in major cities. Democrats in the affected cities decided that the riots were a great idea even though it was their own police that were being attacked.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City’s radical leftist boss, claimed that “more disruption… will change the trajectory of things”. Even though the only trajectory that the protests have changed thus far is New York City traffic. “The more people fight back, the more it takes away his power,” he insisted.
Wiser heads on the left recognized that messing up Manhattan traffic wouldn’t stop Trump from taking office. Instead they decided to abolish the Electoral College. Senator Boxer will introduce a bill to that effect. Bernie Sanders mumbled that it’s time to rethink it. Michael Dukakis fired off an angry email insisting that Hillary Clinton had won and that abolishing it should be a top Democratic priority.
Since Hillary lost, the Electoral College is, according to Slate, an “Instrument of White Supremacy—and Sexism”. And probably Islamophobic and Homophobic too. Time Magazine defaulted to the default lefty attack on anything by accusing the Electoral College of being racist. But if Hillary had won, then any attack on the Electoral College would be racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and claustrophobic.
Rank and filers weren’t interested in waiting to abolish it tomorrow. They skipped right to trying to rig it today. Over 4 million people have signed a petition titled, “Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19”. Because that’s just how they think elections should work.
Efforts were made to contact Electors directly urging them to hijack the election. Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney said that the Electors were being harassed with “insults”, “vulgar language” and “threats”. One Elector reported that his cell, home phone, email and Facebook were targeted.
“They’re just trying to steal this thing,” he said.
The Electoral College is undemocratic. Unless you’re a Democrat asking it to undemocratically hijack the results of a state election while depriving its voters of political representation.
Some Democrats despaired of stealing the election and tried to steal the Supreme Court instead. There were revived calls for a Supreme Court recess appointment. There’s a petition, a Saturday Night Live punch line and a bizarre effort by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley to move the nomination forward.
Merkley claimed that Trump has “no right to fill” that seat and that the Supreme Court seat was stolen. “We need to do everything we possibly can to block it,” he insisted.
What does that mean? How about a permanently deadlocked Supreme Court?
A Slate writer urged that, “the only way to answer nihilism is with nihilism of our own.”
“Obstruct the nomination and seating of any Trump nominee to fill Scalia’s seat,” she urged. “We will lose. But that’s not the point now… If Democrats can muster the energy to fight about nothing else, it should be this.”
A permanently deadlocked Supreme Court doesn’t sound like much of a plan. But Trump Derangement Syndrome means embracing nihilism. And it’s downright rational compared to the celebrity meltdowns as TMZ’s finest cope with the blow to their egos of an election that showed they didn’t matter.
Lady Gaga has been yelling at Trump on and off Twitter. Constitutional scholar George Takei demanded that Obama just appoint Garland. Honorary feminist Joss Whedon declared, “This is simple: Trump cannot CANNOT be allowed a term in office. It’s not about 2018. It’s about RIGHT NOW.”
What does that mean? It’s a tantrum. It means that baby wants his power and he wants it now.
And it only gets crazier from there.
The outer reaches of Trump Derangement Syndrome include calls to boycott three brands of toilet paper because they’re allegedly made by the Koch Brothers. Never mind that the Koch Brothers weren’t supporting Trump. Facts, like democracy, only matter when they happen to be on your side.
Then there are the ritual burnings of New Balance sneakers on YouTube and Instagram. Not to mention support for the secession of California from the United States of America.
A man has sued Donald Trump for $1 billion for having inflicted “great emotional pain, fear and anxiety on Election Day and beyond.” Students at Cornell held a “cry-in” to mourn the results of the election. The University of Kansas offered students therapy dogs. At the University of Michigan’s multi-ethnic student affairs center students took comfort in regressing to childhood with coloring books and Play-Doh.
John Hopkins recommended a healing circle. Stanford urged students to “take care of yourselves and to give support to those who need it.” Vanderbilt encouraged them “to take advantage of the outstanding mental health support the university offers.”
