Just a short blog note here to let you know my blogging will continue to be sporadic, due to some family health issues. I’ll try to get some blog posts written soon, but presently most of my time and energy is involved in trying to keep up with my housework and caring for my husband, whose mobility is very limited right now. He’s got to have more tests done & possibly replacement of the shunt that’s already in his head, but for the moment most of the time he can’t walk more than a few steps with his walker. So, we’re getting a routine established moving him around the house in the wheelchair, dressing, etc.
Category Archives: General Interest
Weekend SPIN info war status report
President Trump engaged in an appalling Twitter tantrum yesterday, as former First Lady, Barbara Bush, was being laid to rest. First Lady, Melania Trump, attended the memorial service, as did former presidents, Clinton, Obama and their wives and of course both Bush presidents were there. The glaring absence was President Trump.
President Trump reacted like a kid, who wasn’t invited to the birthday party that all his peers were attending, by tweeting mean and petty attacks. He was a child lashing out and I doubt he realizes how much he damages himself by continuing the petty name-calling and “Trump being Trump” tactic. Long ago, I wrote that Trump made a big mistake being the one-man show hurling insults to run his scorched earth. The Clintons always relied on Blumenthal’s sneaky planting dirt in the media and people like James Carville to be the attack dogs, so they never got their hands dirty.
Trump’s embrace of the vicious SPIN info war and being his own attack dog is a self-defeating tactic, if his goal is to be treated with respect befitting the President of the United States of America. To be treated with respect demands you treat others with respect. To ever hope to be treated as a great leader, means you learn to rise above the gutter and insults, and lead by example.
Way back in the beginning of Trump’s presidential run, I wrote often about how he learned how to use the Clinton SPIN information warfare tactics and due to a variety of factors, including Hillary Clinton’s own missteps, like not campaigning in key Rust Belt states to shore up support and calling Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables”, he won the election. However, the Clintons, Democrats and many in the mainstream media, who run the Left’s SPIN info war were never going to allow Trump to be treated like a President of the United States. They’ve waged the same relentless SPIN war against Trump that they ran against GW Bush, except it’s more intense.
Bill Clinton survived impeachment, leaving extreme partisan animus. However there wasn’t much love lost between Al Gore and Bill Clinton, so compared to the 2000 election loss, that partisan battle over the election results, was not as vicious as the battle over 2016. 2016 is deeply personal and Hillary Clinton has a well-seasoned information warfare apparatus, which has waged non-stop information warfare against President Trump. Sid Blumenthal’s fingerprints are all-over the “Trump Russia Collusion” hysteria and the media recycling through the Dump on Trump spin attacks.
That Comey, Clapper and Brennan decided to sell Kremlin propaganda and disguise it as legitimate intelligence, along with selling Steele’s dossier as an intelligence report rather than as political opposition dirt needs to be investigated by the proper U.S. intelligence authorities. The supposed credibility of the Steele dossier is that it came from high-level Kremlin sources. Unpack that in your mind – the credibility , Comey, Clapper, Brennan, the Dems, and the mainstream media are relying on to prove “Trump Russian Collusion” came from the Kremlin… The Steele dossier is Clinton/DNC Russian collusion. That top U.S. intelligence officials would engage in a SPIN operation selling unverified Kremlin dirt is not only unethical, it’s a serious national security concern.
Even now, James Comey caveats the infamous alleged pee tape as unverified, but slyly hints that it might be true and that the Kremlin might have compromising information on Trump. Reality check here – the Kremlin likely has compromising dirt on most high US officials and Western officials, because amassing dirt to engage in smear campaigns is the Kremlin’s information warfare modus operandi. To have a former FBI director using Kremlin propaganda to destroy a duly elected American president is surreal.
President Trump rather than colluding with the Russians, appears to be a dupe, just as the Clintons are. The Kremlin fed them the dirt for the Steele dossier and they swallowed it whole.
