It’s about to get an overhaul. NASA needs one, too, but Congress will never stand for it; insufficient opportunities for graft.
Category Archives: War Commentary
Nazis
Yes, sorry, but they really were socialists, and there is nothing “right wing” about them.
Related: Dinesh D’Souza apparently has a new book
Dinesh D’Souza explodes the Left’s big lie. He expertly exonerates President Trump and his supporters, then uncovers the Democratic Left’s long, cozy relationship with Nazism: how the racist and genocidal acts of early Democrats inspired Adolf Hitler’s campaign of death; how fascist philosophers influenced the great 20th century lions of the American Left; and how today’s anti-free speech, anti-capitalist, anti-religious liberty, pro-violence Democratic Party is a frightening simulacrum of the Nazi Party.
Yup.
The Imran Awan Case
It needs a special counsel a thousand times more than Russiagate:
There are a lot of shoelaces to be tied up here. Among them:
Why did Debbie Wasserman Schultz keep this man in her employ right up until he was arrested Tuesday night when he has been under suspicion for months. Does he have something on her or other people?
Why did Nancy Pelosi lie when she said she never heard of Awan? Email revealed by Wikileaks says Awan had access to Pelosi’s iPad. (Wiklileaks has never been shown to be inaccurate.)
What is on the smashed hard drives Awan is trying to retrieve from the FBI? (Oh, those Democrats and their hard drives.)
Why is Awan suddenly being legally represented at the highest level by Clinton ultra-loyalist Chris Gowan — a fact-checker for Bill Clinton’s memoir of all things? (They are already using the same right-wing conspiracy baloney they used in the Lewinski case.) Does this make sense if Awan’s just a low-life fraudster? Why not let him dangle?
Just what is the relationship, if any, between the Awan case and the unsolved Seth Rich murder? Is it entirely an accident that Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s brother Steven is accused of blocking the investigation? Denials from Debbie aren’t worth much anymore.
Where did the Wikileaks come from anyway? Was it really Russia?
Funny thing, though, the alphabet news organizations don’t even seem to think this is a story.
[Update a few minutes later]
More links from Glenn.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Understanding the Awan connection:
Hezbollah aside, the danger posed by scandal-plagued, debt-ridden IT professionals on Capitol Hill is obvious, especially when (1) they have access to national security information and (2), if I may say so, when they are connected to Pakistan. It’s impossible not to wonder who may have received data the Awans had access to, especially given Pakistan’s history of collaborating with a various foreign countries and entities — including both friends and foes of America.
Finally, according to Raisley, Imran Awan had access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password. This probably means the brothers had direct access to DNC emails. Might they have sold them to Russians? Might they have sold them to non-Russians?
Clearly, I’ve entered the realm of speculation. But if the mainstream media is going to speculate endlessly about President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, shouldn’t it also be speculating about the Awan connection? And if Trump is to be investigated endlessly by the government, shouldn’t the Awan connection be investigated, as well?
So what’s keeping Sessions from assigning a special prosecutor? He hasn’t recused himself from this.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Total MSNBC and CNN blackout of the story continues.
[Sunday-morning update]
This is about a lot more than bank fraud. As Mark Steyn says, want to see real collusion with a hostile power? Because this is what it looks like. And just how bad is the rot at the FBI that they let all this go on for so long?
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Roger Simon reviews all of the scandals:
Quite a litany, huh? Are all six connected? It’s hard to say at this time. Maybe all are or none are. I would imagine it’s some, if not all. But they’re all connected morally — plus beneath all this are the endless leaks, which I suppose could constitute a scandal of their own.
Now let’s play that game from Sesame Street — “One of these things is not like the others.” Yes, you got it. It’s number one. In that case, Republicans are under suspicion. In the other five, it’s the Democrats. And yet the only one under official investigation by Robert Mueller and crew is one. Something rotten in the state of…? You bet!
