GayPatriot

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A couple of deaths where “Clinton” pops up

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First, the strange tale of Peter Smith, 81.

  • He was a GOP donor and opposition researcher. He was trying to locate the 30,000 emails that Hillary had “bleached” in defiance of a Congressional subpoena.
  • In May, ten days after he gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal where he explained his strategy of reaching out to hackers (five hacker groups claimed to have the Clinton emails), he was found dead in his hotel room with a plastic bag tied over his head, and a helium tank to aid the asphyxiation process.
  • Per the Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal’s lead reporter initially told people that Smith had died of natural causes – but that was false:

    …the lead reporter on the stories said on a podcast he had no reason to believe the death was the result of foul play and that Smith likely had died of natural causes.

    However, the Chicago Tribune obtained a Minnesota state death record filed in Olmsted County saying Smith committed suicide…

  • And now, even the suicide story is in doubt.
  • Per the Chicago Tribune, Smith was staying at a hotel “near the Mayo Clinic”. (Mayo refuses to confirm whether he was a patient.) Smith was expected to check out, the day they found his body. The day before, he told a hotel worker “Tomorrow is my last day” – which seems like it could apply to either his stay, or his life.
  • Smith was found with a suicide note, which claimed he was facing a serious illness and stated that “No foul play, whatsoever” was to blame. Some find a note like that suspicious in itself.
  • Friends and associates say they had no idea of Smith being ill or planning a suicide.
  • This includes Charles Ortel, a fellow researcher into Clinton corruption, who spoke with Smith the day before the alleged suicide.

    “He may have been a fantastic actor but I certainly didn’t leave that phone call saying, ‘oh sh*t, the guy’s at the end of his rope,’” Charles Ortel…told The Daily Caller…

    “This does not seem like a settled story. It made perfect sense to me he might have died of natural causes, but little chance he would have killed himself,” Ortel said.

    …Ortel knew Smith personally. “We had countless discussions,” Ortel recalled of his relationship with Smith. “He was using his unique decades of experience in politics to offer me advice how to expose the Clinton Foundation.”

Next and more recent, Klaus Eberwein, 50.

  • Allegedly, he shot himself in the head at a Quality Inn near Miami.
  • Per Miami Herald:

    A supporter of former Haitian President Michel Martelly, Eberwein served as director general of the government’s economic development agency, Fonds d’assistance économique et social, better known as FAES…

    [a childhood friend and business partner] said he last spoke to Eberwein, 50, two weeks ago and he was in good spirits…

    During and after his government tenure, Eberwein faced allegations of fraud and corruption on how the agency he headed administered funds…

    Eberwein was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Haitian Senate’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission…

  • So, what’s the Clinton connection? Some far-out sites say that he was a critic of the Clinton Foundation’s operations in Haiti, and was set to testify specifically about Clinton Foundation wrongdoing.
  • I want to see better reporting on the connection before I narrate it as “truth”. But as a possibility, it seemed worth mentioning.

Addendum: I want to make clear that I’m not suicidal, never have been, and never will be. In the unlikely event that I ever “commit suicide”, or “have an accident”, there should be automatic and deep suspicion of foul play.

Inspired by Judi McLeod’s timely article. She reminds us of another strange case from 2016, John Ashe – although this one was an alleged exercise accident:

…disgraced UN official John Ashe… — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon [late June 2016] in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. [ed: an initial falsehood about natural causes, same pattern as Peter Smith] But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)

Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fundraising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton.

One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”

I do believe in coincidences – which is why I still have not committed, for example, to the theory that Seth Rich (of the DNC email leaks) had to be a political murder. But the Clintons, over the years, do seem to get a LOT of these coincidental deaths of people who might have something on them.

Did Hillary lose by being a warmonger?

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My intuition has long said yes. I mean, Hillary’s support for destroying Libya and Syria and creating aggressive confrontation with Russia is part of why I don’t like her. People who want peace seem to have preferred Trump, in 2016.

