[25.] Defendant’s false and negligent statements about Plaintiff include: …
[b.] Posting the reason for the [New York Post account being locked] as it being in violation of Defendant’s “hacked material” rules ….
[26.] Defendant’s Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy … defines a “hack” as “an intrusion or access of a computer, network, or electronic device that was unauthorized or exceeded authorized access.[“]
[27.] The Hacked Materials Policy further defines “hacked materials” as “information obtained through a hack.”
[28.] Defendant’s actions and statements had the specific intent to communicate to the world that Plaintiff is a hacker.
[29.] According to Meriam-Webster, a “hacker” is “a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system.” …
[31.] Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not [constitute] hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, BIDEN, and then, after BIDEN failed to retrieve the hard drive despite Plaintiff’s requests, in accordance with the Mac Shop’s abandoned property policy.
[32.] Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant’s actions and statements, is now widely considered a hacker and, on the same day Defendant categorized the Plaintiff as a hacker, Plaintiff began to receive negative reviews of his business as well as threats to his person and property….
[36.] Defendant … has made false statements that the materials obtained by NY POST from GIULIANI, which originally came from the Plaintiff, constitutes hacked materials thereby categorizing the Plaintiff as a hacker.
Mac Isaac also alleges that the New York Post story “published a photo of Plaintiff’s business thereby notifying the public where BIDEN had dropped off his laptop.”
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China’s Antitrust Crackdown On Tech’s Giants Leads To Massive Losses
China’s continued crusade against Jack Ma – which may or may not culminate with Beijing tearing apart his fintech giant, Ant Financial on anti-trust grounds – led to a second day of frenetic selling among China’s largest tech firms, driven by an investor panic Beijing’s crackdown on financial intermediaries and antitrust scrutiny would spread beyond Jack Ma’s internet empire and engulf the country’s most powerful corporations.
As Bloomberg reports, Alibaba and its three biggest rivals – Tencent, food delivery giant Meituan and JD.com – were hammered in the past 48 hours, losing nearly $200 billion in the two sessions since Thursday when regulators revealed a probe into alleged monopolistic practices at Ma’s company, which was followed on Sunday by comments from PBOC deputy governor Pan Gongsheng who slammed the world’s biggest fintech company, Ant Financial, which is also owned by Ma saying it “must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations.”
Traders were stunned by what appears to be the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on not just Alibaba but also, potentially, the wider and increasingly influential tech sphere; as a result they quickly puked the Chinese tech megacaps, with Alibaba falling 8% Monday in Hong Kong, losing $270 billion of value since its October peak. Tencent and Meituan also tumbled more than 6%. Alibaba rival JD.com slid roughly 2%.
“The Chinese government is putting more pressure or wants to have more control on the tech firms,” Jackson Wong, asset management director at Amber Hill Capital, told Bloomberg. “There is still very big selling pressure on firms like Alibaba, Tencent or Meituan. These companies have been growing at a pace deemed by Beijing as too fast and have scales that are too big.”
So far Beijing’s ultimate intentions vis-a-vis Jack Ma and his online tech empire remain unclear, but as we noted yesterday, “the worst case scenario would be for Ant to forgo its money management, credit and insurance businesses, halting its operations in the units that service half a billion people. Its wealth management business which includes the Yu’ebao platform that sells mutual funds and money market funds, accounted for 15% of revenue.”
Today Bloomberg picks up on this, writing that “investors remain divided over the extent to which Beijing will go after Alibaba and its compatriots as Beijing prepares to roll out the new anti-monopoly regulations. The country’s leaders have said little about how harshly they plan to clamp down or why they decided to act now.”
As Bloomberg adds, it’s unclear what concessions regulators may try to wring from Alibaba. Under the existing Antitrust Law, which is undergoing revisions to include the internet industry for the first time, Beijing can fine violators up to 10% of their revenue. In Alibaba’s case, that could mean a levy of as much as $7.8 billion.
Of course, the heavily sold tech names aren’t just sitting their: on Monday Alibaba raised its stock repurchase program by $4 billion to $10 billion, effective for two years through the end of 2022. But the buyback program was overwhelmed by fears that the steps taken against Ant are just the tip of the iceberg. While the central bank stopped short of calling for a breakup, the financial services giant now needs to present specific measures and a timetable for overhauling its business.
