I ran across a post at Sad And Useless yesterday about Modern Journalism. Go ahead and click the link first…..OK, now you have an idea of the over-the-top, unhinged, make everything beyond rationality journalism of today. Moving forward, we get this bit of insanity by Norman Eisen, Caroline Fredrickson, and Noah Bookbinder at Politico
Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes
The FBI issued an extraordinary statement on Wednesday, pushing back on the release of a partisan congressional memo alleging the bureau used improper evidence to obtain legal permission to surveil a Trump campaign adviser. We’ve never seen anything like it. “[T]he FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,†the bureau said. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.â€
As John Hinderaker explains, he has grave concerns, too. Concerns that the FBI and DOJ acted beyond improperly in the runup to the 2016 elections, and have become beyond politicized.
The memo, written by Congressman Devin Nunes and barreling toward public circulation at the president’s discretion, has already created a firestorm, and it is not even out yet. Nunes fired back at the FBI hours later, claiming, “It’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counterintelligence investigation during an American political campaign.â€
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: This memo is the latest escalation in an eight-month effort to tarnish the Russia investigation that might be the most significant smear campaign against the executive branch since Joe McCarthy—only here, the effort is being led by the head of that branch himself. As the New York Times reported, the Nunes memo seems like a dagger aimed by President Trump at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is supervising the Russia probe for the Justice Department.
Interestingly, that 8 month effort has brought forth nothing that shows collusion, and no wrong-doing in line with the whole idea of the investigation. There have been a few process issues, and Mueller and his team have gone way off track in looking at things that have nothing to do with Russian interference. After all this time, one would think there would be something. Something that says “hey, there was collusion!” Which, while despicable, would not be illegal.
Unlike the investigation into Watergate, which is where the Saturday Night Massacre comes from, when “Nixon fired fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus.”
Hinderaker wrote
I’m so old, I can remember when liberals were in favor of revealing corruption in institutions like the FBI. Those days, of course, are long gone.
Yes, they are. They know there are serious problems in the FBI and DOJ. The Nunes memo will expose some of that corruption and politicization. And it could be the start of exposing Obama and his cronies. Which is why you get turn the volume to 11 articles like the Politico one.
I was at the audiologist’s office on Monday, and whilst awaiting my appointment, I looked at one of the hundreds of magazines left in there. (They really need to clear out a bunch of old stuff.) One was a copy of The Week, from August of 2016, right after the Democratic National Convention, and it was full of stories about the evil Russkies hacking DNC e-mails and using them, through WikiLeaks, to discredit the odious Hillary Clinton.
Why, it seems, despite Chris Cuomo’s apoplexy, that if there was any Russian help for Donald Trump, the public already knew about it, three months before the election. The Democrats and the credentialed media — please, pardon the redundancy — had been pushing the evil Russian interference meme for months, and it appears that the voters discounted the allegations. Apparently the voters were a bit more concerned with what the hacked e-mails revealed about the lovely Mrs Clinton [gag!] and her campaign than they were about just how those e-mails got hacked and released.
And so we get to the (alleged) American government interference in the election, the attempts by the Obama Administration to help Mrs Clinton. I have no doubt that the Trump campaign used every means at heir disposal, whether fair or foul, to take down Mrs Clinton, and I have no doubt that the Clinton campaign used every means at its — and the government’s — disposal, whether fair or foul, to take down Mr Trump. In a way, it was like Watergate: President Nixon and his campaign used illegal means to try to take down George McGovern, even though Mr Nixon was virtually guaranteed to win in 1972. And President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the campaign used illegal means to try to take down Donald Trump, even though Mrs Clinton was virtually guaranteed to win in 2016.
One wonders: having run against the guaranteed winner of the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, perhaps President Obama, an extremely astute politician, realized just what a poor candidate Mrs Clinton was. Somehow, some way, a junior, first-term Senator from Illinois saw that The Anointed One might not be as formidable as we were all told, got in the race — how uppity of him! — and beat her. Why else would the Obama Administration have allowed whatever American government collusion there was to happen, when everybody knew that Mrs Clinton was a guaranteed winner?
Vice President Biden also said that he knew Mrs Clinton was a weaker candidate than generally realized, but, given that he didn’t say so publicly until after the election, perhaps he’s using a bit of hindsight there.
This is the point which needs to be hammered home: there was as much American government collusion as Russian government collusion in trying to sway the election!
In the end, the voters of the heartland, of ‘flyover country,’ enabled by the wisdom of the Framers in creating the electoral college, saved the country from a Hillary Clinton presidency. For this we should all give thanks!
tl;dnr
How unfortunate: you might have actually learned something.
Of course, the most humorous part is that the Clinton campaign judged, early on, that Donald Trump would be the easiest candidate for them to beat, and they tried to influence his selection as the GOP nominee. While I doubt that their efforts in that had anything more than a negligible affect, it was a case of be careful for what you wish.
And that was always the risk. tRump WAS the most beatable, but the damage from his victory was much greater Almost any other Repub candidate would have beaten Secretary Clinton easily – with or without the assist from Russia.
It’s kind of like global warming in a risk-benefit analysis. Let’s say there is only a 5% probability of an 8C increase, the risk is low but the result is catastrophic.
Russia’s objective was to sow discord in America and weaken her. It’s working.
Interestingly, Mr. Mueller, a conservative Republican with a reputation beyond reproach, has been extraordinarily effective at preventing leaks. Shocking! He is building his case privately, not publicly. Little tRump is trying mightily to influence PUBLIC opinion before the results of the investigation are announced.
The Russian government, with the cooperation of the tRump campaign, helped secure the election for little tRump. The GOP has made the POLITICAL calculation to assist in the cover up. Little Nunes is a little tRump lackey.
Whatever the little tRumpitistas committed during the campaign is of such enormity that they risk America to cover it up.
Ahem.
Mueller Requests Delay In Flynn Sentencing
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/31/robert-mueller-michael-flynn-sentencing/
tl;dnr
Butthurt much, little guy?
“The FBI issued an extraordinary statement on Wednesday.”
hmm, another anonymous source. Nobody had the nerve to put their name on it…very telling.
So the Deep Staters behind the anti-tRump “coup” are all traditional Republicans? Rosenstein, McCabe, Wray, Comey, Strzok, Mueller…
So is this a battle between the fascistic, pro-Russia Nu Cons and the anti-Communist, Republican Old Guard?
From Strzok’s texts “proving” his bias:
After all of the hype, the Nunes memo almost certainly can’t live up to expectations. If it’s mostly a fabrication, as the left were previously claiming, then they should want to see it released, since the refutation of the fabrications would hurt the Republicans and President Trump. It’s only if it’s mostly true that it becomes a problem for the Democrats.