Last week, a new study came out which showed that Hillary may have lost PA, MI, WI by being a warmonger.

A new study attributes Donald Trump’s victory last year to communities hit hardest by military casualties and angry about being ignored. These voters, the authors suggest, saw Trump as an “opportunity to express that anger at both political parties.”…

The study…found a “significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.” The statistical model it used suggested that if Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin had suffered “even a modestly lower casualty rate,” all three could have flipped to Hillary Clinton… “Trump significantly outperformed Romney in counties that shouldered a disproportionate share of the war burden in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“America has been at war continuously for over 15 years, but few Americans seem to notice,” Kriner and Shen write. “This is because the vast majority of citizens have no direct connection to those soldiers fighting, dying, and returning wounded from combat.”

Insane asylum updates

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First, a few items on the “Trump dossier” (which I previously backgrounded here).

  • The Washington Post has further discredited one of the dossier’s most salacious claims.
  • Did John “Landslide” McCain have anything to do with the dossier? A British defamation lawsuit shows that, at the least, McCain had exceptionally early access to it.

    According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State Department official as two in a handful of people known to have had copies of the full document before it circulated among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed…Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and a Russia adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, discussed the 35-page dossier with McCain…

    The British court document also confirmed that Washington research firm Fusion GPS, co-founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, had been hired to conduct opposition research by one of Trump’s GOP primary opponents. Later, Democrats paid for the same research on Trump’s past and alleged Russian ties.

    It’s funny how Fusion GPS keeps popping up. But I didn’t know that Fusion GPS also had GOP (probably #NeverTrumper) connections, as well as Democrat.

  • Natalia Veselnitskaya drips with Democrat sympathies and ties to Fusion GPS / the “Trump dossier”.

    Apart from her social media posts, photos of her sitting with Democrats at a Senate hearing, and so forth, the Obama administration explicitly gave her a special pass into the U.S. in 2015. Why?

    That makes it all the more possible that her intent in getting a fake meeting with the Trump campaign was to set them up for the FISA warrants that enabled the Obama administration to spy on them.

    Either Congress or a Special Counsel should now investigate those FISA warrants and the Obama administration’s spying on its domestic political opponents.

  • Are TrumpRussia and #NothingGate really Hillarygate? The connection between Hillary/DNC, Fusion GPS and the “Trump dossier” needs investigating because:

    This connection has raised the question of whether Kremlin prepared the dossier as part of a disinformation campaign to sow chaos in the US political system. If ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton associates, Russia Gate is turned on its head as collusion between Clinton operatives (not Trump’s) and Russian intelligence…

    Former FBI director, James Comey, refused to answer questions about Fusion and the Steele dossier in his May 3 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Comey responded to Lindsey Graham’s questions about Fusion GPS’s involvement “in preparing a dossier against Donald Trump that would be interfering in our election by the Russians?” with “I don’t want to say.”…

    The dossier was not, as the press reports, written by Steele…In Stalin’s day, some of the most valued KGB (NKVD) agents were called “novelists,” for their ability to conjure up fictional plots and improbable tales to use against their enemies…

Related news:

#NothingGate: Because yeah, they’ve got a lot to hide

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Scott Adams has dubbed the Trump Jr scandal #NothingGate – There’s nothing there, but it sure is terrible.

We all know the signs. A couple hours ago, MSNBC was quoting campaign finance law about how campaigns are not supposed to take foreign contributions.

FOR REAL. Yes, I Laughed Out Loud. Right in front of everybody at the gym.

The law clearly talks about money and OBJECTS (the ordinary meaning of “things”) of value. Here is what they were quoting:

A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.

First, the words are written *on the foreign national*. Second: Only in a McCarthy-ite, Salem Witch Hunt world could the words be stretched to cover knowledge (which, in the context of a campaign, is called opposition research). AND…AND…AND…IF the words are indeed to be stretched so very far, then Hillary’s campaign was equally-or-even-more guilty.

