Drudge has this Circa report highlighted:
Did the FBI retaliate against Michael Flynn by launching Russia probe?
Guess this is the Trump counter-offensive. With the Clinton/Obama hacks leaking right and left trying to destroy Trump and Trump’s crowd fighting back, the Russians don’t have to work hard to undermine American democracy. Sure looks like our own rabid partisans are doing a bang-up job, without any hostile foreign assistance.
Filed under Politics, Public Corruption
After watching Donald Trump’s political media strategy for two years, his opponents, in the GOP, in the media, the panoply of enemies arrayed on the Left, and those who consider removing Trump from office a patriotic duty or perhaps revenge( Comey & friends), you’d think they would have learned how Trump operates. They haven’t learned anything and it’s pathetic to watch Trump outmaneuver them over and over and over.
Trump’s attacks don’t depend on facts or truth, they depend on optics. It’s a show and he takes charge of the stage every time. Trump’s opponents, many of them Tweet warriors, attack him relentlessly on Twitter and they recycle through all their old talking points – Trump’s taxes, his multitude of bold-faced lies, his chaotic White House, etc., etc., etc. Some hope the constant negative drumbeat will erode Trump’s poll numbers and aid in taking Trump down. I suspect only the political geeks follow all of this closely and most Americans just go about their daily lives, tuning it out.
Trump foes overplayed the “Russian collusion” hysteria and Trump has now seized the Russian issue and used the Friday, big Washington Post story to turn the tables on President Obama, leaving the big “Russian collusion” hysterics in a position where they were forced to admit that President Obama didn’t do enough last summer to counter the Russian cyber attacks.
Trump now controls the Russian narrative and his loyal sycophant, Sean Hannity has begun spreading the talking point that “even if Trump had colluded with the Russians, that’s not illegal”. They are working to inoculate Trump from any damaging revelations that might come from Mueller’s investigation, by convincing Trump’s most loyal followers that this investigation is just an unfair witch hunt.
So, with all this being played out last week, you’d think the Comey group, who are working to takedown Trump, would be wary of Trump’s ability to use the media to his advantage. Nope, Comey’s friend, Benjamin Wittes, on Friday, after the big Washington Post story on the Russian threat, tweeted:
TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK
To be clear, fuse length on this one is uncertain. Could be today. Could be Monday.
Why on earth would anyone, who has watched Trump operate, give Trump a head’s up of more damaging information on the way? Trump quickly seized on “Obama didn’t do anything to stop the Russians” and flipped the Russian collusion attack on its head.
His opponents have hurled the same talking points, over and over, since November. They haven’t produced any credible evidence of “Russian collusion”. And Trump, sensing another wave of attacks, preempted them by pushing Obama’s inaction on the Russian threat, the Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton and the DNC/media corrupt collusion to do in Bernie Sanders out front.
Trump just steamrolled them.
Trump isn’t a great strategist, but he’s an expert at stealing the show and sucking up all the oxygen.
Matthew Continetti explains the problem with how news is reported in a very good National Review piece:
They’re Wrong About Everything
Continetti explains:
“Events are turning me into a radical skeptic. I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past. I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise. What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. Habit, I guess. A sense of professional obligation, I suppose. Maybe boredom.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448929/media-democrats-republicans-does-anyone-know-anything
Between the mainstream media running Dem spin, Fox News running Trump spin and Twitter being the news sausage factory, we’re stuck in a news vacuum, despite being inundated with breathless reporting. This news dilemma seems much like the situation with TV, where we have hundreds of channels, yet nothing worth watching.
Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, The Media
I am trying to stop laughing at the shameless WaPo/Obama team propaganda effort to breath life into the “Russian collusion” story, that is on life support.
“In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy.”
Seriously, “crime of the century”???
What a pathetic piece of trash journalism and media collusion to keep the Democrats “Russian collusion” hysteria going. The truth is, yes, the Russians tried to interfere in our election and their cyber-activities have been escalating . That escalation was a growing concern among the intelligence community for the past few years. The truth also is that the Obama administration tried to downplay that threat and did very little to combat it out of political concerns with working out their Iran deal. Add in that President Obama is a waffler who prefers to “lead from behind” (not make decisions).
