How To Spin The Most Extreme Corruption To Make It Seem OK

The recently departed Bill O'Reilly would often call his TV show the "no spin zone."  It was a good effort on his part, but I would say that almost everything that comes out of a human being's mouth is spin of one sort or another.  That's particularly true in matters that relate to a person justifying his own conduct.  Even the biggest crooks in the world always have a narrative going on in their heads to excuse what they are doing as being perfectly OK. 

As an extreme example of this phenomenon, consider the lead headline in yesterday's New York Times:  "Russia-Trump Tie Was Big Concern Of Ex-C.I.A. Chief."  In the on-line version the headline is "Ex-C.I.A. Chief Reveals Mounting Concern Over Trump Campaign and Russia."

Nice try.  Here's my alternative headline for the same article:  "Ex C.I.A. Chief Brennan Offers Preposterous 'Russia' Cover Story To Excuse Blatantly Illegal Government Spying On Trump Campaign."  My alternative headline is just the other "spin."  

The gist of the article is that Brennan supposedly initiated use of CIA and FBI resources to snoop on the Trump campaign because of what he says was "concern" about contacts between that campaign and Russia.  Excerpts:

 John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described on Tuesday a nerve-fraying few months last year as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald J. Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. . . .  “I know what the Russians try to do,” Mr. Brennan said. “They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including U.S. individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly.” . . .  [I]ntelligence agencies are unanimous in their belief that Russia directly interfered in the election. . . .    

One thing I've learned from 40 years in the litigation business is this:  there's no definitively disproving what a person says about what is going on in his own head.  "I think," "I believe," "I concluded," "I was concerned," and so forth are all ultimately non-disprovable.  On the other hand, we are entitled to apply our common sense to the situation to see if such justifications are credible.

Let me start with this:  The citizens of the United States have given truly awesome powers to federal government law enforcement and intelligence agencies for one and only one reason, which is to keep the people safe.  For that purpose, and that purpose alone, we have acquiesced in the creation of the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, with their enormous and frightening investigatory and surveillance powers.  The single biggest corruption in which these agencies can engage is the use of their powers to interfere in the election process, and thus to disadvantage one side of the political divide in favor of the other.  The use of the investigative and surveillance powers of the CIA/NSA/FBI by government officials as a weapon against political adversaries is a far, far, far worse corruption than, say, merely taking a bribe, no matter how large;  and is a far, far, far worse corruption that merely embezzling millions, or even billions, of dollars from the government's coffers.  Misuse of the investigatory and surveillance powers against political adversaries goes to the very integrity of the democratic process, and indeed to the right to control the investigatory agencies themselves.

And therefore, if the officials of any of those agencies have used any of their powers to investigate or surveil the campaign of a political adversary, they had better have a damned, damned, damned solid basis for it.  And by a damned, damned, damned solid basis, I do not mean self-serving assertions of mere "suspicion" or "concern."  Anybody can assert "suspicion" and/or "concern" at any time they feel like it, for little or even no reason.  It's the ultimate non-falsifiable baloney.  If these enormously powerful agencies are going to engage in activities at this level of irresistible temptation of extreme corruption, they'd better have extremely specific facts indicating an extremely specific crime being committed.  This is no trivial matter.  If the CIA and the FBI and the NSA can invoke their frightening powers on the basis of a mere claim some kind of vague "suspicion" or "concern," and thereby launch an investigation of the political adversaries in the midst of a presidential campaign, then nothing about our political system is safe.  They can always claim "suspicion" or "concern."  If those are the criteria, you can be one hundred percent certain -- as certain as the night follows the day -- that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies will always be misusing their powers to interfere in every political contest of any consequence in this country at all times.  The temptation is just too strong.  It's the very definition of evil.