At the University of Maryland, an astronomy test was canceled to help students cope with “a personally threatening election result.” A Yale economics professor made his test optional because students were “in shock” over losing an election. A dozen midterms were rescheduled at Columbia.
One student complained, “Instead of studying for my exam, I was glued to the election update. It’s not fair to have a test the following day when something so monumental is taking place, especially when this event is threatening so many groups of people in our country.”
Under all the outraged rhetoric is a narcissistic sense of entitlement. Frustrate it and tantrums happen.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is the tantrum that happens when that sense of entitlement bursts. It’s not a new phenomenon. We saw it with Bush and with previous Republican presidents before him. But as the left’s power has grown, its insular ivory towers have become unable to imagine ever losing it.
Obama maintained the illusion that the opposition didn’t matter by ruling unilaterally. Then in one election the illusion collapsed. The left wasn’t really in charge. There were millions of people across the country in places they had never visited or even heard of who got to decide on all these issues.
That warm comfortable safe space of John Oliver and Samantha Bee viral videos, Buzzfeed stories and social media feeds filled with carefully curated people who agreed with them wasn’t reality. It had been an illusion all along. It was an elitist island that had little in common with that vast geography of people who get their say through the Electoral College. After two terms of getting their way on everything, they woke to a world in which they didn’t matter and which was suddenly no longer catering to their whims.
They don’t really want to abolish the Electoral College, to put Garland on the Supreme Court or to burn New Balance sneakers. What they really want is to get rid of democracy and replace it with a dictatorship. Trump Derangement Syndrome is the tantrum of tyrants.
It’s a real threat to democracy. But that’s what the left has always been.
The hysteria of Trump Derangement Syndrome is the flip side of Obama worship. Both reject democracy and embrace power. They are the illiberal attitudes of a totalitarian movement at odds with America. [Emphasis added.]
Yep.
Left wing Europeans had their own Temper Trumptums
“A world is collapsing before our eyes”, tweeted the French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election. Although he later apparently deleted the tweet, the sentiment expressed in his tweet encapsulates the attitude of the majority of the European political establishment.
Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, described the reaction to Trump’s victory across Germany’s political spectrum as “shock and uncertainty.” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen described Trump’s win as a “heavy shock.” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “The world won’t end, but things will get more crazy”.
Green party leader Cem Özdemir called Trump’s election a “break with the tradition that the West stands for liberal values.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said:
“Trump is the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. … They want a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table. And he who doesn’t keep his mouth shut gets publicly bashed.”
In a fine touch of irony, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who recently referred to the Chinese as “slanty eyed,” told Deutschlandfunk radio that the U.S. election was a “warning” for Germany: “Things are getting simplified, black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. You can ask simple questions, but one should not give simple answers.”
In France, the media reaction was summed up by the left-leaning newspaper, Libération:
“Trumpocalypse… Shock… The world’s leading power is from now on in the hands of the far-right. Fifty percent of Americans voted in all conscience for a racist, lying, sexist, vulgar, hateful candidate.”
Critics omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.
President François Hollande described Trump’s victory as marking the start of “a period of uncertainty.” Previously, Hollande had said that Trump made him “want to retch.”
On a very different, but related note, Nigel Farage speaks about the Trump and Brexit revolutions:
Sharyl Attkisson explains in the next video how and why the lamebrain media were consistently wrong about the presidential election:
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim, agrees with Trump’s much-maligned — and grossly distorted by the media — plans for deciding which Muslims will be allowed to enter the United States.
Conclusions
I engaged in a bit of Schadenfreude while writing this, but the problem has its serious aspects.
Many people wanted “feminist” Hillary to continue Obama’s feckless foreign and domestic policies; not enough to win the election for Hillary, but enough to make them believe that they should and would win hands-down. Since they didn’t, they concluded that something serious — they don’t know what, beyond the idiocy of American voters and a “corrupt” electoral system — must have caused “racist, antisemitic, misogynist bully” Trump to win.