Yup. If Republicans were smart, they’d be screaming for investigation into all of this, beyond what Jim Jordan and a few others have been doing. But if Republican were smart, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
[Monday-morning update]
Let’s investigate all the scandals:
The House Republicans identify no fewer than 14 additional scandals or potential scandals that they want investigated by a second special counsel, Robert Mueller having shown himself to be a tool of the Democratic Party (my characterization, not theirs).
…At a time when the corruption of the Democratic Party stinks to high heaven, it is absurd that the “investigation” garnering nearly all the headlines relates to something that didn’t happen. It is time to fight fire with fire.
The House Republicans addressed their letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Sessions may or may not have been correct in recusing himself with regard to the investigation into the Trump campaign, but he certainly has no need to defer with regard to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the fourteen additional subjects raised by the House Judiciary Committee members. He should appoint one or more additional special counsels to go after the Democrats. They should all be loyal Republican attack dogs. And when the dust has settled, the special counsel law should be repealed.
The Democrats have gotten away with (in some cases, literally) murder for decades, thanks to the Democrat operatives with bylines in the media.
[Bumped again]
[Update a while later]
Yes, Congress can, and should censure Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At a minimum.
The Zumwalt
This is interesting. A proposal to convert it to a 21st-century pocket battleship.
Iran
The health-care debacle is devastating on the domestic front, but probably the worst legacy of the Obama presidency will be its nuclear program. And it continues to play games with its ships in the Gulf. At least now we’re ready for it.
The Trump White House
Yes, there is no staff shake up that can fix it. The problem is Trump himself:
at every turn, the president has acted as if he has something to hide. Whether he actually does is an open question, but his obsession with the unfairness of the Russia story — and his refusal to credit claims that the Russians meddled in the election, or to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin — is a perpetual smoke machine causing people to think there’s got to be a fire somewhere. The author of Donald Trump’s problems is first and foremost Donald Trump.
So what’s my point? Simply: The author of Donald Trump’s problems is first and foremost Donald Trump. It’s fine to point out the excesses of the Democrats and the media. There’s certainly ample reason to criticize his staff. It’s understandable that Trump supporters think the “establishment,” the “swamp” or the “Deep State” have undermined him — because they have.
But Trump is not a victim. He is the hamster spinning the wheel in the massive Rube Goldberg machine that is the spectacle of presidential dysfunction.
And an ignorant emotional 71-year-old man with attention-deficit disorder and no impulse control isn’t going to change.
Dunkirk
I’d been thinking about going to see it, but having second thoughts after reading this review.
Game Of Thrones
Libertarian edition.
Louise Mensch
Charles Cooke isn’t impressed. To say the least:
In a more sensible world, a woman such as Mensch would be running around a train station warning commuters about the spaceships in the lavatory car. In America, 2017, alas, she was first elevated to the head of a News Corp property and is now is at the heart of what has become a popular and widely read conspiracy movement, which not only indulges her endless flights of hallucinatory fancy but repeats and retweets them under the heady imprimatur of “reporting.” Along with Eric Garland, Claude Taylor, Andrew Laufer, and a few other sorry victims of early onset absurdity, Mensch provides hope and titillation to the illiterate and the credulous, more than 250,000 of whom have elected to follow her on Twitter.
In the course of her breakdown she has ensnared some of those you’d imagine she’d ensnare — Joy Reid is a fan, naturally, as are Ted Lieu and Keith Olbermann – but she has also managed to attract some of those you would not. To his intense discredit, Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe has shared her material on more than one occasion, which should serve as a welcome reminder that brilliance in one’s field in no way guarantees the possession of common sense.
RTWT. Brutal.
Clinton’s Emails
Byron York: What campaign wouldn’t have wanted to get them?
It was, as the New York Times’ Mark Landler said in August 2016, the “original sin” of the Clinton email affair — that Clinton herself, and no independent body, unilaterally decided which emails she would hand over to the State Department and which she would delete.