And let's be clear about one more thing:  this is a completely partisan issue.  The employees of the federal government in the Washington area -- and that includes the principal staffs of the CIA, FBI and NSA -- consist of ninety plus percent partisan Democrats.  If they can get away with using their investigatory and surveillance powers on the basis of self-serving statements of "suspicion" and/or "concern" to investigate and surveil politicians in political campaigns, then those powers will always be used to advantage the Democrats and disadvantage the Republicans.  That applies irrespective of which party may happen to be "in power" in the presidency or Congress at some moment in time.

So what did Brennan offer in the way of the "damned, damned, damned solid basis" to justify his conduct?  In a word, nothing.  Here's a longer Brennan quote, this time from Byron York in the Washington Examiner:

"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign," Brennan testified. "I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons. . . .  

Brennan claims to have learned that there were "contacts and interactions" between members of the Trump campaign and Russian representatives, and, supposedly, he "know[s] what [they] try to do."  So?  His statement is just another way of saying that he had and has nothing whatsoever in the way of specific facts as to actual wrongdoing.  There is absolutely nothing illegal about members of the Trump campaign having "contacts" or "interactions" with representatives of Russia.  Without doubt, representatives of the Trump campaign had "contacts and interactions" with representatives of at least 30 or 40 of the important countries in the world.  That's an important part of the job of a campaign, to be ready to run the foreign policy of the United States in the event that their candidate wins.  For that matter, representatives of the Clinton campaign, with one hundred percent certainty, did the same.  Go further:  suppose that members of the Trump campaign actually "colluded" with representatives of Russia to figure out ways to try to defeat Hillary.  That is not illegal, let alone criminal!  Kudos to (otherwise partisan Democrat) Alan Dershowitz for making this obvious point in multiple forums over the past several days, for example here.  Is he the only Democrat left in America for whom civil liberties and the integrity of our democracy are more important than momentary partisan advantage?

So which is the worse problem:  (1) that Russia may have been "colluding" with one of the campaigns to disadvantage the other, or (2) that the CIA, FBI and NSA were working to help one campaign against the other, including by using their investigatory and surveillance powers?  It's not even close.  Russia has no ability to launch criminal probes in the United States.  Russia has no ability to threaten prosecution in the United States.  Russia has no ability to sweep up emails and financial records in secret in the United States and use them to prosecute political adversaries.  Russia has little to no ability to utter "leaks" to a friendly press to advance its political objectives.

But nevertheless the Trump/Russia story rolls on every day in the New York Times, Washington Post, et al.   

Progressive Fantasy Of The Day: Healthcare As A "Human Right"

I live in New York, and as a result I get to have friends and acquaintances tell me, more or less on a daily basis, that they firmly believe that "healthcare" is a "human right."  Or, make that a "basic human right."  Mind you, these are very nice and sincere people, and generally quite intelligent as well.  They care, deeply -- or at least, they believe that they care deeply -- about the plight of the poor generally, and in particular about the plight of those with health issues who have inadequate "healthcare."  (Note that the word "healthcare" for these purposes has very little or nothing to do with whether the subjects in question receive care for their afflictions, and almost entirely relates only to the question of whether the subjects have the unrestricted ability to call upon third parties to pay for that care.)  My New York friends find it difficult to comprehend how any person with a minimum level of morality could disagree on this subject.  When they learn that the winner of the Ms. USA pageant -- a black woman, no less! -- expressed the opinion that healthcare was a "privilege" rather than a "right," they are horrified, if not outraged.  

And God forbid that I should try to engage one of these people by presenting arguments for a different point of view.  As you might have gathered from reading this site, I'm not one to acquiesce or remain silent in the face of poorly-reasoned groupthink.  Plenty of people have raised their voice at me, or just walked away in a huff.  Another friend lost!

But in my case it has never gotten to the level that it reached over the weekend at the convention of the California Democratic Party.  That's where, as I reported just yesterday, the crowd raised its middle fingers for a chant of "F**k Donald Trump!", and then proceeded to shout down the likes of U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon for daring to suggest that the state might want to consider a "public option" healthcare law before going all the way to the holy grail of fully-socialized medicine, known as "single payer."  Simultaneously, a bill (known as Senate Bill 562) to impose the "single payer" system has been advancing in the California legislature, and declared socialist Bernie Sanders has been criss-crossing California whipping up his fans to support the proposed "single payer" system.    

