How government bureaucracies confirm our suspicions about political influence.

KDHE doctored a COVID case chart to justify mask mandates

KDHE Secretary Lee Norman shared a COVID case chart with media this week, which he said shows the counties that abided by Governor Kelly’s mask mandate are ‘winning the battle.’ But he deceptively doctored the chart to justify mask mandates.

At about the 15-minute mark of the recording, a reporter asks (according to Norman’s restatement of the hard-to-hear question, “If the no-mask counties would start masking, would it (blue line) drop, and would it dip down below the mask counties.”

Norman said, “I think it would.”

The reporter clearly read the chart as showing the masked counties (the orange line) now have fewer daily cases than the unmasked counties (the blue line).

But the chart was consciously manipulated to produce that appearance by comparing the same data (cases per day) on different axes.

Cases for mandate counties are based on the left axis, with a range of 15 to 25, while those without mandates are based on a secondary axis on the right, with a scale of 4 to 14.

But the results look dramatically different when shown below on the same axis.  The mask counties show a decline and the trend is down a bit for those without mandates.  But Dr. Norman doesn’t want people to see that counties with mask mandates have about 77% more daily cases per capita than the counties without mandates. 

He told reporters that the unmasked counties might dip below the others if they ‘masked-up’ but those counties already have fewer cases!

Many counties that rejected Governor Kelly’s statewide mandate did so because there were very few cases in their counties.  As of August 3, less than 1% of the Kansas population was confirmed to have had COVID at some time, and the rates of hospitalization and death have been steadily declining.

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Third world countries do not have a peaceful transition of power....and now neither do we!

Obama Clinton Coup Attempt: Decimating the “peaceful transition of power”

written by L.J. Keith May 16, 2019

WASHINGTON, DC: The attempted coup staged by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump has completely destroyed the notion of the “peaceful transition of power” in America.

Never before in the history of the Republic has an outgoing President attempted to sabotage and undermine his successor. Until Barack Obama.

The very fabric of the United States demands that the integrity of our elections be respected. No two-term President has ever sought to destroy the Presidency of his successor by maliciously undermining them both before and after he was elected.

The peaceful transition of power was an integral part of  American Democracy. Not anymore, apparently.

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The Clinton Brennan Russia Hoax: The damage done to America

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A conspiracy to destroy Trump

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both damaged the United States in ways the Russians couldn’t even hope to.  They have openly assaulted the integrity of our elections. Weaponized the intelligence agencies, the DOJ and the FBI against political opponents. Actively conspired to overthrow the President. Set in motion a series of corrupt activities and cataclysmic events that have eviscerated the character of America for the last three years.

In the process, Obama is the destroyer of the very notion of the peaceful transition of power. His criminal activities to undermine the Trump Presidency amount to sedition, abuse of power, abrogation of civil rights, waging an effective coup d’etat against the constitution and amount to treason.

Hillary Clinton continues, two years after she lost, to insist that the election was “stolen from her”. Obama Vice President Joe Biden agreed with a New Hampshire voter who declared Trump an ‘illegitimate President”.  Hillary Clinton invented the Russian Dossier that John Brennan and James Comey inflicted on the body politic. Joe Biden was part and parcel of the Obama administrations dirty tricks, criminal spying, and overt corruption.

A reckoning is coming: Barr appoints US Attorney John Durham

Fortunately for America, Attorney General William Barr has appointed US Attorney John Durham to get to the bottom of the whole Russia Hoax. He has apparently been at work for several months. He has empaneled at least one Grand Jury. This is bad news for John Brennan and Jim Comey and James Clapper.

The IG Report from Michael Horowitz is about to be released. It will detail how all four FISA warrants obtained by Jim Comey were illegal. How the unverified Steele Dossier was deliberately included at the insistence of either Jim Comey or John Brennan.

John Durham will use the IG Report as an adjunct to guide his investigation.

But the tentacles stretch everywhere and now, at last, the full scope of illegal spying and criminal activity by a wide swath of the upper echelons of the Obama Administration will come to light. That is what terrifies Democrats. It should. There is a number of criminal indictments coming that will shake the foundation of the Republic.

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Coup Leader Barack “Milhous” Obama makes Nixon look like an amateur

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Spying on Trump and Republicans since 2012

Most Presidents leave office, especially after two terms, and essentially step back from public life. Not Barack Obama. Shellshocked by Hillary Clinton’s loss, Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Clinton set in motion a series of events that will forever tar his Presidency, and decimate the concept of a peaceful transition of power.

