Last week, Matt Taibbi of the The Rolling Stone published a book chapter that criticized the Mainstream Media’s Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.
Taibbi noted how shocking it is for him to see national media voices after the release of Robert Mueller’s report patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves “for a three-year faceplant they must know will haunt the whole business for a long time”.
“Fake news? Mueller isn’t buying it,” writes David Bauder of the Associated Press. He noted that with a “few exceptions,” Mueller’s investigation “repeatedly supports news reporting that was done on the Russia probe over the last two years.”
Bauder added the report showed “several instances where the president and his team sought to mislead the public.” He congratulated the New York Times and Washington Post for correctly reporting that White House counsel Don McGahn had been ordered to find a way to fire Mueller.
However, the standard has not been to be more right than Trump, but to be right all of the time. That had been the standard, anyway.
Most of the Russiagate story was, unfortunately, just what Trump called it. Fake News. There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller Report is crystal clear on this.
He didn’t just “fail to establish” evidence of crime. His report is full of incredibly damning passages, like one about Russian officialdom’s efforts to reach the Trump campaign after the election: “They appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.”
Not only was there no “collusion,” the two camps didn’t even have each others’ phone numbers!
In March of 2017, in one of the first of what would become a mountain of mafia-hierarchy-style “Trump-Russia contacts” graphics in major newspapers, the Washington Post described an email Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sent to Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. They called it “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government.”
The report shows the whole episode was a joke. In order to further the Trump Tower project-that-never-was, Cohen literally cold-emailed the Kremlin. More than that, he entered the email incorrectly, so the letter initially didn’t even arrive. When he finally fixed the mistake, Peskov didn’t answer back.
That was “the most direct interaction yet of a top Trump aide and a senior member of Putin’s government”!
As outlined in his initial mandate, Mueller explored “any links” between the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump. His conclusion spoke directly to the question of whether there was any kind of quid pro quo between the two sides:
“The investigation examined whether these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the Campaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future.”
In other words, all those fancy org charts were meaningless. Because there was no conspiracy, all those “walls are closing in” reports — and there were a ton of them — were wrong. Rachel Maddow, Chris Cuomo and hapless idiots of Brian Stelter and Don Lemon kept it all going, as we were told we’d hit “turning point” after “turning point” leading to the “the beginning of the end,” with Trump certain, soon, to either resign in shame, Nixon-style, or be impeached.
The “RNC platform” change story was nothing more than an unfounded rumor, according to Mueller. The exchanges Trump figures had with ambassador Sergei Kislyak were “brief, public, and non-substantive.” The conversations Jeff Sessions had with Kislyak at the convention didn’t “include any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.” Mueller added “investigators did not establish that [Carter] Page conspired with the Russian government.”
There was no blackmail, no secret bribe from Rosneft, no five-year cultivation plan, no evidence of any kind of any relationship that ever existed between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
News Flash: Michael Cohen “never traveled to Prague.”
The whole Steele dossier appears to have been bunk, with even Bob Woodward now saying the “highly questionable” document “needs to be investigated.” The Times similarly is reporting, two-plus years late, that “people familiar” with Steele’s work began to have “misgivings about [the report’s] reliability arose not long after the document became public.”
Reporters are going to insist all they did was accurately report the developments of a real investigation.
They didn’t imply vast criminality that wasn’t there, or hoodwink audiences into thinking a Watergate-style ending was just around the corner, or routinely blow meaningless episodes like the Sessions-Kislyak meeting out of proportion, or regularly smear people who not only weren’t part of a conspiracy but had no connection to anything.
They’ll also claim they didn’t spend years openly rooting for indictment and impeachment via wish-casted predictions disguised as reporting and commentary, or denouncing people who doubted the conspiracy as spies and Putin apologists, or clearing their broadcast panels and op-ed pages of skeptics while giving big stages to craven conspiracy-spinners like Malcolm Nance and Luke Harding.
That’s fine. In the short term, a significant portion of the country will probably agree coverage was appropriate, probably the same sizable plurality of poll respondents who say they disagree on some level with Mueller’s findings. A lot of people out there despise Trump, and at least right now will be inclined to sympathy for broadcasters and editorialists who gave full quarter to the most damning theories of conspiracy and criminality in the Russia case.
But as conservatives found out in 2016, news audiences over time lose trust in news organizations that tell them what they want to hear politically, but get the substance of things wrong.
The Mueller report makes clear reporters were sold wolf whistles over and over, led by reams of unnamed official sources who urged them to see meaning in meaningless things and assume connections that weren’t there.
Reporters should be furious about being made to like such fools. They should be outraged at all those people who urged them to publish the Steele report, which might have led to career-imperiling mistakes in print. They should be mad as hell at CIA chief Gina Haspel and the other unnamed officials who told them disclosing the name of already long-ago exposed government informant Stefan Halper would “risk lives.”
More than anything, reporters should be furious at the many sources close to the various investigations who (it now seems clear) must have known pretty early there were serious holes in many areas of this story, and that a lot of these “dots” were dead ends, but didn’t warn their press counterparts. For instance, the papers should be mad those who supposedly had misgivings about the Steele report didn’t warn them earlier.