Then, even as I was writing yesterday's post, the Appropriations Committee of the California State Senate went and released a financial analysis of SB 562.  The Sacramento Bee has the story here:

The price tag is in: It would cost $400 billion to remake California’s health insurance marketplace and create a publicly funded universal heath care system, according to a state financial analysis released Monday.  California would have to find an additional $200 billion per year, including in new tax revenues, to create a so-called “single-payer” system, the analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee found. The estimate assumes the state would retain the existing $200 billion in local, state and federal funding it currently receives to offset the total $400 billion price tag.

How does this level of cost compare to the entire existing annual budget of the State of California?  The answer is, it is well more.  The entire current annual budget is about $180 billion.  Thus, implementing the "single payer" system of SB 562 would require more than doubling of all state taxes in California, which, as I am sure you already know, are already among the very highest in the country.  Don't worry, there's a proposal to raise the money:  impose a 15% payroll tax on everybody in the state. (As I understand it, a "payroll tax" is like an income tax, except without the features that low income people are exempted and high income people pay a higher progressive rate.)  For comparison, the current top California income tax rate is only about 13%, and only applies to incomes well above $1 million per year.

Are you surprised that just this one new program could possibly cost so much?  Then you haven't been following the issue.  For example, as I reported as recently as Saturday, New York also has a "single payer" bill working its way through the state legislature, and the incremental cost of that bill has also been estimated as well more than the entire amount raised by all state taxes currently in existence.  (In the case of New York, the estimated incremental cost of the "single payer" bill is $91 billion per year starting in 2019, while the entire take from all existing state taxes as of 2019 is estimated as $82 billion.)

Can anybody do this more cheaply?  Well, we can look to see if any other states have had a single-payer healthcare system that got far enough in the legislative process to get costed out.  And there are two more such states.  Vermont, under Democratic Governor Pete Shumlin, made a run at enacting a single-payer system in 2014 -- indeed, bringing "single-payer" to Vermont was Shumlin's signature issue.  As reported by Avik Roy in Forbes here, in late 2014 two consultancies  put cost figures on the Vermont proposal, known as Green Mountain Care:

The Shumlin administration, in its white-flag briefing last week, dropped a bombshell. In 2017, under pre-existing law, the state of Vermont expects to collect $1.7 billion in tax revenue. Green Mountain Care would have required an additional $2.6 billion in tax revenue: a 151 percent increase in state taxes. Fiscally, that’s a train wreck. Even a skeptical report from Avalere health had previously assumed that the plan would “only” cost $1.9 to $2.2 billion extra in 2017.  In 2019, Costa estimated that Green Mountain Care would have required $2.9 billion in tax revenue vs. $1.8 billion under pre-existing law: a 160 percent increase in revenue.

So Green Mountain Care also was estimated to cost well more than the entire existing take of all state taxes -- about 120% according to one estimate, and about 160% according to the other.  Once these numbers came out, Shumlin raised the "white flag" (as Roy puts it) and the proposal went away.  

On the cost end, are you starting to notice a pattern here?  The cost of these single-payer healthcare proposals seems always to turn out to be something well in excess of the entire existing state tax revenue.

Colorado was no different.  Colorado's single-payer plan was called Amendment 69, and it was put to the voters in a referendum that was on the ballot at the same time as the 2016 presidential election.  From Megan McArdle at Bloomberg last August:

Building this new entitlement would cost more than 140 percent of the total current state budget. Since there are no plans that I’m aware of for the Colorado state government to stop doing all its other functions, that means that everyone in Colorado would have to take whatever check they are currently sending to their state government, tear it up, multiply the total by 2.4, and write a new check.

