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Please note — sensitive subject matter below.
On Monday, October 9, 2017, the United States celebrated Columbus Day.
The actual day is October 12, but the second Monday is chosen to give Americans a three-day holiday where it is observed.
When I learned about Christopher Columbus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the teachers presented a straightforward lesson. We all had to know the year he arrived: 1492. We had to know the names of his ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. We learned that he was an Italian, from Genoa. We learned that Spain — King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I — financed his trip to the New World, which he hoped was the Indies in Asia. The object was to acquire valuable natural resources, e.g. gold.
I don’t think many of us walked out of that history lesson thinking Columbus was perfect, but we remembered that he opened up the Atlantic to future exploration, colonisation and trade.
The American colonies were, for a time, referred to popularly as Columbia, even though Columbus never landed on the US mainland.
Columbus always maintained that the islands he claimed for Spain were in Asia. It was Amerigo Vespucci who proved during his voyages that they were in the New World, and why America was so named.
Remnants of Columbus’s terminology still exist. We use the name ‘Indian’ because that is what he called the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean islands he discovered. Again, he was certain he was in Asia — the Indies he was sent to discover. Even today, some of those islands are collectively referred to as the West Indies.
These days, Columbus is viewed as a bad man. American leftists have defaced Columbus statues in some cities. However, no one today discusses the brutality of the tribes he encountered. Furthermore, no one looks at standard behaviour and legal punishments of the 15th century.
Paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes, life was nasty, short and brutish. Europeans were abused in their own countries with excessive legal corporal punishments of some description, which Westerners have not tolerated for many decades.
Therefore, for people to say that Christopher Columbus was some sort of anomaly is far from the truth. He was typical of his time.
On Monday, October 9, Tucker Carlson of Fox News interviewed a professor from the University of Maryland, asking him about the furore about Columbus Day:
The professor says that Columbus had 100,000 slaves. He also mentions that Columbus started the slave trade because he had a number of blacks on his ships. However, one could go into the Moorish abduction and enslavement of whites in the British Isles in the 1600s and how ‘white slavery’ became another name for prostitution. It wasn’t just in the British Isles, either — but all over Europe (emphases mine below):
The slave markets that flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, or modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. These markets prospered while the states were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned. It is estimated that between 1500-1800, 1 million to 1.25 million white Christian Europeans were enslaved in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th, by slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli alone (these numbers do not include the European people which were enslaved by Morocco and by other raiders and traders of the Mediterranean Sea coast),[6] and roughly 700 Americans were held captive in this region as slaves between 1785 and 1815.[7]
Sixteenth- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul’s additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700.[8] The markets declined after the loss of the Barbary Wars and finally ended in the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.
But I digress.
The professor whom Tucker Carlson interviewed even says at the 7:30 mark that Columbus never went to the US mainland. That admission rather shoots the anti-Columbus argument in the foot.
However, before bringing on the professor, Carlson introduced this topic wisely:
Carlson says this crusade against Columbus is all about the Left’s attempt to destroy Western civilisation:
- This isn’t really about Columbus;
- This is a full-scale assault from within on the West itself.
Before he interviews the professor (this part is in the full video), Carlson mentions an academic paper for the Third World Quarterly that had to be withdrawn not because it wasn’t well-researched, but because the editorial board vehemently disagreed with its conclusions.
This tweet mentions the fear of violent repercussions should the paper be published:
An online sleuth managed to trace the abstract and put the link on the Wayback Machine:
Abstract
For the last 100 years, Western colonialism has had a bad name. It is high time to question this orthodoxy. Western colonialism was, as a general rule, both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found, using realistic measures of those concepts. The countries that embraced their colonial inheritance, by and large, did better than those that spurned it. Anti-colonial ideology imposed grave harms on subject peoples and continues to thwart sustained development and a fruitful encounter with modernity in many places. Colonialism can be recovered by weak and fragile states today in three ways: by reclaiming colonial modes of governance; by recolonising some areas; and by creating new Western colonies from scratch.
Overall, there is some truth in that, although I disagree with recolonisation. Those countries have been independent for well over five decades; they need to govern themselves properly, without corruption — for their people’s sake.
In closing, Carlson made another good point: the Latin American countries with statues, city squares and other places named after Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) aren’t renaming or dismantling them.
This is just one more reason not to trust the Left.
— Do read the comment below about Spain and Columbus Day. —
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On Wednesday, August 16, 2017, US Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) flew to London to meet with Julian Assange within the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy.
Recall that, as far back as January, Assange has consistently maintained that there has been no Russian collusion. He even gave an interview to Fox News’s Sean Hannity to say so.
On August 16, the Daily Caller reported:
Charles Johnson, a conservative journalist, told TheDC that he arranged the meeting for Assange because the WikiLeaks chief wants to strike a deal with the U.S. so he can stop living in asylum.
Rohrabacher’s spokesman Ken Grubbs told TheDC, “I can confirm that the meeting happened” and said that Johnson was in the meeting.
Johnson said that he arranged for the meeting to happen and that Rohrabacher would be the envoy in charge of bringing back a deal to the Trump White House …
Rohrabacher issued a statement afterward to the effect that:
Assange “emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”
The congressman, Johnson and Assange met for three hours:
A press release from the California congressman’s office stated that Rohrabacher “plans to divulge more of what he found directly to President Trump.”
The Hill reported:
“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails” …
“Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public,” he said.
Sean Hannity spoke with The Hill‘s executive vice president John Solomon, who wrote the above article. Hannity concluded the interview by saying that Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading this hacking investigation, and the Republican-majority Congress have ‘a duty’ to find out more about this.