Of course, it all started years before Trump was elected. The Obama White House was using FISA court 702 authority to spy on a range of Republican figures since 2012. James Comey allowed three contractors unlimited access to the most sensitive NSA databases, including PRISM. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Chief Justice John Roberts, Mitch McConnell, everyone was a target.

The NSA data was shared with Brennan and Comey and the Obama White House. The abuse was discovered and stopped by NSA Director Mike Rogers in April of 2016. Rogers notified the head of the FISA Court in October of 2016.

She has ruled that illegal access to NSA programs were granted through FISA court 702 authority. She has sent her ruling to the Attorney General William Barr. This will certainly fall under the purview of US Attorney Durham’s investigation. This is in addition to the FISA warrants illegally obtained on Carter Page.

The Steele Dossier and illegal FISA warrants

Then there is the Steele dossier. Russian interference in our election if ever there was one. $9 million dollars paid by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. For Kremlin disinformation. From sources close to Putin. By a foreign agent, a British spy, from FSB and Russian government sources. Easily disprovable lies that were never verified.

Currently, John Brennan and James Clapper and James Comey are forming a circular firing squad as to who insisted the dossier be included in the National Intelligence estimate. We know it was used for the FISA warrants. We also know that one of the sources that “verified” the contents for the first FISA warrant was Clinton crony Sydney Blumenthal. Who also actively helped put the dossier together. You can’t make this stuff up folks.

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Trump is a Crime Victim: Time to indict the Coup plotters

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The expanding list of criminal conspirators

The evidence of a conspiracy to destroy the Trump presidency is overwhelming. So when John Brennan,  James Clapper and Jim Comey are indicted, and they will be, who will they squeal on? After all, the finger pointing and recrimination has already begun. With the indictments of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Sally Yates who will they implicate?

At the Obama White House, it is well known that Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and Valerie Jarrett were up to their eyeballs in the whole sordid affair. Along with Samantha Powers at the United Nations.  Between them, they unmasked Trump associates from NSA wiretaps over 300 times in 2016 alone.

When Ben “Benghazi” Rhodes is indicted, will he finally mention that the whole scheme was run from the Oval Office?

When Susan Rice is frogmarched before a Grand Jury will she confirm that everything was not “run by the book”, but by Obama’s own personal book?

Because it is clear the Constitution was never considered in the entire process.

All the way to the Obama Oval Office

And since the antecedents of spying on Republicans with NSA systems and denial of civil rights go all the way back to 2012, does that mean Eric Holder is back in the criminal mix. Did John Kerry facilitate the spying on Trump associates with British and Australian intelligence? With a James Clapper indictment, will he finally turn on his co-conspirators Brennan and Comey, and his overlords in the Obama Oval Office?

And where is Hillary in the whole process?  She is the criminal mastermind of the Steele dossier. How is it that she, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Kerry, and Lynch came together in this conspiracy and Barrack Obama knew nothing about it.

I was born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.

Joe Biden doesn’t escape culpability either. In addition to the corruption scandals surrounding his son Hunter in Ukraine and China, Biden is also a part and parcel of every aspect of the Obama conspiracy against Donald Trump.

Either Biden knew exactly what was going on, and is equally culpable. Or was out of the loop, an ineffectual buffoon, tending to his own corruption. But both Biden and Clinton cannot escape responsibility for the stink of scandal and corruption surrounding them.

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The Obama – Clinton Axis of Evil: From Benghazi to the Steele Dossier

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The legacy of the peaceful transition destroyed.

Most Presidents are content to serve their term and move on. Barack Obama had his 8 years in office. Even in the most contentious elections and after disputed results, there was never been this sort of dangerous, systematic, deliberate rejection of the will of the people. The abrogation of the constitution to use extrajudicial methods to destroy the incoming president. It is the very definition of a coup.

John Adams gave way to Thomas Jefferson. Andrew Jackson accepted the election of 1824, and ran again in 1828 and won. Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration and re-election was held within the midst of a Civil War. President Grover Cleveland lost his reelection in 1888, only to return to the White House in 1892.

Theodore Roosevelt didn’t try to stage a coup against Woodrow Wilson. Richard Nixon didn’t challenge the 1960 election, even though he had ample reason to. Al Gore didn’t actively conspire to undermine President George W. Bush, altho Harry Reid did.

Al Gore resisted but finally conceded one of the most contentious election of our lifetimes. Respecting the constitutional order and the well being of the country was more important.  Until 2016 and Trump.

In fairness, Gore was unable to win his home state of Tennessee or Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas. Otherwise, Florida and hanging chads wouldn’t have mattered.

But Barack Obama was a different story altogether.

Holding the coup plotters accountable

The Obama White House was illegally spying on Trump and other Republicans since 2012. They worked with Hillary Clinton to corrupt the electoral and judicial process by inserting the Steele dossier into the heart of the American body politic. As Peter Strzok texted, “POTUS wants to know everything.”

Brennan, Comey, and Clapper framed the candidate and then President Trump, and accused him of treason. They knew it wasn’t the case. They knew it all along. It was all a grand criminal Russia hoax. They did it anyway.

Now US Attorney John Durham is going to hold them all accountable.

Destroying the peaceful transition of power in America is both the most symbolic and perhaps, as we will soon find out, the least of the crimes of the Obama Presidency. Valerie Jarrett. Ben Rhodes. Susan Rice. Samantha Powers. John Brennan. James Clapper, James Comey. Loretta Lynch. And yes, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Time to lawyer up. You are going to need it.

“He said, ‘I saw you at the Beer Store and to me you were taking back, what looked like in my opinion, an excessive amount of bottles,’” Art said.

‘A Serious Erosion of Civil Liberties’: Backlash Grows Over Canada’s New Impaired Driving Laws

By Steph Willems on January 11, 2019 

Can you be pulled over and ordered to blow into a breathalyzer, under threat of arrest, for the simple act of returning empty liquor bottles in the middle of the day? Sure can, at least if you’re living north of the border. It happened to a 70-year-old man in Mississauga, Ontario last weekend.

As part of a massive package of laws enacted in mid-December, Canadian drivers are waking up to the knowledge that the legal standard of “reasonable suspicion” no longer exists when it comes to interactions with the police — at least when pertaining to the combination of alcohol and motor vehicles.This week, they’re learning it’s possible to face a drunk driving charge, even if you only started drinking after you got home.

Oddly, the new booze laws stem from Canada’s recent legalization of marijuana. Seeking to soothe nervous citizens worried about stoned carnage on the roads, the governing Liberal Party passed Bill C-46, a raft of new laws designed to clamp down on impaired driving, despite the fact that roadside testing for cannabis is still in its infancy (and can be quite inaccurate).

Buried in the legislation was the removal of “reasonable suspicion.” This standard, found in most Western countries, maintains that a police officer must have a reason to demand a roadside breath sample from a motorist. Erratic driving, for example, or slurred speech and the smell of booze or drugs during a checkpoint stop or when pulled over for an unrelated reason. The new laws give Canadian officers the ability to demand a breath sample from any sober-looking individual pulled over for having a broken taillight.

Failing to provide the sample when asked constitutes a crime, and a motorist will not be driving away in their own car after refusing a breathalyzer request (or, where applicable, a saliva test).

But let’s get back to the 70-year-old who enjoys bottle deposits. According to Global News, Art (last name withheld) had just finished returning his holiday bottle cache to one of the province’s Beer Stores (yes, that’s the name of the store that sells beer in Ontario — the government makes it so) when he found himself pulled over. The officer asked if he had been drinking.

“He said, ‘I saw you at the Beer Store and to me you were taking back, what looked like in my opinion, an excessive amount of bottles,’” Art said.

From Global:

During the discussion, Art said the officer demanded a roadside breath sample. He asked what would happen if he did not provide it. The officer told him he would face arrest, a criminal charge, and a licence suspension.
Art agreed to provide the breath sample, passed the test, and was on his way.
“I felt like I was violated in a way. They shouldn’t have that right to pull a person over unless there is a good sign the person is doing something wrong,” said Art, who was not using a cellphone, hadn’t been speeding or violating any traffic rules.

While the federal government stands by its legislation (“This is one of the most significant changes to the laws related to impaired driving in more than 40 years and is another way that we are modernizing the criminal justice system,” Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said last month), civil liberties groups and criminal defence lawyers single it out as being ripe for abuse. The “slippery slope” argument applies here, whether or not you feel it’s valid. Opponents feel that, with this tool in hand, fishing expeditions could become commonplace, with minorities shouldering the bulk of the roadside stops.

It’s a possible hammer-and-nail scenario, with every motorist looking like a nail … and some looking more like a nail than others. Of course, keep in mind that police still need a reason to pull you over in the first place.

But while some proponents of the law (or at least the government behind it) fall back on the time-honored “Well, if you’ve got nothing to hide…” argument, another section of the impaired driving legislation has given even backers food for thought. Contained in a law is a subsection that allows police to breathalyze operators of vehicles, vessels, or aircraft up to two hours after they’ve parked their vehicle. A finding of impairment would lead to an impaired driving charge, unless the individual can prove they weren’t also sloshed while operating the vehicle.

