All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Taibbi is a progressive through and through. But he’s actually a journalist! He’s honest about the lack of objectivity or even reality that the Left has embraced. Good for him.
‘Corroboration Zero’: An Inspector General’s Report Reveals the Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke
Here is the text of Durham’s reaction to I.G. Horowitz’s report:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, December 9, 2019
Statement of U.S. Attorney John H. Durham
“I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff. However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
For me the informative statement is, “last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham has the evidence and he’s going to find out who will be forced to take responsibility for abusing the FISA mechanism. I wonder how soon the grand jury will be empaneled? My longer-term readers know I am a vindictive so and so. It would give me the greatest pleasure to hear that the lucky recipient of the Grand Jury’s attention decided to sell his fellow conspirators down the river. Is it too much to hope for some action as a Christmas present? Sigh. Time will tell.
But the bigger picture is how this will impact the Democratic Primaries, the Impeachment Fraud and the 2020 Election. Once again, I think we have to assume the Democrats are depending on the Media to downplay any negative impact from the investigation.
With respect to the primaries the biggest risk is for Biden. If the overseas investigation touches on the Ukraine crimes then he won’t be the Democrat candidate in 2020. I’m not sure Ukraine will actually show up in the investigation. We’ll have to depend on Rudy Giuliani and the Senate to play up that angle.
As far as the Impeachment nonsense, it’s clear that the Attorney General’s investigation (through Durham) is what really caused the impeachment decision. Possibly the Ukraine call was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Clapper and Brennan must be pretty scared. But the Impeachment will be finished off pretty soon because if they don’t start soon it’s going to knock the various Senators running for president out of the race. So possibly the investigation won’t get into high gear until the Senate exonerates the President. Waiting that long is really annoying so I hope it’s not the case.
Finally, with respect to the 2020 election, if the investigation uncovers a true smoking gun, e.g., if one of the mid-level or higher conspirators turns state’s evidence, then President Trump will win in a landslide and the Republicans will end up with sizable majorities in the Congress. If the investigation is only the normal trial of overambitious bureaucrats then the President will still win but more in line with his 2016 win.
So, let me end with an exhortation to Durham and Barr. Hey boys, get to work! Life is short and as one of my friends always says to me whenever I get excited about the Durham investigation, “it’s not enough unless they frog-march Comey and company out of their houses at 3am like they did to those poor guys whose only crime was they wouldn’t lie about Trump.”
The IG’s Russiagate Report has been published and is available
https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
Two of the recommendations seem to point at who Durham will be starting with:
The Department’s Office of Professional
Responsibility should review our findings related
to the conduct of Department attorney Bruce Ohr
for any action it deems appropriate. Ohr’s
current supervisors in CRM should also review
our findings related to Ohr’s performance for any
action they deem appropriate.
The FBI should review the performance of all
employees who had responsibility for the
preparation, Woods review, or approval of the
FISA applications, as well as the managers,
supervisors, and senior officials in the chain of
command of the Carter Page investigation for
any action it deems appropriate.
The first recommendation is specific to Bruce Ohr.
The second one is for the Carter Page FISA team. Looks like those are the sacrificial lambs. Barr and Durham, go get ’em.
post script – Durham says he has more and better info than the IG:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/statement-us-attorney-john-h-durham
Go get ’em Mr. Durham!
post post script
And Barr also says “not so fast!”
Go get ’em Mr. Barr.
How can you beat this title? Vote For Me You Lying Racist!
David Catron had this article in the American Spectator. Well written, true and sardonically funny. What else do you need?
This Thursday, 12DEC2019, is the British General Election. Currently, the Tories are way ahead of Labour in the polls but the smaller parties will come into play if the Tories can’t get an overall majority. But at least this week, finally we’ll know if Brexit will actually happen.
Tomorrow is supposed to be the IG’s report on Russiagate. We’ve been told that it will be a nothing burger. If that is the case it will make liars out of several of the sources we heard from last month. Anyway, it’s about time it finally ends. Durham better have something real and have it real soon.
The Pelosi Psychiatric Facility will be performing their Impeachment Follies next week also. Meh.
Lots of stuff going on, hopefully lots of laughs. Stay tuned.
Four years ago, Michael Anton named the 2016 presidential election the Flight 93 Election. The analogy was that voting for Donald Trump was the equivalent of storming the cockpit to attempt to stop the Democrats (and Republicans) from hijacking and crashing the Unites States of America.
Unexpectedly it worked. And over the last few years we have seen just how apt the Flight 93 metaphor was. But we have moved well beyond the analogy because although we may have wrested the cockpit out of the hands of the terrorists, the plane is still taking anti-aircraft fire from enemy forces on the ground.