Guess what happened in ten days’ time? Rohrabacher was connected with Russians, but, strangely enough, as Fox’s Tucker Carlson said, not with Assange. You can see the board with the congressman’s notional connections in the first few moments of the following video:
Rohrabacher found this laughable, since he was President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter during a time when Russia was far from being America’s friend. However, he is Chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, so will have met with Russians through his work. Seriously, if anyone has Russian connections it’s the Clintons and the Podestas. This post has more on wider Democrat connections.
Rohrabacher told Carlson that, while he does not approve of all WikiLeaks releases, he largely approves of their work in exposing governmental over-reach.
He told Carlson that Assange said the leaks were an inside job.
On August 30, Sean Hannity interviewed Rohrabacher. The congressman has not seen President Donald Trump yet but has been told that a meeting is being arranged:
Meanwhile, in possibly related news, the FBI says that Hillary Clinton’s emails are not in the public interest. The Washington Times reported:
Hillary Clinton’s case isn’t interesting enough to the public to justify releasing the FBI’s files on her, the bureau said this week in rejecting an open-records request by a lawyer seeking to have the former secretary of state punished for perjury.
Ty Clevenger has been trying to get Mrs. Clinton and her personal attorneys disbarred for their handling of her official emails during her time as secretary of state. He’s met with resistance among lawyers, and now his request for information from the FBI’s files has been shot down.
“You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject,” FBI records management section chief David M. Hardy told Mr. Clevenger in a letter Monday.
The next day, Assange sent this message:
Good.
In the meantime, I hope that a meeting between Trump and Rohrabacher is imminent.
On July 20, I wrote about Michael Caputo, one of Bill Clinton’s advisers during his presidency.
He explained one of his jobs to Tucker Carlson on Fox News:
You can see the full interview here:
Essentially, as I wrote on that post:
Caputo helped to ensure Yeltsin’s re-election.
As president, Hillary’s husband ordered — and got — interference in a Russian election.
I wanted to get that point across to anyone who thinks the Democrats are saintly.
However, Caputo made a second point to Tucker Carlson.
When Carlson asked him if he thought whom the Russians would have preferred as president of the United States, Caputo said Hillary Clinton.
Caputo said that the Russians consider Hillary Clinton ‘predictable’, and, therefore, easier to out-manoeuvre.
They are less sure about Trump because he is exactly the opposite. He is capable of outsmarting them.
That is important to know, especially as other world leaders are likely to have the same impression.
It has often been said that Trump plays 4-D chess. At least one world power thinks that is true.
Interestingly, Caputo ended up becoming Donald Trump’s communications advisor for the 2016 presidential campaign.
I still intend to write about President Donald Trump’s visit to Paris, even though it happened a week ago.
However, time constraints prohibit me from doing so at the moment.
Unfortunately, Big Media did not cover the trip very well. No surprise there.
On Sunday, July 16, 2017, I saw an interview with ex-CIA man Dr Steve Pieczenik on the Alex Jones Show:
If that does not work, here is another link. The interview is in the first half of the segment.
Pieczenik talked about Trump’s G20 meetings as well as his visit with France’s president Emmanuel Macron.
He said that Trump has been able to find common ground with world leaders even when they disagree on important issues.
Trump was able to negotiate the ceasefire in Syria with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the G20. Pieczenik says that was facilitated by the two men finding common ground in other areas.
According to Pieczenik, both men admire beautiful, accomplished women. Putin is very proud of his daughter who speaks several languages. Likewise, Melania Trump might have been a model but is hardly an airhead. She, too, speaks five languages.
Both Trump and Putin enjoy the closeness of family and like to spend time with them. That would have been a topic of conversation. Angela Merkel wisely sat Putin and Mrs Trump together at dinner, also helpful.
Trump is forging important alliances, even if most of the world thinks he is tweeting all day long.
Besides Putin, Trump made an equally positive impression on Poland’s president Andrzej Duda in Warsaw earlier this month. Whilst there, he participated in the Three Seas Initiative, forging new links with Central and Eastern European countries.
Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel went swimmingly. For the first time in many years, there is hope that peace in that region could become reality. His meeting with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in April was a tremendous success.
Trump has also been successful in forging alliances in the Far East, particularly with Japan’s president Shinzō Abe. His meetings with China’s president Xi Jinping were productive. The Trump administration is currently conducting sensitive trade negotiations with China.
Steve Pieczenik explained that China fears Japan because of their disputed claims on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The United States might have to mediate at a certain point.
So, while Big Media and their lesser left-leaning counterparts continue to discuss Russian collusion in the 2016 election, President Trump is making productive inroads and good impressions on the world leaders he has met thus far.
So it was in France. Prior to meeting with Trump on Thursday, July 13, Emmanuel Macron met with German chancellor Angela Merkel that morning. Then, after Merkel’s departure, Trump came on the scene. Everyone thought the pro-EU Macron would give him a chilly reception.
However, that was not the case, particularly in the 25-second departure handshake on Friday, July 14. Macron couldn’t let go of his new friend.
Instead, Steve Pieczenik said that Trump was able to persuade Macron to also look to the United States. Pieczenik was certain that Trump was able to get Macron to see that the EU was ‘dying’ (Pieczenik’s word) and that focussing on relations with the United States would be more important in the long run.
Pieczenik went further and said that Trump is slowly breaking up the European Union.
On his own website, Pieczenik described what the French and American delegations would have talked about during Trump’s trip. ‘Trump Meets Macron in Paris!’ is recommended reading. Excerpts follow, emphases in the original:
Let me assure you, that these prestigious intelligence/military officers/operatives are not there to watch French planes fly around in the sky or watch soldiers march through the Arc de Triomphe. I would suspect that they have a full agenda that they want to share with Macron and his own chief of the army, the highly decorated General Jean-Pierre Bossier [CEMAT], regarding one very important issue: counter-terrorism!
