[Update a few minutes later]
[Monday-morning update, after the Barr letter was released on Sunday]
Glenn Reynolds has some links.
My brief thoughts: Both in refusing to properly administer the law in the case of the Clinton server to keep her campaign viable, and in concocting a false case against first a presidential candidate of the opposing party, and then the president, weaponizing all the legal and intelligence tools against him, this was the greatest abuse of federal power in American history. Those responsible, at the highest levels of government, even into the Obama White House, must be held to account, or the people will no longer be able to trust the most powerful institutions of the Republic. The continuous lies from the Democrats and the media about “Russian collusion” no doubt contributed to the loss of the House to the Democrats last year, if not caused it in and of themselves. Not only must those responsible for the abuse of power be held to legal account, but it would be just and fitting for this to result in a great victory against the Democrats in both the presidential and congressional races next year. It’s unfortunate that the Republicans would be the beneficiary of that, but sadly, we have no good choices in political parties, and haven’t in my lifetime.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Glenn, his latest USA Today column: Collusion by the media, but don’t expect any apologies. And more at The Morning Brief.
[Update a while later]
This wasn’t just the biggest abuse of federal power in American history, but the biggest media failure in American history.
[Update at noon]
The real threat to the Republic: The Democrat Party. It always has been.
[Afternoon update]
No collusion, but the #Resistance is still yelling about it.
And Russiagate is WMD times a million.
The media should engage in a struggle session, but they won’t.
I’ll remember where I was when first I heard that the report had been released on Friday (Anza Borrego State Park, looking at a superbloom of wildflowers).
If you look carefully at the bottom shot, you’ll see a mountain sheep ram standing on top of the ridge (this was with my phone, kicking myself that we hadn’t taken a camera with a zoom lens).
I’ll also remember where I was when we heard the Barr letter being read on the radio yesterday: Looking at more wildflowers, including poppies, on a hillside north of Lake Elsinore (the crowds were apparently horrific down there in Walker Canyon, but this road was relatively empty).
The orange splash on the distant hillside in the top picture is the same kind of golden poppies (the California state flower) as the ones in the bottom picture, by the side of the road.
[Late afternoon update]
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with Mueller, but sees signs of hope.
At this point, unless you are Mueller or Barr; the details of the report are still withheld from the public. For now, I’m ok with it. Earlier this year, I read through Gregg Jarrett’s The Russian Hoax. The book was well researched and written. Yet, I hated it, and ever more so as I read on to the end.
It’s not just that Hillary paid for this garbage of a dossier and peddled it. That’s who she is, and what she’s done all her life. The only collusion during 2016 was hers and the DNC to block Sanders, Hillary and CNN on debate questions in both the primary and general election, and her and an UK spy that colluded with Russian spies. Apparently none of that is illegal, although I would think what her and the DNC would constitute fraud. But I didn’t vote in her primary, and so I wasn’t defrauded.
I understand the Democrats desire to disrupt Trump’s presidency. I understand the tit-for-tat of each side appointing special prosecutors. Obama was the only not to get one. It seemed the tit-for-tat had ended. But instead we picked up it back up.
What I couldn’t take was how many knew this was a farce and did nothing. Either these people are the most gullible people in human history, or they are liars. It’s almost impossible to disprove anything, but the dossier was an exception. It failed to even match up supposed travels by Trump and Cohen with plausible dates in which their whereabouts would either put them in Russia or Prague or were otherwise unknown. It also became obvious that the investigation of Trump was setup by the recusal of Sessions as far back as his confirmation hearing. And the dossier was the tool to make that and so much more happen.
From there, the snowball of deceit just gets worse. Everyone was calling for Comey to resign or be fired all the way up to the day Trump fired him. Then somehow this nitwit, that couldn’t read the law as written, lead an investigation that could collect missing evidence in the hands of a pedophile, or plan Hillary’s exoneration to boost her vote, became some paragon of virtue. Sessions recusal gave Rosenstein, who likewise should have been recused as he wrote a letter recommending Comey’s firing and then some, appointed Mueller, who should have recused himself as a friend of Comey’s and having just interviewed to be his replacement. The trap was sprung on the American people.
From that point on; an investigation of a farce has gone on for over 2 years. Political operatives on both sides have collected a paycheck by pretending to see unicorns that nobody else could see. The only jail time is for crimes that happened before Trump’s campaign, or sketchy procedural issues. Nobody has been held to account for perjury to the FISA court or to Congress. Nobody has been held to account for leaking classified or investigative information. And it appears now; nobody will be held to account for the collusion that obviously did occur by the Hillary campaign.