But they’re not mad, which makes it look like a case of intentional blindness, in which eyes and ears were shut among other things because the Trump-Russia conspiracy tale made a ton of money. Media companies earned boffo ratings while the Mueller probe still carried the drama of a potential spectacular ending, with blue-state audiences eating up all those “walls are closing in” hot takes.
The absence of what Mueller repeatedly calls “underlying crime” make his ravings about an elitist mob out to get him look justified. This is not an easy thing to achieve, but we’re there, and the press is a big part of that picture.
News audiences were betrayed, and sooner or later, even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize it and tune us out. The only way to reverse the damage is to own how big of a screw-up this was, but after the last three years, who would hold their breath waiting for that?
Paul Plante says
Personally, having not only read every day, word for word, all that the so-called “press” had to offer on this subject of Russia trying to take over the United States of America in the 2016 election, which hysteria actually goes back to the First Red Scare in America after WWI, but also, thanks to the internet, having actually saved all those news articles in an on-line archive so I could go back and review what was said yesterday or the day before by the media, to compare it to what was being said that day, my opinion of the media is very low, and can be described in a single word called “contempt,” defined in this case as the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn, as in “the media showed their contempt for their job by doing it very badly,” with such appropriate synonyms as scorn, disdain, deprecation, disparagement, denigration, opprobrium, odium, and obloquy.
In a word, the MSM proved themselves to be little more than lazy, ignorant, Binky-sucking narrative spinners who could spin the narrative on a dime overnight and totally change the story, as that contemptible rag THE WASHINGTON POST did in the case of why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, which very much reminded me of the skillful use of propaganda in Orwell’s political
novel 1984, which seems to be the template followed by the MSM in this country today, because it is so very effective.
For those unfamiliar with the work, in 1984, the ruling party produces propaganda to promote Big Brother and to control its citizens by ensuring that the citizens’ minds are filled with propaganda and confusion so that the people cannot think clearly, and since 2016, what a dose of that we have been fed by this so-called MSM in America.
As to the First Red Scare here in America, and as an older CITIZEN of this nation who was taught about the power of propaganda when young so that I could see through it and resist it, I think this history is relevant to what we just went through today with this “RUSSIAGATE” crap-fest, as World War I was ending, a fear-driven, anti-communist movement known as the First Red Scare began to spread across the United States of America, just as it is again spreading across America, thanks to Hillary Clinton and the MSM.
By way of background, in 1917 Russia, the BOOGIE-MAN, had undergone the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Bolsheviks established a communist government that withdrew Russian troops from the war effort so that Americans back then believed that Russia had let down its allies, including the United States, by pulling out of the war.
In addition, communism was, in theory, an expansionist ideology spread through revolution and it suggested that the working class would overthrow the middle class.
Once the United States no longer had to concentrate its efforts on winning World War I, many Americans became afraid that communism might spread to the United States and threaten the nation’s democratic values.
And all these years later, in a new century and new millenium, thanks to hysteria being whipped up by Hillary Clinton, the Democrats and the MSM, here we are all over again, back to the same old, same old, with the blame for that being laid on Trump as a Russian or Communist dupe, tool or agent.
Which takes us back to that old saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Which is pathetic.
Paul Plante says
For anyone truly interested in this subject of INTENTIONAL MEDIA MANIPULATION of the American people by what is known as the MSM in this country by printing FAKE NEWS about all this supposed “Russian interference” in our 2016 presidential election that is now being blamed on Trump, which actually should be every single person in this country from sixth grade right on up, you should take just a moment and listen to Hussein Obama himself discussing the subject in an interview broadcast on television, to wit:
http://dailynewselites.blogspot.com/2016/12/obama-russia-did-not-hack-our-elections.html?m=0
That same interview was the source of a story in the British publication The Telegraph entitled “Barack Obama tells The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah that Russian hacking was no ‘big surprise'” by Chiara Palazzo on 13 December 2016, where we are treated to the following information which has subsequently been buried under a mountain of pure horse**** by the MSM since then, to wit:
US president Barack Obama discussed Russia’s impact on the 2016 election and the importance of security briefings on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Monday in his first television interview since Nov 8.
Mr Obama said Russian involvement in the hacking was no “big surprise” and that the real question should be how did “fairly routine” hacked emails receive more attention than any policy and become the “overwhelming story and constant source of breathless coverage.”
end quotes
There, people, is the molehill that the MSM managed o pump up with a lot of hot air into a veritable Mt, Everest that was supposed to get Donald Trump impeached in what would have been a media coup, and that takes us back to 2016 and the Telegraph article as follows:
“When the DNC got hacked, we immediately assigned our intelligence community – our law enforcement – to investigate what had happened.
“And we determined – and announced – in October that it was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies in law enforcement that organisations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.”
“That was a month before the election.”