Obama put thousands of American troops into the Horn of Africa, specifically Djibouti, to help fight terrorism alongside French troops. Trump has maintained US presence in the region. However, Trump’s military advisors have noted that the American troops require more French input on language and culture there:
I am certain that critical strategic/tactical issues regarding present American occupation in the former French colony in Djibouti [Horn Of Africa] at Camp Lemonnier will become a salient issue. France is far more effective in counteracting the tribal/ethnic battles raging in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Central African Republic, et. al. than the novitiate Americans. Instead of sending more American troops, the key issue will be the nature of alternative aid to these impoverished African colonies in order to pre-empt the possible rise of terrorist cells.
Also:
Whatever the past histories are of each country, Macron realized thanks to his time as an investment banker at Rothschild & CIE Banque [closely affiliated with Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase] that alienating any American POTUS was neither feasible nor productive.
In conclusion, there are many geopolitical successes going on right now involving President Trump.
Now, as to foreign collusion regarding elections, Pieczenik had interesting information.
Before I get to what he had to say, here is background information from Michael Caputo who worked in Bill Clinton’s administration over 20 years ago. This was his mission:
He explained to Tucker Carlson that he was sent directly by the Clinton White House to Russia where he was able to get Boris Yeltsin successfully re-elected.
Pieczenik — ex-CIA himself — told Alex Jones that Caputo was part of a CIA programme to ensure Yeltsin’s re-election.
So, there: Hillary’s husband ordered — and got — interference in a Russian election.
Pieczenik also said that, on the domestic front, before John Brennan became CIA director in 2013 (he resigned before Trump’s inauguration), he opened an ‘office in Hollywood’ to effect change in film and television storylines to turn people away from American values and ideals.
Now, back to Michael Caputo. Although he worked for the Clinton administration, two decades later, he became Donald Trump’s communications advisor for the 2016 presidential campaign.
Caputo clearly enjoyed his time in Russia during the 1990s, because he met and married a Ukranian. On March 20, 2017, he found out that his wife’s name was mentioned by Jackie Speier, a congresswoman (D-California), during televised Congressional hearings. (Speier, incidentally, was a survivor of the Jim Jones cult in Jonestown. That should tell you something.) Since then, Caputo told Tucker Carlson that he and his family have received many death threats because Mrs Caputo is Ukranian, even though she now has American citizenship.
The interview starts at the 2:25 mark:
Caputo tells Carlson that he had to testify last week as to what he knows about any involvement Russia had in Trump’s campaign and the election. He says there is absolutely no evidence.
Caputo said — and Trump supporters already know this — the only reason for this accusation, which is now nearly a year old, is to prevent the president from getting anything done.
That, of course, would open the door to impeachment.
I realise that some reading this are hoping for it. I pray to the contrary.
Instead, it is the Democrats who must come clean about their nefarious activities.
On Thursday, March 23, 2017, RMC (French talk radio) had a morning discussion on the London attack which occurred the day before.
Les Grandes Gueules (The Big Mouths) discussed the trend for vehicle terrorism, an ISIS-approved method which started with the July 14, 2016 attack in Nice. The Berlin Christmas market attack on December 19 was the next spectacular. On Wednesday, it was London:
The day after the London attack, Belgian police detained a man in Antwerp for driving at speed along a main pedestrian-only street. Reuters reported:
“At about 11 a.m. this morning a vehicle entered De Meir at high speed due to which pedestrians had to jump away,” a police spokesman told a news conference, referring to the street name.
He added the driver was later arrested and additional police and military personnel had been deployed to the center of Antwerp, but did not give any further details.
The Daily Mail reports that the attacker is French-Tunisian. The article has good accompanying photographs.
French media now call such attacks ‘low cost’ terrorism, meaning that no equipment other than a vehicle is required. The radio show panel debated on whether this was appropriate terminology. Opinion was divided. Some found it demeaning to the victims. Others thought it described the situation objectively.
Regardless, the London attack has raised the same reactions and the same questions of previous attacks.
American military veteran, author and film maker Jack Posobiec summed it up on Twitter:
An Englishman, Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars editor-at-large, tweeted:
He also made a short news video in which he put forth the inconvenient truth about the London attacks and others:
People have been speculating incorrectly on the significance of the date the London attack took place. Reuters has the answer (emphases mine below):
The mayhem in London took came on the first anniversary of attacks that killed 32 people in Brussels.
The article also stated that Khalid Masood — formerly Adrian Elms, then Adrian Ajao — whom police shot dead:
was British-born and was once investigated by MI5 intelligence agents over concerns about violent extremism, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Thursday.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued by its Amaq news agency. But it gave no name or other details and it was not clear whether the attacker was directly connected to the group.
Police arrested eight people at six locations in London and Birmingham in the investigation into Wednesday’s lone-wolf attack that May said was inspired by a warped Islamist ideology.
About 40 people were injured and 29 remain in hospital, seven in critical condition, after the incident which resembled Islamic State-inspired attacks in France and Germany where vehicles were driven into crowds.
The assailant sped across Westminster Bridge in a car, ploughing into pedestrians along the way, then ran through the gates of the nearby parliament building and fatally stabbed an unarmed policeman before being shot dead. tmsnrt.rs/2napbkD
“What I can confirm is that the man was British-born and that some years ago he was once investigated by MI5 in relation to concerns about violent extremism,” May said in a statement to parliament.
So far, four people have died:
It was the worst such attack in Britain since [July 7] 2005, when 52 people were killed by Islamist suicide bombers on London’s public transport system. Police had given the death toll as five but revised it down to four on Thursday.
Some found it strange that the March 22 London attack took place on the same day that Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan said:
that Europeans would not be able to walk safely on the streets if they kept up their current attitude toward Turkey, his latest salvo in a row over campaigning by Turkish politicians in Europe.
While that is strange, it probably remains a coincidence. Erdogan is angry with the Netherlands and Germany at the moment.