Why would this make it into law? Well, the chances of it being used against a random person is indeed slim, as it’s meant as a way of dealing with the drunk driving suspect who bolts into his house and chugs a bottle of whiskey, knowing the police are on their heels and they’ll soon have to undergo a breath test. “Sorry, officer — just havin’ a drink here. Just started.” That kind of thing. It’s a way of erasing a loophole. However, the mere fact the law exists marks “a serious erosion of civil liberties,” according to Toronto criminal defence lawyer Michael Engel.

“Husbands or wives in the course of separations would drop the dime on their partner,” he told Global, describing how a malicious tip-off to the police would lead them to an individual’s door at an hour when the person is known to be relaxing with a drink. While the law itself offers an out (you’re not actually breaking the law by drinking in a restaurant or home if you weren’t above the legal limit while driving there and there’s no reason to believe you’ll have to undergo a breath test in the immediate future) the onus is on the suspect to prove they started drinking after driving.

If the person is suspected of the crime of impaired driving, either through direct observation by an officer or via a malicious and fake tip, failing to provide a breath sample will lead to charges. Blowing over the limit, in your own home, will also lead to an arrest for impaired driving, until you hire a lawyer and a toxicologist to prove otherwise. Assuming you can afford a toxicologist, that is, and assuming they can prove it. It’s debatable whether going out to your car and asking the attending officers to feel your engine block will work. And what if you only got home an hour ago and it’s still warm?

“It’s a very draconian rule, a very significant invasion of privacy,” said Joseph Neuberger, another Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer.

Opponents say this tool, which could potentially put innocent people at risk of losing their license and job — and maybe even their freedom — will certainly end up being contested in the courts. It turns out legalized weed has unexpected consequences.

[Image: Michael/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)]

Private DMV office provides services to California lawmakers

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers can avoid the long lines plaguing California's Department of Motor Vehicles offices by visiting an office near the Capitol not open to the public, a decades-old practice under fresh fire as wait times surge.

The office provides services for current and retired lawmakers, their staff and some other state employees, The Sacramento Bee reported Thursday. DMV spokesman Artemio Armenta said its primary purpose is to handle constituent requests that arrive on lawmakers' desks and that the two-member staff handles 10,000 requests per year.

But one lawmaker said it shouldn't provide extra perks for the Capitol community as regular Californians are forced to wait up to hours in line for services at their local office.

"I have gotten my registration and all that stuff the old-fashioned way like everybody else in my district," Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson told the Bee. "When you are living a public life the way most private people live, you'll understand when taxes hurt and bureaucracies hurt."

Patterson's colleagues rejected his request to audit the DMV on Wednesday, and lawmakers have recently approved more money for the agency to deal with its exploding wait times.

DMV officials said the long lines are due to complications complying with new federally mandated security upgrades for ID cards. In late 2020, airport security checkpoints will require so-called "Real ID" compliant cards, and Californians are now beginning to get the updated cards.

Lawmakers have approved tens of millions of dollars to hire more staff and implement the roll-out of Real ID. The DMV recently announced it would open more than a dozen offices on Saturdays.

Whether lawmakers and Capitol staff should get access to a private DMV has been disputed before. Some people who work in and around the Capitol downplayed the office's existence in response to the Bee article, saying it's been known about for years. A 2006 Capitol Weekly articlehighlighted the debate over the office, referencing a small-government activist who criticized it for years.

The office has been open for decades, moving locations around the Capitol. At one point it was open to the public. Now, the office is unmarked at the end of a hallway in the Legislative Office Building, located across the street from the Capitol.

When a reporter stopped by on Friday, the door was locked and a woman who answered directed all questions to the public affairs office.

Armenta, the DMV spokesman, said the door is locked because the office handles cash transactions and holds people's personally identifiable information. About 90 percent of the office's work relates to requests from constituents who call their lawmakers over complicated problems the local DMV branch may not be able to solve, he said.

"Often times it's a conduit for constituent work," Armenta said. "It provides the Legislature a way to be closely in contact with state government on helping customers with situations that they're having."

Spokespeople for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins did not respond to questions about whether it's appropriate for lawmakers to get services at the office.

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A proper case for a First Amendment. Would anything been done if it were a BLM tee shirt? The government schools show how unpublic they are

An 18-year-old student at Liberty High School in Hillsboro, Oregon, is suing his school district after he said they violated his First Amendment rights. He was suspended from school after he refused to cover up this Trump T-shirt. Screenshot from KGW video

NATIONAL

He was suspended for wearing a Trump shirt. Now, he’s suing his Oregon school district

BY GABBY FERREIRA

gferreira@thetribunenews.com
At first, Barnes covered the shirt, FOX 12 reported, but then he changed his mind.“I decided, you know this isn’t right,” he told the TV station. “I have my First Amendment, and it’s not right what they’re doing.”

He removed the covering, so officials sent a security guard to the classroom to remove Barnes, who was told to cover his shirt or go home for the rest of the day, according to The Associated Press.

Barnes went home and school officials treated his absence as a suspension, the Hillsboro Tribune reported.

The school later rescinded the suspension, but told Barnes he’d be disciplined if he wore the shirt again. 

“The high school, ironically named Liberty High School, had violated his free speech rights,” Barnes’ attorney, Mike McLane, told KGW. The Associated Press reports that McLane is also the leader of the Republican minority in Oregon’s House of Representatives. 

The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in Oregon District Court, alleges that asking Barnes to cover his shirt and then sending him home was unconstitutional.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article211769674.html#storylink=cpy

The dumbing down of America as a civil rights issue.

College chancellor: Requiring students to take algebra is a ‘civil rights issue’

Jon Street  Jul 21, 2017 12:09 pm

California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley says that requiring all students to take algebra is a "civil rights issue." Oakley said he wants to get rid of the requirement for any community college student who isn't a STEM major, or focusing their studies in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) 

A community college chancellor in California is proposing to get rid of the requirement that all students take intermediate algebra in an effort to boost the graduation rate at his institution.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of California Community Colleges System, made the suggestion during a recent interview with National Public Radio, calling the requirement a “civil rights issue.” Specifically, Oakley said he wants to get rid of the requirement for any community college student who isn’t a STEM major, or focusing their studies in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.

“What we’re proposing is to take an honest look at what our requirements are and why we even have them,” Oakley said, adding that the college system he leads is going to look into “other math pathways” based on research at other colleges across the country.

Oakley said those “other math pathways” should be “actually relevant to the coursework that the student is pursuing.”

He took it one step further, suggesting that dropping the requirement would not only benefit students academically, but also portrayed it as a “civil rights issue.”

“This is also something that plagues all Americans, particularly low-income Americans,” Oakley said. “If you think about all the underemployed or unemployed Americans in this country who cannot connect to a job in this economy, which is unforgiving of those students who don’t have a credential, the biggest barrier for them is this algebra requirement. It’s what has kept them from achieving a credential.”

Currently, the graduation rate at California Community Colleges is just 48 percent. According to NPR, this includes the number of students who either graduate with an associate’s degree and those who transfer to a four-year college within six years of starting at CCC.

Oakley didn’t dispute the dismal graduation rate, and further disputed that he is taking the “easy way out” by simply dropping the requirement.

“[N]othing could be farther from the truth,” Oakley insisted.

“[S]ince the 1950s, we decided that the only measure of a student’s ability to reason or to do some sort of quantitative measure is algebra. What we’re saying is we want as rigorous a course as possible to determine a student’s ability to succeed, but it should be relevant to their course of study. There are other math courses that we could introduce that tell us a lot more about our students,” Oakley said.

Oakley suggested there are other courses that could teach students the same, underlying principle of reasoning, for which algebra is intended.

“There’s an argument to be made that much of what we ask students to learn prepares them to be just better human beings, allows them to have reasoning skills,” Oakley said. “But again, the question becomes: What data do we have that suggests algebra is that course?”

One example of a course that could replace algebra, Oakley said, is statistics.

“[I]f you think about it, you think about the use of statistics not only for a social science major but for every U.S. citizen,” Oakley said. “This is a skill that we should have all of our students have with them because this affects them in their daily life.”

Oakley cited research by the University of Texas, as well as the Carnegie Foundation, to make his point.

Researchers at Michigan State University also conducted research regarding what it says is a “widening” gap in how well low-income students understand math and how well high-income students understand it.

According to the American Educational Research Association, which cited the 2012 study, the research “confirmed not only that low-income students are more likely to be exposed to weaker math content in schools, but also that a substantial share of the gap in math performance between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students is related to those curricular inequalities.”

“Our findings support previous research by showing that affluent students are consistently provided with greater opportunity to learn more rigorous content, and that students who are exposed to higher-level math have a better ability to apply it to addressing real-world situations of contemporary adult life, such as calculating interest, discounts and estimating the required amount of carpeting for a room,” William Schmidt, one of the authors of the Michigan State University study, said, according to a September 2015 AERA press release.

“But now we know just how important content inequality is in contributing to performance gaps between privileged and underprivileged students,” Schmidt added.

Pierce College and College of the Canyons, both located in Southern California, are just two colleges that have experimented with dropping algebra as a requirement. So, too, have at least five other colleges in California: American River College, Mt. San Antonio College, Diablo Valley College, Foothill College and San Diego City College, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Not all colleges, however, are so eager to cut algebra courses from their core curriculum. The University of California system, for example, said the alternative just isn’t rigorous enough. George Johnson, a University of California mechanical engineering professor, told the Los Angeles Times in 2014 that “the faculty at UC are interested in alternative pathways, but, so far, [it] has not reached the level of quality we expect.”

(H/T: Daily Caller)

FEC boss who tried to muzzle Drudge now on Soros payroll

Advocates target Twitter political accounts for regulation. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The former chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, who famously eyed regulating the politics of conservative outlets like the Drudge Report, has joined an advocacy group funded by George Soros and run by his son.

Ann Ravel is the first fellow listed with the California advocacy group New America.

Her fellowship began in March and pays a $30,000 stipend.

"We want to help amplify the work of each of our fellows, both to help them better articulate and reach their target audience, and to raise their profiles as change-makers," according to the group.

Since leaving the FEC, Ravel has continued to speak out for more election regulation,especially on the internet where she sees political advertising shifting to in the next presidential contest.

She has applauded calls for regulating political speech and spending on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and this week endorsed tracing the funding of online ads and regulating individual Twitter accounts.

In a tweet, for example, she drew attention to a report of a Twitter supporter of Donald Trump named "Amy" who the San Francisco Examiner could not find.

Ravel tweeted, "Searching for proof of Amy. FEC allows anonymous internet political ads & refuses to regulate foreign $-leads 2 this."

New America receives funding from the Soros group Open Society Foundations and it is run by Soros son Jonathan Soros.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

The long loathsome trip of the Trump fake dossier as explained by Clarice....

January 15, 2017

The Trump Dossier Puts the Deep State in Deep Doo-Doo

By Clarice Feldman

Mr. Garfinkle of Garfinkle’s New Method Hebrew School in Milwaukee used to frequently echo King Solomon’s admonition; “There’s nothing new under the sun.” I was reminded of that this week when the rapidly unfolding “scandal” of Trump’s purported dealings with Russia hit the news. It has more than a few similarities with the Dan Rather faked-up story of GW Bush’s National Guard service where an anonymous, never-found source supposedly gave Bill Burkett a demonstrably fake report and Dan Rather ran with it. This time a Bush (Jeb) is involved but as an instigator of the story, not a victim. John McCain acts as the intermediary passing the junk on to the Intelligence Community, which makes sure it is published.

If you’re confused about it, let me put it in the context of the most reliable information I’ve been able to put together, noting that I think the story is likely to become even more clear over the next few days. As you will see, the dossier is so ridiculous, if anyone in the Intelligence Community fell for it, he’s too stupid to allow in place, and if no one did but they still played a role in publicizing it, everyone involved needs to be fired

A. Digging Up Dirt on Opponents

In September of 2015 someone -- now revealed as a Jeb Bush Super PAC donor -- paid  Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C. outfit, to compile a dossier of dirt on Donald Trump. Fusion engaged Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 agent in London, to do the job. While early accounts of the story refer to him as a “respected source”, he has a history of dumpster diving for Democrats. 

Kimberley Strassel at the Wall Street Journal has been reporting on his work for some time and explains why he keeps getting hired: “to gin up the ugliest, most scurrilous claims, and then trust the click-hungry media to disseminate them. No matter how false the allegations, the subject of the attack is required to respond, wasting precious time and losing credibility.”

She warns this will be the left’s game:

But it says something about the brass-knuckle approach of the left that it would go so far as to write a dossier suggesting that Mr. Trump is a Manchurian candidate -- and then to foist that report into the hands of intelligence officials.

[snip]

So the left will increasingly rely on campaigns of delegitimization designed to force opponents onto a back foot, push them off task, or even bully them out of the public arena. In the absence of a winning policy argument, this is, in their minds, the best they’ve got. Republicans had better be ready for it. 

At about the time Trump won the nomination, funds from the Bush donors were cut off. Whether this was because the report was so shoddy or the effort so unavailing isn’t clear. At that point supporters of Hillary Clinton became involved in financing the search.

Steele hadn’t been in Russia for decades and as a former British spy could not have done the work himself. So, as the account in the New York Times continues, “he hired native Russian speakers to call informants inside Russia and made surreptitious contact with his own connections in the country as well.”