“This was not a secret,” the president said in the interview which was recorded over the weekend just after a report by the CIA emerged asserting that Russian hacking had sought to help Donald Trump’s candidacy, a claim that the president-elect dismissed as “ridiculous”.
end quotes
So, okay, here we are, it’s December of 2016, and there we see the beginnings of the present charges of obstruction of justice emerging from then-president Obama’s mouth on national television, which continues as follows:
Mr Obama recalled how Mr Trump invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails to “confirm conspiracy theories” and drew a line between the business tycoon’s team and the Russians.
“You had what were very clear relationships between members of the president-elect’s campaign team and Russians, and a professed shared view on a bunch of issues,” he told Mr Noah.
end quotes
Now, I have to say, being older and a lot wiser than the shallow-thinking Obama that I heard Trump saying that Russia should release more of Hillary’s e-mails, and I thought nothing of it, quite frankly, nor did Obama appear to in December of 2016, since the e-mails were quite uninteresting according to Obama, which takes us back to The Telegraph as follows:
“Going forward, I worry that we don’t spend enough time on self-reflection about how our democracy’s working, how our campaign’s working, and how all of us have to do a better job at talking about what’s at stake.”
end quotes
And big surprise there, alright – how about it’s because the American people and the MSM no longer know how to think!
Getting back to The Telegraph:
The president also claimed that “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union” and the hacked emails were “not a particularly fancy brand of espionage or propaganda.”
end quotes
But my goodness, after all the HOOHAH in the MSM since then, you certainly would not know that today.
Chas Cornweller says
Hey Paul, now that you’ve read “word for word, all that the so-called ‘press’ had to offer on this subject of Russia trying to take over the United States of America in the 2016 election”, how about reading the Mueller Report ‘Word for word’ and report back to us what you see there.
For my “two-cents” worth, there was strong evidence that Russia was involved in the 2016 election is multiple formats. Not that America hasn’t done the same thing. It’s the “new” warfare on unsuspecting countries (ie. Citizenry just going about their business daily). The outlandish bloativations of no collusion (my word) of our Embarrassment in Chief reminds me of the Shakespeare line from McBeth. You know the line;” the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” And you know in which context it was used. And what about that classic line from the clearly (note sarcasm here) sublime and contextual mouth of Herr Gropenfuher when he found out about the Muller appointment to the special committee…Classic Trump, “I’m F###!” Boy, that sure sounds like the utterance of the innocent to me. (end noted sarcasm) So, Paul, spare me please…of the proceedings of just another Trump groupie who has not seen the full Muller Report, cannot even say what’s in it (other than what Fox/Barr/Trump tells you what is there) and has no knowledge of the number of “alleged” offenses being investigated at the Federal Level by the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. And on the state level by the Manhattan District attorney, the Department of Financial Services and the Department of Taxation and Finance. Quite a lineup. I imagine we’ll be watching the final days of his presidency play out a lot like the “Escaping White Ford Bronco” scenario of 1994. Slow motion with a finale of the handcuffs and a London Fog over his head. You know, Mafia Don style. Perfect New York take down.
So, did he collude with Russia. Does it matter? He sold his soul long ago. Now, he is willing to sell America’s soul in the most treasonous sense. His false bravado of ‘I’m an American Patriot’ does not play well to people like me. Want to know why? It is because of this.
While he stumped he promised to keep jobs here and help the working class. He has done neither. He has deregulated the banking systems. (wait for the big fall that’s sure to come) He’s lied incessantly about the state of our union (our infrastructure is crumbling everywhere) and he failed on the tax relief (big break for the 1% and corporations – who still off shore work and used that same break for growing the dividends, not the output – big difference!) little break for me and you. And that washes away in just another couple of years. So, yea, he lies. The thing that saddens me most, is watching his base (and some very good friends of mine) blindly and desperately gripping onto the hope he seems to be able to throw out to them. Reminds me of that guy riding in the back of luxury horse drawn carriage, throwing out dimes to the tenement kids as he rides through. (grab em while you can, kids!)
Was Obama and Hillary any better? Was George W? I really don’t care…they are not in the position of power now. They have nothing to do with ‘Now’! This game show host we elected president is a sad reflection of the morale and intelligence of today’s America. I am just saying. And Paul, truly, you know it is the truth. The transparency of the lying and the overtly dysfunction in the White House today is unnerving. And sad. The truths that we hold to be self -evident just do not apply today. You know that. I know that. What are the symptoms? What is the cause? Is Trump just a symptom? Who, what is the cause? We are politically, intellectually, and diplomatically sick. Society (as a whole – not individuals – though some are) is very, very ill. We’ve lost our way. Churches are preaching partisanship, not Christianity. The media is preaching the gospel of Big Business and not the truth the way Ed Murrow or John Chancellor or even Walter Cronkite read and spoke it. The chain of well-being has slipped its sprocket. We don’t trust our politicians. We don’t trust our education system. We don’t trust our system, anymore. Why? Because it is broken. And our present seat of power (all three branches) reflect that. It’s not a question of what can we do…it is a question of when will the people (you know, these truths we hold to be…folks) when will they wake up and see the brokenness for themselves? Then and only then can we have an honest discussion of how to fix it.
Truthfully, this is not a right or left issue. And if you think it is, then you are asleep. No, it is a human issue. It is a societal issue. It is an issue of reason and humanity and only the strong will make it past what is to come if we continue down this road. Thanks for reading Paul.