In other words, pretty much the exact same story.  Meanwhile, while the proposal seemed to be leading in early polls, once the costs were known, it sank rapidly.  It ended up losing in a huge landslide, about 80-20.  Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton carried the state by about 5 points.  

My expectation is that even California is going to come to its senses on this one, angry activist demonstrators or no.  But the progressive fantasy will never go away, with the federal government as the ultimate target.  After all, the federal government is not subject to normal budget constraints, and has an infinite pile of free money to be used to create perfect justice and fairness in the world.  Right?  Of course, there are lots of other causes lined up for the infinite money -- curing poverty, ending income inequality, "climate justice" payments, reparations for slavery, etc., etc.    

Raising Political Discourse To A New Level

If you are still wondering, "Who are the Krazy ones around here?", I have a couple of new entries today.

The Democratic Party of California just held a convention on Saturday.  This is the party that is about as dominant in this state as either political party is in any state in the country.  They control  the governorship, and they also control both houses of the state legislature by two-thirds "supermajorities."  They delivered the state to Hillary Clinton in the recent election by a margin of more than 4.3 million votes.  

So how was the discourse at their convention?  For starters, outgoing state party chair John Burton chose to use his speaking time to lead the crowd in a chant of "F**k Donald Trump."  The crowd responded by chanting along and thrusting their middle fingers in the air.  Classy!  Here is a photograph of the moment, via GatewayPundit:

In its coverage of the event, the AP chose to spin the chants and gestures as "a sign of the vigor of the party’s distaste for the president."  OK.  AP also notes that "rowdy activists" in the crowd repeatedly disrupted the speeches of anyone the deemed "insufficiently supportive," Exhibit A being -- Nancy Pelosi!  

Rowdy activists organized by the California Nurses Association repeatedly interrupted speakers they deemed insufficiently supportive. When U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called for a “public option” in health care, the advocates began chanting “single payer.” State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, who has previously suggested now is not the time for single-payer, received similar treatment

Meanwhile, also from GatewayPundit, and also from California, we learn that UCLA has posted job listings for a position with the title "Social Justice Advocate."  The program seeks applicants to help their classmates “navigate a world that operates on whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as the primary ideologies."  Here is a longer quote from the online application:

The Social Justice Advocates initiative aims to empower students by developing them as conscious and critical leaders and equipping them with cultural and political capital as they navigate a world that operates on whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as the primary ideologies. Social Justice Advocates will learn about systems oppression and how they intersect and build upon one another maintain the status quo. Most importantly individuals and the collective will be empowered through liberatory scholarship and practices and strengthening their emotional intelligence to create change within their spheres of influence. Social Justice Advocates will educate their peers on how they can make UCLA a more equitable space for all students and communities.

The program materials indicate that the funding comes in part from the taxpayers and in part from alumni -- they don't reveal the split.

If you are wondering how the rest of the world might be reacting to the descent into kraziness here in the U.S., you may be interested in this article from Chenchen Zhang at OpenDemocracy.  Ms. Zhang reports that a new term "baizuo" (Chinese characters: 白左) has recently come to prominence on Chinese social media sites.  The translation is given as "white left," and the term is said to be derogatory.  Excerpt:

So what does ‘white left’ mean in the Chinese context, and what’s behind the rise of its (negative) popularity? . . . .  [A]s a social media buzzword and very often an instrument for ad hominem attack, it could mean different things for different people. A thread on “why well-educated elites in the west are seen as naïve “white left” in China” on Zhihu, a question-and-answer website said to have a high percentage of active users who are professionals and intellectuals, might serve as a starting point. 

The question has received more than 400 answers from Zhihu users, which include some of the most representative perceptions of the 'white left'. Although the emphasis varies, baizuo is used generally to describe those who “only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment” and “have no sense of real problems in the real world”; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to “satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority”; they are “obsessed with political correctness” to the extent that they “tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism”; they believe in the welfare state that “benefits only the idle and the free riders”; they are the “ignorant and arrogant westerners” who “pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours”.