Only when the “Russian collusion” became a Dem talking point did the Russians cyber-activities become a national crisis. Heck, the DNC even refused to let the FBI analyze their computer system after it was hacked. If the Dems were so concerned about the Russian cyber-threat, why didn’t the DNC cooperate with the FBI investigation?
Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics
I meant to post a link to this Stella Morabito piece, Rather Than Judging Fathers’ Household Labor, Let’s Appreciate It, on Father’s Day, but better late than never. Morabito writes:
“Politicized feminists—such as high achievers Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter—laid a lot of the groundwork for chore angst by zeroing in almost exclusively on score-keeping over domestic chores. Melinda Gates has also chimed in. But you’ll find little discussion about the value of traditionally masculine household projects. The hype seems to be for a 50-50 split only in the so-called traditionally feminine labor: housework and child care.
As they’ve come to realize that the maternal instinct dies hard, feminists are focusing more on engineering the role of the father. They don’t welcome the news that millennial women are surprisingly inclined to leave the workforce to stay home with kids. Hence, the focus on changing male attitudes, such as Sandberg trying to convince men that doing more housework would pay sexual dividends. She called it “choreplay.” Sigh.”
Morabito demolishes the feminist dogma about keeping score on 50-50 “equal distribution of labor” in marriage, with a tribute to two very different men, her father and her husband.
Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest
Here’s an interesting read:
Filed under General Interest, Politics, ThatWitch2016
Today is Father’s Day, so the debate going on in my head as to blog post topic is, Should I write a sappy, “my father was the greatest Dad ever” ramble about my Pop or some larger cultural issue? Perhaps, this post will be a little of both.
I loved my parents a great deal, but I respected them as much as I loved them. My mother was a serious type person, but my Pop was the most happy-go-lucky, cheerful, practical joker to the max, kind and unpresuming man imaginable. My parents were both extremely hard workers, but they also were hard workers with taking care of my 3 sisters, two brothers and me.
My mother was reserved around other people and cautious around new people, while my Pop never met a stranger. My mother marveled at how Pop had this ability to strike up conversations with strangers and within minutes find common ground. And, before you knew it, he had acquired more friends. He was also dedicated to helping people whenever he could, but he did it in a quiet, nonchalant way, with no fanfare, often with no mention of it all. A few years back, I wrote:
“As a child, I marveled at how many people stopped by our home bearing everything from fresh garden produce to hams and bottles of whiskey at Christmas time as thank-you gifts to my Dad for “favors” he did for them (of course the whiskey sat gathering dust at our home, as my parents weren’t drinkers). My Dad made helping people part of his daily life, with no mention of it and certainly no desire for anything in return.”
And
“When my father passed away a couple attended the services and they expressed their great admiration for my father and told my siblings and my mother about how many times my father helped them with things around their house, This couple were newcomers to our community and I assumed my mother knew them, as I had years before moved away from home. Later as my family sat discussing the services, one of my sisters asked my mother about this couple. My mother said she had no idea who they were and she thought one of us might know who they were. My Dad’s brand of quietly doing “favors” for people could sure put us on the right path to rebuilding the American team and his “small town values” still serve as my personal model on how to treat other people. Often when I queried why he did so much for other people, his usual response was, “Well it didn’t cost me much except a little time and everyone has a little time to spare.””
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/04/26/time-to-spare/
My Pop was an illegitimate child born to a mother who wanted nothing to do with him. He was raised by his maternal grandparents. My husband’s father left when he was 5 years old and he never saw him again. His mother went through many failed relationships with men moving in and out of my husband and his five siblings’ lives. I wrote about this in a post about J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, because the experiences and problems Vance faced in childhood reminded me of my husband’s family. My father may not have had a mother or father who wanted him, but he had grandparents who loved him and were good role models.
The interesting thing about my parents and so many parents in previous generations is they never read a single book on parenting, yet they were dedicated, constant in their devotion to their families and unswerving in their belief in their moral and religious principles.