Once again, we have the lone-wolf narrative. Patently wrong, as it has been in other terror attacks. Notice Reuters says police arrested eight people. Therefore, how could it have been a lone-wolf operation?
On the notion of normalising terror in big cities, Tucker Carlson had this to say:
Although it sounds clichéd, it is true that prayer — public and private — help greatly at a time like this.
We can pray for the families and friends of victims PC Keith Palmer, fatally stabbed by the attacker, as well as the two civilians who died: Aysha Frade (wife and mother of two daughters), Kurt Cochran (an American tourist, husband and father) and the latest victim, a 75-year-old man. We can pray for Mrs Cochran, who was injured in the attack and is in hospital. We can pray for the 40 injured. Their lives will never be the same again. They will need God’s help for physical and mental recovery.
In closing, The Sun has an excellent set of photographs which tell the horrific story of the March 22, 2017 attack.
On Monday, March 6, 2017, Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of the speakers who addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters at their annual legislative conference in Washington, DC.
Fox 10 Phoenix has the entire 34 minute video — recommended viewing:
For decades, average Americans have wondered why there is such a gulf between Washington and most of the United States.
Carlson explains the DC disconnect.
Starting with Trump’s surprise win in 2016, Carlson said that the middle class was simply fed up with the DC elite ignoring their cries for help regarding immigration and trade.
He said that the DC elite are oblivious to average Americans. Washington DC has full employment and more people working as housekeepers than ever before. Conversation revolves around the theoretical, e.g. economic theory, rather than reality.
He explained that two things that people in DC love are immigration and free trade. Immigration is great because DC residents can get servants very cheaply. In some cases, he said, they are paid a child’s allowance as a salary. DC residents then feel they are being virtuous towards the less fortunate.
However, what works for DC doesn’t work for the rest of the nation. The middle class tried time and time again to point that out to the elite, who dismissed them as being racist and stupid.
The same scenario occurred with trade. The middle class are losing their jobs. The elite in DC do not care.
This broad swathe of dissatisfied Americans took to the ballot box in November 2016. They mounted a peaceful revolution by electing Donald Trump to the White House.
Carlson talked about the rabid hate of Trump in Washington, where 90%+ of voters plumped for Hillary Clinton. Carlson said that, out of three million government employees, only 50 actually like Trump. Whether that is numerically accurate is beside the point. Trump faces an uphill climb.
Furthermore, as much as Democrats loathe Trump, it’s even more entrenched on the Republican side.
He said that Trump can come up with the most sensible policies — buying cheaper drugs from Canada — and politicians simply shut him out. They cannot hear what he is saying. I call that Trump Derangement Syndrome. The term was used about Bush and Obama’s opponents in their time.
Carlson said that nothing in this world is 100% good. Immigration and market-driven trade are two of these things. They work well for the top one per cent but are disastrous for everyone else. He pointed to other examples of where people have noticed and vote accordingly: the UK, with Brexit, and France, with Marine LePen (doing well in the polls).
Carlson spoke about the disaster coming from mass unemployment, particularly among men. Unemployment, he said, drives men crazy. Men need to work in order to feel that they have value and purpose in life.
He said that the current immigration model — and this is true for other Western countries — is predicated on a large manufacturing base. Unfortunately, that manufacturing base no longer exists. Therefore, immigration policy must change accordingly to fit reality.
This also holds true with regard to war and trade. Trump opposes needless American intervention in other nation’s affairs. Trump supports trade deals that will help, not hinder, America.
Carlson also warned about driverless vehicles. Once again, all of Washington waxes lyrical about how ‘cool’ these are. Yet, they will put 8 million people out of jobs overnight if they become reality on the nation’s roads. Carlson pointed out that the most popular occupation among recent high school graduates is driving a truck.
If truck drivers — and taxi drivers — become obsolete, what are they going to do for work? Carlson correctly surmised that they won’t be retraining to become computer programmers. He said that the Trump administration should ban them outright. I agree, in part. They should be banned for commercial use, at least.
He also talked about the Tea Party, which failed, in his estimation, because it lacked a leader. The Tea Party, he explained, was a way for conservative Republicans to express their dissatisfaction with the Republican Party, which clearly does not share their interests.
Then along came Donald Trump. Carlson found it interesting that Trump has never really issued a concise statement about what his movement or ideology stands for. Yet, he struck a chord with millions of Americans who felt he spoke for them.
I’ll conclude with something that Carlson opened with. He said that Republicans and Democrats must really take in and understand what upsets Americans and why they voted for Trump. He said that serious soul searching must take place in the two main political parties. Unfortunately, he noted, that has not yet begun.
As for what Trump’s ideology is with regard for America, I predict we will all be able to articulate it by 2020.
I nearly forgot to mention Carlson’s opinion of the media: ‘dumb’, except for his colleagues at Fox. He told the fire fighters that he has worked for every cable news network and knows whereof he speaks. He said that no one with an ounce of intelligence goes into media. (That should tell us something about students in Media Studies.)
Carlson’s speech was great. He spoke for 13 minutes then took three questions from the audience, for the next 20. He’s much livelier giving a speech than he is in interviews on Tucker Carlson Tonight. And rightly so. This address shows a different side to his personality.
The post-election events of just this week alone could be turned into a potboiler of a television series.
I feel bad for people who didn’t have the time (work, family) or inclination (closed-mindedness) to follow this election every day. Those who didn’t have the time are excused. The second group do not realise how serious the situation in the United States is today.
America is in grave danger. People who warned against Obama in 2008 and again in 2012 will be proven correct. Some news items in this post illustrate that.
Mischief afoot — fake news from Big Media
Last weekend, America’s news shows discussed at length stories in the Washington Post and New York Times that ‘intelligence officials’ (anonymous, but within the CIA) stated that the Russian government
hacked the U.S. election.