Beginning in June and until December Steele delivered his findings -- a series of short memos -- to GPS. Although post-election no one was paying, Steele continued on this muckraking operation,

The memos suggested that the Russians were trying to influence Trump and stated that one of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, had met with a Russian official in Prague. (A claim Cohen has credibly rebutted.)

Word of the dossier made it to the FBI via Senator John McCain, a man with an apparently insatiable desire to betray.  McCain, who heard about the dossier from a former diplomatic colleague of Tony Blair (Sir Andrew Wood), dispatched someone (apparently former State Department official David J. Kramer) to London to pick it up, then handed it off to the FBI.

From sources as yet unknown, news of the Steele report made it to journalists who investigated and finding no verification after investigating refused to print it.

The FBI, tried to get permission to tap into a server in the Trump Tower, which was denied, then in a strangely odd act tried twice to get a warrant from FISA to tap into it. Whether this was in response to the dossier, I do not know.  Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review Online:

To summarize, it appears there were no grounds for a criminal investigation of banking violations against Trump. Presumably based on the fact that the bank or banks at issue were Russian, the Justice Department and the FBI decided to continue investigating on national-security grounds. A FISA application in which Trump was “named” was rejected by the FISA court as overbroad, notwithstanding that the FISA court usually looks kindly on government surveillance requests. A second, more narrow application, apparently not naming Trump, may have been granted five months later; the best the media can say about it, however, is that the server on which the application centers is “possibly” related to the Trump campaign’s “alleged” links to two Russian banks -- under circumstances in which the FBI has previously found no “nefarious purpose” in some (undescribed) connection between Trump Tower and at least one Russian bank (whose connection to Putin’s regime is not described). That is tissue-thin indeed. It’s a good example of why investigations properly proceed in secret and are not publicly announced unless and until the government is ready to put its money where its mouth is by charging someone. It’s a good example of why FISA surveillance is done in secret and its results are virtually never publicized -- the problem is not just the possibility of tipping off the hostile foreign power; there is also the potential of tainting U.S. persons who may have done nothing wrong. While it’s too early to say for sure, it may also be an example of what I thought would never actually happen: the government pretextually using its national-security authority to continue a criminal investigation after determining it lacked evidence of crimes.

The second thrust of the Steele “investigative” report suggested Trump had engaged in some scatological conduct while in Russia, hiring prostitutes to urinate on the bed the Obamas had used there.

These claims were not only unverifiable, they were ludicrous as well, as was the Intelligence Community’s justification for giving them one second’s worth of credence.

As Iowahawk tweeted: “Unconfirmed Denial of Unsourced Blockbuster Allegations Raises Questions, According To Insiders Who Requested Anonymity.”

At American Digest, Gerard Vanderleun explains precisely why:

1) An international business man who has spent decades in the rough and tumble world of real estate development and skyscraper construction and may be presumed to have some sophistication when it comes to wheeling and dealing with governments of all sorts throughout the world travels to

2) Moscow. Not Moscow, Idaho, but Moscow in Russia. That would be Moscow the capital of one of the most paranoid and intrusive governments in the world (Both now and for the 19th and 20th centuries). It is a society and a government with a long history of...

3) Secret police and the clandestine surveillance of its own citizens and visitors to the extent that the US was digging bugs out of the walls of its own embassy in Moscow for decades. When he gets to Moscow he stays at...

4) The Moscow Ritz-Carlton in the “Presidential Suite.” Since such accommodations are typically only taken by the filthy rich and/or representatives of foreign governments such as, say, presidents. And then this sophisticated and reasonably intelligent billionaire real estate developer...

5) Assumes that such a suite in such a capitol city of such a government has no surveillance equipment at all installed in its rooms, bathrooms, closets, and -- most importantly -- bedrooms. He then asks the hotel staff to show him...

6) The bed in which Barack Obama and his wife slept in when they were in this same “Presidential Suite.” Upon being shown the bed our businessman then...

7) Contacts two high-dollar Russian hookers (who would never, ever, have anything to do with the KGB or other intelligence organs of Russia) and instructs them to.... Wait for it....

8) Urinate on said bed in order to give said businessman some odd sort of thrill and...

9) Said businessman remains utterly positive no agency of the Russian state is running cameras and microphones from every possible angle in the master bedroom in a “Presidential Suite” in a top hotel in the capital of Russia and...

10) The two damp hookers will never, ever, reveal a word about their golden shower in the Ritz Carleton’s “Presidential Suite.”