“True heroes are there for the long haul, and you can see their weaknesses along with their strengths.”
p. 12, How To Be a Hero To your Kids, Josh McDowell & Dick Day, 1991
My husband and I had plenty of disagreements on parenting, because my husband’s frame of reference for discipline was the Army and I told him children aren’t soldiers. The barking out orders and yelling at them rather than talking to them was met with resistance and temper tantrums. It made their behavior much worse and escalated problems rather than solving any. Yelling does not solve anything. And that’s where the above quote comes in. When our kids were grade school age, my husband came home from work one day with the book, “How To Be A Hero To Your Kids” in hand. He told me the chaplain brought this book to him, after a talk they had about parenting. I was stunned that my definitely-not-religious husband turned to an Army chaplain in a casual conversation about his parenting difficulties.
I think almost every parent has yelled at their kids about something, especially dealing with teenagers. My father was not a yeller, but I recall the one time he yelled at me. I was in my early teens and started arguing with my father about going to catechism class, which was a weekly ordeal for two years, before confirmation in the UCC/Lutheran church. I didn’t want to go to catechism class and argued about it the entire two years. One evening, I was supposed to go next door to my great-aunt, who was going to drive me and her daughter (my second-cousin) to catechism class.
My mother was at work at the hospital, so I started this tirade about how I wasn’t going to catechism class and I stormed out the back door by our kitchen and I slammed that door as hard I could for good measure, to make my point. The glass in the door shattered. My Pop, who never raised his voice, came tearing out that door after me, as I scrambled across the ice-covered snow in the yard. He caught me by the arm, kicked me in the butt and yelled, “That’s enough out of you!”. He firmly told me I needed to march down to my great-aunt and go to catechism class. I was so stunned at his yelling and kicking me in the butt, that I went to catechism class without another word.
When I got home, my Pop was his usual calm self, but I knew he wasn’t going to let me get away without mentioning my bad behavior. He told me he couldn’t get glass to fix the window until the next day, but he had already covered the hole with cardboard. And he told me I needed to start thinking about other people in our family instead of just what I wanted. He made me feel selfish, because my actions were totally selfish. He apologized for kicking me in the butt, but truthfully, I think I deserved it. It wasn’t just my Pop who had to endure my temper tantrum, it was my entire family and while it may have felt great slamming the door in defiance, that door window was the top half of the door. The broken window let ice-cold air blow into the house.
I started thinking about self-control after that incident and I started working on my temper. I’ve never reached the same level of calm as my Pop, but I keep striving to treat other people like he did. We all make plenty of mistakes at parenting, but the one thing everyone can strive for is to tamp down on anger and work at not yelling.
People flying into rages about everything is an American pastime. It’s not just our politics where Americans have gone off the deep-end, it’s all around us in our culture and in way too many homes across America.
Although, How To Be A Hero To Your Kids , is a little dated and written from a Christian perspective, the lessons are universal. You don’t need a cape, superpowers, or celebrity status to be a good role model for your kids, but you need to get your priorities straight and be dedicated for the long haul.
Filed under Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest
Here’s a fascinating piece from The War on the Rocks:
Filed under Uncategorized
The political atmosphere in America continues to descend into deeper partisan divides and the media’s frenetic spinning the news keeps perpetuating confusion and keeping America’s politics in a state of constant chaos.
Believing the worst of political opponents and those who hold differing views is the new normal. Extreme partisans feverishly work to launch vicious smear campaigns to destroy the character of political opponents, without any concern for the veracity of their scurrilous attacks in this endless scorched earth information war. With American partisans so entrenched in this self-destructive, by-any-means necessary, war of words, the Russians don’t have to do much to “influence” or work to destroy our democratic institutions. Our own partisans are burning them down rapidly, while Putin sits back and laughs at “America developing political schizophrenia”.
Here are two reading recommendations
David French’s piece: To Defend Trump, The GOP Is Becoming a Party Bill Clinton Would Love
The other is a book, Stopping Words That Hurt, Positive Words In a World Gone Negative, by Dr. Michael Sedler. I read this book a couple years ago and last night I started reading it again. I have it in kindle format, but it’s available in paperback at amazon now. While the book is written from a Christian perspective, the lessons really are universal and just plain old common decency. He explains why, what biblically is referred to as “evil reporting”, lying, gossiping, spreading negative stories about others, is only half of the issue. He explains why listening to “evil reporting” is very destructive and he offers many positive personal strategies to “stopping words that hurt”. I need to work a lot harder on this.
