At the Border of Progressive Madness

On numerous occasions over the past few years, I have posted on this little blog some pieces on how when progressives announce that they are suddenly concerned, feeling "OUTRAGE!" over something, they are really talking about something else. I have discussed progressive "OUTRAGE!" over Confederate flags and statues; the very use of words; the evils of voter id; the pressing need for gay marriage; and, of course, the urgent requirement to fight against all forms of racial inequality. In all those little postings, I note that the ostensible target of progressive wrath is never whatever "OUTRAGE!" the well-coordinated talking points of the moment are highlighting in the legacy and social media, the universities, the halls of political power, and on the streets.

So what is the latest manifestation of progressive "OUTRAGE!" to fall upon us? What "OUTRAGE!" are the progs pushing today to get us not to think about the FBI scandal, Hillary's corruption, and the failed Russia hoax?

Why it's children at the border! Of course! Children! "Refugee" children! Who doesn't like children--except, of course, for Planned Parenthood? The current children theme is a variation of an earlier children at the border "OUTRAGE!" I wrote about that here, here and here, among many others, and most recently here. In one of those pieces, I noted that,

[W]e do not see the "children" go from, say, violent Honduras to nearby peaceful Nicaragua or Costa Rica. No, the "children" take a 1200 mile trek across dangerous Mexico to come to the USA, where they are welcomed by Progressive policies of free stuff.

Now we are treated to the spectacle of US border officials ripping children away from their loving "parents"--and we don't know if they're the parents. "Separated," yes, "separated" is now the new evil word! Curse you, Trump! This never happened under previous Presidents! Hollywood types are all abuzz; the word "NAZI" makes a frequent appearance. Hillary Clinton, her very self, is now up-in-arms over taking children from their "parents." The woman who told us that it takes a village to rear our kids doesn't like that village when it's run by Trump. The same progs who have set forward and funded billions upon billions of dollars worth of programs that take children from American parents--"Child Services," anybody?--object to children being separated temporarily from foreign criminals.

 Oops! Did I just write C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L-S? Yes. There, I wrote it again. 

Folks, as you we'll know, these "asylum" seekers are, in fact, criminals. If nothing else, they are child trafficking coyotes.

First of all, we must question their love for the kids if they are putting them through a brutal and illegal trip; this is child trafficking at its worst. Second, if they were legitimate asylum seekers, they would go to a legal border crossing, and claim asylum. They would get a respectful hearing, and "their" kids would not be ripped away. Instead, of course, these "asylum" seekers have allowed themselves to become pawns in a cynical and ILLEGAL process that exploits children. This stunt is pushed by well-funded progressive activists, abetted by Mexican officials, with the intention of collapsing our immigration system and creating a fake but very loud and visible political and humanitarian "crisis."

I repeat, people crossing our border illegally, that pesky word, are, by definition, breaking the law and engaging in criminal behavior. If a bank robber were to show up at the bank with his kids and get arrested, would the kids stay with him? No. Child Services, anybody? We don't keep minor children incarcerated with adult criminals; imagine the "OUTRAGE!" were we to do that. 

Another fake crisis.

And as a post script I would note, that if it isn't a fake crisis, why do these people, these supposed parents, keep coming? You'd think they would want to avoid having their children ripped away, and forced to live in a racist and fascist country.  The Jews, after all, did not run TOWARDS the concentration camps. Just a thought. 

The IG Report and Comey

Not going to pretend I read the whole thing. No way. I will get around to it, but 560 or so pages of a government document is just a little too much given all the other stuff I am doing right now. From what I have read, however, and from the analyses that have been shooting out all over media world, it seems the report is quite damning for Comey, his immediate circle, the FBI, in general, and former AG Lynch--who gets nailed (sorta) for her outrageous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. It also does Hillary Clinton no favors, finding that it seems almost certain foreign intel services got into her private server and gained access to the illegally stored classified information there.

Look, there's a lot in the report, I am uncomfortable going into too much detail about something I have not read in its entirety. I don't like relying on media accounts of these sorts of things. I don't like spin whether it's from Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. One area of particular concern for me, which I don't think the report deals with, is Comey's motivations for how he behaved, although the report says he was "insubordinate," and, btw, used a private email account for government business.