Paul Plante says
Dear friend Chas, first of all, I haven’t read “word for word all that the so-called ‘press’ had to offer on this subject of Russia trying to take over the United States of America in the 2016 election, because the bull**** continues to pour in faster than I can bail the boat.
Case in point would be this FOX News article “Schiff hedges on Trump impeachment, says instead, ‘Vote his a– out of office'” by Victor Garcia on 27 April 2019, where we have this latest revelation from the smarmy little Burbank, California congressman and twerp Adam Schiff, as follows, and this is relevant because it feeds back into the so-called Mullet, now, why does the spell-checker insist on calling it that, Mueller Report, to wit:
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a vocal critic of President Trump, said Friday night that he had “no expectations” that Trump would be indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller at the conclusion of the Russia investigation.
“Even if the evidence supported it, because [Mueller] is fundamentally conservative — and I don’t mean left-right conservative — but he was going to follow the established policy.”
“He was not going to make new ground,” Schiff said during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.
“So I didn’t think it was realistic to expect that [Mueller] would indict the president,” Schiff continued, “and those that did, I think, were unrealistic in their expectations.”
end quotes
Pray tell, dear friend Chas, but when he talks about those poor deluded souls in this country who were unrealistic in their expectations that Mullet, now stop that, spellchecker, Mueller was going to indict the president, that being the Trump you so dislike, which is your privilege as a fellow American citizen, could he have been talking about yourself do you think?
Getting back to that article, w have this, to wit:
Last week Attorney General William Barr released a redacted version of the full Mueller report that cleared the president of collusion with Russia.
end quotes
Now, seriously, dear friend Chas, need I really know more than that?
Getting back to the Fox News article, we have Adam Schiff belching up this huge gob of horse**** from deep in his gullet as follows:
Schiff argued that the report ultimately did prove that Trump was “unfit for the presidency.”
end quotes
Unfit for the presidency?
Where was that in the Mullet, okay spell checker, you’re done, Mueller Report?
Am I to believe that this Mullet is now the final arbiter of who is or is not fit to be an American president?
Where does our Constitution give that kind of authority to a hack lawyer like Mullet, er, Mueller?
And to answer my own question, it doesn’t, so if Mullet is claiming such authority in his report, it serves to render the report exactly what it is – a compilation and condensation of a literal Mt. Everest’s worth of horse****, pig**** and bull**** built up from shifting sand, smoke and mirrors by Hillary Clinton, Lanny Davis in his tongue-in-cheek political thriller “The Unmaking of the President,” and the MSM based in some large part on the fabricated Steele Report, which itself is the subject of a Washington Examiner article entitled “Isikoff: Media should have had ‘more skepticism’ over Steele dossier, which was ‘thirdhand stuff’” by Diana Stancy Correll & Jerry Dunleavy on April 28, 2019, as follows:
A top investigative journalist who promoted information from the so-called “Trump dossier” that claimed Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia now says the media should have approached the document with “more skepticism.”
“I think it’s fair to say that all of us should have approached this, in retrospect, with more skepticism, particularly when we didn’t know where it was coming from,” Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, told Vanity Fair.
“We knew that Steele compiled it, but that Steele did not hear these allegations himself.”
“Somebody else heard them from others and then passed them along.”
“That’s thirdhand stuff, which is not usually the kind you want for publishing.”
The dossier, composed by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, 54, contained scandalous and unverified claims about Trump’s connections to Russia and was used by the FBI to obtain a warrant and three renewals to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
By January 2017, FBI agents had reportedly concluded that some of the dossier’s contents may have been based upon “rumors and hearsay” which were “passed from source to source” and perhaps even upon “Russian disinformation.”
Watergate journalist Bob Woodward has been calling Steele’s dossier “garbage” for over two years.
It was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign through the Perkins Coie law firm and opposition research and business intelligence group Fusion GPS, which had contracted Steele.
end quotes
You see what I am saying here, my dear friend Chas, when I say that I am still wading through the ocean of horse**** that underlies this Mueller Report?
Getting back to that Washington Examiner article:
Steele met with Isikoff, 66, in September 2016.
Also at the meeting was Isikoff’s long-time friend Glenn Simpson, 55, the founder of Fusion GPS.
The three discussed Trump and Russia, and Steele provided him with some of his research, but Isikoff has maintained he didn’t know that Fusion GPS was being paid by the Clinton campaign and DNC at the time.
Isikoff wrote an article based in part on his conversations with Steele for Yahoo News.
It was later used in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting Carter Page.
Iskoff said he was stunned when he learned that, saying “it’s self-referential” and “it seems a little odd that they would cite the Yahoo News story about the matter they are investigating themselves based on the same material that had been separately presented to the FBI.”
end quotes
A convoluted mess, or what, dear friend Chas?
Getting back to that article:
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, released this month, undercut some of the most scandalous allegations included in the dossier, including that the Russians had obtained compromising information on Trump.
Mueller found no evidence to support the accusation in the dossier that Trump watched Russian prostitutes urinating on a Moscow hotel bed while being secretly filmed by the Russians.