The State Administration for Market Regulation dispatched officials to Alibaba’s Hangzhou headquarters last Thursday and the on-site investigation was completed on the day, according to local news reports. The People’s Daily — the Communist Party mouthpiece — ran a commentary over the weekend warning Alibaba’s peers to take the antitrust investigation into Alibaba as a chance to lift their own awareness of fair competition.
Meanwhile, as we noted over the weekend, the formerly outspoken Ma has vanished from public view since Ant’s IPO got crushed by Beijing in the last moment in November. As of early December, Ma was advised by the government to stay in the country, a Bloomberg source said.
What happens next?
According to Bloomberg, “some analysts predict there’s a crackdown coming, but a targeted one.” They point to language in the regulations that suggests a heavy focus on online commerce, from forced exclusive arrangements with merchants known as “Pick One of Two” to algorithm-based prices favoring new users. The regulations specifically warn against predatory pricing – selling below cost – to weed out rivals.
“As this latest investigation occurs at a time when China is ready to take action against monopolistic practices, we think SAMR might want to use BABA’s case as a precedent to send a message to the rest of the industry that the authority is determined this time to address the” pricing issue, Nomura analysts wrote in a note Monday.
[25.] Defendant’s false and negligent statements about Plaintiff include: …
[b.] Posting the reason for the [New York Post account being locked] as it being in violation of Defendant’s “hacked material” rules ….
[26.] Defendant’s Distribution of Hacked Materials Policy … defines a “hack” as “an intrusion or access of a computer, network, or electronic device that was unauthorized or exceeded authorized access.[“]
[27.] The Hacked Materials Policy further defines “hacked materials” as “information obtained through a hack.”
[28.] Defendant’s actions and statements had the specific intent to communicate to the world that Plaintiff is a hacker.
[29.] According to Meriam-Webster, a “hacker” is “a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system.” …
[31.] Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not [constitute] hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, BIDEN, and then, after BIDEN failed to retrieve the hard drive despite Plaintiff’s requests, in accordance with the Mac Shop’s abandoned property policy.
[32.] Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant’s actions and statements, is now widely considered a hacker and, on the same day Defendant categorized the Plaintiff as a hacker, Plaintiff began to receive negative reviews of his business as well as threats to his person and property….
[36.] Defendant … has made false statements that the materials obtained by NY POST from GIULIANI, which originally came from the Plaintiff, constitutes hacked materials thereby categorizing the Plaintiff as a hacker.
Mac Isaac also alleges that the New York Post story “published a photo of Plaintiff’s business thereby notifying the public where BIDEN had dropped off his laptop.”
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More than 800 Vanderbilt students were asked on a class assignment if the U.S. Constitution was “designed to perpetuate white supremacy.”
The “correct” answer to the question was “true.”
The course, entitled “US Elections,” discussed “the presidential and congressional elections, the recruitment of candidates, nomination processes, financing campaigns, media coverage, polling, predictive models, and implications of results.”
Tulane University in New Orleans is offering course in spring 2021, entitled “Feminism after Trumplandia,” will look at President Donald Trump’s actions while in office, including the “defunding of Planned Parenthood,” the “Muslim ban,” “assault on pro-choice legislation,” rescinding “protections for transgender students,” and Trump’s “history of sexual assault” as “unprecedented dystopia for women.”
Despite the description, the professor teaching the course vows it will not be partisan.
“It is more about the movement of feminism from 1950 onward and trying to chart how it has changed under the Trump administration,” she said.
An urban studies class at Queens College made students write about three alleged “thefts” that made President Donald Trump wealthy.
According to the Jacobin article upon which the project was based, Trump’s thefts included “wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses.”
The University of Pittsburgh released materials for its first-year, mandatory anti-black racism course. The inaugural semester of “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance” was required for all freshmen, who were automatically enrolled in the course.
The first week of the course introduced students to “critical theories on race and anti-blackness in everyday life.” Multiple weeks of the course discuss Black Lives Matter and its influence as a “contemporary black liberation” movement.
“I’m glad to say I now have a Ph.D. in racism,” one student told Campus Reform.