Seriously…Are these people thinking at all? Well, we know they’re not. This is “what insanity looks like”. These people aren’t following any rational thought process.

Why would they not? The obvious reason: Deflection. Distraction.

  • Let’s not talk about Hillary’s campaign violations.
  • Let’s not talk about her campaign’s meetings with officials of a foreign government, in an effort to obtain valuable knowledge (or opposition research) on her opponent from those foreign officials.
  • Let’s not talk about all the Saudi money (which would be illegal indeed) in her campaign.
  • Let’s not talk about the Hillary campaign’s documented, illegal levels of collusion with the media.
  • Let’s not talk about all the Fake News, “Hillary is ahead!” and “Hillary is a lock to win!”, that the media perpetrated to try to depress Republican/Trump voter turnout.
  • Let’s not talk about the basic fact that she was a terrible candidate – and she lost.
  • Let’s not talk about the massive Clinton Foundation corruption.
  • Let’s not talk about Hillary’s collusion in giving Russia 20% of America’s uranium supply, apparently in exchange for hefty speaking fees and other yuge donations.
  • Let’s not talk about her campaign chair, John Podesta, and his brother being on Russia’s payroll for years.
  • Let’s not talk about Hillary and the Obama administration colluding to obstruct justice, in the Hillary e-mail investigation.
  • Let’s not talk about the indictments coming, hopefully, for James “Leaker” Comey.
  • Let’s not talk about the unbelievable scandal of the Obama administration spying on domestic political opponents. And the intelligence agencies going along with it.
  • Let’s not talk about the fact that the entire “Russia hacking narrative” has been a lie from minute one and, accordingly, the leadership of U.S. intelligence agencies are seriously politicized and compromised, meaning President Trump had better clean house – for America’s good.
  • Let’s not talk about the Trump administration’s progress and successes.
  • No, no, no. Deflect, deny, distract, handwave, keep screaming “Trump!!!!1!”

Fortunately, none of this needs to matter. The Controlled Media, the Left, and the “political class” have lost a lot of power. What we’re seeing now are the throes of their cognitive dissonance; their refusal to believe it. Having done nothing whatsoever wrong in this matter, Trump – and Trump Jr. – need only stay strong and clear-headed, and they will survive; and survival is victory.

My one, little doubt about this situation would be: Whether they will stay strong? We shall see. I know, I know…their track record argues that they will.

Russia psychosis update

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Just to follow up my earlier post on the Donald Trump, Jr. situation. It turns out that:

  • Someone called Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, arranged the meeting between Trump, Jr. and Veselnitskaya in June 2016.
  • In a good act of transparency, Trump Jr. has released the emails that led up to it. (The left-leaning Guardian calls them “damning”; but of course they aren’t.)
  • Trump Jr. took the meeting because he was a campaign operative and Goldstone promised – but then failed to deliver – a Russian whistleblower with “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia…”
  • Per USA Today:

    Goldstone [arranged the meeting] at the request of his client, Azerbaijani-born pop singer Emin Agalarov, whose ties to Veselnitskaya are unclear.

    [She] stated she had some information regarding illegal campaign contributions to the (Democratic National Committee)…

    At the meeting, Goldstone said Veselnitskaya “presented a few very general remarks regarding campaign funding and then quickly turned the topic to something else.” (Multiple reports say she then spoke about Russia barring Americans from adopting…)

    At that point, Goldstone said, “the meeting was halted by Don Jr., and we left. Nothing came of that meeting and there was no follow-up between the two parties.”

  • Also, Veselnitskaya had NO meaningful ties to Putin or anyone high-level in the Russian government.

The emails make clear that Trump Jr. took the meeting because he wanted to expose illegal Hillary-Russia collusion, if that existed. He was told, in effect, that he was meeting a whistleblower. He surely knew that Hillary has a history of colluding with the Russians, seemingly in exchange for money.