President Trump watches a lot of FOX news and gets a great deal of his SPIN attacks from FOX pundits. I believe our counter-intelligence agencies should be looking closely at the FOX SPIN apparatus for hostile foreign intelligence connections. Add Drudge Report to that concern, among several other Trump SPIN outlets. Sadly, I have felt for a long time that the Clinton’s reliance on Blumenthal and several other shady operators surrounding them left them completely compromised and some hostile foreign intelligence have access to all the inner-workings of the Clinton machine.
It’s way past time for America to defeat the corrupt, polarizing, destabilizing scorched earth SPIN information warfare being waged via America’s mass media outlets. This isn’t about choosing between Trump or Hillary, Republican or Democrat, it’s about deciding to promote being an American first and to work to promote pulling America’s moral center back to the middle, away from the extreme partisan fringes. It’s about changing the tenor of our American political culture. It’s about stopping the SPIN news cycle and teaching reporters, political leaders and the American people to begin the process of taking a deep breath and not jumping to conclusions or repeating every piece of sensationalized news which wafts across the news airwaves or internet superhighway.
Finger-pointing begins
JK posted the link to the OIG report on Andrew McCabe’s “lack of candor” and everyone should read that report, which centers on McCabe lying about his role in FBI leaks to the WSJ about the Weiner laptop containing more Hillary emails.
Here’s that link: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/o20180413.pdf
James Comey is talking a lot these days on his book tour and he’s got his talking points well rehearsed. Comey has been bragging that he is Mr. Ethical who called for Andrew McCabe to be investigated, but McCabe’s lawyer has made a statement for McCabe, that Comey is lying and was completely aware of the WSJ leaks McCabe authorized:
“In a statement, Bromwich says “the report fails to adequately address the evidence (including sworn testimony) and documents that prove that Mr. McCabe advised Director Comey repeatedly that he was working with the Wall Street Journal on the stories in question prior to publication.””
The leaks to the WSJ relate to October 2016 leaks from high within the FBI to counter lower level FBI leaked information to the WSJ about ongoing Clinton Foundation criminal investigations and Huma Abedin having Hillary emails on the Weiner laptop, which the FBI had seized during the Weiner investigation.
Comey and the mainstream media have consistently used the Dem. spin messaging casting those lower level leakers as “rogue, Trump-supporters” in the FBI. I don’t know if they were Trump-supporters or not, but as always the media went with that labeling. They might have been pursuing their criminal investigation and believed at the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ, there was a corrupt effort to impede or deep-six their investigation. If there was suspected criminal activity by powerful political figures, you’d think the FBI would want to proactively investigate that. Did they ever try to secure Bill Clinton’s emails from that homebrew server? That server was his personal email server for his Clinton Foundation work.
It’s helpful to go back over the timelines and the messaging campaigns underway. From my Dec. 13, 2016 blog post, Queen Hillary’s failing coup:
“Here’s a rundown of the Clinton/Dem/Colluding Media talking points I’ve seen, being hysterically repeated on Twitter and various news sites in the last few days:
- “Fake News” is a dire threat and only certain (Clinton colluding) media can be trusted to report “real” news.
- Various incantations on popular vote should rule over electoral college – from the dramatically escalating popular vote total for Hillary (likely embellished) to contorted legal reasoning, to crap like Nate Silver tweeted some tripe that Hillary only lost in 4 states by 1%, so without the Russian hacking she’d likely have won – so based on a hypothetical situation, he created imaginary polling statistics, that he’s presenting as serious analysis???
- More Comey attacks – Harry Reid claimed Comey downplayed Russian hacking.
- Harry Reid claims Trump directly involved with Russian hacking.
- Electoral college electors need a special CIA briefing on Russian hacking.
- America needs a do-over election, because of Russian interference in the election.
The liberal media has shed all pretense of being objective journalists, in fact, many are little more than Democratic hacks. The hysteria over Americans paying attention to Wikileaks over American journalists’ reporting or Democrat mouthpieces speaks not to Americans being idiots, it speaks to people TRUST Wikileaks (a likely Russian front) over American journalists and the liberal media.
Following Twitter, is an exercise in frantic, sore-loser talking points, most bogus or deeply disingenuous, being breathlessly repeated by a cadre of big name “journalists” and news organizations 24/7. It’s like kids at summer camp, sitting in a circle around a campfire, whispering something in the next person’s ear and saying, “Pass it on!””
