Left & Right January 15, 2020

Publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair. We open with a question from the producer about what we think the long-term effect of the Soleimani killing will be.

It’s a good thing in my view. Soleimani was a bad guy, responsible for the deaths of more than 600 American soldiers through the use of Iranian IEDs against US forces in the region. His death opens a window into what Iranian media and western mainstream media have not shown — that he was an Iranian terrorist operative, that he trained and equipped Iranian proxy armies including Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi Rebels in Yemen and others in Syria to make war against Israel and the USA. The aftermath of his death shows also that many, if not most Iranian citizens do not support the theocratic regime in Iran.

Mark says the killing lacks a strategic objective in that Trump says he wants to withdraw Americans from the region but is ordering killings there and increasing the likelihood that we are going to have a war. He points out that wo months ago I defended Trump’s taking American troops away from the Turkey/Syria border, but now I support the Soleimani killing. The general was an Iranian government official. We got lucky the airliner was shot down because it reflected badly on the Iranian government and that seemed to prevent further escalation against us. Mark believes Trump lacks a strategy in the region and this action reflects that.

I compare killing Soleimani to killing al Baghdadi two months ago and Obama’s approval of killing Osama Bin Laden years in 2012. But Soleimani was an Iranian government official, Mark says. He was going into other countries in the region killing Americans, I said, so we should tolerate that because he was an Iranian government official? It’s a sliding scale, Mark said. There’s a reason Obama and Bush decided not to take him out, a good reason in Mark’s view.

I raise something publicized two years ago called “Operation Cassandra,” an FBI investigation into drugs and money laundering conducted by Hezbollah operatives working for Iran in the US in 2015. Involved were the Awan brothers who were also IT specialists employed by the Democratic National Committee. Although the FBI had 50 agents on the case, the Obama Administration blocked the investigation because it might interfere with efforts to reach an agreement with Iran for the Nuclear deal. Over $1 billion in laundered drug money went from the USA to Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds force under General Soleimani.

Also part of this drug scam was the stealing of intelligence from the computers of Democrats serving on congressional committees - including the Intelligence Committee — and sent to Iran by the Awan brothers. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz ran interference for the Obama Administration and key congressional Democrats to cover it all up. The coverup continues as the DOJ and others are still hiding documents requested by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A federal court hearing was being conducted as our show was being taped because a federal judge wanted to know why the FOIA requests were being blocked.

On the last show, Mark requested that I investigate the California law about consent from two parties when conversations are being recorded. I did and discovered Mark is right about the California law but there are exceptions as I though then: if one party believes a crime is being committed, and if the recording is in a public place. 

I bring up another surreptitiously-recorded tape released the day before the show of a Bernie Sanders Campaign employee in Iowa saying Milwaukee would burn if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination there this summer. If Trump wins again in November, cities would burn. The employee, Kyle Jurek, also said gulags would be opened for Trump supporters, and other outrageous things. The networks ignored it last night (Tuesday, January 14) and so did Brett Baier on Fox.

Then I bring up a lawsuit recently settled between the Covington Catholic boy wearing a MAGA hat who was trashed after the Pro-Life march last year in Washington, DC and CNN, who was sued. CNN settled rather than go to court, but we don’t know yet the details of the settlement. Several other lawsuits against the Washington Post, reporters from other networks, Elizabeth Warren, and others are still pending.

Mark hadn’t heard of these developments and calls them “hobby horse” cases that fit my agenda.

The second question from the producer asks us if we support legislation granting religious exemptions to parents about having their children immunized. Mark says we have to balance individual rights with the public good. I agree with that and didn’t have much more to offer beyond it.

Mark asks which Democrat candidates I like and I say none of them. If I had to choose which I disliked least it would Amy Klobuchar. Mark says she’s practical in a midwest sort of way and very smart.

Mark said he had Governor Weld in (to a Sun Editorial Board interview) who is running against Trump, and Weld said someone has to do something about the deficit. He said we have to worry about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and 800,000 trucker will be out of work, which is what Andrew Yang said. He said Bernie is coming in Sunday (January 19) and Mark would ask him about those issues.