It’s Orwellian that Trump Jr’s interest in exposing Hillary-Russia collusion (if more of that existed) would now be depicted as him supposedly colluding with Russians. But that’s the mentally-ill world we live in. Anti-Trumpers are calling these latest Nothing Burgers “explosive”, “disturbing”, “potentially treasonous”, and “the smoking gun”, because supposedly “The exchange demonstrates that the Trump campaign was eager for help from Russia” (Slate).

It’s all nonsense. It’s normal for campaigns to meet with anyone – American or foreign – who might have dirt on opponents. The term of art is “opposition research”. As noted below, Hillary’s campaign sure met with foreigners, to do it. And again, Trump Jr’s evidenced intent was to expose Russia collusion that he thought Hillary could be doing.

The whole incident smells like a setup, that Trump Jr. rightly dodged. As suggested in my earlier post, we need to know more about Goldstone’s, Agalarov’s, and/or Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Democrat dirty-tricks shop, Fusion GPS.

Sorry, lefties. Once more, you push the fake “Russia hacked the election – and Trump colluded” narrative, and you come up way short.

Here’s a couple stories worth looking at, lefties:

  • How Ukraine hacked the election. Ukraine officials met with Hillary/DNC operatives to try to dig up dirt on Trump. (Exact same thing that you’re freaked out about, with Trump Jr.)
  • How Saudi Arabia hacked the election. Crown Prince Salman asserted that he was responsible for 20% of Hillary’s campaign funds. As ZH puts it, ” It is illegal in the United States for foreign countries to try to influence the outcome of elections by funding candidates.”

Lefties – I understand your need to lie to yourselves about Trumprussia, but –
Why don’t you care about Ukraine hacking our democracy?
Why don’t you care about Saudi Arabia hacking our democracy?
Why don’t you care about Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s massive pay-for-play donations to the Clinton Foundation?
Why don’t you care about Hillary’s Russia collusion in giving away 20% of the U.S. uranium supply to Russia?
Why don’t you care about Bill, and the Podesta brothers, taking massive “fees” and other payoffs from Russian companies?

Palate cleanser: Lefties practicing their self-defense skills. It’s funny to see lisping, up-talk-y gamma males going on about martial arts – with zero self-awareness about how Antifa and the Left are the violent people in America today.

UPDATE: Yes, Veselnitskaya hangs with Democrats.

Is Trumprussia boomeranging?

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As Rush, Hannity, etc. have been pointing out lately, eight months of baseless Trump-Russia collusion allegations seem finally to be blowing up in the faces of the Democrats, Controlled Media and Deep State.

In a recent poll, 73% of Americans said the investigations are causing Congress to lose focus, 64% said they’re hurting the country, 56% said it’s time to move on, and 52% said they don’t believe Trump did any collusion.

And the story itself is taking a few turns. First, I’d like to give the background on something called the Trump Dossier.

  • It’s a salacious report on candidate Trump that was put together (in 2015 or 16?) by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele.
  • His work was sloppy, containing (among other things) provably-false tales of Trump associates meeting Russians in Europe, and probably-false tales of Trump doing bizarre sexual practices. (OK, tame practices by gay standards.)
  • Steele was paid to produce the dossier by a company called Fusion GPS.
  • Many suspect that Fusion GPS was paid ultimately by Democrats and/or #NeverTrumpers, and was hired precisely to do a hit piece (something shoddy and salacious).
  • The dossier was passed to the FBI and other U.S. agencies. Although they knew it was false in its most serious claims (or should have known), they appear to have used it as a basis for investigations on Trump and as a roadmap for questioning witnesses.
  • Also, some suspect that the Obama administration may have used the dossier to obtain their secret FISA warrants and/or NSA surveillance on Trump, during and after the 2016 campaign.
  • We need to know on that last point because, *if true*, it would be explosive: one would have to “connect the dots” of Hillary or DNC paying a foreigner for a bogus report on Trump, Obama using the report as a bogus reason to spy on candidate Trump, Susan Rice “unmasking” the data and distributing it within the Obama government, and then leakers possibly leaking Trump campaign secrets to media, DNC and/or Hillary. Quite a trick.