In a country where the media and politicians are consumed by their scorched earth war of words, to win the news cycle, I think all of us need to start demanding a truce in this “cold civil war”.
“No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character”
– John, Viscount Morley
Character counts most, especially in leaders.
I started collecting memorable quotes in my early teens. The above quote is one of my favorite quotes, because it goes to the heart of human character. Along with collecting quotes, watching people and trying to figure out what makes them tick (how they operate) is another life-long hobby, of sorts. Often, even as a child, I would point out something someone said or did that made me distrust that person. My mother had a very trusting nature and wanted to believe in the best in people. I, on the other hand, prefer to assess what people say and do, to get to the heart of their character.
President Donald J. Trump is not a hapless, naive victim and the darkening clouds around his presidency aren’t just angry #Resist partisans out to do him in. The darkening clouds are caused by how Trump operates.
Even if Comey is a disgruntled former employee, a grandstander, acted totally inappropriately in leaking his memos or going along with Lynch on using Clinton talking points language and his July 5, 2016 public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton, that still leaves us with Trump asking Comey to publicly clear his name several times and having 9 private conversations with Comey – all of them about the Russian influence matter.
There are Republicans and Trump supporters hitting the media with a barrage about this being a partisan “witch-hunt”, which it most assuredly is, but it’s also just like with the Clintons, that Trump acted in ways that give every appearance of being very corrupt. Democrats have been willing to sacrifice every shred of honor to go out and spin and do damage control for the Clintons for decades. It now appears that many Republicans are willing to do the same thing for President Trump and partisan political purposes.
The Republican Party allowed its party to be hijacked by Trump and his strong-armed, tough-talking thugs, turning this election into some “do or die” civil war, where Trump was the “GOP Insurgent”, who was America’s last hope. How low Republicans and conservatives will sink to prop up Trump remains to be seen.
All along, I have refused to support Trump, because I believe he is just like the Clintons – amoral and thoroughly corrupt. I noted early in his presidency how corrupt it was for the president to personally be making business deals using the Office of the President as leverage. He not only made deals, he publicly disparaged some companies, using the Office of the President to damage private businesses. Back during the primary, in August of 2015, I wrote:
“The first Republican debate ended with no clear winner emerging. Sure, there were plenty of gotcha questions, but Donald Trump didn’t answer any questions in detail, except the one explaining his support for Democrats in the past. His followers will latch onto his bombastic, red meat, xenophobic rhetoric, missing that Trump personifies exactly what these supporters hate about Washington. He eloquently described buying politicians and peddling influence. He represents the worst part of big money greasing palms in DC. I would have asked him why he wanted Hillary Clinton at his wedding, since he said his big donations compelled her to attend.
Nothing Trump said demonstrated he studied the issues and did some research prior to this debate. His performance reminded me of Sarah Palin, who reveled in throwing out the same sort of red meat rhetoric, devoid of any substantive details. If he doesn’t bother to read up on and research the complex issues facing America for this debate, one can only wonder how he would handle them as President. It speaks to a narcissism that echoes the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, another “I am the greatest” ego.”
https://libertybellediaries.com/2015/08/07/trump-the-influence-peddler-in-chief/
Shortly after this LB blog post, in August 2015, there was the Trump/Kelly debate dust-up:
“Last week I bought one of Trump’s books, as I mentioned before, and I read it. Assuredly, Trump offered many interesting insights into, as the book’s title stated, “TRUMP: How to Get Rich”. The pride he takes in his children comes across and he offers some worthwhile advice on investing and negotiating, but trying to get to the character of who exactly is Donald Trump, well, he’s a man who has chapters in his book like “Be Strategically Dramatic”, “Sometimes You Still Have To Screw Them”, and “Sometimes You Have To Hold a Grudge”, replete with examples from his life and his guiding principles. Here are some quotes (page 138):
“When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye.”