Still, there were people who did not believe that Clinton’s deleted emails, all 30,000-plus of them, were truly gone. What is ever truly gone on the Internet? And what if Clinton were not telling the truth? What if she deleted emails covering more than just personal matters? In that event, recovering the emails would have rocked the 2016 presidential campaign.
So, if there were an enormous trove of information potentially harmful to a presidential candidate just sitting out there — what opposing campaign wouldn’t want to find it?
I certainly still want to see them. And I still want to see a special prosecutor appointed to do (unlike Comey’s) a proper investigation.
The problem for the Trump defenders (and after last week, I hesitate to bring the issue up again), is that the campaign spent months vociferously denying that they were colluding with the Russians to get this kind of information while simultaneously doing everything possible (other than saying they weren’t) to make it look as though they were, including Trump’s own public request of Putin almost a year ago to hack her and find the emails. His defenders now say there was nothing wrong about going to Russia for oppo research. OK, fine. If there was nothing wrong, why have they spent so much energy denying that they did so?
I hate to say what I would do if I were Trump, because, obviously, if I were Trump, I’d do all the stupid things that Trump does. But if I were someone in Trump’s position here’s what I would have done. I’d have given the following speech:
One of the reasons that I won this election is because my opponent was not only a terrible candidate with awful policies, but recognizably corrupt. And not only was, and is, she corrupt, but so was the previous administration that in addition to siccing the IRS on its political enemies while covering up the crime, refused to properly investigate her, and tied the hands of the FBI director in his investigation.
Because she did all she could to destroy all those emails, we have no idea what was in them that she so feared us finding, but the public still deserves to know. If getting them from the Russians was the only way to get them, then that was the price that had to be paid, to begin to restore the integrity of the American government, and I make no apologies for that.
But I’m not Trump.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Clinton corruption, I’m sure that this is just a coinkidinky: Haiti official who exposed the Clinton Crime Family Foundation’s criminality and was going to expose much more next week “commits suicide.” Sure he did.
Oh, and a reminder from a year ago. Sad how being associated with the Clintons (and/or investigating them) makes so many people so despondent that they have to take their own lives.
[Update a few minutes later]
For those too young to remember, how the press ignored or helped cover up Clinton corruption two decades ago. Democrat operatives with bylines.
The sprawling fundraising scandal ultimately led to 22 guilty pleas on various violations of election laws. Among the Clinton fundraisers and friends who pleaded guilty were John Huang, Charlie Trie, James Riady, and Michael Brown, son of the late Clinton Commerce secretary Ron Brown. But many questions went unanswered, even after the revelations that Clinton had personally authorized offering donors Oval Office meetings and use of the Lincoln bedroom. A total of 120 participants in the fundraising scandal either fled the country, asserted their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, or otherwise avoided questioning. The stonewalling worked — and probably encouraged Hillary Clinton in her own cover-up of her private e-mail server and her ties with the Clinton Foundation.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449539/chinese-illegally-donated-bill-clinton-reelection-campaign-media-downplayed
The nineties were when I finally lost any vestige of support for Democrats I’d ever had.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Subpoena Fusion GPS:
Isn’t it interesting that a Russian-born American lobbyist with a Soviet counter-intelligence background just happens to have been tied to Fusion GPS?
The depth of corruption in DC is staggering. Trump was elected in part to drain that swamp, but he seems too incompetent to do it.
[Update a couple minutes later:
Which theory is harder to believe?
That Trump, who had never run for office before and who was panned as a clown by the Democrats and the media right up until Election Night last November, orchestrated a grand coup d’état with the assistance of the Russians to “hack” an American election, and that it was so well hidden that the Don Junior meeting is the only real evidence unearthed so far of the whole thing?
…Or that the Obama administration and the Democratic Party used their immense power to attempt to ensnare the Trumps in a damaging narrative that would either discredit him and the Republican Party as traitors in the event of a Clinton victory or cripple his administration in “scandal” should he pull an upset?
This is going to get very messy for the Democrats, I hope.