James Comey still bringing up the alleged Trump pee tape in a Moscow hotel on his book tour is the most amazing thing to behold. He is using unverified allegations from Steele, a paid Clinton/DNC, operative, who relied on 2nd and 3rd hand Russian sources, claiming to have sources close to the Kremlin. A former FBI director is and has been working to delegitimize President Trump, a duly elected American president, using an alleged Kremlin sex tape of an American citizen visiting Moscow. Comey always slyly asserts he doesn’t know if it’s true, but he puts it out to disparage Trump. Sure, Trump does plenty to discredit himself, but the truth is there appears to have been an orchestrated effort at the highest levels of the Obama administration and among some top Obama intelligence and FBI officials to takedown Trump by vicious leaks and a relentless scorched earth media campaign to both delegitimize his presidency and continually bait him. Unfortunately for Trump, without fail, he takes their bait.
During those days in October 2016, while the Hillary email investigation was reopened, the Dems and media were on board with the messaging campaign to cast the leaks about ongoing Clinton Foundation criminal investigations and the Weiner laptop as the work of “rogue Trump-supporters” in the FBI, but they also have burnished Steele into some reliable, retired super-spy, even though he has admitted to being virulently anti-Trump and his dossier relied on 2nd and 3rd hand sources in Russia, claiming sources close to the Kremlin. That means that information is highly likely never going to be verifiable or reliable, but James Comey’s FBI used the Steele dossier, which he knew was dirt on Trump paid for by the Clinton campaign/DNC, to initiate spying on Trump campaign officials and he’s still trying to sell the Steele dossier (Kremlin dirt allegedly compiled on an American citizen) on this book tour.
Something is very wrong with how the Lynch DOJ and Comey led FBI operated.
Trump might end up impeached for some issues stemming from the Cohen investigation, but this Trump/Russian collusion spin is about spun out.
Interesting list of strategic assumptions
Here’s a War On The Rocks article worth reading:
THE U.S. MILITARY’S DANGEROUS EMBEDDED ASSUMPTIONS
by David Barno and Nora Bensahel
Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Uncategorized
Another Comey tell saga
Today, I came across this Trump tweet, retweeted by Ben Shapiro, with comment and I want to give my short take of this:
Ben Shapiro Retweeted Donald J. Trump
So he publicly re-opened the investigation into her because he wanted a job? That makes no sense. Taking polling into consideration is bad enough, but this is illogical.
Ben Shapiro added,
The Comey explanation is as contorted as the Trump explanation. I suspect Comey expected Hillary to win, so he wanted the Weiner laptop issue “checked off as investigated” & buried. The speed with which he reopened the investigation & reclosed it made it seem like box-checking
From the reporting on the Comey interview with Stephanopoulos. Comey states:
“I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I’m sure that it was a factor,” Comey told ABC News’ chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview ahead of the April 17 release of his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
“I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been, that she’s going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out,” he added.
Despite Stephanopoulos trying to spin this reopened investigation as creating a shadow over a Hillary administration, I suspect Comey believed that in a Hillary administration he would still be FBI director and Loretta Lynch & company would still be running the DOJ. He knew how Lynch & company wanted the Clinton investigation(s) deep-sixed.
Comey gets that sanctimonious tone equivocating after Stephanopoulos’ spin, but facts matter. During that quickie Weiner laptop investigation the FBI was leaking like a sieve, like reports of numerous ongoing field office investigations into the Clinton Foundation. By Comey publicly announcing “FBI reopened & investigated, nothing to see here“, he was digging a public fire break for a President Hillary Clinton and for himself as FBI director. He would then have had another convenient public “extremely careless” investigation conclusion to refer to, plus his job as FBI director.
With all that FBI leaking when the email investigation was reopened it seemed like Comey was facing field office PR insurrections and he wanted to placate them that the FBI was doing due diligence to its duties, but he was also looking to his future as FBI director working in a Hillary Clinton administration.
If Hillary had been elected, she could have pointed to the public FBI exoneration on both her email investigation and the emails on Weiner’s laptop.
