Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic party cohorts are flailing against the likelihood that Obama's signature screw-up, ObamaCare, will be repealed.
As Dilbert creator Scott Adams notes, apparently on the advice of the satire site, the Onion, they have adopted the fighting words "Make America Sick Again".
Actually Obama and his party, with the aid of what Instapundit has dubbed "Democratic operatives with bylines" continue to make me sick of their lies and distortions of truth.
As for the death of ObamaCare, if past is prologue -- and with these folks it is -- we can expect the press will flood us with sob stories, because in a nation chock full of feelers, emotive accounts are more compelling than economics and logic. Remember when they were working our heartstrings to get it passed?
Congresswoman Louise Slaughter probably deserved a blue ribbon for her tale of a constituent who couldn't afford dentures and had to use her dead sister's as an example of why we needed ObamaCare (which incidentally doesn't include dental coverage).
Sob stories are not the only way Obama's administration "contorts reality "and masks" "the consequences of its initiatives" says Victor Davis Hanson in an article well worth reading in its entirety.
After outlining its many deceits, Hanson says why they do this:
Obama advanced an agenda to the left of that shared by most past presidents. Obamacare, the Benghazi catastrophe, the Iran deal, his strange stance toward radical Islam, and the Bergdahl swap were unpopular measures that required politically-driven recalibrations to escape American scrutiny.
Second, Obama's team believes that the goals of fairness and egalitarianism more than justify the means of dissimulation by more sophisticated elites. Thus Gruber ("the stupidity of the American voter") and Rhodes ("They literally know nothing") employ deception on our behalf. Central to this worldview is that the American people are naive and easily manipulated, and thus need to be brought up to speed by a paternal administration that knows what is best for its vulnerable and clueless citizenry.
Such condescension is also why the administration never believes it has done anything wrong by hiding the facts of these controversies. Its players believe that because they did it all for us, the ensuing distasteful means will be forgotten once we finally progress enough to appreciate their enlightened ends.
This week, two incidents come to mind: the Chicago torture revelations and the claims about the Russians hacking our election. In both cases, once again, the Democratic handmaidens of the press played what helpful role they could.
The Chicago Torture Case
In Chicago, four young black thugs kidnapped a mentally ill young white man, held him for about two days, tortured him for around six hours while texting his parents that they were holding him. They slashed him, bound and beat him, made him drink water out of a toilet, ripped his clothing and forced him to say "f**k Donald Trump f**k white people." In contrast to the drummed-up Trayvon Martin and Ferguson cases, just to take two examples, reporters downplayed the incident if they reported it at all, and cast blame on everyone but the perpetrators. At CNN, Don Lemon said he didn't think it was evil. On the same channel, Symone Sanders, Bernie Sanders' former press secretary, said the incident was Trump's fault. "We cannot callously go about classifying things as hate crime, Motive here matters."
In this regard she was consistent:
In November, Sanders also dismissed the possibility of a hate crime after another shocking video out of Chicago showed a mob beating a white man while taunting him for supposedly voting Trump. The assailants stole his car and dragged him, stuck in the door, through the streets.
"Hate crimes and protesting are not the same thing," Sanders said. "A hate crime is a crime that is committed against somebody because of their religion, because of what they look like, because of their sexual orientation. That's not the same thing as protesting."
In its initial coverage ABC and NBC skipped the story and CBS, which covered it, left out the revealing "f***k Trump, f***k white people" part of the story, which certainly goes a long way in describing their motive.
CBS's blackout on the details of this story, and their competitors' embargo of the story itself, dovetails perfectly with Iowahawk's observation that "Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving," and Jim Treacher's line that in the 21st century, the profession "is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats."
Unfortunately, for the propagandists the story could not be ignored because the perpetrators live-streamed the torture in three videos posted on Facebook. Facebook eventually removed them, but too late to hide the evidence -- viewers had captured, saved, and shared them. This might explain why after some clumsy two-stepping the Chicago police finally decided to add a hate crimes charge to the list of offenses although they claimed it was a hate crime, not based on race, but on the victim's mental disability.
I don't recall the Washington Post covering the news that Bob Creamer, husband of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (one of the Democrats who voted this week against the House bill criticizing the administration's UN abstention of the resolution attacking Israel) admitted on camera his role in paying mobs to beat up Trump supporters. On the other hand, this week, Callum Borchers penned this piece of ridiculous vitriol, claiming that the incident confirmed racist Trump voters' view and was therefore being distorted out of significance by the right.
John Hinderaker at Powerline had a different take: "I don't want to hear another damn word about 'hate crimes' against minorities supposedly inspired by Donald Trump's campaign or election, not unless they equal this level of depravity."
Hacks and Hacking
When vitriol isn't sufficient to attack the president-elect and his followers, add more lies to the mix and get your toadies in the intelligence community to play along with those in the press. That's the story of the claim the Russians hacked the DNC and Hillary's emails and passed them to Assange because they wanted Trump to win.