It’s backfiring on the Democrats because at long last, the Senate Judiciary committee is investigating Fusion GPS and who was behind the bogus dossier.

Next, I’d like to discuss The Washington Post’s blockbuster article last Friday on Russian election hacking, a game-changer.

WaPo is known for “burying the lede”: putting a title/frame on a story that tries to mask the important revelations within it. This article is titled “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault”. Thus, WaPo’s frame is: Russian election hacking is real and isn’t Obama a lonely hero for having tried to punish Russia?

But the article’s details tell a different story.

  • Everyone agrees, still, that Russia didn’t change a single vote. In that respect, the 2016 election was perfectly fair and un-hacked.
  • The CIA did report to Obama in 2016 that Russia was trying to do cyber-crime on various U.S. targets, including both the DNC and RNC.
  • For five months, Obama dithered and considered various responses and, in the end, he did…nothing. Until after the election (when he expelled some Russian diplomats, tightened some sanctions, and fanned the flames of protest and questioning Trump’s legitimacy).

“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” said a former senior Obama administration official involved in White House deliberations on Russia [in the months before the election]. “I feel like we sort of choked.”

I want to make clear that I still do not take this “Russia hacking” narrative at face value. My reasons:

  • Still no evidence. The WaPo article doesn’t actually provide any.
  • After Wikileaks Vault 7 (including revelations that the CIA itself routinely hacks things and leaves Russian fingerprints), there is no reason to take the CIA’s word on anything – without evidence.
  • Also, Russia could have tried to hack into stuff – but with little or no effect.
  • In regard to the “DNC emails”, at least, it is still very plausible the leaker was Seth Rich, a DNC insider. Because Wikileaks dropped many hints about it. (At this point, yes I trust their hints more than the CIA’s.)
  • And it still doesn’t matter who leaked the “DNC emails” because they were 100% true and relevant information that American voters deserved. If it was Russia, they did not attack our nation or our democracy; only our 2 major-party Establishments. (Big difference.)
  • It is still exceedingly odd that the DNC denied FBI investigators access to their computers after the leaks. Instead, the DNC spoon-fed the FBI a report on supposed Russian hacking from another shoddy, DNC-paid company, CrowdStrike.

But let’s say it’s all true. Most observers agree that the major countries all try to hack each other (or spy), and to influence each other’s elections. And that Russia and the U.S. have been doing it to each other for 70 years or more. Why should 2016 be an exception? In that case,

  1. It is all the more strange and inappropriate that the DNC didn’t let the FBI in to look at their servers and network, after the alleged “DNC email” hack.
  2. It is strange and inappropriate that Obama didn’t defend the U.S. constitution (as his oath requires) by telling the American public. Obama was no stranger to stirring up trouble with Russia (see: Ukraine coup, 2014). Why wouldn’t he, here? Some guesses:
    • He’s just ineffectual?
    • The Russian interference was routine (see above); much less of a deal than WaPo is now making of it?
    • Obama didn’t want to draw attention to Hillary’s corrupt Russia dealings?
    • He didn’t want to draw attention to Democrats having serious problems with security; like, you know, Hillary’s e-mail scandal?
    • He didn’t want to draw attention to Hillary’s hypocritical interference in Russian elections?
    • He thought Hillary would win, and didn’t want any Russia messes tainting her presidency in the public’s mind? (This is WaPo’s theory. But then, when Trump won, Obama was suddenly OK with tainting the next President?)
    • Or: Deep down, Obama didn’t want Hillary to win? (This is Rush’s theory.)
  3. It is still strange and inappropriate that leading Democrats want to blame Republicans – and the American people – in all this. For example, from Rep. Adam Schiff:

    He said many groups inadvertently abetted Russia’s campaign, including Republicans who refused to confront Moscow and media organizations that eagerly mined the troves of hacked emails.

    In other words, damn the American people for opening their eyes and reading those 100% genuine DNC emails!