Be paranoid. I know this observation doesn’t make any of us sound very good, but let’s face the fact that it’s possible that even your best friend wants to steal your spouse and your money.”
The chapter on holding a grudge is even more interesting, because Trump relates how for years he had donated huge amounts of money to NY governor, Mario Cuomo and when he called Cuomo to ask for a favor from Cuomo’s son, Andrew, who was running the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mario Cuomo refused to do the favor (which Trump doesn’t explain in detail other than to say it was an appropriate favor involving attention to a detail). Trump blew up and for any who are confused with Trump’s vendetta against Megyn Kelly on Twitter, calling her a bimbo last night or his refusing to entertain a question by Jorge Ramos from Univision this evening, well, this chapter on holding a grudge (page 142) explains it. Trump called in a political favor believing it was owed to him, because he donated a lot of money to Mario Cuomo (crony capitalism is what most people call this greasing of palms). Here is how Trump describes the phone call:
“I did the only thing that felt right to me. I began screaming. “You son of a bitch! For years I’ve helped you and never asked for a thing, and when I finally need something, and a totally proper thing at that, you aren’t there for me. You’re no good. You’re one of the most disloyal people I’ve known and as far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell.”
My screaming was so loud that two or three people came in from adjoining offices and asked who I was screaming at. I told them it was Mario Cuomo., a total stiff, a lousy governor, and a disloyal former friend. Now whenever I see Mario at dinner, I refuse to acknowledge him, talk to him, or even look at him.”
When you hear Trump whining about being treated unfairly, here’s what I believe he means: If you agree with him, fawn over him and puff up his ego, that’s treating him fairly. If you disagree or criticize him, I believe, he will wage an all out campaign to destroy you. So, I keep wondering how his character will play in the long, arduous rough and tumble of presidential politics, where being ripped apart by opposition research, pundits and reporters only escalates as the campaign wears on”
https://libertybellediaries.com/2015/08/25/trumps-his-own-bimbo-eruption/
The most disturbing aspects of Trump’s retaliation against Kelly were his supporters running hit pieces about her, digging up her Howard Stern interview to cast her as a “slut” and he called Roger Ailes to try and get her booted as a debate moderator. Trump encouraged his followers not to watch FOX News. Later, Trump refused to show up for a FOX debate, set-up a vet fundraiser, to try and upstage the debate and then months later, controversy arose with how the funds raised in that vet fundraiser were handled.
Kelly was a private citizen and it worried me how Trump would use the power of the presidency, when he was willing to use his power as a celebrity and leading GOP presidential candidate to try to harm not only her job, but to rally his followers to attack her.
Preet Bharara, a former federal prosecutor, may be friends with Chuck Schumer, may be angry Trump fired him, but this morning he stated that President Trump called him 3 times in one month, 2 times before inauguration and 1 time after inauguration. Bharara said he refused to take the third call, when Trump was president and reported the contacts to the chief of staff to the Attorney General. These phone calls left an electronic trail and that Bharara reported these calls to the chief of staff to the Attorney General can be corroborated. Do I believe Bharara? Absolutely. Bharara felt like President Trump was trying to cultivate a relationship. The interesting thing to find out is if Trump called other federal prosecutors around the country, where he didn’t have “personal business interests”.
Bharara is well-known for his fight against public corruption.
Trump is known for bragging about buying politicians.
Yesterday, some of the most ardent Trump pundits were out in full-force trying to smear Robert Mueller too and this scorched earth character assassination is the same thing the Clintons and Democrats have engaged in to bury Clinton scandals. It is corrupt, immoral and extremely damaging to the country, because it corrupts American culture.
Whether Republicans are willing to give Mueller the Starr treatment remains to be seen.
Will Republicans make propping up President Donald J. Trump, the “GOP Insurgent” and extremely corrupt crony capitalist, the hill they die on?
Filed under American Character, General Interest, Public Corruption
The story of this rug, that my father bought for me when I was a child, is in my 2013 blog post, My Lucky Rabbit
libertybelle diaries 