Heck, the usual “Islamophobia” spin about Huma was ready-made for that scenario. I believe Comey was just trying to pull off another “extremely careless” PR spin to bury another Clinton scandal and keep his FBI director position.
I wrote about the Comey tell after his July 2016 “extremely careless” speech and I suspected the Clinton silencers at work, but after the exposure of all those fine career professionals handling the Clinton email investigation Comey cited, it sure now seems that Comey entrusted the overseeing of the Clinton investigation to some highly unprofessional, politicized hacks. He also suffered from the same malady that infects people who get too close to President Trump. Many people who hang around Trump begin to act like him – rude, disrespectful, engaging in reprehensible name -calling and petty, vicious taunting.
Comey began making politicized judgments and acting like those around him at the highest level of the Lynch DOJ. His tones now, trying to appease the Left about the reopened email investigation, clearly shows he wants to get back in their good graces and he proclaims his intention is to “contain” the Trump forest fire” (stop Trump), which he believes “ethical leaders in the government can’t contain”.
Comey’s on a PR campaign to stop Trump, which can only mean he is out to build public support for impeachment, and he has now sunk to the Trump level of name-calling to try to make his case for ethical leadership.
Lord, help us if Trump and Comey are our American role models on principled leadership…
Filed under General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, Public Corruption
A link worth reading.
Andrew McCarthy has a very informative piece on the constitutional issues and other facts involved in the Mueller investigation, Trump’s presidential power and Congressional power. Very interesting and worthwhile read:
Trump and the Unitary Executive by Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online
Filed under General Interest, Politics
Trump’s prepping for a major info war offensive
Trump and his info warriors are prepping the FOX and conservative media information battlefield to prepare for Trump firing Rosenstein.
America is on the precipice of a major constitutional crisis. As I’ve said for months now, we are already sinking rapidly into an information void, where the American “news” environment has become a wasteland of partisan political SPIN. You can turn on the three major cable news channels and compare. While CNN and MSNBC preen about how FOX’s political reporting is just Trump propaganda (which it is), they fail to see that the “mainstream media” reporting is to a large degree the Democrat talking points or reliant on “unnamed sources”, who are highly likely Democrat politicians.
I don’t feel like rehashing all of this, so this post is going to be some points, then I have housework to do and I am learning how to make Amish knot rag rugs Made my first small rug a few days ago using old fabric from the 90s. The technique is simple, but as with most craft and needlework, I need to practice a lot more to get my knots a uniform size. My first rug is 24″ across:
1. Since Trump & his info warriors are poised for another major offensive, here’s a 2015 TPM editorial about Trump’s way of info war, worth reading: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-way-of-the-doofus-warrior
2. The past few days, on FOX, Twitter & across friendly conservative media, Trump and his info warriors are “prepping the information battlefield”, working to feed anger about Comey, the Clinton email investigation double standard, and obvious corruption in the Lynch DOJ.
3. No one on the Left has any organized defense against Trump’s info war offensives. Instead, they run the same losing defensive moves – hysterics, same failed spin messaging & “taking to the streets” with the far-left fringes screeching.
4. On the right, there’s still a very divided GOP, which benefits Trump, because there’s enough Trump mouthpieces in Congress to sabotage and slow down any orchestrated Republican effort to thwart Trump’s info war offensives.
5. And there’s enough anger among the right about the 2016 Clinton/DNC/Obama corruption using the Lynch DOJ and Comey’s “extremely careless” to temper Congressional Republicans from acting against Trump. They know Trump will hit the road with rallies to woo their constituents.
6. America is spinning itself into a constitutional crisis. SPIN info war is a larger threat to America than Trump, because the longer this 2016 info war drags on the deeper the information void becomes. We have all 3 major cable NEWS networks reporting vast amounts of SPIN as news.
7. This endless high-octane American SPIN info war escalates partisan anger, deepens divides & erodes our constitutional system, but it also is destroying America’s reputation in the international community. SPIN can lead us into both a constitutional & a national security crisis. Foreign leaders, both friends and adversaries, rely on American media to a very large degree to assess what is going on in America and also on the reliability of our American government. This endless 2016 information war continues to erode America’s credibility.
Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics
