Journalists ~ Russia Collusion Hoax?

Journalists ~ Russia Collusion Hoax?

Should journalists who propagated the Russia collusion hoax be jailed?
John Hinderaker, Powerline 

Roger Simon asks that question. He rightly indicts the journalists who spread the idiotic lie that President Trump “colluded” with Putin’s Russia:

"A penalty of some kind, indeed a serious one, should certainly be levied for misinforming the public on the most important subject of our day, which has happened repeatedly over the last few years concerning the Russia probe. And when these prevarications can be shown to have been deliberate, to have been done knowingly, difficult as that may be to prove, the line to sedition may have been crossed and there is an argument the reporters involved should face legal consequences. They should also be fired.

Many of the major media organizations and their reporters lied about Russia collusion on a regular basis, even, in the cases of the New York Times and the Washington Post, winning Pulitzers for their deceptions.

This evolved out of what we might call a “systemic folie á deux,” a corrupt alliance between the (almost always anonymous) leaker with an ax to grind and the leakee (i. e. the reporter) who is all too eager to grind that ax. A search for the leakers, who are in legal jeopardy, is putatively underway by the DOJ, but, although it obviously takes two for this pernicious tango, the leakees seem bound to get off scot-free."

Unjust? Of course, it is. And not so deep down, the media outlets know this.

In the end, Roger isn’t serious about jailing journalists, much as they might deserve it. But I would add this observation: Why is it that journalists who lied about Russia collusion will no doubt “get off scot-free,” while proudly displaying Pulitzers on their mantels? Why is it that the media organizations that employ them and share their political biases feel no need to sanction them in any way, let alone fire them?

The answer, I think, has a lot to do with the virtual abolition of libel law in the political arena. In a sane legal environment, journalists who published lies about people like Carter Page, and even President Trump, would have to worry about legal liability and the humiliation that comes with an adverse jury verdict. More important, perhaps, their employers would have to worry about paying civil judgments.

But when it comes to defamation, we don’t have a sane legal environment. The U.S. Supreme Court has seen to that in a series of decisions that deserve to be controversial. Wherever you think the boundaries of defamation law should properly be drawn, I think it is almost indisputable that our current legal regime goes too far in immunizing reporters, editors, newspapers and cable news networks against the consequences of negligently or maliciously propagating career-destroying and life-destroying falsehoods about public figures and matters of public interest.

Maybe if President Trump gets another Supreme Court appointment our extremist defamation jurisprudence will be moderated so that there is at least a possibility of holding journalists accountable.

Maybe the Press Should be Quarantined

Maybe the Press Should be Quarantined 
Bill O'Reilly, billoreilly.com 

If you are observant during this time of national isolation, you can learn a lot about your country and, perhaps, yourself.  This is a once in a lifetime experience that will change many things in America; some for the better, some for the worse.

On display right before our eyes is the collapse of honest journalism.  This has been brewing for a while.  In fact, Ted Koppel believes that I, your humble correspondent, ignited the situation by injecting opinion into a prime time cable news program beginning way back in 1996.  Mr. Koppel said that to my face on The O’Reilly Factor.

But Ted ascribes far too much influence to me.  All I did was take the newspaper editorial pages and hone them on television. Nothing wrong with that.  Of course, the concept can be misused by dishonest people but that’s been going on since William Randolph Hearst.

What we are vividly experiencing now in America is a herd media mentality that is using the medical catastrophe to sell a narrative to the folks: the virus is largely Trump’s fault and voters must banish him come November.
My opinion is not stated to support or engender sympathy for President Trump. Americans have seen him talk about the pandemic for hours each week.  Surely, we the people can arrive at a conclusion about the President using our eyewitness capabilities.

But the actual news reporting on the government’s response to the virus is heavily skewed to make Mr. Trump look bad. The hostility of many in the White House press corps is stark and anyone who denies that is a deceiver.  Obviously, the animus directed at Mr. Trump by “objective” reporters violates every journalistic tenet. Reporters can and should ask the toughest questions they can formulate.  But they should not inject hostility into the query.

What is happening here is failure to communicate honestly, with apologies to Cool Hand Luke.  National news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, and CNN, among others, are all practicing “outcome journalism.”  These outfits do not demand their employees search for factual truth.  Instead, editors and TV executives want a clear outcome from the pandemic reporting.  And that is Trump must go. Therefore, almost every bit of the President’s virus response will be portrayed as wrong, stupid, or even lethal.

It should be noted that there are some pro-Trump expositions in the media, but the hate-Trump presentations heavily outnumber them.

Once a free society cannot get honest, objective information, it becomes less able to make responsible decisions.  That is absolutely happening right now in America. The relentless contagion of propaganda funded by massive media corporations has spread to every part of this country.

It is not an overstatement to say the press collapse is a virus that is harming us all.  And there’s no vaccine in sight.

The 13 revelations about the FBI

The 13 revelations showing the FBI never really had a Russia collusion case to begin with

John Solomon, Just the News 

Recently declassified evidence directly undercuts the main arguments the FBI used to justify investigating President Trump and his campaign.

They’ve come slowly, drip by drip: the reluctant revelations of an FBI bureaucracy. But taken together, the body of evidence now amassed over two years of investigating the investigators explains why Attorney General William Barr last week declared there was never really a basis to probe Donald Trump’s campaign for alleged collusion with Russia.

"I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history," Barr told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.

"Without any basis they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president. to sabotage the presidency, and I think that – or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency,” the attorney general said.

Two years ago, those words coming from the top law enforcement official in the land would have been hard to imagine, or to support with public evidence.

But today, after countless open record lawsuits, congressional investigations, sworn depositions and declassifications, there is compelling evidence that the FBI did not have justification to sustain its nearly three year-long, now debunked, Russia collusion probe or to support Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting the Trump campaign.

Furthermore, the evidence shows, the false narrative was sustained by repeated leaks of information to the news media that was blatantly false, debunked in many instances by evidence sitting in the FBI's own files.

The latest revelations came Friday, when previously classified footnotes from the Justice Department inspector general were unmasked and showed the FBI had stunning reason to distrust Christopher Steele’s dossier when the former British spy first pitched it in July 2016.

Here are 13 of the most important revelations that undercut the FBI’s predicate for opening an investigation targeting the Trump campaign in July 2016, for obtaining a year’s worth of FISA warrants to spy on former campaign adviser Carter Page and for seeking a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, to take over and extend the probe.

1.) The FBI possessed information dating to 2015 in Steele’s intelligence (Delta) file warning that he might be the victim of Russian disinformation through his contacts with Vladimir Putin-connected oligarchs. By 2017, the FBI was warned specific false information in Steele's dossier was planted by Russian intelligence, according to the declassified notes that became public from Michael Horowitz’s report.

2.) Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr warned the FBI in August 2016 that Steele held an extreme bias against Trump (he was “desperate" to defeat Trump) and that his information was likely uncorroborated raw intelligence.

3.) Steele’s work on the dossier was funded by Trump’s rival in the election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and the Democratic Party, through their opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. Ohr warned the FBI in August 2016 that Steele’s work was connected to the Clinton campaign in some way.

4.) Steele told a State Department official in October 2016, 10 days before the FISA warrants were first secured, that he had leaked to the news media and had an election day deadline for making public the information he had shared with the FBI as a confidential human source.

5.) Steele was fired Nov. 1, 2016 for violating his confidential human source agreement by leaking to the news media.

6.) Information Steele provided to the government was proven, before the FISA warrants were granted, to be false and inaccurate. Specifically, he told State official Kathleen Kavalec in early October 2016 that he believed Russia was funding its hacking operations through its consulate in Miami. The Russians did not have a consulate in Miami, Kavalec reported in her notes.

7.) Steele was caught in October 2016 peddling a false internet rumor also being spread by a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee and a liberal reporter. That rumor claimed Trump and Putin might be communicating through mysterious computer pings at a server tied to Russia’s Alfa Bank. The rumor was dismissed by the FBI as false.

8.) The FBI falsely declared to the FISA court it had corroborated the evidence in Steele’s dossier used in the search warrant application, including that Carter Page had met with two senior Russians in Moscow in summer 2016. In fact, the Page meetings were never corroborated and a spreadsheet that reviewed every statement in the Steele dossier found most were either inaccurate, uncorroborated or information easily found on the Internet.

9.) The FBI interviewed Steele’s primary sub-source in January 2017, who claimed much of the information attributed to him was not accurate, exaggerated or rumor.

10.) The FBI possessed statements of innocence from Page collected by an undercover informer in August and October 2016, including that Page denied meeting with the two Russians and did not play a role in changing a GOP platform position on Ukraine during the Trump nominating convention. The statements undercut two primary allegations made by the FBI in seeking the FISA warrants.

11.) The CIA alerted the FBI that Page was a friendly U.S. asset who had assisted the Agency on Russia matters and was not a stooge for the Russian government. The FBI altered a document to hide this revelation.

12.) The FBI possessed exculpatory statements made by Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in which he told an undercover informer he and the Trump campaign were not involved in the Russian hacking of Clinton’s emails and considered such activity to be “illegal.” The FBI originally opened the probe of Trump campaign on suspicion Papadopoulos was somehow involved in the hacking.

13.) The FBI concluded in January 2017 that Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn was not being deceptive in his interviews with agents and likely suffered from a faulty memory and was not operating as an agent for Russia.

There are many more revelations that expose flaws, lies and misconduct in the creation of a false Russia collusion narrative. But these 13 alone help explain why Barr made such a sweeping statement last week.

They also likely explain a statement made years earlier in text messages between two key FBI employees, when lead Russia case Agent Peter Strzok texted his lawyer and paramour Lisa Page in May 2017 that there was “there's no big there there” in the Russia probe.

The Unbearable Rightness Of Trump

The Unbearable Rightness Of Trump

Andrew Klavan, The Daily Wire 

During the Republican primaries of 2015, I played a funny supercut of Donald Trump on my podcast. I had misjudged Trump then, fearing his flaws too much and appreciating his talents too little. The supercut put together all the times and tones in which he had said the word “China,” and backed it up with a jazzy bass. I found it hilarious.

Well, it was hilarious. But Trump was right about China. Right that its behavior was unprincipled and dangerous. Right that our trade imbalance with them represented a power imbalance that they could abuse. He was right about China when the Democrats and their press were distracting the country’s attention with trivial Russian trolling. And he was right to engage them even though the Wall Street Journal types screamed like a girl in a horror movie over how his “trade war” might affect their portfolios.

Do you remember Trump’s inaugural address when he spoke about the “American carnage” of closed factories and unemployment that was already causing an epidemic of deaths by despair? He was right about that, too. Right that it required attention when every Democrat and his pet journalist said it was “dark” to mention it. Right that it could be fixed when Barack Obama said it couldn’t. And right that it was a matter of policy when conservatives said he was interfering with the magic of global capitalism and, anyway, those lazy, oxycontin-chugging crackers kind of deserved it.

He was right that globalism could not thrive without a strong self-defending nation state, because nations are not just economic structures, they are also moral entities and some (like China) are wicked and some (like us) are good and deserve favor.

He was right that borders must be secured when blithering leftists were ready to virtue signal the west to death and high-minded right wingers like myself were shrugging off a slow-motion invasion, trusting to some imagined protective magic in our creed.

He was also right that the American news media has become corrupt and fake and needs to be regularly savaged until they are shamed into reforming and playing fair with the public. The Left, of course, loves it this way, though it destroys any chance of American dialogue. The Right underplayed the problem and was resigned to long-term death-by-culture.

The current pandemic has only underscored how very right Trump was: it was unleashed by China, exacerbated by globalism and weak borders, and has been endlessly darkened by the lies of a Republican-hating press.

Trump has not always been articulate in his rightness, and often it has been instinctive rightness rather than philosophical, which has made it easy to dismiss. But he has been right so often and about so much that it is time to confer on him what no one but his most mindless followers have conferred on him yet: the benefit of the doubt.

Which brings me to the current situation.

The idea that Trump ignored warnings or that Trump reacted late or that Trump over-reacted and carelessly destroyed our economy: these are all the whiny assertions of irresponsible children.

We are always being warned about everything. Pandemics, pulse bombs, earthquakes. We have business to take care of. We prepare where we can. Trump reacted quickly given the misinformation we were getting from China and WHO. He stopped travel from China when Joe Biden and the rest of the Left called him names for it. Even the governors who hate him admit he has responded to their calls.

And as for over-reacting and uncaringly dumping the economy… What inside info have you got that he’s not seeing? Does anyone with an ounce more sense than the hate-filled half-wits at CNN or the New York Times – does any sensible person believe that Trump doesn’t care about the economy? His political fortunes depend on it for one thing. And he’s rightly proud of his skill at fixing things, the economy above all.

The president has had an unprecedented and unknowable threat on his hands. He is following experts and feeling his way – just like every leader on earth. If social isolation leads to a low death toll, and the economy bounces back as quickly as he hopes, will the Twitter Jeremiahs line up outside the White House to apologize? Will they say: “Hey. Wow. That really worked, Mr. President. We doubted you every step of the way but, doggone it, as it turns out, you did a good job.”

Who will be the first to wonder aloud if maybe Trump got it right again?

Anyone?

Corona Meltdowns

Corona Meltdowns
Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness 

Is the bad and self-negating behavior of so many of Trump’s enemies setting him up for an even more impressive victory in the fall?

As the coronavirus outbreak begins to reach its zenith, it remains unclear whether the measures taken to stem its tide will prove sufficient, insufficient, or an overreaction. What is certain, however, is that a number of individuals and entities have behaved shamefully and demonstrated no capacity for leadership or usefulness in this moment.

Nancy Pelosi: Gone are the mythologies that Nancy Pelosi was a pragmatic liberal voice of reason among the otherwise polarizing American Left, honed after years of paying her dues to the Democratic Party, as the mother of five dutifully ascended the party’s cursus honorum.

It does not matter whether her political and ethical decline was a result of her deep pathological hatred of Donald Trump. Who cares that her paranoia arose over the so-called “Squad” that might align with socialist Bernie Sanders to mesmerize Democrats to march over the cliff into McGovern-like oblivion? All concede that very few octogenarians have the stamina and clarity to put in the 16-hour work-days and transcontinental travel required by a Speaker of the House.

Instead, all that matters is that for a nation in extremis she is now puerile, even unhinged—and increasingly dangerous.

In retrospect, the public will remember how in fear and confusion she reversed course to spearhead impeachment, outsourced the task in the House of Representatives to its most incompetent and perfidious members—Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—and wasted weeks of the country’s precious energy and time as it was on the cusp of an epidemic.

Pelosi then quickly weaponized the viral crisis in hopes that COVID-19 could do what Robert Mueller’s dream team and impeachment had not done—destroy the administration of Donald Trump before the November 2020 election. Only such an obsession explains why any sober politico would damn Trump as culpable in January for ignoring the viral dangers, while nearly a month after his necessary and controversial travel ban of January 31—that stopped perhaps 7,000 Chinese citizens entering California per day, some on direct flights from Wuhan—she was doing a photo-op tour to urge the public to get out and shop in San Francisco’s crowded Chinatown: “That’s what we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here“.

Such a crazy juxtaposition is not just politics or hypocrisy—it’s insanity. The night before an impeached Trump was acquitted in the Senate, and five days after Trump had controversially stopped incoming Chinese visitors, Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address before a national television audience, a level of spiteful vitriol not seen in the U.S. Congress since the years leading up to the Civil War.

When the Congress finally agreed to call a truce and pass a bipartisan “rescue bill” to stave off a depression and deliver some relief to millions of unemployed, Pelosi single-handedly delayed passage to insert irrelevant progressive treats into the authorization—until she was reprimanded by her own party to cease and desist.

She is now, in the middle of an epidemic, insanely talking about a “truth” impeachment-light commission to investigate Trump. She is absolutely clueless of the nihilistic circus that would ensue when her own previous on-the-record statements, the parasitic investment practices of U.S. senators of both parties, the bizarre behavior of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the empty January braggadocio of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Joe Biden’s smearing of the Trump travel ban would be fully aired.

Does she have any idea that by forcing Trump to “own” the virus—predicated on the notion of trusting in bleak but widely criticized Armageddon modeling—she is greenlighting Trump to take credit for the response, especially if coronavirus proves in the end comparable to the 60 million infected, roughly 1 million hospitalized, and 15,000-60,000 dead in the prior influenza epidemics of 2009 or 2017?

It is difficult to find one thing Pelosi has said or done that has not made the country worse off since the virus officially hit our shores in late January.

The Media: Watching the media deal with the daily White House briefings reminds the country that we have never had journalism of this low character before—not in the acrimony over the Founding, not in the furor during the Civil War, not even in the age of yellow journalism at the turn of the 20th century.

Reporters do not wish to transmit knowledge to the public that might aid in confronting the virus. They do not even wish to clarify murky statements from public officials to ensure Americans know exactly what the government wants them to do.

Instead, journalists during White House briefings fixate on two agendas.

One is to goad the president into saying something sloppy, by repeatedly suggesting that in reacting to the virus, he was in error, that he is cruel and heartless, or that he is dangerous. That gotcha obsession explains why the media can call Trump a xenophobe and racist for issuing a travel ban against China—contrary to the earlier advice of WHO, the Centers for Disease Control, the media, and the entire Democratic Party hierarchy—then silently support it. It explains why they then use doctored Chinese data and propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party to convince Americans that China—a nation that lied about the origins, spread, and nature of the virus—is admirably doing a better job in containing the virus than is their own country. Even the media cannot keep straight their own anti-Trump gymnastics.

If evidence convinces Trump to let the public know that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are efficacious in treating patients infected with coronavirus, then reporters will seek to persuade Americans that such off-label uses have no utility and are dangerous—even if they have to stoop to find some nut who drank fish-tank cleaner, clearly marked unfit for human consumption, to argue that a nonpotable chloroquine derivative cleaning agent provides proof of “Dr.” Trump’s deadly ignorance.

But the White House press obsesses over a second agenda, too. It must always prove that previously respected figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, once embraced by the liberal media in their pre-Trump days, either are in revolt against their doltish boss or brain-washed into obsequious enslavement to the president. Often the media advances both antithetical scenarios near simultaneously.

The third rail for the media is that Fauci and Birx are empirical and sound mostly politically disinterested. They seek to provide Trump with scientific data about the virus to balance his incoming streams of financial, economic, military, and cultural information.

When Trump accepts their advice over objections from other advisors with competing national concerns, the two feel it was for the good of the country. When he demurs, they press their arguments as advocates of public health. And when they rarely lose an argument the two concede the president has to balance dozens of existential concerns.

In other words, it would be hard, for anyone other than the current press corps, on Monday to paint Fauci and Birx as frustrated scientists at the mercy of a moron who refuses to listen to science, while on Tuesday writing off both as Trump toadies who have joined the forces of darkness.

But that is currently the schizophrenic state of the American media. The only constant is that whatever Trump advocated, they are against, even if lives are at stake. And whatever Trump policy seems to be working for the good of the country, they either deny or ignore it.

Another irony: While the current media is the logical culmination of the liberal biases of the more polite leftwing domination of network and print media of the late twentieth century, it is now also far more vulnerable to exposure and ridicule. After all, it was progressive Silicon Valley’s creation of the Internet website and social media that have allowed truth to emerge past even media filters, truth that has largely exposed the media as incompetent, meanspirited, and increasingly irrelevant.

Joe Biden: The virus shutdown was first seen as providing a necessary respite for the 77-year-old former vice president to go home, rest up, and recuperate after an exhausting summer, fall, and winter of campaigning—an ordeal that supposedly had explained Biden’s increasing flubs and gaffes.

Indeed, when the shutdown first began, a rested Biden, coming off a well enough debate performance against Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), was to broadcast daily out of his home. In informal fireside chat fashion, good ol’ Joe from Scranton would offer “here’s the deal” homilies and “point one, point two, point something or other” commentaries on the virus and Trump’s inadequate response to it.

But what followed was an ungodly disaster, as if the problem all along never was Biden’s weariness, but Biden himself. A rested Biden’s botched commentaries only convinced observers that a President Biden at this moment would be a veritable catastrophe. Biden seemed more confused from his home than he was on the campaign stump. He tried reading from a teleprompter script, and then talking ex tempore, and then both, and found he could do neither.