That's right, guys, the Chinese are laughing at you.  A lot more Americans ought to be laughing at them as well.  But then, many people find it difficult to laugh when they are being scorned and belittled, or told that they are "privileged" even as they lose their jobs or their pay doesn't increase for decades.  

If You Think President Trump Is Crazy, Consider What California And New York Are Up To

One of the latest talking points from the left is that President Trump is so unhinged that he should be removed from office by the processes of the Constitution's 25th Amendment.  (That Amendment, adopted in 1967, provides for the Vice President to take over as Acting President whenever the Vice President and "a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments" inform Congress that the President "is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.")  For myself, I'm struggling to figure out exactly what about Trump's activities is so crazy.  You may disagree with Trump about plenty of things, from Obamacare reform to tax reform to immigration policy to rolling back environmental regulations to cutting discretionary government spending -- but plenty of perfectly sane people think that these things are good ideas, and even necessary.  

Now, can we look at a few things that are definitely 100 percent certifiably crazy?  I'm talking of course about proposals that the Democratic governors and Democrat-controlled legislatures are implementing, or trying to implement, in California and New York.

Start with California.  In September 2016 California's legislature passed, and Governor ("Moonbeam") Brown signed, a law that they call out there SB-32.  SB-32 requires that there be a reduction of "greenhouse gas" emissions in California to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.  At one time in my life I would have thought that 2030 was impossibly far away; but it's now only about 12 1/2 years, and for these purposes that is not very far at all.  

Larry Hamlin has a big write-up on SB-32 and its consequences today at Watts Up With That.  We all know that California has been on a big push during the whole 27 years since 1990 to replace fossil fuels with "renewables" and to force big-time energy conservation on the citizenry.  They have covered the hillsides with wind turbines, and the valleys with solar collectors.  So how much of the 40% reduction have they accomplished so far?  The answer is, less than none.  According to this chart appearing in Hamlin's post, California's emissions for the latest year given (2014) were actually marginally above the 1990 level:

But don't worry, we're going to get started on this tomorrow, and emissions are going to fall off a cliff starting in 2020!  And how exactly are they planning to accomplish these reductions?  The answer, according to Hamlin's analysis of statements from state authorities, is "massive regulatory and policy change[s]," aka a vast regime of coercion.  Oh, and by the way, they haven't yet figured out what exactly that coercion is going to consist of:

[E]xtraordinary admissions are noted from the state's leaders about the complete lack of knowledge, expertise and experience of the state government needed to achieve these escalated emissions goals. . . .    

All of this, mind you, to achieve a reduction in world CO2 emissions of a small fraction of 1%, even as China, India, Africa, et al., race forward with hundreds of new coal power plants.  It is as safe a bet as you could make that the emissions reductions mandated by SB-32 will never take place.  But how much will the lives of Californians be disrupted in the meantime?  This is seriously insane.

But is it as insane as what is going on in New York?  New York has two entries in today's insanity sweepstakes.

First, from our illustrious Governor Cuomo (in his latest State of the State Report), we know that, like California, we must “double down by investing in the fight against dirty fossil fuels," not to mention the equally critical battle against "fracked gas from neighboring states.”  And how exactly are we going to do that?  The funny thing is, the one big, real energy action on the part of the Governor that is going to have a dramatic impact on emissions seems to be taking us in the opposite direction.  I'm talking, of course, about the impending forced closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant.  According Robert Bryce in a recent piece in the City Journal, Indian Point has a capacity of 2083 MW; it provides something around 30% of the power for New York City.  And how exactly is New York going to replace all that power without a big increase in CO2 emissions?  Bryce points to a report put out by something called Synapse Energy Economics at the behest of green groups Riverkeeper and NRDC, promoting what Bryce calls the "fictions" that renewables and conservation can take up all the slack:

[Synapse] published a report last week repeating the same shopworn claims that the Green Left has been making for years: namely, that we don’t need coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear energy, and that virtually all our energy needs can be supplied by renewable energy and greater efficiency. The report . . . makes three grievous errors: it ignores one of the gas-fired plants now being built, it greatly exaggerates the potential for energy efficiency, and it makes no mention of the backlash against wind energy in New York.  