Well, enough of that metaphor. Let’s try a new one. A few days ago I reviewed the current state of the Democrat Presidential Primary and I declared that the only way they could get me to watch them was if I thought I’d get a laugh out of it. Creepy Uncle Joe could get me to listen to his Tales of Corn Pop or watch him bite his wife’s hand but I wasn’t interested anymore in watching their boring debates or commercials.
But on closer inspection I think maybe boring is the wrong word. I think the correct word is painful.
Let me elaborate. When Liarwatha or Bernie starts yammering about the Green New Deal or Medicaid for All, the disconnection from reality is actually painful to listen to. A sane listener experiences a jarring cognitive dissonance. It’s like someone is scratching his fingernails across a chalkboard or when you bite down on a sore tooth. So, it would take quite a bit to get me to listen to this stuff again.
And the same thing occurred when the Schiff gang began their little sitcom around impeachment. Listening to Pelosi’s minions pretending to be Watergate investigators is just too tedious and nonsensical to follow for more than a minute or two at a time. One of my friends sent me a link to the testimony Jonathan Turley gave at the hearings. He is the one “expert” that wasn’t an obvious hack trying to legitimize the Schiff kangaroo court. I listened to his measured and balanced discussion of what kind of presidential actions would and would not amount to an impeachable offense. I found him credible. But I also realized that he would not influence opinion one way or another. Forty percent of the country would agree with him, another forty percent would call him a liar and the last Twenty Percent would be “unsure.” The needle wouldn’t even twitch. So why should I watch this stuff if it makes no difference at all? I mean I think it’s good for our side to put their side of the story out there to make sure the Twenty Percent hears both sides of the story but for me and my readers there’s no new information provided.
Which brings me back to what I was saying the other day. The only possible reason to watch the Democrats is for entertainment value. Creepy Uncle Joe or foaming at the mouth commies will have to pull out all the stops if they want me to tune in. The denizens of the Island of Broken Toys will have to really try to get me to watch. Maybe a three stooges slap fight between Joe, Petey and Bernie or a hair pulling cat fight between Fauxcahantas and Hillary might get me to view but not much else. I mean after the Swalwell fart it has all, more or less, been done.
So here we are with a United States Presidential Election going on, hundreds of millions of Americans making up their minds who will wield the most powerful office of the most powerful nation that has ever existed. The occupant of this office, an office that has as one of its responsibilities deciding whether to launch a thermonuclear strike with the planetary extinction capability of the US nuclear arsenal, will be chosen by this process. And as the leading opposition candidates for that job we have Creepy Uncle Joe, Liarwatha, Bernie the Stalinist and Butt Pete. There is no other way to characterize the situation but as a bizarro world scenario. The classical description is Alice in Wonderland. We have a normal observer, Alice, confronted by a world where everything is inverted and the normal rules of nature are suspended. She struggles to cope with the inconsistency and outright madness but finds herself unable to do more than move from one absurdity to the next. In this analogy no one would try to make sense of the Mad Hatter or the Queen of Hearts. It would be futile. Admittedly some people find this amusing but a steady diet of this sort of thing results in the experience I noted at the beginning of this essay, jarring cognitive dissonance.
To my mind the sensible way to address this election is to try and sway the Twenty Percent by highlighting the positive results and agenda of President Trump and exposing the absurd and dangerous positions and bizarre behaviors of his opponents. This is what the talking heads on the Right need to do. They need to pound away at Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and the Deep State that handed them this hot mess. It’s up to Bill Barr and John Durham to connect the dots on what the Russia and Ukraine scandals are really about. If it turns out that Hunter Biden was part of a bigger payday for the Obama administration then that will cook Joe Biden’s goose for sure. But even without that I think we’ll see our side prevail in 2020.
For me this though this is not the mission. I preach to the choir. There’s no need to bang that drum. You all know all this. My job is to provide my opinions and hopefully amuse. So, I don’t want to bore anyone with logical arguments as to why the Democrats are wrong about this or that policy position. You all know they’re the enemy. I don’t have to convince you. What I need to do is find some interesting things to discuss about the world we live in and make fun of the evil cretins who want to make us Orwellian slaves. And that’s what I’ll do, I will chronicle the evil, stupid, absurd and insane doings of the Progressives and their allies in the Media and the Deep State. That is my mission in the Alice in Wonderland Election. So down the rabbit hole we go. Hopefully we’ll meet on the outside again after we wake from the nightmare.