In short: If WaPo’s story is true, then instead of Trump-Russia collusion, we should be looking at Obama-Russia collusion and Obama-Hillary collusion. This is the game-changer.

Trumprussia was always “mostly bullsh*t”, as we learned Tuesday. The real story would be if the Russian government interfered in U.S. elections – and President Obama let them. Then made a big deal of it later – just to undermine President Trump. Now *that’s* attacking American democracy.

In every plausible version of this mess,

  1. Someone in the government spread around the fake Trump dossier (when they should have ignored/discredited it).
  2. The DNC hid an alleged crime scene from FBI investigators.
  3. Susan Rice wrongly “unmasked” data on domestic political opponents.
  4. Obama failed to do a thing about Russian interference; until it was time for him, and various Deep State leakers, to undermine a lawful new President whom they just didn’t like.

President Trump should fire Special Counsel Mueller

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In the Watergate scandal of 4 decades ago, there were actual crimes at the heart of it.

  1. Five men, working for President Nixon’s campaign, broke into the other side’s headquarters to steal files and set up wiretaps.
  2. They were exposed and suffered consequences; but the consequences needed to reach up to Nixon as well, because he had known/approved their actions on some level, and lied to the nation (in denying his knowledge).
  3. In addition, the Nixon administration had spied on (and/or harassed) domestic opponents through the FBI, CIA and IRS.

In Bill Clinton’s impeachment 2 decades ago, there were actual crimes at the heart of it.

  • His conducting an affair with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, while disgraceful, was not a crime.
  • But then Clinton and Lewinsky committed perjury – Lying while under oath, in sworn depositions in another matter (Paula Jones’ lawsuit). Also, they asked others to commit the crime of perjury. That’s what “obstruction of justice” looks like.

In both cases, there was something real to investigate and punish. In President Trump’s present situation, there isn’t. Trump’s only “crime” is that he won the election.

We already know because the Obama administration (like the Nixon administration) used the intelligence agencies against its domestic opponents. The Obama administration surveilled the living daylights out of the Trump campaign – using any excuse they could they could think of, “oh this is just incidental to surveilling someone else” – then carefully “unmasked” and circulated the data. That’s precisely why we have been treated to so many leaks to the media, these last several months, about who-met-when-with-whom.

And they’ve turned up nothing. There’s nothing there. No collusion with Russia. We know already.

The only other thing that Trump MAY have done (because we still have only one side of the story), is if he hurt the feelings of James “Leaker” Comey by expressing a polite “hope” that Comey wouldn’t prove to be a ridiculous butthole toward General Flynn. Big. Deal. Even by Comey’s account: No, Trump didn’t suborn anyone to wrongdoing.

As such, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation into these matters is a waste of time and resources that would be much better spent investigating the crimes of the Obama administration. Not only the spying and other harassment of domestic opponents, but also the Obama administration’s collusion with Hillary Clinton in covering up (or failing to prosecute) her many crimes; such as the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play corruption, Hillary’s willful and large-scale security breaches (that should have been prosecuted and weren’t – why not?), and more.

The purposes of Special Counsel Mueller are entirely political.

  1. Have a monkey on Trump’s back, instead of Obama’s and Hillary’s backs where it belongs.
  2. Have a monkey on Trump’s back, so that he will be unable to accomplish his campaign promises (infrastructure rebuild, tax reform, Obamacare reform, immigration / The Wall, smashing ISIS).
  3. Throw 1,000 lawyers at Trump and his key associates, so that eventually they will trip up in some “process” crime of not having responded with utter perfection, every time.

That’s how the game works. You just keep adding lawyers until you create a problem. Humans are forgetful, sloppy and flawed by nature. If you add enough lawyers, you are 100% guaranteed to catch someone in some inconsistency, eventually. It doesn’t matter whom you’re looking into. In this way, you can subvert or reject the result of an election.

If Trump were to fire Mueller, the controversy would be enormous but a lot of people would understand. Now including myself.