Every member of the GOP that did nothing from 2017 through 2018 should be ashamed of themselves. They will be shamed by me. At least and until certain Democrat operatives face jail time for this fraud. And I do think some GOP operatives may need jail too.
But I got a nickel that says we will now pivot to nothing happening, because it would “tear apart this country”. I won’t be happy with it. Yet, I can accept mutual disarming. However, that can’t happen while Democrat House members are currently abusing the IRS to pull Trump’s tax returns. My advice is for them to stop it. Stop it now. You really don’t want to open that box.
At the time of Mr. Comey’s firing, one of my sanctimonious neighbors here in the People Republic of Ulyanov* put a sign in their suburban-house picture window “Special Counsel”, meaning he was for it.
I am just waiting for the same number to put up a sign, “Never mind!”
* once known as Madison, but after the desecration of the graves of Confederate prisoners of war who died under “camp conditions” in a place just across an alley from my office, it was pointed out that James Madison held other human beings as slaves, hence the newer name for this city.
The DNC media is in a bit of a bind. How could/can they report the truth about what happened? They were willing participants.
Was there a single media outlet that didn’t help rig the Hillary investigation? Was there a media outlet that didn’t partner with Fusion GPS to propigate the Democrat’s and Government’s attacks against Trump?
They knew what they were doing. They weren’t conned, they were in on the con, especially CNN and MSNBC who hired Brennan and Clapped. These two made regular appearances and claimed perfect knowledge about Russian collusion based on what they knew as heads of the CIA and DNI.
So the media can’t tell the truth. And they don’t want to because the truth leads to Obama being the most corrupt President in our history and the media’s support of his efforts to rig a presidential election and stage a coup.
Our only hope is that there are enough GOP congressmen who have the stones to reveal everything to the public.
At this point I would settle for the GOP speaking up about vote fraud and taking steps to crack down on it wherever they can.
Or putting up competent candidates that inspire people to vote for them.
I also want a pony.
You might get the pony.
I was just surfing a left-leaning blog where the progressives were so in denial that one said that Mueller’s investigation never mattered -because the amount of evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians that’s already been revealed is so vast and overwhelming that only blind partisan Republicans denied it.
I found that pretty amazing. There is absolutely no way for reality to contact these people.
There’s never been any evidence. Mueller looked for two years and couldn’t find any.
The claim never even made any sense. Of all the people who could help a candidate with a campaign, the Russians would rate somewhere below Belgians (who have modern elections) or Argentinians (who at least speak Spanish). Of all the people the Russians might have been supporting on the political side, to get down to someone like Trump, a TV reality star who runs beauty contests, the Russians would have to skip everyone in Washington DC who has a reserved parking spot. The Kremlin would have to be flipping through a Rolodex with names like David Hasselhoff and Rick Harrison of Pawn Stars to find Trump’s name.
But apparently progressives are so convinced that Trump colluded that Mueller finding nothing doesn’t even have a tiny impact on their certainty. They are probably the same kind of people that in North Korea would honestly believe that Kim’s body is so efficient that he doesn’t poop.
The whole Trump-colluded-with-Russia thing is exactly analogous to one of those wacky cults that believe the world is going to end at a particular time on a particular day. The fated day and hour having come and gone with no sign of the Apocalypse should, by rights, blow these cults to smithereens, but they generally just seem to double down and keep going.
The modern left is organized denial of reality. Since most of them have government jobs or welfare, there’s no need for them to live in the real world… the money keeps coming, no matter what they do.
The problem, of course, is that they’re burning through masses of social and economic capital that won’t last much longer.
They can’t point to any evidence of collusion, only speaking to Russians about things other than hacking the Hillary campaign and the DNC.
Trump wanted to open a hotel in Moscow, so his organization talked to Russians. This is somehow spun as collusion.
There are two events that are the closest to collusion, the Trump Tower meeting and Roger Stone communicating with Wikileaks.
The Trump tower meeting was with a Russian lawyer working for the Hillary campaign, so Mueller couldn’t use that in court. The media uses it all the time without informing the public who her employer is.
There was potential in the Roger Stone case. But now, it looks like perjury over statements on the dates of when things took place. Otherwise, the Mueller report would have said there was collusion.