It’s always nice to see some numbers that confirm what you think is going on. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan don’t seem to think Schiff is doing the country any favors.
https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/03/impeachment-is-backfiring-in-the-midwest/
Well here we are in December and Kamala Harris even ending her campaign is so boring I can barely bother to fake interest in watching her rip-cord speech. And I shouldn’t have bothered. She didn’t even cry or anything. Sure, her face looked kind of spastic at points but that’s just her face. Of course, she gave us the blather about fighting on and on for women and persons of color and colorful personal women but it looked like she was really connecting the dots hoping she can be Butt Pete’s running mate. There just wasn’t any fun in the whole thing.
So, the highlights of the race in the last few weeks were:
Well all right, that last one doesn’t count because Swalwell resigned a while ago. But it actually was the funniest thing in the list. Honestly, it’s starting to seem like even the Democrats know that they will lose in 2020 but feel like they have to hang in there just in case famine or pestilence breaks out to save them. Unfortunately, they’re atheists and divine intervention wouldn’t take their side.
The other hope they hold is the Impeachment Show. But it seemed to run out of gas and viewers last week and turning it over to Nadler doesn’t promise to improve things. No, they’re going to have to try to hold the public’s interest on their own with debates and commercials and PBS and CBS specials. But it’s hopeless. The only non-boring actors, Biden and Sanders, are certifiable loons. Creepy Uncle Joe gets weirder every time he opens his mouth and it can’t be long before he starts undressing on stage and challenges the audience to a wrestling match. Bernie, on the other hand, will eventually slip up and reveal his deep longing for the return of Stalinist Russia and the good old days.
A month or two ago I threw in the towel on Joe being the candidate and assumed Liarwatha was the front runner. But supposedly she imploded when people figured out the Green New Deal and Medicaid for All would actually mean the new tax rate would be 150% of total salary. So now Butt Pete is “The Man,” sort of. But let’s face it, none of them can win or even look like a realistic candidate for President of the United States. And admittedly Donald Trump wouldn’t have seemed like a likely candidate for president a generation ago. But the gap between President Trump and this Field of Losers from the Island of Broken Toys is disturbing. I can only assume they’re saving the normal candidates for 2024.
All right, so that’s where we are. Bloomfield and Patrick have joined the circus but more clowns are not going to change the equation. I still hold out great hope that the Presidential Debates between the President and whichever midget is nominated will be a laugh riot. But until then I’ll have to subsist on Biden gaffes and Swalwell gas.
How the year does fly. Another remarkable journey around the sun is almost complete and so of course we get to the two Great Holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are the times when we gather together with friends and family and enjoy rich food and good company. And Thanksgiving is supposed to be the day we count our blessings.
The last couple of years have been happier and more prosperous thanks to President Trump’s policies. The economy has recovered from the Bush/Obama Depression and a number of his executive actions and judicial selections have given us something to be hopeful about. The “Resistance” has seemed to reach the point of open absurdity with impeachment now looking like a losing issue for the Democrats instead of the President.
So, all of that is reason to be thankful and I agree it is. But what I’m most thankful for is that I can see.
I can see through the GOP Establishment in the government and in the press and recognize them as just part of the enemy that we must beat. They are the ones who have been responsible over and over for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory and selling us down the river to the Progressives for money. The Republican politicians did it for the money they get from lobbyists to vote for sending our jobs and industries to China and allowing endless immigrants to replace us. The Republican Pundits (and judges) sold us out for the right to go to the Left-Wing dinner parties and rub elbows with the Cloud People.
That knowledge is what I’m thankful for. Now I know who my enemy is and I also know what I have to do to protect me and mine from their agenda. Donald Trump showed us what it means to be unafraid of being called a deplorable. If all they can do is call you a racist or misogynist or homophobe or transphobe then we can ignore them and get on with our lives. We can search out like minded individuals and form our own society. It won’t be easy or without pain but so what? What good thing ever is? And we won’t vote for anymore McCains or Bushes or Romneys. No more mealy-mouthed losers who call themselves Christians or Conservatives or whatever they want to pretend to be but vote for depravity and defeat. No more.
This year I took the whole Thanksgiving week off and was able to enjoy time with family and help prepare a little for the feast. This year we have family from near and far arriving and Camera Girl has risen to the challenge and will have a total of 48 pounds of turkey and two refrigerators full of other mouth-watering delights including cornbread and sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, sweet potatoes, candied yams, buttered rolls, buttered corn, cranberry sauce, cranberry jello mold, peas and onions, roasted Brussel sprouts and cranberries and string beans and almonds. For dessert there will be apple pie, pumpkin pie, cocoanut custard pie, blueberry pie, home-made ricotta cheese cake, ice cream and chocolate covered fruit. And lots of strong coffee
After that we’ll collapse in the living room and watch Laurel and Hardy in the 1934 movie, “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and the 1939 animated version of, “Gulliver’s Travels.” Then I’ll spend time playing with my grandchildren and making plans with them for the holidays.