Under present circumstances, it would be reasonable and just. Let the Democrats demagogue their violent, insane “base” about it, and let the other half(-plus) of the country get on with the grownups’ business.

UPDATE: A prediction from Newt Gingrich that before it’s over, we’ll need a Special Counsel to investigate the Special Counsel.

Does Camille Paglia’s example prove or disprove a notion that women shouldn’t vote?

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A commenter pointed us to this Weekly Standard interview with Camille Paglia. As in most of her work, she says true and fascinating things – on the way to wrong conclusions. As a sample, here she is on the election:

Hillary, with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee, assisted by a corrupt national media who, for over a year, imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals…

After Trump’s victory (for which there were abundant signs in the preceding months), both the Democratic party and the big-city media urgently needed to do a scathingly honest self-analysis, because the election results plainly demonstrated that Trump was speaking to vital concerns (jobs, immigration, and terrorism among them) for which the Democrats had few concrete solutions…

She has much more to say; RTWT. For example, she slams the transgender movement of today as dupes of Big Pharma:

…the pharmaceutical industry, having lost income when routine estrogen therapy for menopausal women was abandoned because of its health risks, has been promoting the relatively new idea of transgenderism in order to create a permanent class of customers…I condemn the escalating prescription of puberty blockers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for children. I regard this practice as a criminal violation of human rights.

And she covers President Trump’s recent “infrastructure” speech, which indeed was awesome.

But then, whom did Paglia support? (Disclosure: I supported no one; a registered Independent, I came close on Gary Johnson but even he wasn’t good enough for me.) As Paglia explains:

I am a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and for Jill Stein in the general election. Since last Fall, I’ve had my eye on Kamala Harris, the new senator from California, and I hope to vote for her in the next presidential primary.

Which is downright silly.

In travelling the “alt” opinion world, one occasionally comes across a strange theory that women shouldn’t vote. Here is an example from the vlogger Black Pigeon Speaks (who is center-Left on many issues, but right-ish on immigration, culture and terrorism). For the record: I disagree with the theory (that is, I think women should vote). But I’m going to describe it.

The essence of the theory (which again, I think is a broken theory) is that biology has wired men to take stands on issues and to initiate projects in the world; while it has wired women instead to be concerned with immediate safety and securing benefits from the group (and/or some patron). Because of that, says the theory, women voters over time will drag a country toward both appeasement (of its enemies) and socialism. Which is not good.

Is Camille Paglia evidence for that theory? Here we have a woman with a talent for grasping and expressing truth, yet she still can’t see through the people-destroying ruse of socialism.

Kabuki theater

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Figuring out what’s happening in Washington – under the surface, with the Deep State factions – is a guessing game. Highly uncertain. Of course I don’t “know anything”, in the sense of having sources. I read the tea leaves as best I can, and I guess.

When President Trump unexpectedly did a huge Saudi arms deal, I had a feeling that former FBI Director Comey’s testimony would then turn out as a net win for Trump. What’s the connection? Hard to explain. I’m going to say some stuff now which could easily be crap; feel free to shoot it down in the comments, or to add your own ideas.

[Read more…]

Much ado, part II

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I wanted to capture some details for future reference.

  • Comey affirms that NYT has been publishing false stories of Trumprussia collusion.
  • Comey admits to maliciously leaking his own memos.

    Hmm – does this put Comey in legal jeopardy? (UPDATE: Seems more and more like it should. Comey’s formal memos of what happened on his job are government property. Could they be privileged information? Even classified? Then who was Comey to take them out of the office when he was fired; much less, to leak them?)

  • Senator Jim Risch dismantles any ‘obstruction’ case against Trump:

    Risch: ‘I hope’, this is [Comey’s version of] the President speaking, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go…I hope you can let this go.’

    […]

    Comey: “Correct.”

    […]

    Risch: “Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go.”

    Comey: “Not in his words, no.”

    Risch: “He did not order you to let it go.”

    Comey: “Again, those words are not an order.”

    Risch: “He said ‘I hope’. Now, like me you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases charging people with criminal offenses…Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice, for that matter of any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?”