Why? Academia — from kindergarten through graduate school — are one big part of the problem and the lamebrain media are another. Most of those placed in charge of them doubtless agree with Obama’s position that His world vision is right and that Populism is dangerous.
Remember the Obama Kids?
Now San Francisco teachers have an anti-Trump lesson plan.
[I]nstead of laudatory songs that praise the new president, a sick new anti-Trump lesson plan that demonizes President-elect Trump and his supporters has already been offered to teachers in the San Francisco area. High school social studies teacher Fakhra Shah apparently drew up the lesson plan in a fit of spite and rage in the wee hours of the morning of November 9, right after Trump was elected. The school district reportedly has no problem with the plan, which characterizes the new president and his supporters as racist and sexist bigots.
. . . .
[Ms. Shah] warned teachers that some students may lash out at the new president using foul and obscene language. She even encouraged this because it is how kids living under white supremacy lift themselves up and fight oppression at school. Or something.
“I know that they might curse and swear, but you would too if you have suffered under the constructs of white supremacy or experienced sexism, or any isms or lack of privilege,” she wrote.
This is not “empowering” or “uplifting.” It is seriously deranged and destructive. The songs of Obama praise were disturbing and inappropriate, but this kind of propaganda is just plain evil. Instead of helping students deal with an election that maybe didn’t go the way they wanted, they are encouraging them to wallow in anger and self-pity and branding over 60 million Americans as racist and sexist bigots.
America won the election but we still have a big problem. I hope to be able to suggest fixes in a later article, but there are no easy solutions.
Clinton Aide: Hillary Lost Because Women Suffer From “Internalized Misogyny”
November 17, 2016Clinton Aide: Hillary Lost Because Women Suffer From “Internalized Misogyny” Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, November 17, 2016
The dismissal of white women by the Clinton camp as self-loathing, sexist robots is another effort at avoidance. The Democratic leadership and consultants proved out-of-touch with the public despite polls that gave ample indication that Clinton was the worst possible candidate to put forward in this anti-establishment period. Nevertheless, the Democrats appear to be rallying around again many of the same leaders and the Clinton family (including reportedly grooming Chelsea as the new “brand” name candidate). The position of aides like McIntosh is that the fault is that white women simply did not listen or learn. It was not the message or the candidate or her campaign. It is a remarkably insulting spin but it seems to be preferred to the more difficult questions raised by the campaign.
***********************
We recently discussed how, within minutes of the loss on election night, Clinton aides began to spin the loss and entirely the fault of FBI Director James Comey — a spin picked up by Clinton herself the next day. Many of us have questioned that spin in light of Clinton’s long-standing low polls on truthfulness and her ranking as (with Trump) the most unpopular nominee of a major party for the presidency. Now, former Clinton campaign communications director Jess McIntosh has come up with a new culprit. Of course, it is not the Democratic establishment that engineered the nomination despite ample warning signs in the polls. It was not the campaign that preferred spin to honesty at every turn. And it was not the candidate herself. No, it was the self-loathing and inherent sexism of women.
In an appearance on MSNBC (which seems at times to be moving through the stages of grieving of Kübler-Ross), McInstosh insisted that the problem was with sexist, self-hating women: “Internalized misogyny is a real thing and this is a thing we have to be talking about as we go through and see.” She added “We as a society react poorly to women seeking positions of power. We are uncomfortable about that and we seek to justify that uncomfortable feeling because it can’t possibly be because we don’t want to see a woman in that position of power. As we go through these numbers, as we figure out exactly what happened with turnout, it seems to be white college-educated women . . . We have work to do talking to those women about what happened this year and why we would vote against our self-interest.”
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.
Jess McIntosh is the Communications Director for Emily’s list and previously served as spokesperson for Senator Al Franken.