A Brooklyn College professor threatened to remove any student from “Fundamental Concepts in LGBTQ Studies” if he or she misgenders another individual; after Campus Reform contacted the university for comment, the professor was instructed to remove the threat.
“My name is B. Call me B,” wrote the professor in the course’s syllabus. “I am nonbinary, transfeminine…I adhere to a strict policy of respect for the gender, sexual, and racial identities of my students. Intentional misgendering, as with any attempt to slur another student’s personal integrity on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, will result in immediate dismissal from class for that session. Continued abuses will result in disciplinary action with the appropriate administrators.”
The syllabus listed several LGBTQ-related reading assignments, including “Is the Rectum a Grave?” and “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay.”
BMW Will Produce An Additional 250,000 EVs Over Next 3 Years, CEO Says
As if Tesla’s inclusion in to the S&P 500 and ARK Invest’s batshit insane impressive fund inflows over the last couple weeks haven’t been enough to make you consider a top in Tesla, the rest of the automotive world continues to close in on the automaker.
We have now officially seen electric vehicles from manufacturers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Ford offering up “real world” competition to Tesla, who continues to struggle with quality control defects while focusing on getting their car horns to make fart noises.
Now, BMW is throwing their hat in the ring – in a big way. The German manufacturer said this weekend that it plans to produce an additional 250,000 electric vehicles over the next three years.
The company’s CEO Oliver Zipse said on Sunday: “We already had ambitions growth plans and want to further expand our market position.”
The CEO says he has remaining concerns about Germany’s transition to electric vehicles will be slowed down by lack of charging infrastructure. He predicted that 15,000 private and 1,300 public chargers would have to be put into operation in the country, every week, starting now.
“Unfortunately we are far from that. Therefore, the next big joint project in Europe must be to expand charging infrastructure,” he said, according to Bloomberg.
Recall, in the U.S., President Elect Joe Biden has already promised 500,000 new EV charging stations in the U.S.
This will be part of Biden’s plan to help create “over 1 million jobs by investing in clean energy”, TechStartups wrote last week.
The plan will mark a rapid expansion of EV infrastructure across the U.S., which had about 78,500 charging outlets and about 25,000 charging stations as of March 2020. It also means that Biden is going to have to convince Congress to continue to approve subsidies and tax credits, which have led to such wonderful wastes of money as Tesla’s Buffalo plant.
The initiative appears to be part of a plan to stop China from “dramatically outpacing” the U.S. in its adoption of EVs, Reuters noted last week. As part of his plan, Biden expects to nominate former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Granholm has experience in taxpayer-funded subsidies, Reuters notes; she helped secure $1.35 billion in the past to incentivize companies to make EVs and batteries in her state when she was governor.
There is some fractally weird stuff, leading to weird pro se litigation, in Sweigert v. Goodman (S.D.N.Y.). The 2017 Charleston port dirty bomb hoax is just part of the backstory (see also here). Another is the allegedly defamatory statement (which Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron has since concluded is not defamatory) that “Jason Goodman is the CEO of a company which is operating the world’s most advanced commercial HD video drone in Ukraine at the exact time a Western-backed coup breaks out there.” Indeed, the Dec. 11, 2020 order by Judge Valerie Caproni in this case (Dkt. 175) recites,
WHEREAS the Court has recognized that this dispute primarily serves as a forum for the two pro se litigants to rehash “incomprehensible and illogical online conspiracy theories,” Dkt. 87 at 1; see also Dkt. 140 ….
Plaintiff seeks an Order enjoining Defendant from using video podcast “wrappers” that include Plaintiff’s “persona, name or likeness,” but does not seek to enjoin the podcasts themselves. {Plaintiff defines “wrappers” as “thumb nails, titles and video descriptions.”}
Under New York law, P can successfully sue D for using P’s name or likeness without D’s permission, if the use is “for purposes of trade.” Not all uses, though, are for purposes of trade, even if they aim to make money; generally speaking, the uses can be broken down into four categories:
Advertising for some product (e.g., using a celebrity’s name in an ad for soap).
Merchandising, such as T-shirts, coffee, mugs, and the like.