The Conservative Treehouse pointed out:
First, the media’s choice of wording is critical within both reports.
It is impossible to “hack an election“. What was hacked was the DNC email system, and John Podesta’s email. WikiLeaks published the content of both “hacks”.
Additionally, WikiLeaks has denied the source of the information was a foreign government.
Both The Washington Post and New York Times, simultaneously, published articles on Friday claiming anonymous sources within the CIA (note: intensely political CIA Chief John Brennan in charge) point to the Russian government as the originators of the hacking. However, both articles are written with very obtuse and non specific language intended to cover over the fact these reports are not actually stating the official intelligence community are making these specific claims.
All other media outlets subsequently take this illogically based presentation and spin their coverage whereby the “DNC hacked” becomes “the election hacked“.
On Monday, December 12 John Podesta responded to a request from 10 Democratic electors, including a daughter of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for more information about the CIA’s assertions that Russians were involved in affecting the outcome of the election.
That day, Politico reported (emphases mine):
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed” …
Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.
… Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO on Monday that Trump is a “potentially dangerous president.”
On Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey threw a spanner into the works:
In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
What’s more, Comey told Trump that James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, agreed with this FBI assessment.
The only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was John Brennan, the director of the CIA, according to sources who were briefed on Comey’s conversations with Trump.
Later that day, Fox News reported lawmakers were furious that a House Intelligence Committee briefing on the matter was cancelled:
Anger on Capitol Hill boiled over Wednesday night after the intelligence community’s alleged “intransigence” forced the cancellation of a House Intelligence Committee briefing on claims of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
“Somebody has the time to leak it to The Washington Post and The New York Times, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a member of the committee, told Fox News’ “The Kelly File.” “It’s their job to come. They don’t have any choice. They have to come in, especially when they have created this.”
… Fox News was told the CIA Director John Brennan declined to provide a briefer, citing its focus on the full review requested by President Obama. The other agencies did not respond to the committee’s request, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.
Larry Johnson, the founder of No Quarter, used to work for the CIA. He picked up on this story in his post, ‘John Brennan’s Failed Soft Coup?’ He wrote:
This should be setting off alarm bells throughout the U.S. Government, but especially within the intel community and the military. CIA Director John Brennan appears to have tried and failed to take out Donald Trump. It is his Agency that spread the lie that Russia made it possible for Trump to win the Presidency. This was not the idle opinion of some underling. Someone was given permission to tell elected Legislators a lie. A bald faced lie. Brennan, and no one else, bears ultimate responsibility for this lie.
When the news first broke last Friday that the CIA had told Senators that Russia essentially gave the election to Donald Trump the politicians and pundits infesting Washington were up in arms. Hell, even John McCain and Lindsay “Little Old Lady” Graham jumped on the hysteria bandwagon to voice outrage and threaten Russia. Tonight we learn that Brennan was lying.
There’s more at the link, but it is important to see this:
I have heard from knowledgeable friends that Clapper finally decided he would not walk the plank for John Brennan. Clapper has lied once before to the Senate and apparently felt that he could stomach no more lies. This isolated Brennan. He has no place to hide now. He could have sent a briefer who would have had to endure the indignity of admitting that the CIA had no hard evidence to buttress its speculation that Russia favored Trump.
This is more than a lie folks. This represents the first time in my life that the Director of the CIA has tried to intervene and disrupt a Presidential election. Brennan should be immediately dismissed and he should pray to God (or Allah) that he is not prosecuted for sedition. Given his prior service as the Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia, one begins to wonder if he has been protecting the interests of America or serving those of a foreign power?
And:
This also completely destroys the Democrat effort to gather support to brief the Electors, who have no security clearances. How in the world can you justify briefing Electors when you are refusing to brief members of Congress who do have the clearances?
In today’s Washington Post, John Podesta blamed the FBI — and people connected with Donald Trump — for Hillary’s loss:
Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.
Podesta’s picture accompanying the article is priceless. Sorry, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. The Podesta WikiLeaks made it abundantly clear that the Democrats — and Hillary — do not like everyday Americans. They also do not like each other.
On the Russian interference front, I have seen reports this week that a British MP said Russians were to blame for Brexit. Someone in Germany thought the Russians could be influencing their election set for next year. Don’t believe it for a moment!
The faithless elector — more fake news from Big Media
Chris Suprun is a Republican elector for Texas. He doesn’t want to vote for Donald Trump, the voters’ choice in that state. Not voting for the winner in one’s state makes one a ‘faithless’ elector.
He is one of a handful of ‘Hamilton electors’ who take the moral high ground. The expression ‘Hamilton elector’ did not surface until this year. These people claim to be voting in the manner of Alexander Hamilton, instrumental in establishing the Electoral College in the infancy of the United States.
Suprun probably thought he had it made when the New York Times published his op-ed on December 5 listing the many reasons why Trump is no good.
He lives in the Dallas area and works as a paramedic.
He wrote some interesting things, including these gems:
Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation.
I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.
Fifteen years ago, I swore an oath to defend my country and Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On Dec. 19, I will do it again.
Rule No. 1 for electors: vote for the winning candidate in your state. Each elector signs a pledge to do just that. Any elector who has a problem with that should stand down. (I couldn’t be an elector. I was for Gore in 2000. I could not have cast a vote for W then or in 2004.)
The next day, Americans made their responses known. YourVoice Radio host Bill Mitchell rightly said Suprun should be stripped of his electorship. Mitchell took a poll asking what the public thought. 98% of the 4601 participants said he should be withdrawn as an elector.
A man from Texas started a petition on Change.org to demand that very thing. Unfortunately, it is still 14,000+ votes shy of the necessary 50,000. The Electoral College vote takes place on Monday. Still, it was worth a try and a decent effort.