I said I would ask Bernie about Kyle Jurek but Mark isn’t inviting me to interview presidential candidates anymore because I asked a tough question of Hillary four years ago. Mark said it was a disrespectful question and it made the women in the room (on the editorial board) uncomfortable and I wouldn’t have asked a question like that of a man. He said I had a unique opportunity in life to talk to a Secretary of State and former first lady and I ask a disrespectful question. I tell him George Stephanopoulos asked Hillary the same question a week or two before our interview and it was all right for him, a former Clinton aide, to ask it but it’s a gotcha question when I do?

“It was disrespectful,” said Mark.

“I see. Was it disrespectful for Stephanopoulos to ask it?”

“I’m the one who controls the editorial board and guess what? I’m not inviting you back.”

You aren’t, I know, because I asked a tough question,” I said.

We went back and forth several more time and I said, “Okay, we disagree.”

“We do, and I get to not invite you. That’s the great part,” Mark said.

“Right. You don’t want to invite me and that’s fine, because I’m too tough on the women.”

Then Mark brought up Andrew Yang and how well he’s doing. I question his idea of giving $1000 to everyone.

As time is running out I thank him for appearing on the show and point out that we see things quite differently but that’s good for viewers.

 Mark says, “Well, thanks for having me back — and you can ban me from your show.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I say. “I mean, you do it to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it to you.”

The Politics of Racism

Has Democrat identity politics so saturated our culture that we must all think our race the primary determinant of who we are? It sure seems that way when listening to what passes for political discourse these days.

It’s been a long time — so long I cannot remember the last time it bothered me when someone called me a racist. It did sting the first few times and it put me on the defensive. I felt compelled to refute the charge, but I don’t anymore. The accusations are most often in anonymous comments on my web site, but also in signed letters to the editor in newspapers carrying my column.

When on my “Left & Right” TV show, one leftist opponent habitually calls Republican policies or individuals racist, I ask for specific evidence. His answers indicate he doesn’t know what racism actually is. Dictionary.com defines it as:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

Early charges of racism against me came after I wrote columns arguing against Affirmation Action policies enforced by the federal government. According to HG.org Legal Resources:

The purpose of affirmative action is to promote social equality through the preferential treatment of socioeconomically disadvantaged people.

My point was that in order to grant preferential treatment to historically disadvantaged groups like blacks and women in hiring, college admissions, and granting of government contracts, other groups like white men must necessarily be passed over. That, of course, requires bona fide racial and sexual discrimination.

There can be no argument that so-called “affirmation action” discriminates against white men. College admission policies discriminate against Asian men and women as well as whites as evidenced in recent lawsuits against Harvard University by Asian students who have been denied admission on the basis of race. Evidence indicates other Ivy League colleges do the same.

A 2015 LA Times article reported on a Princeton study using SAT scores to measure advantages and disadvantages of applicants according to their race. It was summed up by a college admission specialist named Ann Lee who said: 

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 [SAT] points. Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points. Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

It’s the ultimate irony that Asians and whites who argue against such racially discriminatory policies are the ones accused of racism. Who is making these racist accusations? New York Times columnist David Brooks last week claimed that for the past twenty years: “

…white educated Democrats have moved left is true, but it’s not the essential truth. The bigger truth is that this segment is now more likely to see politics through a racial lens. Racial equity has become the prism through which many in this group see a range of other issues.

While I find myself agreeing with Brooks less and less lately, I’m with him on much of what he says in this column. Charges of “racism” hurled against me for more than twenty-five years have nearly always come from educated white liberals. Though many are still impressed by them, I’ve learned that college degrees do not prove intelligence, and I believe educated liberals yell “racism” when they run out of logical arguments. Another driving force behind accusations of racism is “white guilt,” especially as described by Shelby Steele in his 2006 book by that name. Educated white liberals are terrified that anyone may think them racist, so they bend over backward to forestall any such possibility.