Meanwhile, another report from something called Environmental Progress (nuclear energy boosters) predicts that the closing of Indian Point will lead to New York's greenhouse gas emissions going up by an astounding 29%.  Which side do you want to bet on?  As a clue, there is a huge new natural gas plant -- about 2/3 the capacity of Indian Point -- about to begin construction in the Town of Dover, about 80 miles North of New York City.    

Can we top even that one?  Yes!  According to this post on Reason Hit-and-Run on May 17, the New York State Assembly has now passed, by a vote of 87-38, a bill providing for so-called "single payer" health care.  The bill now goes to the State Senate, where this article at Common Dreams reports it is within a vote or two of having enough support to get passed.  According to Reason, the estimated annual cost of the proposed new healthcare system will be some $91 billion -- a figure well in excess of the entire annual take of all state taxes in New York, which are expected to generate only $82 billion by the time this healthcare law would take effect in 2019.  And New York already has tax rates that are at or near the very highest rates of any state in the country.  Moreover, the entire $82 billion is already committed to other purposes.  So where to get a fresh, new $91 billion per year?  

To pay for the single-payer system, Friedman suggested that New York create a new tax on dividends, interest, and capital gains that would range from 9 percent to 16 percent, depending on how much investment income an individual reports, and a new payroll tax that would similarly range from 9 percent to 16 percent depending on an individual's income. 

In short, there will be a far-more-than-doubling of all already-near-highest-in-the-country income-related taxes.  No problem!  (By the way, those measures wouldn't raise nearly enough money to pay for this, but really, when you are at this level of progressive fantasy, why not just pretend?)

So, folks, keep in mind that this is what the left has in mind for you if and when they take control of the presidency and Congress.  And they say that Donald Trump is insane!

For A Brief Respite From Trump Derangement, Try Venezuela

Let's face it, there's going to be a new, and most likely completely baseless, instance of Trump derangement blaring from the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post more or less every day for at least the next three and a half years.  It can be amusing to make fun of these things, but at some point the Manhattan Contrarian has to find something better to do.  How about looking into recent reporting on Venezuela?

Based on a tip from a reader, I turned to interior page A4 of Monday's edition of the New York Times, and found there an article on Venezuela, occupying the full page, mostly text, but accompanied by several pictures of empty store shelves and of riot police clashing with demonstrators.  The authors are Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, and the headline is "How Venezuela Has Stumbled to the Brink of Collapse."    

My reader's question was, how is it possible that they could write this mountain of text about the collapse of Venezuela's economy and its causes without even once using the word "socialism"?  And he's right about that -- the word "socialism" doesn't appear a single time.  But it's much  worse than that.  By itself, the omission to mention "socialism" in a discussion of the causes of Venezuela's economic collapse could be attributed to mere ignorance or stupidity.  This article goes far beyond mere ignorance and stupidity, and veers deep into dishonesty and malice.  

The basic idea here is to gin up a narrative to describe the reigns of Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela in terms to tie them to Trumpism, and to make the story of Venezuela into a call to resist Trump.  Don't believe me?  Try a few excerpts:

Distrust of institutions often leads populists, who see themselves as the people’s true champion, to consolidate power. But institutions sometimes resist, leading to tit-for-tat conflicts that can weaken both sides. . . .  

Because populism describes a world divided between the righteous people and the corrupt elite, each round of confrontation, by drawing hard lines between legitimate and illegitimate points of view, can polarize society.  Supporters and opponents of a leader like Mr. Chávez come to see each other as locked in a high-stakes struggle, justifying extreme action. . . .  

