Opinion – Skunk Politics

June 14, 2018July 3, 2018

Journalist Laughs Off Spygate as Evidence Mounts

Spygate will never be proven, never ever, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The perpetrators of the greatest American abuse of power since J. Edgar Hoover were not aware of how far off the rails they went and many are honestly still unaware today. How is this possible? Although Spygate is real we must understand that there was no secret meeting in a hidden cave where Comey and Clapper and Brennan concocted a plan to take down Trump. Instead we had people with critically impaired judgement believing they were running a legitimate operation.

There are no specific laws governing when the FBI can send informants into a campaign, or when they can initiate sting operations, or when they can levy surveillance on Americans. A law can’t cover every possible situation. Instead we have various criteria and checks that are always a version of determining what is “probable cause.” In other words, it is always a judgement call.

Professionals in the department of Justice surely have unparalleled judgement. Surely.

Maybe you believe that what has become known as ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ (TDS) is a silly thing that Trump loyalists ascribe to people they disagree with. It isn’t, and it clouds the judgment to the tenth degree. Let’s talk about the syndrome.

A Nobel winning economist, named Paul Krugamn, said the economy would collapse and never recover once Trump was elected. A ridiculous statement for even a first year undergrad. Thousands of psychiatrists have publicly pronounced Trump mentally incapacitated without examining their virtual patient, which violates a major tenant of their profession. They literally diagnosed a paitent based on MSNBC coverage. Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates felt that General Flynn was a blackmail risk to the White House because he lied, as if he was the first person to lie in Washington D.C.

It is clear to many that TDS can affect anyone, educated or not. But why would anyone assume that the heralded heads of our intelligence community suffer from this malady? Glad you asked, before ever meeting the POTUS, the FBI director, James Comey, expressed his concern about Trump, “I feel great pressure to stay to try and protect the institution I lead.” And James Clapper, former DNI, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he thought Trump was a threat to democracy, this was affirmed by General Hayden the very next day. Below is a newly released excerpt of a high level FBI agent’s opinion of Trump supporters.

It is clear the people running our country’s intelligence agencies were either extremely biased or clinically deranged against Trump. Sadly, this bias was solely based on what they saw on television. This is our elite intelligence community.

Next we must accept the fact that the FBI was investigating Trump and his campaign. This is not contested. Anytime a presidential candidate is under investigation by an FBI subordinate to the opposition party, there is reason for skepticism in even the most pristine circumstance. This is true from 1789 until the republic ends.

So we have clear evidence that the leaders of our intelligence community, who have un-tethered power, didn’t like candidate Trump. (Read all their newly released books for corroboration) We also know that many educated people carrying extreme bias towards Trump have deluded judgement. And we also know that some of these people have initiated or ok’d investigations into Trump. The next step is to examine the investigation while giving the professional law enforcement people the benefit of the doubt.

The intelligence community’s judgement was that Carter Page was suspicious enough to have his fourth amendment rights surrendered and a Fisa Warrant issued yet he was not charged.

The same is true of George Papadopolous, the subject of a FISA warrant because he was approached by a Russian. No charge relating to the reason for the Warant.

What did three star General Michael Flynn do to permit surveillance? No one really knows. No charges of working with Russians here either.

Why were informants placed in or around the campaign? Um

Why did the FBI allegedly send an informant to entice Roger Stone and Michael Caputo to pay for dirt on Hillary?

What was the impetus to investigate the president?

Why were Manafort and Michael Cohen investigated and (will be) indicted on unrelated crimes for the sole purpose of trying to coerce them to flip on the POTUS. Was there any reason to treat Trump like Pablo Escobar?

Each one of these steps should have required a preponderance of evidence before getting the go-ahead. How could all of them been granted and all of them turn up empty? Bad judgement. In all of these instances the intelligence community felt there was enough there to violate the fourth amendment of US citizens and in every case there was no crime. This behavior is common in Uganda not America.

February 6, 2018February 14, 2018

CNN Hiring Practices Called Into Question?

During the week of February 4th, many proponents of fairness in the media felt shock after seeing the most recent hire at CNN. Who was this new recruit? Josh Campbell, the FBI agent who publicly authored a NY Times opinion piece against Trump. In response to the personnel move, Donald Trump Jr tweeted, “You would think their stable is full in the hate on Trump department. Ahh, who am I kidding? It’s CNN of course there’s more room.”

What did Trump Jr mean?

One might think that Don Jr was referring to the hosts. Perhaps Jake Tapper, a former writer for a far left publication? Maybe Chris Cuomo, the son and brother of pillars of the democratic party? Or could it be Jim Sciutto, a former Obama official, who comes with former Obama officials as sources? These three are just a taste of the issue with hosts but this is not the travesty Don was referencing.

Another theory would be Don Jr was referring to the stable of pundits who appear on panels. It is quite common to find entire panels of anti-Trump perspectives. Many of the experts at CNN are direct hires from the Clinton/Obama machine. ‘HIres,’ such as regulars, Gloria Borger and David Axelrod or even the contributors like Neera Tanden, John Podesta and Robby Mook or even the countless guests who easily outnumber supporters of Trump 5-1. (With the ‘1’ being self-hating republican Anna Navarro)

The true problem Don Jr saw was that CNN is boldly and irreverently hiring symbols of the resistance. The pattern is too much to ignore.