James Clapper, the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) destroyed any reputation for probity when he lied under oath before Congress in June 2013 on NSA surveillance of citizens. Last week the DNI and FBI published a report on purported Russian hacking of the DNC which any rational analysis discounts as fantastical.
Specifically, the report concludes the following {report in bold,}:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
What proof is there? Sadly, again, none. However, as the intelligence agencies state, "We have high confidence in these judgments"... just like they had high confidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
And while the report is severely lacking in any evidence, it is rich in judgments, such as the following:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment.At this point a quick detour, because the intel agencies responsible for drafting the report then explain how "confident" they are: "CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence."
What do these distinctions mean?
High confidence generally indicates judgments based on high-quality information, and/or the nature of the issue makes it possible to render a solid judgment. However, high confidence judgments still carry a risk of being wrong.Moderate confidence generally means credibly sourced and plausible information, but not of sufficient quality or corroboration to warrant a higher level of confidence.In other words, while not carrying the infamous DHS disclaimer according to which last week's entire joint FBI/DHS report is likely garbage, the U.S. intel agencies admit they may well be "wrong."
Going back to the report, we then read:
Moscow's approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia's understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals. Moscow's influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations -- such as cyber activity -- with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or "trolls." Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections that have used intelligence officers and agents and press placements to disparage candidates perceived as hostile to the Kremlin. Russia's intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards. DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.Russia's state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences. We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.Or, as some have stated, just a regurgitation of already existing opinions and absolutely zero facts.
Days before Trump was given an opportunity to see the findings, the White House likely leaked them to NBC and other suppliant members of the media.
Once again the Washington Post uncritically sensationalizes the findings.
And once again people like the investigative reporter Sheryl Attkisson, like Zerohedge, find the press reliance on the report unpersuasive:
There has also been a concerted, political effort to blame the Russians for Trump's victory. In fact, as I wrote in 8 Facts on the "Russian Hacks", to prove that the DNC hack or leak (whoever committed it) helped Trump win, one would have to know that tens of thousands of Trump voters were planning to vote for Clinton but changed their mind based solely on the WikiLeaks emails; that the emails somehow managed to only affect the electoral vote but not the popular vote (which Clinton won); and that they somehow selectively swayed voters in key swing states, but not voters in states where Clinton won. To date, such evidence has not been provided.
This isn't to say the U.S. assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed the hack of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails is incorrect. But the huge effort to put the allegations on the front pages only after a Donald Trump victory, the rush to act and retaliate in the final weeks of the Obama administration when there's been years of inaction regarding comparable or more egregious hostile acts, and the attempts to portray the DNC hacks as something that changed the election outcome, certainly raise reasonable questions.
Powerline's John Hinderaker also agrees:
Today the U.S. intelligence community -- i.e., the CIA, the FBI and the NSA -- released a report titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections." This is the declassified version of a longer report that was delivered to President Obama, President-Elect Trump, and indirectly to the Washington Post and other news organs friendly to the Democratic Party.
[snip] Weirdly, today's report never mentions the one the same agencies (apparently) released eight days ago. That report did purport to contain evidence of Russia's involvement in the email intrusions, but, as we and many others pointed out, that supposed evidence was essentially meaningless. Anyone could have carried out the simple attack described in last week's report, and neither the malware used nor the IP addresses implicated–contrary to the conclusory claims of the report–tied the intrusion to Russia's government.
That first report stands as the only publicly available evidence that Russia had anything to do with hacking the DNC account, or John Podesta's (which was not addressed at all in that first report). Today's report adds nothing. It is purely ipse dixit–take our word for it. If the agencies have any responses to the many critiques of their first report, they are keeping those responses to themselves.
I agree with Hinderaker, who says if we are going to investigate this more thoroughly, let's go all the way. Start with the most obvious Russian interferences in domestic political affairs -- the support direct and indirect to various left-wing movements like Occupy Wall Street and environmental efforts, including the anti-fracking effort in the U.S., so useful to Russia's energy program. I also am in synch with my online friend Cecil Turner:
"And the really funny thing is that what the Russians tried to do to Hillary, Obama is now trying to do to Trump: delegitimize the President to weaken the nation."
The present administration has been able to keep the opposition off balance by throwing so many balls into the air at once. Now they're about to see how it works on them as the incoming administration begins with a scheduled six cabinet-level confirmation hearings and a new budget, a vast number of personnel changes, department cuts, reorganizations, and new executive orders cancelling Obama's. That should keep Pelosi and her merry band too busy to dream up even more laughable slogans and the press home guard in constant hair-pulling mode trying to fit everything into a racist, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-Semitic template they use on Republicans.
revised: Department of National Intellgence to Director of National Intelligence
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