McIntosh’s statement reflects what turned off a lot of women that I spoke with. The Clinton campaign hammered away at different groups “voting their interests” and specifically drum beat the notion that women had to support Clinton as the first possible female president. It was all about “self-interest.” That pitch itself can be viewed as sexist. Many women did not trust Clinton and saw nothing in her that spoke to their lives or the difficulties of their families. Notably, Clinton was losing among various female groups to Sanders in the primary. Again, Clinton staffers spoke of educating women to see their self-interest, but tended to avoid the anomaly of running female-centric themes without the support of most women. For many women and men, picking a president is not about “self-interest” but the best for their country and their families.
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.
The dismissal of white women by the Clinton camp as self-loathing, sexist robots is another effort at avoidance. The Democratic leadership and consultants proved out-of-touch with the public despite polls that gave ample indication that Clinton was the worst possible candidate to put forward in this anti-establishment period. Nevertheless, the Democrats appear to be rallying around again many of the same leaders and the Clinton family (including reportedly grooming Chelsea as the new “brand” name candidate). The position of aides like McIntosh is that the fault is that white women simply did not listen or learn. It was not the message or the candidate or her campaign. It is a remarkably insulting spin but it seems to be preferred to the more difficult questions raised by the campaign.
Trump’s Bizarre Winning Formula
November 17, 2016Trump’s Bizarre Winning Formula, Town Hall, Victor Davis Hanson, November 17, 2016
The Democratic Party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come.
First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.
On top were the cynical elites who turned up in the WikiLeaks John Podesta email trove: self-important media members, Ivy League grandees, Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street plutocrats and coastal corridor snobs. They talk left-wing but live royally. They court minorities to vote in lockstep, then deride them in private. The vast lower tier of the party comprises government employees, the poor, minorities, and the millions dependent on state and federal assistance. The Democrats in between were ignored, and so they kept fleeing the party. Look at the red/blue map of the election. Democratic strength retreated to the inner cities and the rich coastal suburbs.
The Democrats also, in suicidal fashion, stoked racial chauvinism, or the notion that one’s tribe should transcend all other affiliations. After pandering to various minority groups, Hillary Clinton apparently believed that they suddenly would forget her emphasis on race and ethnicity to vote for her, a 69-year-old white multimillionaire.
But the Democrats learned a bitter lesson in 2016: Obama’s left-wing, rich/poor ideological agendas do not appeal to most of the country. Despite a hard progressive agenda, Obama was able to win two terms by relying on racial and ethnic solidarity, earning record numbers of Latino and black votes.
Could a Radical Israel Basher Soon Head the Democratic Party?
November 16, 2016Could a Radical Israel Basher Soon Head the Democratic Party?, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, November 16, 2016
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) is the leading contender to head up the Democratic National Committee. In announcing his candidacy for the position, Ellison said, “When voters know what Democrats stand for, we can improve the lives of all Americans, no matter their race, religion, or sexual orientation.”
Ellison has the support of the progressive wing of the party, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as the so-called establishment types such as Senator Chuck Schumer.
What would a Democratic Party led by Rep. Ellison really look like? One need look no further than Rep. Ellison’s own statements, associations and actions. Under Ellison’s leadership, the Democratic Party will continue to evolve into a pro-Islamist party that helps advance the stealth jihad agenda, and a party that moves away from its traditional support of our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.
Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, has a past history of working actively on behalf of the anti-Semitic firebrand Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. In 1995, writing as Keith X Ellison, he published a column for Insight News, which praised Farrakhan as “a role model for black youth” and denied that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite. In 1997, Ellison defended a statement by Joanne Jackson of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism, who was reported to have said that “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.”
When Ellison first ran for Congress, Nihad Awad, executive director of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), provided his support at a fund raiser in Minneapolis for Ellison. Ellison in turn has spoken at CAIR fundraising events. He also defended CAIR against credible charges that CAIR was trying to infiltrate staff offices tied to committees on the judiciary, homeland security and intelligence. At CAIR banquets in late 2008, Ellison urged CAIR supporters to seek jobs in the then incoming Obama administration.