On December 8, Suprun appeared on Tucker Carlson, who confronted him over his soi-disant description of ‘moral elector’. He told Carlson that several other electors have contacted him and they have had very interesting conversations:
Discussing the upcoming vote with other EC Republican electors could be interpreted as an ‘ILLEGAL electoral college coup d’état’. Such actions could give rise to charges of treason, rebellion, insurrection or sedition.
The following day, news emerged that the media contact company Suprun had on his Twitter account is Van Jones’s (former Obama adviser) PR firm. Did they come up with ‘Hamilton elector’ and ‘moral elector’?
After tweets about Megaphone Strategies appeared, Suprun listed a different media contact on his Twitter page. Texas ABC television news affiliate WFAA contacted both firms:
Two public relations firms he has hired – Megaphone Strategies and Fenton Communications – responded to our requests for an interview saying: “Suprun’s schedule is jammed packed.”
But that wasn’t all. His first responder story turned out to be bunk:
on at least two occasions over the last couple years at crowded Major League Baseball games, Suprun has been introduced as a 9/11 veteran before throwing out first pitches.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park [Virginia] Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” said a first responder who knows Suprun and only agreed to speak about him if his identity was concealed.
The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.
The fire chief there added that his department never even responded to the Pentagon or any of the 9/11 sites.
And there is more, much more. His CV is littered with lies:
It shows he was, at the time this story aired on WFAA, a paramedic with Air Methods air ambulance service. But Christina Brodsly, a spokeswoman for that company, said he is not an employee there.
Suprun also claims to currently be a paramedic with Freedom EMS in Dallas. But records from the Texas Department of State Health Services indicate there’s no such company. A firm with that name used to exist in Houston, but it went out of business in 2008, according to DSHS.
The article goes on to say that Chris Suprun — upholder of the nation’s morality when it comes to voting for a president — has been bankrupt for most of the past five years. He was released from bankruptcy supervision only this month.
The story isn’t over yet, though. On December 12, Gotnews revealed that this moral guardian depends on his wife to work to pay off their $200,000 debt owed to various creditors. Suprun and his wife have three young children.
Gotnews got digging. While Mrs Suprun is busy working to support the family, her moralistic husband has been surfing on the cheating website Ashley Madison:
According to the data, Suprun joined Ashley Madison in February 2012, just six months after joint-filing for bankruptcy with his wife, Dianne Michelle Suprun, in September 2011, and paid for an “affair guarantee” in September 2012.
Where did he get the money?
An “affair guarantee”, which costs $249 today, is a discounted “package” for “credits” that allow men to chat with potential cheating partners on the website. Suprun, who had three kids under the age of 10 at the time, listed himself on the site as “attached male seeking female.”
Gotnews tells us:
Even though he used a throw-away e-mail address and changed his birth date by a few days, the Ashley Madison credit card data is unmistakably Suprun …
There’s only one Stephen Christopher Suprun, from Texas, born in March 1974, and the P.O. box is one of many P.O. boxes registered to Stephen Christopher Suprun that can be found with a quick search of any public records database.
It’s also the same P.O. box used for Suprun’s “Never Forget 9/11” charity, which he still lists on his Twitter profile …
There’s more at the link.
And this upstanding man — someone who has lied about his career, being a 9/11 first responder and also registered with a cheater’s website — has a problem voting for Donald Trump?
News becomes ‘performance art’
Tucker Carlson recently had another guest from Newsweek. Kurt Eichenwald appeared, alleging that Trump had been in a mental hospital for treatment in the 1980s or early 1990s. Eichenwald explained some of the background but spent nine minutes avoiding giving a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether the president elect actually was a patient.
Carlson rightly accused Eichenwald of ‘filibustering’, winding down the time so he wouldn’t have to give an answer to a topic he himself raised as the issue he wanted to discuss. He never did give an answer and accused Carlson of interrupting him. Eichenwald ended by saying he had an important message from the CIA. He never delivered that, either. Meanwhile, he occasionally waved around a white binder that read ‘Tucker Carlson Falsehoods’.
This interview was very strange indeed. Carlson called it ‘performance art’ and ‘the craziest interview’ he’d ever done, which it probably was:
The_Donald has more, including partial transcripts of the dialogue.
And it didn’t end when he got off air. A bizarre series of tweets ensued. Someone also sent him an assault gif, which Eichenwald’s ‘wife’ said, using his account, gave him a seizure. (The assault gifs are linked to in the aforementioned The_Donald thread. Don’t look. They are potentially dangerous for people prone to seizures.) It’s unclear whether his wife was actually tweeting on his behalf. Then Eichenwald couldn’t find the all-important CIA message. Let’s hope it wasn’t sensitive information!
This man appears to have a peculiar journalistic past with regard to an incident involving investigating pornography (more here). That was in 2007. This year, he was a big water carrier for Hillary Clinton and is sure there is a link between Trump and the Kremlin. He got aggressive about the issue with a fellow journalist in October and began tweeting repeatedly about it.
Faithful electors in the majority
Regardless of Chris Suprun, two reports state that the electors are highly likely to be faithful to the process and to their states’ voters.
Politico reports that Suprun is the only faithless Republican elector we know about. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is contacting their electors to ensure they will be voting for Trump. the article goes on to say that the RNC routinely contacts them after presidential elections. However, this year, there’s a difference as the Democratic National Committee has also been contacting GOP electors in an effort to discourage them from voting for Trump.
Trump currently has 306 electoral votes. He needs 270 to win:
If 37 Republican electors rejected him, he’d fall below the 270-vote threshold necessary to become president, sending the election to the House of Representatives for a January vote.
Democrats are attempting to persuade Republican electors to vote for someone like John Kasich of Ohio instead of Trump. However, Kasich said he does not want electoral votes.
Being a faithless elector is not a light matter in some states. Utah:
binds electors to support the candidate who won the statewide popular vote, as the most prominent reason he won’t consider voting for someone other than Trump. Similar laws exist in 29 states, including 14 where Trump won.