“It’s been surprising to me the degree to which some people have wanted to maintain that the dossier was checking out when, as far as I can tell, it hasn’t,” Isikoff said.
“There are aspects in there, like cultivating Trump on business relationships, that there is support for, so it’s not a total wash.”
“But it’s the specifics that really knocked people over the head, that really set expectations for what Mueller was gonna find — a vast criminal conspiracy of collusion — and the reality seems to be that the relationships are murkier than that.”
end quotes
So given that, dear friend Chas, why would I want to waste my precious time reading through the Mueller Report?
Why not just read the Cliff Notes, and wait for the blockbuster movie that is supposed to be coming out soon?
And that takes us back to the Fox article, and the belching of bull**** by Democrat Adam Schiff, to wit:
“I do think [Mueller] laid out what we needed to see, which is that the Russians were engaged in a systemic effort to interfere in our election, that the Trump campaign welcomed it, embraced it, built it into their plan, made full use of it, lied about it, covered it up and then obstructed the investigation into it,” Schiff said.
“And if we had any doubt before about this president’s fitness for office there was no doubt remaining.”
“He is unfit for the presidency.”
end quotes
Seriously, Chas, doesn’t that sum up things nicely for you there, saying in a terse manner all that really needs to be said?
You think Trump is unfit to be president, which sentiment is backed up in spades by Adam Schiff and Mullet himself, and seriously again, Chas, how can I possibly refute that?
Don’t I just have to surrender to the force of their arguments?
Paul Plante says
And back to you we come, my dear friend Chas Cornweller, and before we go further, let us go back to September 22, 2016 @ 4:27 PM, which as you will recall was about a month and a half before the 2016 presidential election that spawned this Mueller Report, which my dear friend Chas Cornweller, is nothing more than a WHITE WASH by a bunch of Hillary Clinton lawyers under the direction of Clinton FIXER Lanny Davis, who himself was the subject of a New York Magazine article entitled “Beltway Sleazeoids Concerned About Partisanship” by Jonathan Chait on June 18, 2012, where we, the American people who care about this nation’s future were told, “In reality, people like Steele and Davis get attacked not because they break from party dogma but because they are, respectively, a buffoon and a sleaze-merchant,” and, “To be fair, Davis is a buffoon as well,” which will give you some necessary background here, Chas, to see where I am coming from, which takes us back to what you said on 22 September 2016 as follows:
“You (me) bring up so many interesting points, I really don’t know where to begin.”
“So, let me play devil’s advocate (which seems appropriate on many levels for those that know me.)”
end quotes
That was in response to a Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by myself on 18 September, 2016 entitled appropriately enough “What Kind of Caterpillar Smokes a Hookah? Does Anybody Know?” where the following subject matter was put forth concerning the 2016 presidential election, to wit:
And now we are confronted with the election of our third and most powerful imperial president to date, in what has to be the most bizarre and surreal presidential election in my lifetime.
With respect to bizarre and surreal, we have Hillary Clinton, who just made the most miraculous recovery from pneumonia the world has ever witnessed, making national news by slamming Donald Trump on Thursday, September 15, 2016, for declining to answer a question about where President Barack Obama was born, as if the most important issue facing this nation today was not about ISIS, or when we are ever going to get out of Afghanistnam, or our $20 TRILLION national debt, but instead is “where was Barack Obama born?”
“When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?” Hillary ranted and pouted at The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute awards gala in Washington, D.C. because Trump would not tell her where Barack Obama was born, as if Trump had been there as a witness to record the momentous event, and as if not considering where Barack Obama was born was really a worthy topic of debate between two presidential candidates in America today, neither of whom is named Obama, constitutes bigotry, which is defined as “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.”
Does the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t see it worth the while of we, the American people, to have listen to a silly debate between himself and Hillary Clinton on the question of where Barack Obama was born really qualify as “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself,” or is the charge of bigotry made by Hillary Clinton simply patently stupid?
Are there more important things for two presidential candidates in this country to debate about than where Barack Obama was born?
Or is that really what is at the top of the list?
Now, as to that caterpillar, it is blue in color with a haughty look on its face and a supercilious attitude as it sits on a mushroom outside my window smoking its hookah and occasionally blowing smoke letters in the air, which, when put together, seem to say “this **** is too bizarre to be real,” a sentiment I find it impossible to disagree with.
Whatever kind of caterpillar that is, it sure does seem to have its finger on the pulse of these times that we now find ourselves immersed in.
Could it be Tom Jefferson reincarnated?
A question for our times if there ever was one.
end quotes
There. my dear friend Chas Cornweller, is where this sick saga that leads in an unbroken line to this Mueller Report you are on about really begins, with what has to be the most bizarre and surreal presidential election in my lifetime, which is longer than your shorter lifetime, and that brings us up to 29 April 29, 2019 @ 8:45 PM, where still acting in your capacity as a devil’s advocate (a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing arguments), you said as follows:
“Hey Paul, now that you’ve read ‘word for word, all that the so-called ‘press’ had to offer on this subject of Russia trying to take over the United States of America in the 2016 election’, how about reading the Mueller Report ‘Word for word’ and report back to us what you see there.”
end quotes
My response to that is simple, my dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller is quite simple.