So, tomorrow may not see much in the way of posting unless something earth shaking occurs.
But Happy Thanksgiving to all you folks out there and may you and your family enjoy a feast and a wonderful time.
Trying to handicap a presidential election is far from an exact science. So, let’s have some fun.
Here is a map of the 2016 presidential results in terms of the electoral college votes. Trump won by 77 electoral votes, 304 to 227.
A few things come to mind. That 77 electoral college vote lead in 2016 translates into a lot of flexibility in 2020. The three big surprises in 2016 were Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Well a 77 electoral college vote lead means you can lose additional states with up to an additional 38 electoral votes and still win the election. For instance, Pennsylvania and Michigan have big cities like Detroit and Philadelphia where voter fraud is almost the rule. Together those two states have 36 electoral votes. If President Trump won all the states he won before except for Pennsylvania and Michigan, he’d still win. That’s pretty good. It would be very close but he’d still win. But you might say what about Wisconsin and its 10 votes? Well, the folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin are still relatively honest and in fact the blue-collar workers up there have actually increased their support for President Trump over the last several years. I’ll say that it is possible that Wisconsin could go too but let’s look at those two states together.
Now look at some of the “close” states he lost.
Notice in each case that a third-party candidate (either Libertarian or Never-Trump or both) represented more than enough votes to turn the race around if shifted to the Republicans.
The first item up is Minnesota. Trump lost by less than 45,000 votes. McMullin who was a Never-Trumper protest candidate took over 53,000 votes. That tells you there were over 53,000 extra republican voters available in 2016. Well in 2020 McMullin won’t be running or if he is only Bill Kristol will be voting for him. But most of those 53,000 Republicans will be voting. Not to mention all the other blue-collar Democrats who now know that President Trump is pro-worker. My strong opinion is that President Trump will pick up Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes in 2020. So, going back to an earlier scenario, let’s say that Wisconsin flips, well it’s just as likely that we’ll snag Minnesota this time instead. That’s pretty good.
The other states are a lot harder to handicap until we know who the Democrat candidate will be. If Bernie or Liarwatha is the Democrat candidate then either one of their socialist platforms will be a big problem for the libertarians. And if that’s the case then Gary Johnson’s pot head voters might vote their pocketbooks and in Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine and Colorado that should be more than enough to tilt all those states to President Trump.
In theory that would change the Electoral College scores (all other things being equal) to 337 to 194. Of course, this assumes that the Democrats would allow their daft electorate to choose their own candidate. In actuality the politburo wants Creepy Uncle Joe or Bloomberg or Deval Patrick to be the candidate. And that’s the big question mark. Can they make the switch at the convention? The way things are going Biden may not make it to the convention. He may be an indicted co-conspirator along with his nincompoop son Hunter for the Ukraine mess. So that would require either Bloomberg or Obama’s mini-me shadow Patrick to play candidate. Neither is really the perfect candidate. Bloomberg is an insufferable rich guy trying to get the votes of the urban poor that he subjected to the stop and frisk program in New York City which in Progressive circles is considered an abomination. Patrick is a short squeaky voiced doofus that will be less than inspiring to the same urban crowd. I’m guessing neither of them will bring out the Obama sized voting crowd.
But let’s say it is Bloomberg or Patrick. That will cut into the Gary Johnson vote for sure. But does it really change the overall situation on the ground? In either of those scenarios I see Minnesota and the states he won in 2016 still going to President Trump and the rest of those states above toss-ups that, let’s say, go to the Dems. Final Electoral College total 314 to 217. That’s almost a hundred-point difference. That means President trump has a pad of 46 points that can go against him and still win. That’s more electoral votes than in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan combined. That’s as much as Texas and Wisconsin combined.
So those are the rosiest projections. Between now and Election Day a lot of bad things can happen. But you would have to borrow a lot of trouble to assume at this point that the odds are against us. The economy, the stupidity of the Democrats, the obvious falseness of all the Deep State machinations against the President’s administration all add up to an advantage at the polls. The items like voter fraud and changing demographics all existed almost identically in 2016. Plus, the president has energized his base and they are behind him 100%. Even the independents are starting to break his way. A lot can go wrong but right now is not the time for fretting. The wind is at our backs and the prospects for even better things seem to be there.