Some of Ellison’s donors have “a history of Muslim Brotherhood connections,” according to Campus Watch. The Minneapolis branch of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Muslim American Society reportedly paid for Ellison’s pilgrimage to Mecca for the Hajj in 2008.
Ellison is not interested in hearing a diversity of views from moderate Muslims such as M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who believe that reform is needed within Islam today. Indeed, Ellison accused Jasser of speaking like those allegedly turncoat blacks “who would seek to ingratiate themselves with powerful people in the white community and would there turn them on the rest of us and give license to attack us all. Now is somebody going to snatch my 13-year-old daughter’s hijab off, call her a horrible name, spit on her because of something that you said, Dr. Jasser, I worry about that.”
Ellison’s example of a good role model for a dedicated Islamist appears to be Hamza Yusuf, president and chairman of the Zaytuna Institute in California. Ellison lauded Yusuf as a respected religious authority who had converted to Islam. Ellison’s role model called Judaism a “most racist religion,” and said just two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on our homeland, “This country [America] unfortunately has a great…tribulation coming to it. And much of it is already here, yet people are too illiterate to read the writing on the wall.”
As Robert Spencer, the author of Stealth Jihad, has just written, the same media that are falsely claiming President-elect Trump’s choice to serve as his chief strategist, Steven K. Bannon, is a white supremacist and anti-Semite are “hailing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for announcing his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee – despite Ellison’s very real links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two groups that are outdone by no one in anti-Semitism.”
In addition, one wonders why the more so-called establishment Democrats, in particular the likely next Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a strong supporter of Israel, would not be more troubled by Ellison’s virulently anti-Israel positions.
Ellison has called for the cut off of military aid to Israel. His opposition to supporting Israel with any funding for military purposes even extended to the purely defensive Iron Dome. His cockeyed justification for not even backing an effective means to destroy incoming rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza before they can reach civilian population centers in Israel was that to do so could undermine negotiation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. “Because a cease-fire is what we should prioritize now,” Ellison said when asked to explain his vote on Meet the Press. “A cease-fire protects civilians on both sides — it doesn’t just say, ‘We’re only concerned about people on one side.’”
Ellison also wrote an op-ed article for the Washington Post in which he called for “an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.” Thus, for the next possible chairman of the Democratic Party, cutting off Israel’s ability to defend itself with the Iron Dome, together with pressuring Israel to remove all barriers to the import into Gaza of sophisticated rockets from Iran and elsewhere for Hamas to use against Israeli civilians, represents what Democrats should stand for.
Ellison has also made himself an ally of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against Israel, and he has helped legitimize them through participating in their programming. For example, in July 2016, Ellison participated in a panel discussion co-sponsored by The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, one of the largest BDS operations in the US. Ellison has been at the top of that anti-Israel organization’s “House Hall of Fame.” It should be no surprise that, as Salon reported on June 2, 2016, “Rep. Keith Ellison shared a photo on Twitter…that refers to Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories as apartheid.”
Finally, with respect to the issue of Syrian refugees, Ellison did not think that President Obama’s decision to admit 10,000 Syrians during the last fiscal year was good enough. Shortly before Obama announced his ramp up decision, Ellison had written a letter to the president stating, “Now, more than ever, we need to live up to our history by increasing the number of Syrian refugees allowed to resettle in the United States.” After the president announced his decision to admit 10,000 more Syrian refugees in just one year, Ellison commented, “Ten thousand is not enough. Aren’t we the people who say, ‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses’? We must do more for families who are not safe in their own homeland.”
Not on President-elect Trump’s watch if there is any potential danger of admitting jihadist terrorists. With Trump intent on curbing the admission of more Syrian refugees until we get a handle on who they really are, one can imagine how Ellison, as head of the Democratic National Committee, will push his open borders policy for Syrian refugees to the top of his party’s agenda, irrespective of the risks to the American people.