As Brooks put it last week: 

“…if you’re a rich white child of privilege you have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove you’re one of the good children of privilege and not one of the bad ones. In this take, white progressives don noble clothing to make themselves feel good…

Are educated white liberals signaling their virtue when calling the rest of us racist? It was less than three years ago that candidate Hillary Clinton labeled half of Trump supporters racist. Compared to today’s far-left Democrat candidates she was a moderate. It’s Tuesday as I write this and I expect charges of racism against the president and his supporters to dominate tonight’s Democrat debate in Detroit.

Our Supreme Court recently forbade the 2020 US Census to ask people if they’re citizens of the United States but has no problem with questions about race — for which there are over a dozen possible categories. If even the United States government is now officially more concerned about people’s race than their citizenship, what kind of country have we become?

Smelling Trump Supporters

Each time I enter Walmart in North Conway, New Hampshire I think about the 2016 text from former FBI agent Peter Strzok to his girlfriend, FBI Attorney Lisa Page: “Just went to a southern Virginia Wal-Mart,” Strzok wrote. “I could SMELL the Trump support.” Both were deeply into what now appears to have been a Machiavellian scheme to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2016 election.

Walmart draws a different demographic than, say, a Sears Store, but it’s still in business while Sears is bankrupt. It sells almost every kind of item and usually at the lowest prices, so it’s no wonder the poor shop there. Often I hear condescending remarks about Walmart shoppers from people who think themselves elite sophisticates, a large percentage of whom I suspect supported Hillary. Where might Peter Strzok have smelled them? Whole Foods? Bloomingdales?

How many Walmart shoppers voted against Hillary after they heard her remarks about Trump’s supporters delivered shortly after the Strzok text above? “To just be grossly generalist, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call ‘the basket of deplorables,’” Hillary Clinton told donors gathered at a Manhattan restaurant in September, 2016. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.” Many pundits think that remark cost her the election weeks later.

Ken Langone

After shopping at Walmart, I will often go to the nearby Home Depot or Lowe’s for tools and supplies. I think about the shoppers there and wonder about their politics. Mostly they’re tradesmen or do-it-yourselfers looking for the same items I am. They’re purpose-driven, knowing what they need for a particular project. They know how stuff works and know how to fix things when they break down.

Bernie Marcus

In the parking lot are many pickup trucks. I might see a Trump sticker but almost never a Bernie or Hillary sticker. I don’t see very many political stickers because contractors don’t wish to put off clients. Most small businessmen keep their politics private. I suggest Peter Strzok would “smell” more Trump supporters at a Home Depot or Lowe’s than at a Walmart.

Strzok and Page, in concert with many others, did everything they could to prevent Donald Trump from winning. They also worked the Hillary Clinton email investigation that recommended she not be indicted. Then they worked on the “counterintelligence” investigation of Donald Trump that turned into a criminal investigation shortly after his election. Mueller eventually fired them after their caustic, anti-Trump texts went public. According to the Washington Post, some went like this: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted Strzok in August 2016. “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.

Peter Strzok as he testified before Congress

Well, they didn’t stop it, but the two lovers were soon hired by Mueller to work in his dubious Russian collusion investigation, which they probably thought would lead to Trump’s impeachment. It didn’t, but Democrats are still hoping to impeach Trump for “obstructing justice” during the investigation into a “crime” for which it found zero evidence.

Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, and other tradesmen are called in to solve real-world problems. They diagnose, then figure out the easiest ways to make a repair. If they don’t solve problems they don’t stay in business. Neither politicians nor media operate under those constraints, however. Political problems like crime, terrorism, trade deficits, poverty, illegal immigration, deficit spending, unemployment, and so forth are reported by media. Politicians diagnose causes and propose solutions — but are not held accountable when problems persist or even worsen.