News/entertainment that mentions P, for instance books, movies, newspapers, broadcasts, podcasts, etc.
Advertising for such news/entertainment about P (for instance, if P’s and likeness is used on the cover of an unauthorized biography of P).
Generally, 1 and 2 are actionable, but 3 and 4 are not.
Sweigert is essentially claiming that the use of his name falls into box 1, because Goodman has “inserted [Sweigert’s name] into innumerable podcasts that [have] content with no relationship to [Sweigert].” But the Magistrate Judge was unpersuaded, apparently chiefly because Goodman’s potential to profit from the podcasts was too indirect:
Defendant’s podcasts are publicly available on various platforms. Defendant’s videos on YouTube are publicly available without charge. The fact that Defendant solicits visitors to his platforms to make payments in order to become “patrons” does not establish that Defendant’s use of Plaintiff’s name and likeness in his podcasts and/or in the wrappers was for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade [and thus actionable under New York’s equivalent of a right of publicity statute].
The “[r]epresentative example of thumb nails with Plaintiff’s likeness” that is depicted in Plaintiff’s Amended Motion does not make any solicitation for the public to become one of Defendant’s “patrons.” …
And in any event, Judge Aaron concludes, there’s no basis for an injunction here:
[E]ven if there is a fair ground for litigation over the issue of whether Defendant used Plaintiff’s name and picture in Defendant’s podcasts for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade, given the First Amendment considerations inherent in the determination of newsworthiness and in the other limitations of the New York Civil Rights Law, the Court finds that the balance of equities at present favors Defendant, such that preliminary injunctive relief should be denied.
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Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial for Bloomberg entitled, “Trump’s $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake.” It’s a classic:
Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy, taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 — or more. There must be a limiting principle.
The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America’s intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It’s a two-step error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them talk in public.
Summers the day before Christmas appeared on Bloombergto offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. “When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think that’s time to run for cover,” he said, adding: “When you see the two extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air.”
“$2,000 checks would be a pretty serious mistake.”
Here’s “key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration” (and friend to Jeffrey Epstein) Larry Summers arguing AGAINST giving struggling Americans $2K. https://t.co/FZRByGeHZW
Seeing that his comments “lit up the Twittersphere,” Summers then sat down to compose an article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point of view, we’re already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an eviction crisis, you were wrong.
Noting that “total employee compensation” is “only running about $30 billion per month behind the Covid baseline,” he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over the next quarter would “equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary income over the next quarter.”
He then showed a graph explaining that “because of the legislation passed in 2020, total household income… has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy’s potential more or less since the pandemic began.” The good news, as a result, is that “the existing stimulus bill is sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy’s potential to abnormally high levels — unheard of during an economic downturn.”
The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: “Actually, total household income relative to the economy’s potential sits at abnormally high levels.”
There are of course different positions one could take on the question of stimulus checks, but the issue with people like Summers is the utter predictability of their stances. Summers belongs to a club of neoliberal thinkers who’ve dominated American policy for decades. From Bob Rubin to Tim Geithner to Jason Furman to Michael Froman and beyond, the people one friend jokingly refers to as the “Rubino Crime Family” are all basically the same person, affectless technocrats who play up reputations as giant-brained intellectuals — I always imagine them with bulbous Alien Nation heads — while reveling in cold, hard truths about the limits of government assistance.
There is some fractally weird stuff, leading to weird pro se litigation, in Sweigert v. Goodman (S.D.N.Y.). The 2017 Charleston port dirty bomb hoax is just part of the backstory (see also here). Another is the allegedly defamatory statement (which Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron has since concluded is not defamatory) that “Jason Goodman is the CEO of a company which is operating the world’s most advanced commercial HD video drone in Ukraine at the exact time a Western-backed coup breaks out there.” Indeed, the Dec. 11, 2020 order by Judge Valerie Caproni in this case (Dkt. 175) recites,
WHEREAS the Court has recognized that this dispute primarily serves as a forum for the two pro se litigants to rehash “incomprehensible and illogical online conspiracy theories,” Dkt. 87 at 1; see also Dkt. 140 ….