    […]

    Comey: “I don’t as I sit here.”

  • In other comments, Comey said that he interpreted Trump’s words as a direction, but that is, of course, B.S. Because
    1. Comey affirms above that he knew it wasn’t a direction, AND
    2. If Trump had given Comey a direction that Comey felt to be unethical or illegal, then Comey is in legal jeopardy for not having reported it sooner.
    3. Furthermore, per HotAir, Tom Cotton got Comey to acknowledge that he never threatened to resign over Trump’s behavior, as Comey did in a famous 2004 confrontation in John Ashcroft’s hospital room. Instead, and by his own admission, Comey told Trump “that I would see what we could do.”

    This exchange is stunning…ly bad for Comey:

    Rubio: Did you object to or inform the WH counsel about Trump’s “I hope” statement?
    Comey: “No.”
    Rubio: “Why not?”
    Comey: “I don’t know.”

  • We also have Comey and Trump both calling each other liars on certain points, which makes it he-said-he-said.

    Ever read Trump’s book? He has been dealing with lawyers day-in, day-out for DECADES. Figuring out how to influence people, without actually committing legal or ethical violations. His sister was a big-time Federal judge. The notion that President Trump would make inappropriate remarks to the likes of Comey, was always shaky.

  • Comey reveals that the Obama administration pressured him to downplay Hillary’s scandal. Call it a “matter”, not an “investigation”:

    LANKFORD: …the previous attorney general [Loretta Lynch] asking you about the investigation on the Clinton e-mails saying you were asked to not call it an investigation anymore. But call it a matter. You said that confused you. You can give us additional details on that?

    COMEY: Well, it concerned me because…the campaigns were talking about interacting with the FBI in the course of our work. The Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds of euphemisms, security matters, things like that for what was going on.

    We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to testify and talk publicly about it I wanted to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we have an investigation. She said yes, don’t call it that, call it a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just call it a matter…that concerned me because that language tracked the way the [Clinton] campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning…the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way [the Clinton campaign] was describing that. It was inaccurate. We had an investigation open for the federal bureau of investigation, we had an investigation open at the time. That gave me a queasy feeling.

    Where’s the outcry on that? Or, might it be coming? 🙂

UPDATE:

  • Alan Dershowitz – hardly a conservative – makes the interesting point that, if Trump ever had ordered Comey to stop an investigation, his actions would be totally constitutional. Worth viewing.

    Here’s what I got from it. A President can’t interfere with a judicial process. For example, he can’t tamper with juries or witnesses, end a prosecution (short of doing a presidential pardon), defy a subpoena or destroy evidence. But an FBI investigation is NOT a judicial process. Constitutionally, the FBI Director takes orders from the President. Past presidents have ended investigations they didn’t like. If Congress smells a rat, Congress can impeach the President; but that, too, is a non-judicial process (separate and political).

  • These exchanges settle a lot. Flaming skull time!

    Senator Burr: Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?
    Comey: I’m confident. By the time I left, I had seen no indication of that whatsoever.

    Senator Burr: Did the President, at any time, ask you to stop the FBI investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 elections?
    Comey: Not to my understanding, no.

    Senator Burr: Did you ever have access to the actual [DNC e-mail] hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
    Comey: In the case of the DNC…we did not have access to the devices themselves. [ed: which means, and as I’ve stated before, the FBI relied on a report by CrowdStrike, a discredited DNC-paid company]

    Senator Risch: While you were director, the POTUS was not under investigation [at any time], is that a fair statement?
    Comey: That’s correct.

    Senator Collins: I’m trying to understand whether there was any kind of investigation of the President under way.
    Comey: No.

    Senator Rubio: …the president agreed with your statement that it would be great if we could have an investigation…
    Comey: Yes, sir. He actually went farther than that. He — he said, “And if some of my satellites did something wrong, it’d be good to find that out.”

    Lefties: You are not living in reality, if you think Trump is in trouble on this set of issues.