After blasting Trump as a xenophobe and racist for the January 31 travel ban, Biden hemmed and hawed and finally conceded he agreed with the ban. His staff claimed his xenophobic/racist allegations were in connection to Trump’s use of “Chinese virus”—a rubric first institutionalized probably by CNN. Yet Trump used that terminology only after, not before, Biden’s smear. Now Biden apparently is trying to argue that Trump should have issued the once “racist” and “xenophobic” ban even earlier—as Biden its former critic supposedly would have done. Once Biden decided he had to be against everything Trump was for, and once Trump was for most things that the so-called experts thought best, then Biden inevitably was in Pavlovian fashion against what was good for the country.

The truth is that Biden cannot find much to disagree with, given that most Democrats—Pelosi and DeBlasio, especially—were playing down the severity of the virus, as was Anthony Fauci himself in January.

Anytime Biden faulted Trump for belated responses, it was easy for Biden’s opponents to show that almost no one but Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in early January was alarmed about the impending danger (and smeared by the Left for his warnings), and even easier given that Trump’s travel ban met fierce opposition as not merely racist but unnecessary and exaggerated.

Biden earlier also had promised a diversity vice president and is now wedded to that commitment. But the only Democrat in the present crisis who is winning mainstream media acclaim is Governor Andrew Cuomo, despite the paradox that he was also once exaggerating his own readiness for the virus and bragging about the openness of New York to the world. So far, he governs a state with the greatest numbers of virus cases as well as deaths and per capita fatality rates—facts which according to the blame—game logic of the Left are political fodder.

Nonetheless, Cuomo is being touted both as the far more competitive candidate in a crisis than the fumbling Biden, and yet he will prove almost impossible to nominate given Biden’s long campaign and delegate lead. The best squaring of that circle in the eyes of Democrat politicos would be to have Cuomo as the vice-presidential nominee on the ticket. He could rectify some of Biden’s gaffing, and do most of the fall campaigning, while with a wink and nod reassuring voters that he would likely have to step in for a President Biden if the latter’s present disturbing lapses continue.

Now that option seems less likely given Biden’s earlier politically correct grandstanding of promising a diversity vice-presidential pick without a clue of who such a person might be.

For now, the media, Pelosi, and Biden, along with the Left in general, wish to perpetuate a sense of viral Armageddon to make it politically impossible for Trump to initiate a graduated plan of returning America to work. Their hope is for a summer and fall of continued lockdown, a near depression rather than a mere recession, and enough public furor to end Trump in November—while hoping that a sudden post-election end to the lockdown will allow the natural recovery of Trump’s booming economy on their watch in 2021.

Missing in all these calculations is empathy for those who are ill and the losses that such macabre expectations certainly entail. Also absent is a sense of the irony that, by unfairly scapegoating Trump in hours of darkness, they are ensuring that in the upcoming dawn, he will be credited by their same logic with owning what will likely be an impressive U.S. response to suppressing the virus and reviving the economy.

For Turkey, a war and a new refugee crisis

For Turkey, a war and a new refugee crisis

Paul Mirengoff, Powerline 

With so much focus on the coronavirus and the Democratic primaries, the media has paid scant attention to two related developments: (1) war between Turkey and Syria and (2) refugees trying to push their way en masse from Turkey into Greece.
Turkey has been at war with Syria, and by extension Russia, for a few weeks. The war stems from the push by the Syrian regime, with its usual Russian backing, into one of the last footholds of the anti-Assad resistance in the northern province of Idlib, not far from Turkey.

Turkey, hoping to avoid another mass exodus of Syrians into Turkey or up against its border, attacked. This move brought it into conflict not just with Syria but also with Russia.

Dozens of Turkish troops were killed by airstrikes, in other words by Russia. Turkish drones and artillery pounded Syrian positions throughout the region, killing dozens Syrian troops. However, as I understand it, Turkey shied away from attacking Russians.

Turkey called for support from NATO. None was forthcoming.

In addition, the U.S. reportedly turned down a request for help in the form of Patriot anti-aircraft batteries to protect Turkish troops. It has been suggested that Trump’s negative response may have been at least in part the product of anger over Turkey’s purchase last year of Russian S-400, over American objections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham called for the U.S. to enforce a no-fly zone in the region. This seems like too tall an order at this point. The time for a no-fly zone was before Russia became heavily invested in this war. Had the Obama administration acted at that time, the disasters that followed very probably would have been averted.

President Erdogan’s response to the West’s failure to assist Turkey was the release of large numbers of refugees being held behind a border wall. Greece pushed back against the resulting surge of refugees. Greece and Turkey dispute whether the Greeks have used lethal force to stem the flow.

Last night on Christiane Amanpour’s PBS program, a high level Greek official said that only a small portion — 5 percent or less — of the refugees who are trying to surge across its border are Syrians. I don’t know whether this is true or what Greece’s basis for the claim is. However, one of the seriously injured refugees featured in the PBS report is Pakistani, and there is evidence of a significant Afghan presence, as well.

It’s easy to understand why neither Greece nor Europe as a whole desires more refugees, and even easier to understand why it doesn’t want entrants who aren’t from Syria, where the true humanitarian crisis is. At the same time, one can understand why Turkey, facing an influx of new Syrian refugees, wants to rid itself of a large number of its current refugees. And it’s natural that Turkey would play the refugee card in order to gain assistance from the West.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Russia have agreed to a cease fire in northern Syria. It is Turkey that seems to have backed down, as one would expect given the extreme vulnerability of Turkish ground forces to Russia air attacks.