He and his supporters now saw politics as a zero-sum battle for survival. Independent institutions came to be seen as sources of intolerable danger. . . .  The result was intense polarization between two segments of society who now saw each other as existential threats, destroying any possibility of compromise.  

That's right, the real causes of Venezuela's economic collapse have nothing to do with socialism, and instead the collapse arises from "populism" and "polarization."  Gee, do you think there are any lessons to be learned here for the United States?

And, besides never mentioning "socialism," here are a few more things that somehow never come up in this article's description of the causes of Venezuela's crisis:  massive nationalizations of businesses, including uncompensated takings of large sectors of the economy; orchestrated attacks on important economic sectors, like the sector providing food, as "hoarders and speculators"; blow-out increases in government spending, particularly on vast increases in government hand-out programs; huge increases in the level of government debt; and the crash program to build as much subsidized public housing as possible.  Price and currency controls do get one tiny mention near the end of the article.

So my effort to avoid Trump derangement for a day was not completely successful.  It seems that everything in Pravda, down to the Sports Section and the crossword puzzle, today exists in service to the overriding anti-Trump imperative.  The big problem is that the readers, having plowed through a massive piece like this one, might come away thinking themselves informed about a complex international matter.  In truth, when they finish the article, they will know far less about how Venezuela got into this mess than they likely knew when they started.  

This Russia Thing Can't Really Get Any Weirder -- Can It?

Back in 2000, when the close election result in Florida provoked a flurry of lawsuits seeking either to force or to halt repeated ballot recounts, I noted a phenomenon which on reflection is not really that remarkable.  The phenomenon was that I could not find a single person whose view of the legal merits of the lawsuits did not align with that person's desire as to which candidate should win the election.  If somebody wanted Gore to win, somehow that person would have a carefully thought-out view of every technical issue of Florida election law, and that view somehow aligned perfectly with the views of Gore's legal team.  Same for the views of Bush supporters with those of the Bush legal team.

We are now more than six months into the weird "Russia hacked the election" obsession -- or maybe it's the "Trump is a puppet of Putin" obsession.  I first wrote about the Democrat media's weird Trump/Russia obsession back on March 2 here, noting then the total absence in the plethora of breathless news coverage on the subject of any evidence of wrongdoing with respect to Russia on the part of Trump or his campaign.  Meanwhile I had actually seen an appearance of Julian Assange on the Fox News Hannity program on January 3 where Assange had stated it was "1000 percent" that the source for the leaked DNC and Podesta emails was "not the Russian government" and "not a state party."  OK, maybe Assange was not telling the truth; but I couldn't think of any good reason why he might have gone on national TV to tell this particular lie about this particular subject.  After all, he could have just not said anything.  

On the day of my March 2 post, the particular cause of the hyperventilating of the moment seemed to have reached yet another new low.  That day's "revelation" was that Jeff Sessions had spoken briefly with Russian ambassador Kislyak, in full hearing of dozens of people, in a public auditorium, immediately after speaking on a panel sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, where Kislyak had been in the audience.  The New York Times editorialized "Jeff Sessions Needs to Go," and called the revelation a "bombshell."  

Then, last month, I got the crazy idea that this weird obsession would all just fade away after UN Ambassador Niki Haley had taken a hard stance with respect to Russia, and then Trump had fired off that barrage of Tomahawk missiles to punish Russia ally Syria.  Seemed logical, but boy, was I wrong!  Instead, a new angle to the Trump/Russia story gets cooked up at least once per week to keep the thing alive.  Last week, of course, it was the Comey firing -- "obstruction of justice" according to various media sources like Vanity Fair (headline:  "Will Comeygate Lead To Impeachment?").  (Andrew McCarthy at NRO has a good laugh over the "idiocy" of throwing around the charge of "obstruction," when the most serious allegation at issue -- "collusion" between Russia and the Trump campaign -- is completely evidence-free and isn't even a crime.) 