While I know that millions of morons are nodding like the drinking bird over the glass in their deep and abiding belief in this overflowing crock, I still find it hard to believe that there are smart people out there that really are this stupid. But of course they are not that stupid, not the smart ones. Instead they know this is a crock and yet they find they must drink from it lest their #NeverTrump fantasy world dissolve.

Sad. Their repetitive manic desperation now has foam flecking their lips and jowls as they dive down deep, and not for the last time, into this fuming septic tank of their own political sewage. Without even a snorkel. If they ever get out of the tank they will need a long, long golden shower 

B. The Intelligence Community Peddles the Dirt (then feigns dismay that it makes its way into the press).

Among the morons apparently “drinking this up” besides John McCain were high officials in the Intelligence Community, which passed the rumors on to the president and key congressional staff, although -- despite conflicting reports about this -- apparently never shared it with president-elect Trump. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed to have been “dismayed” that this leaked out after having passed it on. He claimed as well that the Intelligence Community “hadn’t made any judgment on whether the claims within the document were reliable”

As my online friend Cecil Turner observes:  “Former U.S. intelligence officials described the inclusion of the summary -- drawn from 'opposition research' done by a political research firm -- as highly unusual.

"Assuming, of course, that it is. The problem with this sort of thing is that it's on the borderline between unknown and unknowable. Every character involved is either anonymous or has a name that sounds pseudonymous, and the sources are professional liars.

"Roll eyes, wait for actual evidence. The fact that it leaked strongly suggests there is none.”

CNN, however, lapped it up, informed its readers of the existence of scandalous reports on Trump, and BuzzFeed, a clickbait site owned in part by NBC, then published the dossier, a portion of which, it seems, was provided by infonerd bulletin board 4 Chan.

Asked why it had published an account of this nonsense which other news agencies had refused to print because it was completely unverifiable, CNN blamed BuzzFeed, noting it had not released the details, presumably on the assumption that readers whose curiosity had been piqued by the news wouldn’t want details.

Steele has gone to ground ostensibly because he fears Russian reprisals, but I think it’s because he wants to avoid answering questions about what are obviously fabrications to satisfy political interests who paid for this shoddy product.

As John Bolton commented: 

Kassam asked if Bolton had ever heard of the man revealed as the creator of the dossier, former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele. “Could it be the case that somebody has just paid this guy to write these things, so this leak came out?” Kassam asked.

“Well, actually, that thought occurred to me because it’s so bad. I haven’t found anybody, including friends who are experienced in both diplomacy and military and intelligence affairs, who haven’t just laughed at most of it,” Bolton replied.

“It’s filled with anonymous sources, single-source information and whatnot. If I were a corporate customer, and I wanted, in effect, a private investigator -- I think that’s what this firm basically is -- and I got something back like this, I would refuse to pay. You or I could sit down at a computer right now and type out these 35 pages, just let our imaginations run wild, and if somebody would pay for it, I suppose it’s nice work if you can get it,” he said.

c. Is it Just IC Incompetence or is the Deep State Deliberately Undermining Faith in Trump and Aiding a Russian Disinformation Campaign?

Glenn Greenwald (hardly a Trump fan) thinks it’s more, and on  examination of the Intelligence Community’s handling of this tripe, it’s hard to disagree with him. He points out the unprecedented support for Hillary Clinton in this “deep state,” and takes issue with their advancing the Steele memos

...the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts, and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.

[snip]

Once CNN strongly hinted at these allegations, it left it to the public imagination to conjure up the dirt Russia allegedly had to blackmail and control Trump. By publishing these accusations, BuzzFeed ended that speculation. More importantly, it allowed everyone to see how dubious this document is, one the CIA and CNN had elevated into some sort of grave national security threat.

ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER it was published, the farcical nature of the “dossier” manifested. Not only was its author anonymous, but he was paid by Democrats (and, before that, by Trump’s GOP adversaries) to dig up dirt on Trump. Worse, he himself cited no evidence of any kind but instead relied on a string of other anonymous people in Russia he claims told him these things. Worse still, the document was filled with amateur errors.

David Goldman, who did support Trump, was more succinct: “Warning the intelligence communities about salacious and politically motivated leaks: the president-elect threatened to drag their shenanigans into the daylight. No one has ever done that to the spooks before. I'm lovin' it.”

In any event, McCain's much-touted hearings on Russian interference with the election should prove to be a million laughs.  He obviously believed this nonsense was credible enough to seek it out and pass it on, so I hardly imagine he’s in a position to make credible calls on what the hearings involving these now discredited documents reveal or on  the wisdom and good faith  of the officials involved in leaking them.