I have written before about Comey (here, here, and here) and noted back in July 2016 that the Democrats had a legitimate complaint against Comey and his public comments about the Clinton investigation. The Republicans, of course, had a valid point, too, noting that despite the detailed listing of all the misdeeds committed by Hillary Clinton, Comey had decided not to pursue criminal charges against her. His was a bizarre performance made even weirder when a few weeks later, he announced he had reopened the investigation into her emails because a big clump of them had been found on Anthony Weiner's laptop. All of this, the IG notes was not in keeping with FBI protocol, and clearly implies that Comey thought himself a power onto himself ("insubordinate"), and that Lynch proved an absolutely horrendous manager and leader of the DOJ.

Democrats, including Hillary, herself, have taken to various media platforms arguing that Comey's press conference shows that Comey favored Trump in the election by his actions if not his words. They note that he did not reveal, for example, that the FBI was investigating Trump-Russia, but did reveal the FBI was investigating Hillary-email. Well, friends, the Dems are not completely accurate on this and are hiding some aspects of what I think was happening inside the FBI. Note, of course, that the NYT and other outlets, in fact, were reporting on an FBI investigation of Trump-Russia before the election, and doing so on the basis of leaks coming from DOJ/FBI. More important, however, I understand from friends close to the FBI, there was a brewing revolt in the ranks over how the FBI leadership was handling Hillary Clinton with kid gloves. I think Comey sought to get ahead of that revolt by holding his infamous July 5, 2016 presser, and tried to split the baby--not very successfully. In addition, of course, Comey probably did not want a lot of attention on the FBI's Trump-Russia collusion investigation because he knew it was based on the fraudulent Steele Dossier and other questionable shenanigans, including dubious, to say the least, "unmasking" and FISA processes. As revealed by the IG report, the FBI/DOJ leadership assumed that HRC would win the November election, and, therefore, all of this illegal and unethical behavior would remain secret--commentary on it merely coming from those of us in the "POS" crowd.

Anyhow, just some thoughts. I hope to give the report a more detailed look in the next few days.

And Quiet Flows the Don . . . nah

First, apologies to Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, and I hope I don't owe him royalties for stealing the title of his novel about the Cossacks.

Second, what more can be said about Donald Trump on the international scene and the over-the-top, hysterical reaction to his undoubted successes by the proponents of the current World Order? I think I have said it all. No, not really, give me a keyboard and I can always blurt something more.

Let's do a wrap up to the G-7 meeting, which I discussed before.

OK, Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): President Trump left that gabfest early so he could save the world from nuclear war, but his opponents couldn't stand it.

PM Justin Bieber Trudeau put on his/her/zhe big boy/girl/nonbinary pants, hid the floral socks, and made oh-so-brave comments about Trump while the President was in the air. Trump, of course, couldn't and wouldn't let it pass, and noted his surprise at Trudeau's new-found boldness when, in fact, during the meetings he had been quite meek and mild; Trump restated how American workers and industries are getting the shaft from tariffs and other restrictions imposed by our "allies." Trump told our negotiators not to sign the G-7 communique. The MSM press, of course, had a field day going on about how Trump has blown up the alliance system, maligned our allies, and divorced America from Europe. A note in passing to MSM: the divorce papers were signed in 1776, and unlike the prog-establishment created mess in Britain today on Brexit, there is no redo, no matter how much prog world would like one.

When I was at State, unity with our allies meant giving in to them. We would sign absurd declarations just to preserve "unity." The G-7 is like that. We go along with the nonsense about climate, gender equality, go lukewarm on ISIS ("Daesh"), yada, yada, yada, and get nothing in return for our people. This latest one (here) was just another mostly no-calorie, word salad but which had some sneaky stuff about synchronizing tax schemes (read it, you'll see; it's an obvious shot at our efforts to lower tax rates). To steal a phrase from Honest Abe, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here today . . . ." Trump ain't buying it. Good. An alliance is a two-way street. An alliance with the current crop of globalist nonsense peddlers (Japan excepted) is real tough. I would note, for example, that one of those allies Angela Merkel, by name, has done more damage to Europe and Western security and values that anybody else in my lifetime. That is not an ally.

The MSM/Democrat Party reaction to the Singapore summit is also nonsensical. One gets the impression that these bien pensants would prefer the status quo, including the threat of a possible nuclear war on the Korean peninsula, than support President Trump's gutsy effort to change matters for the better--and there should be no doubt, Trump dominated that summit meeting. All of a sudden we hear strident patriotism from the likes of Rachel Maddow and others of that ilk bemoaning the "sell-out" to Kim by just meeting him, demanding all sorts of things that they never insisted Obama ask from the Mullahs and Castro when he engaged in his disastrous foreign policy forays. I don't see Trump giving Kim billions in cash and dropping sanctions in exchange for vague promises. He has launched a process which might just work, and if it doesn't, well, we are no worse off than we are now. Give the man some credit.

I hope the Don continues to refuse to flow quietly . . .

Just call it the Gee 1 and be done with it . . . .

After another multinational gab fest last January,  I noted that

President Trump is THE rockstar of the global political world. I don't even know why other leaders bother showing up when this POTUS is in town . . . was anybody else at the meeting? Who knows? Who cares?

We can make the same observation and ask the same questions after the just-concluded G-7 meeting in Canada. Was there anybody else there who matters? Look at the photos. All the other leaders seem to be crowding around Trump, all eyes on him. As in the GOP primary debates, one would be hard-pressed to recall anything said by any another participant. I don't think we have seen anybody dominate international meetings in this manner since . . . since, uh, well, maybe since Jackie Kennedy accompanied her husband to Paris . . ?

Trump sets the agenda, determines the pace, and sucks the oxygen out of the room at these meetings. And--surprise!--the others have no choice but to go along and serve as his foils; they highlight that Trump alone among them seems the nationalist concerned about his people first, and not at all about the international bureaucrats, their bureaucracy, and communiques.

Trump was correct to call for having Russia back into the G-7-8 process. What have we gained by excluding Russia? It was an act of virtue signaling by Obama and the other "leaders" of the West in the wake of Putin's take-over of Crimea. Is Crimea any more free now than it was when Russia was kicked out? Over four years ago, I wrote about dealing with Russia and Putin which,

will require resolve and determination. With the right policies, however, it should prove considerably less difficult than dealing with the once more powerful USSR. Russia is a much smaller nation, and one in serious demographic decline. It has not resolved its economic problems and has a shaky political system that is not certain to survive the departure--whenever that is--of Putin. What Putin has is Putin. He understands the multiplier effect of determined leadership and how that can make up for many orders of military inferiority.

Before that, I wrote a piece on sanctions on Russia which basically said forget about sanctions and just go for energy independence as a way to cripple untoward Russian ambitions. We seem to be doing that, unlike the hapless Obama misadministration. It is now time for serious discussions with Russia, and to bring them into the international game. Russia will always be a problem, but we should be able to handle it better if they're inside the tent rather than out. There is no need to have Russia as an enemy.

Finally, please watch the press conference he held just before leaving Canada (skipping the climate meeting) and heading off to Singapore to meet Kim Jung-un. Can this man handle the press or what? Notice the loaded CNN question at about minute 17; Trump takes no prisoners.

Anyhow, this old Foreign Service Officer stands in awe of Trump's dominance of the international scene.

On the EU from the Left

Sorry for the delayed posting. I have been wrapped up in issues of my father's estate, and have ignored my blogging.

A good friend sent me a very interesting article looking at Trump, Merkel, and the EU from a leftist perspective.

I found the piece well worth reading, even if I don't agree with all of its conclusions. The author, as you will see, is none other than Yanis Varoufakis, once Greece's "far left" economic minister, and a prominent member of what I, at the time, called Greece's honest crooks (also here).

He tried to negotiate a better deal for Greece with the EU, and was stymied by mostly Germany, and left office. As I have written many times (here and here, for example) the EU tried to force its members to "swim with an anchor," aka, the euro--some successfully resisted. Varoufakis seems to agree, somewhat, but doesn't reach the same ultimate conclusion that I did, to wit, the EU, itself, is the problem not just the euro and its current crop of leaders. The EU, after all, was overwhelmingly a political project which sought to balance the political, military, and economic power of the United States, and do so with "magic totems" such as the euro and a massive and overpaid bureaucracy. It, of course, failed to do that, as President Trump has amply demonstrated repeatedly, e.g., his easy destruction of the Paris Climate Accord, and of the odious Iran "deal." The EU, in other words, could "balance" the US only as long as the US allowed itself to be checked, in other words, President Obama. Well, Trump ain't Obama; he won't help the Lilliputians tie down the US.

Varoufakis bemoans the EU leadership's obstinate refusal to make reforms, and blames it for the rise of populist movements in Europe that now threaten the whole EU "project." He particularly blames Merkel, as I have, for the EU's current predicament, but seems unable to grasp the monumental error she made by opening Europe to a rapid Muslim invasion. He makes a good case that the EU is heading for the dust bin, e.g., recent Italian elections, but ignores perhaps the single greatest indicator of this, Brexit--something which this humble blog did not. He also attacks Trump and his policies, although understanding their origins, as a threat to the EU project, a project which Varoufakis, it seems, would like to preserve--hey, I said I didn't agree with everything he wrote, right?

