Monday, April 23, 2018

Left & Right April 17, 2018



With Gino in Florida, Mark Guerringue filled in. Mark is publisher of the Daily Sun newspapers, including Conway Daily Sun, Berlin Daily Sun, Laconia Daily Sun, and the Portland Phoenix, one or more of which run my column.

We start with the Meuller investigation and recent happenings. Then it's media bias in various manifestations. We try to define conservative and liberal. Judge Kimba Wood background; Carter/Trump attorney/client privilege; comparing Ken Starr and Robert Meuller investigations; Facebook difficulties; regulating social media; likelihood of impeachment in 2019 if Democrats win the House.

Facebook in the news: does it need regulation? Political restraints on newspaper advertising should apply to social media as well.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I think you went too far into the weeds with comparisons to the Clinton family , I was skipping around a bit so I may have missed any reference to Muller's "integrity", and Boston area Organized crime "management" concerning Whitey Bulger's crew. Mindful that you're more accustomed to Gino stepping right in, Mr. G isn't like that.
I think you ran out of show before you ran out of "chat".
And holy crap! How often does your "producer" come up with "This just in!!!!", mid show?
CaptDMO

Steve said...

When I was a kid, I read books on astronomy, and they always included the outlined images of prominent constellations. With only three or four stars, they would show the image of an archer or a horse or a fish. I used to think to myself, how do they see those images based on only a handful of stars? I just don’t see it. That’s what some of your conclusions have become: a handful of data points telling a story always of democratic treachery that few people outside of the Fox universe can discern.
 
You’ve told us how Obama was a Manchurian candidate who sought and reached the highest elected office in the country for the sole purpose of destroying the country of residence from the inside.
 
One of your newer reaches is the deep state – this shadowy cabal of thousands of liberal government operatives that spontaneously gelled into existence shortly after Trump got elected. 
 
But what seems to be your newest conspiracy is your suspicion of Mueller, because “…he’s only out for a scalp…” You’re taking Mueller’s decades-long career in law enforcement, which culminated in being name FBI Director, and painting a caricature of a reckless prosecutor more interested in getting a conviction – any conviction – than the accuracy of the conviction. And that reduction of a 30+ year career is based on a handful of data points, two of which is factually incorrect. Here is a link to a NYT opinion piece  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/opinion/robert-mueller-smearing-complicit.html
addressing your claim Mueller held four innocent people in prison. Written by, Nancy Gertner, the federal judge, who ruled in favor of the four individuals wrongfully imprisoned and awarded their $101.8m judgment, she states Mueller’s name never appeared in any of the evidence she reviewed or was provided by the plaintiff’s attorneys. “Mr. Mueller is mentioned nowhere in my opinion; nor in the submissions of the plaintiffs’ lead trial counsel, Juliane Balliro; nor in ‘Black Mass,’ the book about Mr. Bulger and the F.B.I. written by former reporters for The Boston Globe.” Mueller had no role in their wrongful incarceration.
 
Another data point in your anemic attempt to discredit Mueller was the anthrax-laced letters mailed in the immediate wake of 9/11 where a biochemist named Steven Hatfill was the only person of interest in that case. I was a card-carrying Republican at that time and used to watch Fox every day. Fox, along with the other 24-hour news channels essentially covered that story as though Hatfill had already been convicted, in part because AG John Ashcroft named Hatfill the only person of interest and part because opinion media is crap reporting. I clearly remember Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmead making hay out of an embellishment that was discovered on one of Hatfill’s job applications as though it was evidence of his guilt. Your contention that Mueller framed Hatfill is absurd, but follow your Mueller-framing allegation just two short steps to its obvious conclusion. Mueller frames Hatfill, gets him arrested, and the true terrorist continues mailing anthrax-laced letters to public individuals. That actually makes sense to you?
 