The penalties for violating these laws vary widely, with some states carrying no penalty at all, some issuing modest fines, and some requiring immediate replacement of electors. One state, New Mexico, treats “faithless” electoral votes as felonies.
Two Republican electors have already resigned, but still have until the day of the Electoral College vote to change their minds. If they do not turn up on the day in their respective state capitals, they will be replaced with alternates.
Business Insider reported that the Associated Press was able to contact all 538 electors and interview 330 of them:
finding widespread Democratic aggravation with the electoral process but little expectation that the hustle of anti-Trump maneuvering could derail him. For that to happen, Republican-appointed electors would have to stage an unprecedented defection and Democrats would need to buck tradition, too, by peeling away from Hillary Clinton and swinging behind a consensus candidate in sufficient numbers.
Business Insider tells us that Bret Chiafalo of Everett, Washington, co-founded Hamilton Electors. He said that the goal of the group is to steer electors away from the two main party candidates to a third party candidate. However, electors say the group’s tactics leave something to be desired:
“We got a stack of letters from idiots,” said Republican elector Edward Robson, 86, a Phoenix homebuilder.
Fellow elector Carole Joyce, 72, a state committeewoman in Phoenix and retired public-health nurse, was more charitable.
“They’ve caused me great distress on my computer, that’s for sure,” she said.
Trump appointees
On a brighter note, Deplorable Dave from New York not only has a fun countdown calendar but also a highly useful blog page of Trump appointees with the briefest of comments by each name. He updates it every day. It’s well worth visiting between now and the inauguration.
There aren’t many open posts left, which is good. That means the Trump administration can be up and running by January 20.
The Conservative Treehouse has timely analyses of new and potential appointments. Trump has drawn heavily on senior military officers. Former Navy SEAL Commander Ryan Zinke is the latest; he is likely to be the new Secretary of the Interior.
What is also interesting is that Trump is approaching conservative media personalities such as Monica Crowley, appointed to the National Security Council, and Kimberly Guilfoyle as his potential White House press secretary.
What’s next
Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s thank you tour ends this weekend.
Trump has three appearances. He will hold a rally in Orlando on Friday evening. On Saturday afternoon, he will media at the airport in Mobile, Alabama. Then he will meet Pence an hour later in the city’s Ladd-Peebles Stadium for the final rally.
A Nigerian newspaper recently republished an article about Trump by Pat Buchanan but changed the title to something much better: ‘Trump, Tribune of the American People’. How wonderful!
On Monday, December 19, the Electoral College will vote. Although the votes are not counted in the House of Representatives until early January, the media often give an indication before then of the expected result. If credible news appears, I’ll provide an update.
UP
Tucker Carlson might not yet be a household name, but it could be soon.
His Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight began just a little over a month ago on November 14, 2016.
(Photo credit: The_Donald)
Seasoned viewers of American cable news channels will have seen him on CNN between 2000 and 2005 in the days when he sported a bow tie. He was CNN’s youngest anchor when they hired him. He co-hosted The Spin Room and later Crossfire. He also hosted a current affairs show on PBS during this time, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered.
In 2004, Carlson and The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart got into an intense discussion on Crossfire, which some viewers might remember. Stewart stayed on the air afterwards to talk about the issues raised. In January 2005, CNN decided not to renew Carlson’s contract, although he maintains he had already resigned:
I resigned from Crossfire in April, many months before Jon Stewart came on our show, because I didn’t like the partisanship, and I thought in some ways it was kind of a pointless conversation … each side coming out, you know, ‘Here’s my argument’, and no one listening to anyone else. [CNN] was a frustrating place to work.”[10]
In June 2005, Carlson moved to MSNBC where he hosted Tucker in the evenings. He also did other broadcasts and investigative reports. However, the channel’s shows became more oriented to the left-wing and, in 2008, Carlson found his programme cancelled because of low ratings. He explained:
they didn’t have a role for me.
Carlson began working for Fox News in 2009 as a contributor, guest panellist and substitute presenter on several shows. He joined the Fox & Friends team in 2013 then left when he got his own show.
In January 2010, with the help of a longtime friend Neil Patel, Carlson co-founded The Daily Caller, a reputable and popular news site. He resigned as editor-in chief in November, although he will retain his ownership stake of the site. He said:
It was really hard. Not because I’m a great manager, I’m a terrible manager. But I loved it and I loved the guys.
Tucker Carlson Tonight airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET. All the segments can be found on YouTube.
Carlson is quickly developing a welcome reputation for destroying left-wing arguments coherently. He is firm but polite. When the guests’ arguments are particularly off-the-wall, he pulls a face. In fact, you can even buy a tee shirt and enjoy his facial expression whenever you like.
The_Donald‘s contributors, not the world’s biggest television viewers, have this to say:
You see in his eyes that’s he trying to go through the mental gymnastics his guest is and realizing just how it doesn’t compute.
I’m getting addicted to his nightly thrashings of idiots. Never raises his voices, uses their own words and idiocy against them. Has become true must-see tv in our house.
His show comes on right around the time I’m cooking and eating dinner. I have never recorded a news show before because it seems silly, but I record Tucker every night now!
I just really enjoy the way he encourages them to go full moron on national tv.
Oh man… I literally sit down to start watching and the first guest is just getting blown out the water to the point where I don’t even know if I can watch without cringing. Tucker does more in 2 minutes than whole news outlets do all day. Every show is bananas and so direct! Love it
There is more love from The_Donald here and here. There is also a Reddit page devoted to him. This is great because most of the contributors to both subReddits are twenty-somethings and political independents who supported Donald Trump.