Varoufakis sees as negative the rise of movements to defend national sovereignty (I don't and wrote about that here, for example) and lashes out at the Trump administration several times. I, obviously, don't agree with his criticism of President Trump, but it is an interesting and well-written argument. That alone is something to be welcomed in these highly divisive times in which insults and craziness substitute for rational discussion and debate.

Anyhow, hope to have more thoughtful commentary soon. Back to the lawyers.

Back in NC from OC

Back in my beloved home in the NC woods.

Gruesome days in Orange County, California with my father's death, burial, and the start of the lawyer, stock broker, and accountant onslaught. Lots of papers, lots of photocopies, dealing with storage unit managers, real estate appraisers, and getting everything under the sun (it seemed)  notarized.

One bright spot, however. I came to appreciate the genius of McDonald's and hereby declare it the world's best restaurant. I will tolerate no violation of my safe space on this issue. Can't tell you how many mornings, a McD "bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit" with sugar free French vanilla iced coffee saved me from going ballistic. I also discovered their quite excellent "Artisan grilled chicken sandwich" which makes for a delicious lunch when you're on the go. There. If McD doesn't immediately send me $50,000, I am off to Burger King . . .

No, really, McD is a genius creation which provides a good product for a good price and teaches generations of kids how to work. American ingenuity for the world. That and the Mars Rover . . .

More serious stuff to come.

Memorial Day 2018, and Thinking of Tommy Robinson

I wrote some years back on another Memorial Day that,

Writing this post on Memorial Day, my thoughts, of course, turned to those who fought and died to preserve our country. My thoughts also turned to the issue of national defense, in general, and whether we still "get it." We all--well, most of us-- understand defending our nation when it comes under physical attack, e.g., Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and most of us--well, many of us--also understand that at times one must defend our country from threats that have not yet blown through our door, e.g., the Kaiser's and the Nazi Fuehrer's Germany, Il Duce's Italy, Kim's North Korea, and Saddam's Iraq come to mind.

I went on to note that in addition to the military we need our other institutions to defend us and make worthwhile the sacrifice of our warriors, and that,

None of our government institutions, however, can over the long term defend our nation without a major change in thinking within our nation about our nation. What kind of a nation do we want? What kind of Western civilization do we want? For that debate, let's go to the UK. There it seems, at least to this outside observer, that the debate has begun in earnest in the wake of the Woolwich savagery which saw two Muslims brutally murder a young soldier in the name of Allah. There are also reports of an attempted killing of a British prison warden by Islamic prisoners "radicalized" in prison. We now see growing outrage over Muslim violence in Britain and what, apparently, was a leftist attempt to alter radically the nature of British society by encouraging immigration from poor countries and have those immigrants become dependent on and vote for Labour. It appears from documents recently made available that this was a planned effort. The Labour politicians involved in altering Britain's immigration laws deliberately sought to change British society, and knew the country would see a rise in social pathologies such as crime as a result. A visitor to any major British city can testify that Labour's plan has succeeded, social pathologies and all. Some two to three million immigrants from the third world entered the UK in less than ten years. The Labour politicians understood that this radical attempt to alter British society would not have public approval, so they did what leftist politicians do best: lie and label as "racist" anybody opposed to this massive social engineering.

I wrote that back in 2013, but certainly in the British case it seems even more relevant today as we read about the arrest and rapid sentencing to prison of Tommy Robinson.  You can agree or disagree with Robinson's stance on issues such as the Islamization of Britain and the pernicious effects that open immigration is having on Britain, but the ham-handed, Orwellian manner in which the authorities there responded to his perfectly valid activities should send a shiver down the spine of all who care about the truth and the preservation of the rights for which our veterans fought and many died. To have the man arrested for attempting to report on the ongoing trial of the members of an "Asian," i.e., Muslim, rape gang, AND to have some Social Justice judge impose a news blackout on the arrest and the "double-plus" fast sentencing is beyond outrageous. This is something we would expect to see in Cuba not in the most important country in Western Europe, and the "mother of all parliaments." Why is the British press going along with the "black-out"?

Here in the USA, we are marginally better off, thanks to the first and second amendments, but headed down the same dark progressive pathway if we do not maintain our vigilance. The arrest and silencing of Robinson is the natural culmination of the progs' war on individual liberty and diversity of thought, and the ceaseless promotion of "lawfare" as a means to impose a totalitarian agenda. We see it at work, most notably, in our decrepit universities.

I hope President Trump raises the violation of Robinson's rights with PM May, and invites him to come to the US to speak. I doubt very much that British vets fought and died to prevent opposition to the Islamization of their country.