Russia, while desirous of good relations with Turkey in the long term, seems unwilling seriously to compromise its interests in Syria. For Putin, the solution is to seek an end to hostilities that allows Turkey to save face and that somehow minimizes its refugee problem, while at the same time enabling Syria to achieve its military goals.

Whether these objectives can be achieved remains to be seen. The current cease-fire agreement, standing alone, doesn’t seem to achieve them. It’s just a stop gap.

I don’t pretend to know all the wheels within wheels regarding either the war or the refugee question. I just think that both aspects the story deserve our attention.

Bernie is lying about socialist Cuba

Bernie is lying about socialist Cuba

Col Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

Bernie Sanders, like all socialists, is outright lying about how good things are in socialist Cuba.

Socialists simply are incapable of honestly telling the truth about their socialist religion. 

They can criticize everyone else with great skill but cannot be honest about themselves - that is heresy.

If you have the guts to glimpse how people in poverty endure under socialism in Cuba go watch these two recent documentaries:

PBS's Cuba's Secret Side

and

POV's Voices from the Sea

Do that and you will know everything you need to know about 21st century socialism

Roger Stone: The Audacity of Knowing Trump

The Audacity of Knowing Trump

Roger Stone...
...the case is about the left wanting to send political enemies to jail

Tucker Carlson: Fox News

A lot of criminals walking free, but not Stone.

We’ve chronicled pretty extensively on this show how our leaders in Washington suddenly seem deeply sympathetic to people ensnared in our criminal justice system.

An awful lot of criminals are getting out of prison early these days or not going at all. This is compassionate, they tell us, and it may be. Yet somehow, those same compassionate impulses don't seem to extend to Roger Stone, one of President Trump's oldest advisers.

Stone was convicted of lying during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. In the end, Mueller couldn't find collusion between the Trump 2016 election campaign and Russia, but Justice Department prosecutors recommended to the sentencing judge that Stone should get seven to nine years in prison. Good, says official Washington. He is annoying and worse, he is close to Trump. Let him die there.

President Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, John Dean, said on CNN: “Roger Stone is somebody I hold in minimum high esteem. So I was not unhappy to see him get seven to nine.”

Dean led the Watergate cover-up for months. He made hush payments to the burglars. He destroyed evidence to keep investigators from finding it.

So how much prison time did he serve for all that? Well, he served four months. He is not Roger Stone. He didn't get nine years.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe isn't Roger Stone either. He won't even serve that. In fact, McCabe will serve nothing at all, which is pretty remarkable if you think about it.

As an FBI official, McCabe authorized illegal leaks to the press and then lied to investigators about doing it. McCabe was fired from his job for that, as he should have been.

But on Friday, prosecutors announced that they will not bring any criminal charges against McCabe for committing what were obviously crimes.

Over at CNN, where McCabe is a contributor, they celebrated the news.

Other corrupt former FBI officials were thrilled by the news, too. Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page – who spent months texting her FBI boyfriend Peter Strzok about how to stop Donald Trump (not her job, by the way, as a federal employee) tweeted: "Cheers, Andy," with a photograph of herself holding a glass of wine. In other words: Hey America, up yours.

But McCabe was the one man on the left that didn't seem happy about the news that he wouldn’t be charged with a crime. Believe it or not. He is not grateful that he just dodged an indictment. Instead, he says he is angry. He is the victim here.

McCabe said on CNN: “As glad as I am that the Justice Department and the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office finally decided to do the right thing today, it is an absolute disgrace that they took two years and put my family through this experience for two years before they finally drew the obvious conclusion.”

Talk about an ingrate. If he was Roger Stone, McCabe would be in jail right now. Instead, he is a celebrity fawned over by the hair hats on cable news. No doubt his salary has increased.

You ought to be grateful he didn't get caught supporting Donald Trump three years ago. He would be talking to his lawyer through a glass window right now.

And he's not alone. There are an awful lot of people out there who aren't Roger Stone who are walking free tonight.

Take Jose George. George is accused of trafficking in fentanyl. That's the synthetic opioid that's killed tens of thousands of Americans and does so every year.

Police have already linked at least one death to the drugs that George allegedly sold. He was recently arrested in New York state, but police had to release him, thanks to New York's new bail law – even though he was facing life in prison.

After being charged, he was let go without paying a cent in bail. What's stopping him from trying to flee? Nothing. If he doesn't try, he is stupid. That's what life in New York is like now. That's compassion for those who are not Roger Stone.

In November, New York resident, Reeaz Khan – who is also not Roger Stone – was arrested for domestic violence. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requested that he be handed over for possible deportation. New York ignored them and let Khan go.

Now, Khan has been arrested and is accused of raping and murdering a 92-year- old woman. It's not just in New York, by the way. Across the country, cities are slashing the sentences of people who are not Roger Stone or refusing to prosecute them entirely.

In California, Proposition 48 has fueled a wave of car break-ins and shoplifting by criminals who have calculated the potential gains of the crime outweigh the punishment they're likely to get.

In Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner has refused to prosecute dozens of cases of illegal gun possession. Well, how's that worked out? Exactly as you would expect.

Maalik Jackson-Wallace for example, was arrested in June 2018 and accused of possessing a gun illegally. Instead of facing charges, he was sent to a diversionary program and released.