In this video of December 8, California Congressman Adam Schiff (D) accuses Tucker of ‘carrying water for the Kremlin’:
On December 1, he had a go at Newsweek:
And, the following day, the New York Times:
From observing his interviewing style and reading his Wikipedia entry, until recently, I have been working on the assumption that he is High WASP.
After all, he went to a top Episcopal school in New England, St George’s, just outside of swank Newport, Rhode Island. The school is one of five collectively referred to as St Grottlesex (emphases in the original):
St. Mark’s, St. Paul’s, and St. George’s, then part of Groton, an extra t, and then ended with Middlesex.
Carlson went on to study history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. It was founded by an Episcopal bishop in 1824 and was originally called Washington College. It was renamed Trinity in 1845.
I once worked for a High WASP who attended Groton and Trinity. (Groton rhymes with ‘rotten’, by the way. It’s important to know how to pronounce it if you ever find yourself in this milieu.) I give him top marks overall. So, I was impressed to see that Carlson went to St George’s and Trinity, which gives me further insight as to what sort of man he must be. It is not unusual for Trinity men to wear bow ties. It’s a High WASP look.
Then I looked up his father’s Wikipedia entry and discovered that the Carlson family aren’t High WASP at all. His dad’s life story is even more interesting.
Richard Warner “Dick” Carlson might be best known for heading Voice of America, which broadcasts overseas, during the last six years of the Cold War. During that time, he was also the head of Radio Marti which broadcast to Cuba and was also involved with other government-funded information entities designed to build goodwill between the United States and foreign countries.
Dick’s origins are fascinating. He was born in Boston in 1941 and his name was Richard Boynton. His mother was a high school student and his father, Richard Boynton, was in college at the time. Boynton committed suicide in Dick’s infancy. His mother, Dorothy Anderson, gave him to the Home for Little Wanderers, an orphanage in Boston.
In 1943, Mr and Mrs W E Carlson of nearby Norwood adopted the child. They had no children of their own. Mr Carlson managed North America’s largest and oldest tannery, Winslow Brothers & Smith in Norwood. Mr Carlson died in 1953 and 12-year-old Dick went to work to help provide for his mother.
Dick never graduated from high school. He joined the military when he was 17 and served as a medic with the third Battalion, Sixth Marine regiment at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and with the USMC Escape & Evasion School at Camp Geiger, N.C. He later graduated from the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Bainbridge, Maryland. Afterwards, he earned a NROTC scholarship to the University of Mississippi.
After being honourably discharged from the Naval Reserves, he worked for one summer as a patrol officer in the family resort town of Ocean City, Maryland. He returned to Mississippi that autumn to continue his studies but left in October 1962 when a series of violent riots occurred. This was the time of Civil Rights unrest and desegregation. Ole Miss, as the university is known, was attempting to admit its first black student, and segregationists went mad.
Carlson went to California to break into journalism. Although he started as a copy boy at the Los Angeles Times, he managed to get odd jobs which would propel his career: working for top entertainment columnist Louella Parsons and for United Press International’s Foreign Film Bureau.
UPI hired him as a full-time general assignment reporter in 1963, working from their bureau in San Francisco. He was promoted to night bureau chief by the end of the year.
He went on to write for Time and Look magazines and joined ABC News as a correspondent, on assignment in San Francisco and Los Angeles. By then, the late 1960s, riots were breaking out around the nation. Dick covered the main ones in California and was even injured at the San Francisco State College Riots.
Dick married an Omaha girl, Patricia Caroline Swanson. In 1969, she gave birth to Tucker McNear Carlson in San Francisco. (The couple have two other children.)
Dick won many awards for his journalism between 1967 and 1997. In the early 1990s, he worked for George Herbert Walker Bush’s administration. He was the Ambassador to the Seychelles, the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (parent company of PBS and NPR). He has also worked in counter-terrorism.
Today, he and his wife live in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Dick writes a weekly newspaper column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Charleston Mercury.
By now, some will be wondering more about Tucker’s Episcopalianism. He did bring up an analogy involving a hypothetical Episcopal priest in a recent show. His Wikipedia page also states that he is still an Episcopalian.
In 2015, he took exception to Obama’s claim that religion causes wars:
“So we’re responsible for the Crusades a thousand years ago?” Carlson complained. “Who’s ‘us’ anyway? And by the way, who ended slavery and Jim Crow? Christians. The Rev. Martin Luther King. Christians.”
“Christianity is the reason we don’t have slavery in the world today,” he added. “I mean, talk about ahistorical.”
“What’s so striking though is his mention of the Crusades as a way to make the point, ‘Before you judge ISIS, keep in mind that that Christians did it too,'” Carlson asserted. “The Crusades is a fixation among jihadis. There’s not a press release from ISIS or from al Qaeda that doesn’t call us Crusaders.”
Democrat-aligned Media Matters took Carlson to task for suggesting that ‘mainstream religious faith’ refers to Christianity when most of the world’s population is, apparently, Buddhist. The exchange below concerns Tiger Woods, who converted to Buddhism in 2010 during a rough patch:
Jacksonville, FL: When did Brit Hume go crazy? Tiger Woods should embrace Christianity and we will forgive him?
You say this on the air?
Tucker Carlson: Crazy? No. John Wayne Gacy was crazy. Judy Garland and Ezra Pound were crazy. Recommending that someone in distress adopt a mainstream religious faith is pretty conventional advice.
Carlson was probably thinking of Westerners, Americans in particular, not people worldwide.
In any event, it’s great that he is willing to defend and speak out on behalf of the Church.
I nearly forgot to mention that Carlson is married and a father of four. Follow him on Twitter.
UPDATE — APRIL 2017: Carlson has removed his Episcopalian affiliation from his Wikipedia page. However, in an April 10, 2017 article, The New Yorker states that he is still an Episcopalian, one who ‘abhors’ the left-wing clergy running the denomination. Good man. During their courtship, his future wife persuaded him to take Christianity seriously.