According to an article in the Washington Post, your favorite rag, by the way, entitled “Trump’s lack of cooperation with Congress intensifies impeachment push in House” by Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis on 30 April 2019, we are told as follows, to wit:
Another member of Pelosi’s leadership team noted that there were several deadlines looming and that lawmakers needed to wait to see what happens.
Barr, for example, is supposed to turn over the full Mueller report by Wednesday to honor a House subpoena.
He is not expected to do so, and Democrats are prepared to take him to court.
end quotes
So, my dear friend Chas, as you can clearly see, it is impossible for me to read the Mueller Report “word for word.”
Moving right along, you say, “For my ‘two-cents’ worth, there was strong evidence that Russia was involved in the 2016 election is multiple formats,” which takes us back in time again to a story in the British publication The Telegraph entitled “Barack Obama tells The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah that Russian hacking was no ‘big surprise’” by Chiara Palazzo on 13 December 2016, where we were treated to the following information which has subsequently been buried under a mountain of pure horse**** by the MSM, which is what this thread is really all about, as follows:
US president Barack Obama discussed Russia’s impact on the 2016 election and the importance of security briefings on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Monday in his first television interview since Nov 8.
Mr Obama said Russian involvement in the hacking was no “big surprise” and that the real question should be how did “fairly routine” hacked emails receive more attention than any policy and become the “overwhelming story and constant source of breathless coverage.”
“When the DNC got hacked, we immediately assigned our intelligence community – our law enforcement – to investigate what had happened.
“And we determined – and announced – in October that it was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies in law enforcement that organisations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.”
“That was a month before the election.”
“This was not a secret,” the president said in the interview which was recorded over the weekend just after a report by the CIA emerged asserting that Russian hacking had sought to help Donald Trump’s candidacy, a claim that the president-elect dismissed as “ridiculous”.
we are, it’s December of 2016, and there we see the beginnings of the present charges of obstruction of justice emerging from then-president Obama’s mouth on national television, which continues as follows:
Mr Obama recalled how Mr Trump invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails to “confirm conspiracy theories” and drew a line between the business tycoon’s team and the Russians.
“You had what were very clear relationships between members of the president-elect’s campaign team and Russians, and a professed shared view on a bunch of issues,” he told Mr Noah.
end quotes
Now, I have to say, being older and a lot wiser than the shallow-thinking Obama that I heard Trump saying that Russia should release more of Hillary’s e-mails, and I thought nothing of it, quite frankly, nor did Obama appear to in December of 2016, since the e-mails were quite uninteresting according to Obama, which takes us back to The Telegraph as follows:
“Going forward, I worry that we don’t spend enough time on self-reflection about how our democracy’s working, how our campaign’s working, and how all of us have to do a better job at talking about what’s at stake.”
The president also claimed that “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union” and the hacked emails were “not a particularly fancy brand of espionage or propaganda.”
end quotes
So, all these years later, my dear friend Chas, it very much appears that on that score, at least, you are on the same page as Obama was back in December of 2016.
And as Obama clearly said, and as older Americans like myself who don’t store their heads in their ***** already knew, “Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union,” which takes us back to the 1920s, Chas, which is how long this crap has been going on, and let me add here, Chas, that those who were for the Soviet Union and COMMUNISM in this country right from the beginning were DEMOCRATS.
So it is somehow quite unique and at the same time surreal to see the Democrats accusing Trump of being a Russian tool, when historically in this country, the Russian tool has been the Democrat party itself – the party that was soft on Communism, if you will recall your basic schoolboy American history.
Skipping over some excess verbiage here (no offense intended), we come to this from your piece above:
The outlandish bloativations of no collusion (my word) of our Embarrassment in Chief reminds me of the Shakespeare line from McBeth.
You know the line;” the lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
And you know in which context it was used.
end quotes
And yes, Chas, I do know the context in which it was used, which takes us back to 19 September 2016 AT 5:18 PM, and that very subject, to wit:
With respect to her dislike and disdain for the American people, and her broad-brush smears of the American people, who Hillary despises, in a NEWSMAX article dated September 16, 2016 by Mark Swanson, we are told:
Hillary Clinton on Friday slammed Donald Trump for being the standard bearer of the Obama birther movement, telling the audience that “he is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
Clinton made the remarks at the Black Women’s Agenda 39th Annual Symposium in Washington, D.C.
end quote
“He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country,” this from Hillary Clinton who stated publicly in April of 2016:
“If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
end quote
But of course, since she is Hillary, she is not feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country, with that biased and highly prejudicial statement of hers as she panders for votes with it.
What crap say I.
In that same article, Hillary can be seen screeching as follows:
“For five years [Trump] has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said in her speech.
“His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie.”
“There is no erasing it in history.”
“He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology,” Clinton said.
end quote
Why does Donald Trump owe the American people an apology because Barack Obama was born in the United States of America?
What kind of lunatic logic can possibly support that statement?