Plaintiff seeks an Order enjoining Defendant from using video podcast “wrappers” that include Plaintiff’s “persona, name or likeness,” but does not seek to enjoin the podcasts themselves. {Plaintiff defines “wrappers” as “thumb nails, titles and video descriptions.”}
Under New York law, P can successfully sue D for using P’s name or likeness without D’s permission, if the use is “for purposes of trade.” Not all uses, though, are for purposes of trade, even if they aim to make money; generally speaking, the uses can be broken down into four categories:
Advertising for some product (e.g., using a celebrity’s name in an ad for soap).
Merchandising, such as T-shirts, coffee, mugs, and the like.
News/entertainment that mentions P, for instance books, movies, newspapers, broadcasts, podcasts, etc.
Advertising for such news/entertainment about P (for instance, if P’s and likeness is used on the cover of an unauthorized biography of P).
Generally, 1 and 2 are actionable, but 3 and 4 are not.
Sweigert is essentially claiming that the use of his name falls into box 1, because Goodman has “inserted [Sweigert’s name] into innumerable podcasts that [have] content with no relationship to [Sweigert].” But the Magistrate Judge was unpersuaded, apparently chiefly because Goodman’s potential to profit from the podcasts was too indirect:
Defendant’s podcasts are publicly available on various platforms. Defendant’s videos on YouTube are publicly available without charge. The fact that Defendant solicits visitors to his platforms to make payments in order to become “patrons” does not establish that Defendant’s use of Plaintiff’s name and likeness in his podcasts and/or in the wrappers was for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade [and thus actionable under New York’s equivalent of a right of publicity statute].
The “[r]epresentative example of thumb nails with Plaintiff’s likeness” that is depicted in Plaintiff’s Amended Motion does not make any solicitation for the public to become one of Defendant’s “patrons.” …
And in any event, Judge Aaron concludes, there’s no basis for an injunction here:
[E]ven if there is a fair ground for litigation over the issue of whether Defendant used Plaintiff’s name and picture in Defendant’s podcasts for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade, given the First Amendment considerations inherent in the determination of newsworthiness and in the other limitations of the New York Civil Rights Law, the Court finds that the balance of equities at present favors Defendant, such that preliminary injunctive relief should be denied.
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As America’s “Great MaskDebation” year comes to an end, public outcries against various officials’ authoritarian orders grow louder in the face of an increasing body of scientific studies exposing the lies (that Fauci just admitted to).
As more and more ‘members of the public’ educate themselves on the reality of the virus – its contagiousness, its deadliness, the ineffectiveness of mitigation techniques, and the fallacies of COVID test results – at least one American has “had enough”, in her own words, “I’m not crazy… I’m done!”
In June, Attorney General Bill Barr sat for an interview in CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and predicted widespread fraud with mail in voting.
He said: “People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology – which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion – is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire.”
At the time, Barr was the nation’s top law enforcement officer with an obligation to prevent election fraud under a bevy of federal statutes.
What Barr Could’ve Done.
Maybe an investigation of Silicon Valley billionaires ballot harvesting in black neighborhoods, for starters, and then a warrant for surveillance cameras at counting facilities in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Detroit, with federal agents on hand to double check the chain of custody of boxes coming through the back door.
Instead, election integrity was preserved with federal investigations to prevent nonexistent seditious activity emanating from dubious white militias. The “reckless and dangerous” mail-in ballot operation the Attorney General warned about was ignored.
Trump’s political rise is because our institutions no longer work for the common good and instead serve the idiosyncratic preferences of the sclerotic establishment. Picking a bombastic outsider is the only way that 75-million Americans know to tell them to cut it out.
Barr, A Typical Washingtonian Creature.
In private practice, Barr was a highly compensated conduit to power, because being the former Attorney General, or ex-FBI Director, or alum of any office that confers a vendable credential pays big bucks in DC.
He is sufficiently deluded by beltway noise that he does not realize his pandering to shallow political interests as George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General – for instance by authoring in 1992 The Case for More Incarceration – was simply grist for the outrage mill that perpetuates the swindle.
Based on the musings of General Barr, Senator Joe Biden spearheaded a crime bill in 1993. He sold the bill as a way to take “predators” who were “beyond the pale” off the streets.
Because that’s how Washington works.