These are the people who were for gun control for you, by the way, keep in mind.

In March – you won't be surprised to hear this – Jackson-Wallace was arrested and accused of yet another gun crime, and he was released yet again.

Again, prosecutors asked for no bail in Jackson-Wallace’s case, because he's not Roger Stone. Finally last June, Jackson-Wallace was arrested for a third time, this time accused of murder. So do you see a thread here? What's going on exactly?

Criminal justice reform is a lot like gun control. It's not about changing the rules for everyone. It's about selectively enforcing them along political lines.

So for example, the left will lecture you for hours about gun crime and how afraid they are of guns and they hate guns and guns are bad. But they don't really feel that way. They oppose stop and frisk, which saved thousands of lives by taking many thousands of guns off the street. But they're totally opposed to that.

Meanwhile, they're working deep into the night, for example, to disarm law-abiding Virginians in rural Virginia who commit essentially no violent crime and are a threat to no one.

They're not for gun control. They are for punishing people who don't vote for them, and the same thing is happening here.

The left doesn't want criminal justice reform. If they did, they'd be on Roger Stone's side. No. What they really want is to send their political enemies to jail and that's what they're trying to do.

 Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Feb. 14, 2020.

Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a contributor.

Another exhausting trip to Schiffville...

Where’s Waldo whistleblower?

Scott Johnson, Powerline 

In his presentation on behalf of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial yesterday, White House Deputy Counsel Patrick Philbin raised the question of Adam Schiff and the whistleblower. Why have we not heard from him? Why has Schiff deep-sixed the testimony about him? RealClearPolitics has posted video of Philbin’s remarks along with this (lightly edited) transcript:

PHILBEN: I want to touch on one last point before I yield to one of my colleagues. That relates to the whistleblower. The whistleblower who we haven’t heard that much about who started all of this. The whistleblower we know from the letter that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community sent that he thought that the whistleblower had political bias. We don’t know exactly what the political bias was because the Inspector General testified in the House committees in an executive session, and that transcript is still secret. It wasn’t transmitted up to the House Judiciary Committee. We haven’t seen it. We don’t know what’s in it. We don’t know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. Now you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the President of the United States that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of it because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint could be relevant, but there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Recent reports, public reports, suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an Intelligence Community staffer who worked with then Vice President Biden on Ukraine matters, which if true would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. At first when things started, it seemed like everyone agreed that we should hear from the whistleblower including Manager Schiff. I think we have what he said.

SCHIFF (tape): Yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower.

We’ll get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower.

We don’t need the whistleblower.

PHILBIN: What changed? At first Manager Schiff agreed we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the whistleblower, but then he changed his mind and he suggested that it was because now we had the transcript. But the second clip there was from September 29th which was four days after the transcript had been released. But there was something else that came into play, and that was something that Manager Schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower.

SCHIFF (tape): We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to.

PHILBIN: It turned out that that statement was not truthful. Around October 2nd or 3rd, it was exposed that the Manager Schiff’s staff at least had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint and potentially had given some guidance, some sort to the whistleblower. After that point it became critical to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower. During the House hearings, of course Manager Schiff was in charge. He was chairing the hearings. That creates a real problem from a due process perspective, from a search for truth perspective, because he was an interested fact witness at that point. He had a reason, since he had been caught out saying something that wasn’t truthful about that contact, he had a reason to not want that inquiry. It was he who ensured that there wasn’t any inquiry into that.

Now this is relevant here I think because as you’ve heard from my colleagues, a lot of what we’ve heard over the past 23 hours, over the past three days, has been from Chairman Schiff. He has been telling you things like what’s in President Trump’s head, what’s in President Zelensky’s head. It’s all his interpretation of the facts and the evidence trying to pull inferences out of things. There’s another statement that Chairman Schiff made that I think we have on video.

CHUCK TODD (tape): But you admit all you have right now is a circumstantial case.

SCHIFF: Actually, no Chuck. I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now. Again, I think —

TODD: So you have seen evidence of collusion.

SCHIFF: I don’t want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation.

PHILBIN: That was in March of 2017 when Chairman Schiff was ranking member of HPSCI was telling the public, the American public, that he had more than circumstantial evidence through his position on H that President Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Of course, the Mueller Report, as Mr. Sekulow pointed out, after $32 million and over 500 search warrants or roughly 500 search warrants, determined that there was no collusion. That wasn’t true. We wanted to point these things out simply for this reason. Chairman Schiff has made so much of the House’s case about the credibility of interpretations that the House Managers want to place on not hard evidence but on inferences. They want to tell you what President Trump thought. They want to tell you don’t believe what Zelensky said. We can tell you what Zelensky actually thought. Don’t believe what the other Ukrainians actually said about not being pressured. We can tell you what they actually thought. That it is very relevant to know whether the assessments of evidence he’s presented in the past are accurate. We would submit that they have not been and that that is relevant for your consideration.

Collective Denial on Iran

Collective Denial on Iran

Col Mike Walker, USMC (ret)

All,

Love to listen to the pundits from all perspectives sidestep the real crisis with Iran.

It is the most impressive example of collective denial of reality I have ever witnessed -- and it has been going on for decades.

It is a second and much more severe case of this type of infective mental disorder.