If the Democrats do end up selecting Rep. Keith Ellison as the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, they will be elevating a radical Islamist and Israel basher. Contrary to his pitch on Meet the Press last Sunday, his record does not demonstrate how he would successfully lead his party’s effort to “make working America know that the Democratic party is absolutely on their side.” To the contrary, his selection will risk further alienation of a vast portion of Americans who are convinced – correctly so – that the party they had once supported has abandoned them.
Steve Bannon and Keith Ellison: Do the Democrats Really Care about Anti-Semitism?
November 15, 2016Steve Bannon and Keith Ellison: Do the Democrats Really Care about Anti-Semitism? Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, November 15, 2016
(Please see also, The Ellison Angle.– DM)
When is anti-Semitism not anti-Semitism? When it comes from the Left, of course.
President-elect Trump has enraged the establishment media by choosing Steven K. Bannon as his chief strategist, because Bannon, they claim on the flimsiest of evidence, is a white supremacist and an anti-Semite. Meanwhile, that same media is hailing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for announcing his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee – despite Ellison’s very real links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two groups that are outdone by no one in anti-Semitism.
“A chorus of critics took to Twitter,” said the New York Times, “to lament what they said was a frightening normalization of the fringe views that Mr. Bannon promoted as the chairman of Breitbart News. The site has for years given voice to anti-Semitic, racist and white nationalist ideology.”
The evidence? Slim to none. As David Horowitz pointed out Monday, the source for the claim that Bannon is anti-Semitic is “a one sentence claim from an angry ex-wife in divorce court no less, that Bannon didn’t want their kids to go to school with Jews.” Horowitz noted in response that Bannon had wanted to produce a Horowitz biopic: “I find that particularly amusing since Bannon wanted to make a film to celebrate this Jew’s life.”
Horowitz also noted that CNN hit Bannon over “a headline at Breitbart.com calling Bill Kristol a ‘renegade Jew.’” Surely that proves Bannon’s anti-Semitism, right? Wrong. Said Horowitz: “In fact, neither Breitbart nor Bannon is responsible for that statement. A Jew is. I wrote the article, which was neither requested nor commissioned by Breitbart. And I wrote the headline: ‘Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,’” because “Kristol and his friends betrayed the Republican Party, betrayed the American people, and betrayed the Jews when he set out to undermine Trump and elect the criminal Hillary Clinton. Obama and Hillary are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that launched the Arab drive to destroy Israel and push its Jews into the sea (that was their slogan).”
Joel B. Pollak, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News and an Orthodox Jew, declared: “I have worked with Stephen K. Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump’s new chief strategist and senior counselor, for nearly six years at Breitbart News. I can say, without hesitation, that Steve is a friend of the Jewish people and a defender of Israel, as well as being a passionate American patriot and a great leader.”
Meanwhile, the same Democrats who are howling about Bannon are applauding Ellison’s announcement that he is running for DNC Chair, despite the abundant evidence of Ellison’s links to anti-Semitic groups. Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”
It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused todenounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Hamas has declared: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” Ellison has spoken before several groups that have ties to Hamas, and has accepted money from a Muslim Brotherhood group; Hamas styles itself the Muslim Brotherhood for Palestine. Does Keith Ellison also, then, think that “killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah”? No establishment media “journalist” would ever dream of asking him that question, but it’s a fair one: Hamas repeatedly demonstrates genuine and murderous anti-Semitism, and Ellison has repeatedly shown himself willing and even eager to associate himself with Hamas-linked groups.
That’s the real story of anti-Semitism in American politics this week. But the media propagandists are most certainly not going to pause in their hysteria over Trump and Bannon to take any notice of it. Their hypocrisy is obvious, their dishonesty unrelenting, and their moral authority absolutely nil.
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