And why should Trump have to apologize to Obama because Obama was born in the United States of America?
That makes absolutely no sense, either, and it is a sign that it is Hillary Clinton’s mental health we really should be concerned about, although to be truthful, there is nothing that bars someone with a questionable grasp on reality from running for and serving as American president.
“Imagine someone who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world,” Clinton said.
And yes, I can certainly can.
In fact, her name is Hillary Clinton.
And then Hillary says: “Imagine a president who he sees doesn’t look like him and doesn’t agree with him and thinks, that person must not be a real American.”
“Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States.”
END QUOTE
And all these years later, my dear friend Chas, we still have the Democrats singing that same refrain in three-part harmony to a catchy Reggae beat a la Bob Marley and the Wailers with some DO-WHOPPA-DOO being crooned in the background in the style of the Spinners.
At some point, my dear friend Chas, doesn’t is finally start to get a bit old, especially since there is no “fitness” standard in existence for an American president as convicted felon Eugene Debs proved when he ran for president from a prison cell, which incidentally should be a cause for hope for the presidential aspirations of convicted liar and A-HOLE, bumbling lawyer Michael Cohen.
As to the slur “Trump Groupie,” Chas, let me leave you with these words from myself in the THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR SEPTEMBER 27, 2016 AT 10:15 AM, as follows:
Paul Plante says:
And I would like to take a moment here to thank John Read for bringing to the fore in here that ridiculous false argument that circulates in the USA during presidential elections that if you are not for one of the alleged and supposed “major” parties, even though neither party can claim to represent more than a fraction of the American people, then you have to be for the other, so that in this case, if I express incredulity, which is the state of being unable to believe something, that of all the people in the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, a pathological liar with a long, established record of shallow-thinking and very poor judgment, is the best that we can come up with for not only our “leader,” but the “leader” of the supposed “free world,” as well, and God help the free world if Hillary Clinton becomes its leader, in the reasoning of these people like John Read, I have to be a republican and right-winger who is for Donald Trump, and what a narrow and unenlightened view that is.
end quote
I still feel that same way, Chas.
And back to you the ball goes!
Paul Plante says
And moving right along here, people, thanks to our dear friend and fellow American patriot and notable wordsmith Chas Cornweller playing the Devil’s Advocate as he does so very well in here, we come to this Hemingway-esque literary gem that he has provided us with above as follows, to wit:
“And what about that classic line from the clearly (note sarcasm here) sublime and contextual mouth of Herr Gropenfuher when he found out about the Muller appointment to the special committee…Classic Trump, “I’m F###!” Boy, that sure sounds like the utterance of the innocent to me. (end noted sarcasm)”
end quotes
Having had something similar happen to myself, I would come back and say that it sounds to me like the lament or plaint of someone who realizes that he has just been stripped of all control over his life. and that he is going to become nothing more than a PLAYTOY for the MALICIOUS CHILDREN of the MSN, and here were are talking chiefly the Washington Post and CBS News, along with NBC, to kick around and run through the mud, which is exactly what we have been witnessing since Mullet was appointed to be special counsel.
Trump has been reduced to the status of a mere spectator in his own life, which now is a possession of the Washington Post and CBS News.
I remember saying something very similar when I witnessed my own life being destroyed on TV by MSNBC starlet Christine Kapostacy Jansing, although I expressed it as “I just got ******,” which of course, was the INTENT – DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT STEP OUT OF THE BOUNDS SET FOR YOU AS A PUBLIC SERVANT BY THE MEDIA OR YOU WILL SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE REGRETTING IT!
In my case, of course, I had to be destroyed because not only would I not take bribes, itself a high crime and misdemeanor in the corrupt third-world ****hole of New York state, but I even had the temerity (nerve, effrontery, impudence, impertinence, barefaced cheek, gall, brazenness) to blow the whistle on those who were taking bribes, and so my end had to come, and MSNBC starlet Christine Kapostacy Jansing gleefully took up the role of my executioner, using the television as her cudgel or bludgeon, so of course Trump said when he heard that a special counsel had been appointed, “I’m ******!”
And he is, Chas – he has become a caricature, and that is how he will be remembered forever in history – Gulliver taken down by the Lilliputians, or a lion taken down by a seething pack of small growling dogs.
What a legacy, eh, Chas?
T’were it to be you who had to take your turn in the media barrel, what is it that you think you would be exclaiming – “OH, GOODY, I JUST LOVE IT, GIVE ME MORE?”
And that brings us to an interesting poll just out that was the subject of an NPR article entitled “Poll: Most Democrats Back Impeachment Hearings, A Move That’s Unpopular Overall” by Miles Parks on May 1, 2019, where we have as follows:
Most Democrats want impeachment hearings to begin now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted findings are public, but that idea is still unpopular overall, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Seven in 10 Democrats want Congress to begin impeachment hearings based on the findings in Mueller’s report, but just 39% of Americans overall think impeachment hearings are the correct next step.
end quotes
Note that language employed, dear friend Chas – 7 in 10 DEMOCRATS versus 39% of AMERICANS.
We, the American people, have this rabid, radical minority known as DEMOCRATS screeching and screaming and yowling for Trump’s head as they try to be the tail that wags the dog.