The first case dealt with North Korea where (as now) all the "best and brightest" minds were in complete denial that North Korea would get nuclear weapons.

But that pales in comparison to the collective denial about Iran's nuclear arms objectives.

In that sense, the JCPOA was a manifestation of schizophrenia.

It gave Iran a clear pathway to build nuclear weapons while denying Iran would follow it to build nuclear weapons.

You can't make this stuff up.

I listen over and over again to an endless stream of politicians, government officials, and media talking heads (literally from across the globe) drone on about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons as if it is not going to happen -- as if these opining poobahs have the "power" to prevent it.

That is a true mental disorder.

As with North Korea, Iran decided decades ago to get nuclear weapons and like Norht Korea, it will get them.

The only question is the one never addressed: What is the plan when Iran builds its weapons?

We have had decades to prepare but if you deny reality, you always wind up unprepared when reality eventually slaps you in the face.

That virtually assures us that we will be in a true global crisis when the Ayatollahs go nuclear.

I do not look forward to that day but I know who to blame: Ourselves.

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

Iran’s Options in a Showdown with America Are All Bad

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

Trump governs the tempo of the confrontation.

After losing its top strategist, military commander, and arch-terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian theocracy is weighing responses.

One, Iran can quiet down and cease military provocations.

After attacking tankers off its coast, destroying an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, shooting down a U.S. drone, and being responsible for the killing and wounding of Americans in Iraq, Iran could now keep quiet.

It might accept that its strategy of escalation has failed to lead to any quantifiable advantage. Trump did not prove a passive “Twitter tiger,” as his critics mocked. Instead, he upped the stakes to Iran’s disadvantage and existential danger.

The chances, however, for such a logical and passive readjustment by Iran are nil.

Iran believes that Trump’s beefed-up sanctions have all but destroyed its economy and could now extend to secondary boycotts of nations trading with Iran. U.S. sanctions have also squeezed Iranian expeditionary efforts to forge a permanent hegemony and a Shiite crescent extending to the Mediterranean.

If unchecked, American economic pressure could eventually lead to a popular rebellion that would topple the theocracy. In sum, a return to the status quo is unlikely.

Two, Iran can agree to reenter talks about its nuclear program and offer a few concessions.

Iran could concede that the prior agreement was designed to bank Iranian cash and nuclear expertise that would eventually lead to its developing nuclear weaponry after a period of feigned good behavior.

Yet a return to direct negotiations with Washington is also unlikely, especially since Iran once enjoyed a lopsided gift from the United States. Renegotiating anything less would be too humiliating for the revolutionary regime to endure.

Three, Iran can escalate its military operations and its use of terrorist surrogates. The death of Soleimani is Iran’s most grievous setback in decades, and Iran seeks vengeance.

The theocracy will view his death not just in terms of a strategic loss, but as a humiliation that cannot stand. Governments elsewhere in the Middle East are gloating over Soleimani’s killing, and especially over the thought of Iran’s inability to do much about it.

In reaction, Iran could strike American bases and allies in the region. The possibilities are endless. It might send more drones and missiles against other nations’ refineries. Hezbollah could shower Israeli cities with missiles. Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of seeing the rest of the world suffer as it has.

Iran could also unleash its terrorist appendages to stage attacks on American and Israeli assets throughout Europe and the U.S., including military bases, airliners, and soft civilian targets.

Yet this choice is also unlikely.

The U.S. would not have to invade Iran to end it as a modern state. A strike against the U.S. or its overseas military installations would result in a devastating response. The theocracy knows that in hours, U.S. airpower could take out all of Iran’s oil refineries, power stations, and military bases while suffering few if any causalities.

Given U.S. oil independence and the global adjustments to existing sanctions on Iranian oil, the near-permanent loss of Iran’s oil would not greatly damage the world economy.

Iran will bluster and threaten, but waging an all-out war with the U.S. would be suicidal, and Iran knows it.

Fourth, Iran can continue its periodic attacks on U.S. allies and on troops and contractors in the region.

Constant provocation is not a good alternative, but it’s probably seen as preferable to the other poor choices. The strategic aim in such endless tit-for-tat would be to wear down the patience of the U.S. public in an election year.

Given the quick criticism of Soleimani’s killing from Trump’s progressive domestic opponents, and given the Obama administration’s past appeasement in response to Iranian provocations, Tehran might conclude that a hit-and-pause strategy is preferable.

It could incite Trump’s political opponents to brand him a warmonger who acted illegally by “assassinating” Soleimani.

Iran’s hope would be that Trump would lose the support of the anti-war members of his base in key swing states.

If such periodic attacks continued until Election Day, Iran might hope for President Elizabeth Warren or President Bernie Sanders. Either one would likely resurrect the flawed Iran deal and ignore Iranian aggression in Syria and Iraq.

Iran’s goal might be something like re-creating the melodrama of the 1979–81 hostage crisis, Saddam Hussein’s rope-a-dope strategy, or Bill Clinton’s three-month bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. Tehran hopes for American strategic ossification that could prove politically toxic.

But that scenario, too, is unlikely. As long as Trump replies with airpower disproportionate to any Iranian attacks, he, not Tehran, governs the tempo of the confrontation.

Iran created the current crisis. It has choices, but for now, they are all bad.


NRO contributor VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. @vdhanson