Yet this week we have topped even that piece of idiocy.  Of course, it's the lead story on the front page today of both the Washington Post and the New York Times ("Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information to Russia").  Dozens of other "mainstream" sources have picked up the story.  The Post had the story first, of course attributing it to "current and former U.S. officials," aka anonymous leakers.  According to the Post article, the particular subject of the disclosure of classified information was "an Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft."

But wait a minute!  Isn't the President specifically allowed to reveal classified information to other countries if he wants to?  Indeed, isn't that the very essence of being given the authority (by the Constitution!) to conduct the foreign policy of the United States?  Of course the President has that authority!  I would have said that the whole idea behind collecting classified information in the first place is to assist the President in conducting the foreign policy of the United States in whatever manner as he may see fit in his discretion.  And, while Russia and the U.S. may be geopolitical rivals on many subjects, the two countries certainly share an interest in preventing having their aircraft blown up by ISIS terrorists. (Recall that an ISIS bomb blew up a Russian aircraft over Egypt back in December 2015.)  Why wouldn't the President and senior Russian officials discuss this subject when they have one of their infrequent chances to meet?  And why wouldn't they share information to help each other prevent future attacks?

So what is it about this story that makes it news at all, let alone front page news?  The Post does not claim that Trump did not have the authority to disclose the information -- and indeed grudgingly concedes that fact.  Instead they breathlessly suggest that Trump went too far in his revelation, or gave up information that may have compromised a U.S. intelligence source.  But of course, they do not provide enough information for you to evaluate whether that is true or not.  Guess what?  It's in the nature of having elected a guy as President that you have to trust his judgment on these subjects.  I'm guessing that the Washington Post and New York Times do not trust Donald Trump's judgment.  But then, "We Don't Trust Donald Trump's Judgment" would not have made for a very good front page headline.

Meanwhile, Fox News today leads with a story relevant to this same "Trump/Russia" issue, but the story could not be more different.  The headline is "Seth Rich, slain DNC staffer, had contact with WikiLeaks, say multiple sources."   If you don't recall the name, Seth Rich was a tech guy who worked for the DNC and was murdered on a street near his home in a nice section of Washington (Bloomingdale) on July 10, 2016:

The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, investigative sources told Fox News.

The DC police have called Rich's murder a "botched robbery" -- a narrative that is rather undermined by the fact that nothing on Rich was stolen, including his wallet, cell phone, watch, and a necklace.  And also by the fact that he was shot from behind.  Fox News had previously gotten information that Rich had provided DNC information to WikiLeaks from a guy named Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor who had been hired on behalf of the Rich family to investigate the unsolved matter.  Now Fox says they have another source who confirms the same information.  The new source is identified as a "federal investigator" who "requested anonymity."  (Can't say I blame the fellow in requesting anonymity, given that one guy who knew too much in this matter has already been bumped off.)

“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News. . . .  The federal investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between Democratic National Committee leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen [of WikiLeaks] before May 21.

Well, that would certainly explain where WikiLeaks got all the DNC emails showing the collusion between DNC and the Hillary campaign to obstruct the ability of Bernie Sanders to advance in the primaries.  What, it wasn't collusion between Trump and the Russians?  The Fox story is sourced to two different eye witnesses, albeit one of them anonymous, who state exactly what they have seen.  And then there's the small matter of the highly convenient murder.  How about this from Wheeler:

“My investigation shows someone within the D.C. government, Democratic National Committee or Clinton team is blocking the murder investigation from going forward,” Wheeler told Fox News. “That is unfortunate. Seth Rich’s murder is unsolved as a result of that.”

So is this story news?  It is at Fox.  Also at the Washington Examiner, ZeroHedge, the New York Post, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and plenty of others -- conservative sources all.  I can't seem to find anything about this at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., etc. Funny, isn't it?  They are too busy hyperventilating about our President making use of classified information to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.