Trump Hater Unemployment At All-Time Low

After mounting a campaign to be President in the state of Utah, with the sole purpose of thwarting the Trump presidency, Evan McMullin was hired as consultant at CNN.
When reporter April Ryan engaged in a public fight with the President and became a hero of the resistance she found herself working at CNN a day later.
After the media pretended Preet Bahara was a hero for getting replaced by the Trump administration, Preet got a paycheck from CNN.
Once James Clapper broke tradition and called Trump a threat to democracy he found that he earned a part-time gig at CNN.

The amount of time between the acts of #resistance and the hiring is troubling. One might ask if Josh Campbell was promised a job in return for his op-ed.

The bias at CNN is quantifiable if anyone cared to look. The only remaining question is why Sally Yates did not cash in, did she have a better offer at MSNBC?

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017

Did CNN Leak Their Plan To Attack Trump’s Afghanistan Policy?

CNN is circling their prey as they lie in wait for tonight’s unveiling of Trump’s Afghanistan strategy. The President has two distinct options: withdraw from Afghanistan or stay and continue the war. CNN will remain in a holding pattern all day and not offer any preference via anchors or pundits so they are free to attack whichever option Trump chooses.

If Trump chooses to withdraw they will attack. CNN, and the democratic strategists, have a few game plans to go with and likely will start with all of them and wait to see which sticks:

Bannon influence still running the White House
First US President to lose a war (surrender)
Trump wasting the sacrifice of so many soldiers
Flip flopping on promise to fight terrorism
Not listening to generals (White House in disarray)
Trump doesn’t have the stomach for war and he will look weak to our enemies

If Trump chooses to stay he will also be attacked. Once again CNN, and the democratic strategists, have a few game plans to go with and will likewise start with all of them and see which sticks:

Trump letting generals run White House
Trump will get soldiers killed for no reason
Flip flopping on promise of a withdrawal
Attack announced strategy of an unwinnable war

As we discussed earlier, the main goal of CNN is to chip away support of “the base.” So if we had to guess their favored outcome, we would go with stay in Afghanistan. CNN can then really focus on the betrayal of his base. If the network had any integrity this would be difficult for them. As avid Hillary supporters, CNN aligns strongly with the philosophy of retaining a military presence in Afghanistan, but if Trump chooses that option they have to go with their higher calling; shitting on Trump.

June 13, 2017June 22, 2017

CNN Disavows Journalism to Bash Gingrich

Newt Gingrich, the former Trump advisor and former speaker of the house, has been taking flak from CNN. His crime was two (see picture above) seemingly contradictory tweets. Mr Gingrich went from calling Robert Mueller, the man investigating Trump, a “superb choice” to labeling him unfair based on who he is bringing on his team. The punishment for this crime- repeated lambasting by every CNN anchor for a twenty-four hour period.

However, not one journalist bothered to research what Newt was talking about to see if there was a reason for his turnaround. If they did look into the hires Newt mentioned, they would have seen that Newt had a rationale for his new position. CNN never even mentioned one of these hires in their snarky reporting. Had they bothered to look into it, they would have noticed Mueller hiring a series of Clinton faithful as explained by Zerohedge here. This is not to say these people are inherently biased but it’s a valid discussion point.

Maybe twitter needs to lower the character limit of tweets from 140 so CNN can keep up.

UPDATE: Chris Cuomo did bring up the reasoning for Gingrich complaint. He did more than only pointing out the face-value inconsistency.

June 1, 2017June 9, 2017

The Anatomy of a CNN Headline

Let us examine the game CNN plays with the minds of their audience.

SOURCES: RUSSIANS DISCUSSED POTENTIALLY “DEROGATORY” INFORMATION ABOUT TRUMP & ASSOCIATES DURING CAMPAIGN

CNN’s hope is that people in the doctor’s office look up from their magazines at the TV and see “Russia” and “Trump” in the same headline. This reinforces the Trump-Russia tale they’ve been peddling uninterrupted for months. For those at home, who actually watch the network, the anchors will jabber on for hours adding no other information outside the purposefully vague headline.

My theory, like the Deceleration of Independence, is self-evident. The entirety of the story derives from one (confirmed) source who cherry picked a factoid in which key points are intentionally withheld by the source, so as not to diminish the Trump-Russia narrative. But CNN is adept at laundering any anti-trump dribble into A-block news. Question time:

Was this type of spy chatter common in the past as well? The fact that this is an actual story implies that this is a new phenomenon for Donald J. Trump. Isn’t this what Russian spies have always done?
What is this “derogatory information?” What would motivate a source to leave out this key fact which is the crux of the issue?
“Russians” Can you be more specific? American spies intercept boatloads of Russian spy communications. Is this from some low-level nobody on Facebook or a (i.e.) senior FSB official, they must know.
“Discussed?” If they intercepted the conversation, tell us what they were saying. Was it a plan? Why do we get 1/10th of a story?
“Potentially” This is a qualifier denoting the whole story is quite possibly bogus. The most crucial word in the headline.

Regardless, this story is smoke not fire and will dissipate as such. No one will follow it up because no one cares, it’s as impactful as the golf channel to an eight year old on the way to his cartoons.

For more on CNN’s “sources” trick see here.