They think that if they screech loud enough, that that should alone be sufficient to have Trump removed from office, which takes us back in time to the dying days of democracy in Greece and a practice they had known as OSTRACISM, which was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years.
As I am sure you will recall from your own studies, each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism and if they voted “yes”, then an ostracism would be held two months later, where in a section of the agora set off and suitably barriered, and citizens gave the name of those they wished to be ostracised to a scribe.
The person nominated for ostracism then had ten days to leave the city, and if he attempted to return, the penalty was death.
end quotes
Today, the Democrats in America want to use impeachment as a form of ostracism, as we can clearly see from this NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll which was conducted April 24-29, 2019.
And in that, they find themselves facing off against REAL AMERICANS who do not want to see these DEMOCRATS reduce our Republican frame of government in this country to the low state of Athenian Greek democracy, which reduced that nation-state to the status of a third-world ****hole, just as the DEMOCRATS in this country want to reduce the United States of America into a third-world ****hole where nothing but chaos reigns, as it is right now, which takes us back to that NPR article where we have this statement of fact, to wit:
Americans by and large have also been unimpressed by Congress’ efforts to combat Russian interference efforts since the 2016 election.
Only 19% of Americans think Congress has done a “great deal” or a “good amount” to ensure there isn’t interference in the 2020 election.
end quotes
Said another way, dear friend Chas, since they have been in power in this country, these WORTHLESS ******* DEMOCRATS, Nancy Pelosi, Charley “CHUCK” Schumer, Elijah “The Prophet” Cummings, “Jumping Jerry” Nadler, the little smarmy twerp Adam Schiff and the rest of their mindless, raving crowd, with the exception of outcast Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, have not done one thing for this country, period.
They are nothing more than a total waste of space in this country, as well as a source of prodigious amounts of hot air laced with horse**** that threatens our environment worse than climate change could.
As to Democrat outcast Tulsi Gabbard, she was the subject of a YAHOO news article recently entitled “Tulsi Gabbard says it’s a ‘good thing’ Trump wasn’t charged by Mueller” by David Knowles on March 29, 2019, as follows:
Distinguishing herself in a crowded field of Democrats running for president, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, called Robert Mueller’s decision not to charge Donald Trump with colluding with Russia during the 2016 election “a good thing for our country.”
Gabbard, who lags in 2020 polls behind better-known rivals, said in a video posted to her Twitter account that “now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country.”
end quotes
Not surprisingly, dear friend Chas, hers is a voice that you will hear nothing about in the Washington Post or CBS News or MSNBC, because she is off the narrative, which is expressed by TOP DEMOCRAT “Tina the Parakeet” Gillibrand in that same article as follows:
“I’m very concerned because I think what the Attorney General did is undermine the purpose of the special counsel’s job by summarizing this report and putting his imprimatur on it, he is taking away the benefit of having someone who’s non-partisan, not appointed by the president actually making the decision about whether crimes may have been committed,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Thursday on MSNBC.
end quotes
And what an air-head is our Kirsten, who still has a Binky in her mouth to keep her nerves calm, given that according to OUR LAWS, it is the attorney general who is in charge of the Department of Justice, not Bob Mueller as special council, to wit:
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Organization, Mission & Functions Manual: Attorney General, Deputy and Associate
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
The position of Attorney General was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
In June 1870 Congress enacted a law entitled “An Act to Establish the Department of Justice.”
This Act established the Attorney General as head of the Department of Justice and gave the Attorney General direction and control of U.S. Attorneys and all other counsel employed on behalf of the United States.
The Act also vested in the Attorney General supervisory power over the accounts of U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Marshals.
The mission of the Office of the Attorney General is to supervise and direct the administration and operation of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Bureau of Prisons, Office of Justice Programs, and the U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Marshals Service, which are all within the Department of Justice.
The principal duties of the Attorney General are to:
• Represent the United States in legal matters.
• Supervise and direct the administration and operation of the offices, boards, divisions, and bureaus that comprise the Department.
• Furnish advice and opinions, formal and informal, on legal matters to the President and the Cabinet and to the heads of the executive departments and agencies of the government, as provided by law.
• Make recommendations to the President concerning appointments to federal judicial positions and to positions within the Department, including U.S. Attorneys and U.S. Marshals.
• Represent or supervise the representation of the United States Government in the Supreme Court of the United States and all other courts, foreign and domestic, in which the United States is a party or has an interest as may be deemed appropriate.
• Perform or supervise the performance of other duties required by statute or Executive Order.
end quotes
Too many words, unfortunately, for Binky-sucking Kirsten Gillibrand to be able to assimilate, which takes us back to Tulsi Gabbard, as follows:
Explaining her rationale, Gabbard said that “if the president had been indicted for conspiring with Russia to interfere with and affect the outcome of our elections, it would have precipitated a terrible crisis that could have led to civil war.”
A Quinnipiac poll of Democrats likely to seek the 2020 presidential nomination found Gabbard was the choice of less than 1% of voters surveyed.
end quotes
And back to you, dear friend Chas!