I expect it would take at least several boxes to hold Trump’s return for any given year. That’s assuming that most or all of his income isn’t derived from various trusts, LLCs and corporations. For those we’re talking truck loads.
At the same time, I’ll bet he has a group of IRS auditors that spend each and every year going over his returns and back and forth with his accountants. The chance of finding anything substantive is less than the Russian thing.
I wonder if the most embarrassing revelation wouldn’t be that he is worth less than a lot of people think. Even proving that would probably take forensic accountants until past the next election.
I thought he missed a bet when he didn’t say he’d support compulsory disclosure provided that it was extended to Congress.
“I thought he missed a bet when he didn’t say he’d support compulsory disclosure provided that it was extended to Congress.”
Yes indeed. Would have loved to see libs in Congress/media head’s explode if he had done that. Reminds me a bit of during the 2016 election campaign after one of the Clinton/Trump debates someone suggested that Trump’s frequent “sniffing” during the debate was symptomatic of possible drug (cocaine) abuse. Calls were starting for Trump to take a drug test. Then Trump ended said calls by saying fine but only if she (Clinton) also takes a drug test. They (the media/pundits) ran away from that issue so fast like it was Ebola; suddenly he (Trump) was “paranoid” for suggesting such a thing. Was never brought up again afterwards; kind of makes one wonder what kinds of meds Hillary is on?
” I’ll bet he has a group of IRS auditors that spend each and every year going over his returns and back and forth with his accountants. The chance of finding anything substantive is less than the Russian thing.”
Anyone wanna bet that if there were something, the IRS *wouldn’t* leak it out?
My bet is that if there was anything really dirty in the IRS records on Trump it would leak. The worst we’d likely to find is a disallowed deduction. Though if they could get Trump’s tax records without the shadow of a grossly illegal leak I’m sure the democrats would try to spin that as felony tax evasion.
I’ve seen a Matt Taibbi article at least make a few dents in liberals’ heads.
Russiagate is WMD Times a Million
It’s long because he’s going over almost every piece of breathless reporting that the press has pushed over the past two years, all of it ridiculous, pathetic, and desperate.
Trump needs to go after every single government employee that participated in the attempted coup. Then he should pardon Hillary and Obama.
Pardons would follow them through history just as much as convictions and it would be quicker than dragging those weasels into court.
He could just let the wheels of DoJ and IG’s and whatnot turn till they’re squeaking that lots indictments are going to be issued, and then give a long rambling speech and issue the pardons.
Politically, that would be far more effective than trials that the press would spin 24/7 as kangaroo courts and political hit lists and the end of democracy and Stalin.
As for the Mueller report, watching Democrat pundits head’s exploding all over the place today might have been worth the wait. They really are completely unhinged. As one article at the Federalist put it, the press really did become a giant episode of “Ancient Aliens”.
Yes, the media would frame it as show trials because a real trial would show how they plotted with Obama officials and the DNC to construct media coverage to help rig the election and overthrow the President in a coup. They can’t turn back and that is why they have responded by doubling down over the weekend.
It is just like the election when they demanded Trump respect the outcome. Then they demanded he respect Mueller. They reacted to losing the same way both times.
In what way did the media fail? To answer that we must know what their purpose was. Objectively, they didn’t fail. They were the most successful they have ever been.
It is not like the media operated in good faith and made an oppsie. They were willing and knowledgeable participants. This is why we aren’t seeing any introspection but rather doubling down and lots of pounces, seizes, characterizes types of weasel words to make Trump look bad for talking about being innocent.
Without a doubt, Mueller and his corrupt band of DNC stooges intentionally left some doubt on obstruction precisely so that this meme could go on.
The media did not fail in the mission they gave themselves:
Constant accusation and pressure on Trump to depress his numbers and limit the progress he could make. Drive a wedge between Trump and the GOPe so that the power of the GOP in Congress was fractured.
Endless accusations; endless predictions of “the noose tightening”, endless painting Trump as guilty. That was the mission.
Regarding the photos, California wouldn’t be overrun by noxious weeds like that if they weren’t so paranoid about herbicides like Weed-B-Gone.
Philistine. That’s the state flower. My dad actually planted some in a foot-wide flower bed next to the garage when I was a kid. They thrived, and I was impressed that we had the state flower growing in our yard.
I don’t think any of my brother’s friends ever raided them in hopes of extracting opium…
Nice pictures Rand.
It is nice to be reminded that with all the craziness going on around us, we can step outside and take comfort that the world caries on.