My 85-year old father used to forward to me every anti-Obama/Democrat email he received after ricocheting through cyberspace for years. I stopped reading them after finding virtually all them discredited, especially the one where the author quoted Obama admitting that he and Michelle routinely attended flag-burning ceremonies. Your blog posts are beginning to read like those emails.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Here's another opinion piece from Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe on what Mueller did while acting US Attorney in Boston:

http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/24/a_lingering_question_for_the_fbis_director/?page=2

Albano claims he saw a letter written by Mueller advising that the innocent men be kept in prison, but evidently it has disappeared from FBI files.

Steve said...

Did Mueller's letter “disappear from FBI files”, or did it never exist? Your story is now down to a single data point. Your constellation consists of a single star. You're trying to discredit Mueller's 30+ year career in law enforcement based on a single letter he supposedly signed that was seen by one man – Michael Albano – and now cannot be located by anyone.

All of this is academic anyway. Unfortunately for you, you're not allowed to trust what's printed in the Globe. According to tens of thousands of words you've written over the years, most of the national broadsheets – the Boston Globe chief among them – are minions, sycophants and acolytes for liberal progressives. That most of the national newspapers are in the tank for Democrats has been you most consistent theme and one to which you've revisited more than any other. But now that you find a Globe article that supports your position, the Globe suddenly becomes sourced journalism?

Tom McLaughlin said...

As acting US Attorney, Meuller cooperated fully with a corrupt FBI contingent stationed in Boston. You cannot really believe he didn't know what agents John Connolly, James Fitzpatrick, and several others were up to. If he did, he was corrupt. If he didn't, he was incompetent at best. It's not a single data point. It's a pattern. He and perjurer James Comey are joined at the hip.

FBI leadership is corrupt, has been for quite a while and is an integral part of the swamp.

Steve said...

You seem to fall into the same trap as most of the other partisan opinionists who glut the media landscape. Telling your audience what you HOPE is true vs. what you KNOW is true is too great a temptation to resist. You said in your Left/Right show that you know “...for a fact...” that Mueller kept those four guys wrongfully imprisoned. Where's the fact? All you have to do is link it. You might be right about it, but you've truly proved nothing here. If the federal judge who presided over the case and awarded the four men better than $100m said Mueller's name appeared nowhere in any of the evidence, then I'm going to side with her version of events until you can prove your claim. A “fact” shouldn't be too difficult to prove.

You also said Mueller framed Stephen Hatfill: another unsubstantiated claim. Attorney General John Ashcroft was his boss. By your reasoning, Ashcroft either knew about Muelller's frame job, which makes Ashcroft corrupt, or he didn't know anything about it, which makes him incompetent. I'll let you decide.

The reality is, the opinion media on which you subsist has you conditioned, to a Pavlovian degree, to see conspiracy and corruption around every corner whenever something doesn’t go completely in the favor of Republicans. You’ve been trained to be a victim. 

This scorched-earth approach you partisans have towards consuming and distilling politics is lazy at best and destructive at worst. How many institutions are now hopelessly corrupt by Democrats by your measure? I count five. The media is corrupt. Public Education is corrupt. Science is corrupt. Government is corrupt with the advent of the deep state, which, much like the Big Bang, spontaneously burst into existence moments after Trump was elected. Now the FBI, DOJ and law enforcement are corrupt, yet, somehow, Democrats still lose elections and Republicans still win them.
 
Let’s predict what the next venerable institution will be to fall the inexorable onslaught of liberal corruption. I predict it’s going to be the Catholic church. We know it was the gay mafia that facilitated the priest-abuse scandal and covered it up for decades, and now we have the most radical, leftist Pope ever. If he has a successor or two who is as equally out of touch with good, patriotic, conservative values, the church will be the next institution to fall out of favor with the Republican party. What are you going to do if you have to choose between your god and your party?

Anonymous said...

How very patient of Steve to try and explain reality to these people. It reminds me of the hours I wasted once trying to have a rational conversation with a Sandy Hook denier. Conspiracy nuts are impossible to crack.

Anonymous said...

The "swamp" IS Trump, which explains why Washington has never been swampier.