Insiders on both sides help one another perform their Kabuki dance as public servants for the next election even as they pocket a Delaware mansion’s worth of foreign money.
H.L. Mencken observed that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The Shill Continues.
Barr was appointed AG the second time because he penned a 20-page memo proposing that when the president protests against a ridiculous investigation into whether he colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal an election, he is not obstructing justice.
You know, like how nobody is suggesting that Joe Biden’s protests against election fraud investigations means he should get indicted for obstruction under 18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 73.
Any first year law student could tell you that. If you were a warm body willing to help Trump escape a frivolous criminal charge, though, you got a promotion from the practice squad straight into the starting lineup.
As Trump’s Attorney General, Barr served the same cadre of Washington insiders as he did the first time, many of whom were still there because the game works so flawlessly.
The Hard Drive From Hell.
Weeks before the 2020 election, a concerned citizen turned over to federal authorities a laptop that had irrefutable evidence of a Biden family operation to sell influence in China, with 10 percent of the take going to “the big guy” – who happened to be the democratic candidate then running for president.
The nation’s intelligence agencies mobilized on behalf of the Biden family to call the concerned citizen a Russian stooge, and the contents of the laptop Russian disinformation.
At the time – we didn’t know it – the Justice Department had been investigating the very activities confirmed in the laptop.
Barr knew, obviously, that the slander against the concerned citizen was just deep state tripe to protect the Bidens.
Yet Barr sat on his hands, kept his mouth shut, and let the whistleblower suffer vicious public attack, because Washington insiders put the establishment first even against the heroic decency of the little guy.
The Russia Lie.
For two years Barr had investigated the greatest political scandal in American history.
The Washington establishment, along with the FBI, the CIA, and foreign intelligence services, ran protection for the democratic candidate in 2016 by calling embarrassing disclosures about her Russian disinformation – and, when that dirty trick somehow did not get her elected, carrying the hoax into the Trump presidency to cause maximum political damage.
For more on that, please do yourself a favor and read about the sordid scandal in my short ebook, The Russia Lie. I propose in the book that the scam was a political operation to vilify Donald Trump by falsely claiming Russian election interference.
A week after publication, the DNI released notes John Brennan took of a meeting with Barack Obama that confirmed my controversial take.
Brennan wrote that Hillary Clinton was planning to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”
Yeah, but I said it better.
If someone like me sitting at a desk in Pittsburgh can figure this out, then the Attorney General’s head-in-the-sand failure to expose the lie amounts to an intentional cover-up sourced in deliberate indifference.
As with the Biden laptop, Barr’s first impulse investigating the investigators was to protect his friends and neighbors in Washington, the Republic be damned. Some minor flunky at the FBI will go to jail, and everyone else is going to escape to their lucrative cable television deals.
Because the fix, as always, was in.
Now What?
The 75-million who voted for Trump feel cheated but they’re not going anywhere. Their ranks will increase as Washington’s Rube Goldberg-ian governance wreaks havoc and the dissatisfied look for an alternative.
Our side should win the next few election cycles. That would be a “will definitely win” except Republican officials in various key states passed permanent mail-in voting laws ostensibly to address the short-term contingencies of a temporary pandemic.
Yes, the Republican Party is staffed with a bunch of “bilbars” (inventing a word here) at the highest levels.
The “reckless and dangerous playing with fire” will continue, with Republican hopes pinned on electing conscientious candidates even though state elections will be fixed by vote harvesting and back door shenanigans into the foreseeable future.
It is dire but hopeful. Popular movements are best when they overcome even official corruption.
When Trump wins in 2024, he must avoid hiring swamp dwellers to drain the swamp. Of all the things I’ve written about Trumpism in the last four or so years, my favorite is this – nailed the problem a few months into the presidency.
There’s got to be a law professor in Ohio who actually voted for Trump who can be tapped for the position of Attorney General next time.
No more bilbars, please. As Hannah Arendt knew, beholden insiders who prefer prestige to principle is the banality of evil.
Oh, and whoever came up with the idea of landing Air Force One and Marine One at small airports to hold rallies, give that person whatever job he or she wants.
It contributed to one of the greatest landslides in American presidential history.