They escape accountability either by mouthing platitudes via teleprompter, by redefining the problems, or by proposing increased spending on heretofore unsuccessful remedies. For decades media assisted by glossing over failed solutions. When Donald Trump came down his escalator in June 2015, spoke plainly about what was causing our problems, and, without a teleprompter, explained what he would do about them, politicians and establishment media laughed.

When his poll numbers rose, media said it was a fluke and wouldn’t last. Months later he was brushing aside sixteen Republican opponents and cruising toward the nomination. A complete outsider with neither political nor military experience, he had it sewn up by June 2016 and the only thing standing between him and the presidency was Hillary Clinton — and she was under FBI investigation.

Together with Director Comey, Attorney General Lynch, and others, they successfully broomed the Hillary investigation, but Trump was elected anyway and Mueller found no collusion. Now the tables have turned and the investigators are themselves subjects of at least two investigations, one by another special prosecutor named John Durham appointed by Attorney General Barr.

Millions of ordinary people like the tradesmen I see at Home Depot have been watching this unfold right along. They know Trump’s solutions have been working in spite of vociferous opposition from Strzok and his ilk — whose chickens are now coming home to roost.

Understanding the OIG Report

Three years ago I agreed with the mainstream media I otherwise disdained, when they said it was a joke. Donald Trump had descended an escalator at his tower and announced his candidacy for president. He didn’t have a chance, I thought. His uncamouflaged narcissism would preclude a serious bid. No one who combed his hair like that could ever win, I thought. Then he won primary after primary and still I agreed with mainstream media: “His campaign is going to fall apart any day now. He’ll say something stupid; his poll numbers will plummet, and that’ll be it. He’ll drop out.”

And he did say stupid things, plenty of them — all joyfully trumpeted by media — but his numbers kept going up. Eventually Ted Cruz, his last serious opponent and my preferred candidate, dropped out. Trump won the Republican nomination. At that point I realized I was actually going to vote for him, but only because I could never vote for Hillary Clinton or the two minor candidates. I wasn’t comfortable with it, but I knew I would do it. As the campaign wore on, however, I found myself in agreement with virtually all his policy positions — and I really liked how he told Hillary to her face she would be in jail if he were president.

On election night I celebrated his victory. If he actually did half the things he said he would, I knew America would be much better off. At about 9:30 pm, I flipped around to NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC and enjoyed the extreme distress on the faces of their talking heads as they realized Trump would actually win. I savored schadenfreude for the rest of the evening and all through the next day.

I believed President Obama’s DOJ and FBI had helped Hillary to avoid indictment for gross negligence in her handling of classified documents on her private server. However, I didn’t realize at the time that, after exonerating her, the Obama Administration had then weaponized the FBI, DOJ, NSA, and CIA against first Donald Trump’s candidacy, and then against his presidency.

That process I’ve been closely following for more than a year and a half, and I eagerly anticipated last week’s report by the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Its accumulated evidence of FBI and DOJ corruption was extremely damning, but the conclusion in its executive summary was perplexing to say the least. CBS reported it this way: “…the [OIG] report found that political bias [of Obama officials] did not affect the [Hillary email] investigation and it gave support to the decision not to prosecute Clinton.”

So how can the OIG report be both damning and exonerating? Former US Attorney George Parry, writing in The American Spectator, illustrates it best by using a hypothetical:

It seems like a day doesn’t go by without some female high school teacher getting arrested for having sexual relations with an underage student. The story line is always the same. Ms. Hotpants either gets caught in the act or because her student paramour shares with the world the naked selfies that for some weird reason she just had to send to his cell phone. Invariably the teacher is quickly and unceremoniously condemned, fired from her job and arrested.

To illustrate this point, let me apply the OIG’s reserved and non-judgmental standards to the hypothetical case of Teacher 1 and Student A who have been caught naked in a car parked behind the local Piggly Wiggly. Herewith is an excerpt from the hypothetical report by the Pleasant Valley School District’s Office of Inspector General:

We asked Teacher 1 why she and Student A had been in her car at Midnight. She replied that he had been doing poorly in her class, and she was tutoring him. We acknowledge that such additional instruction would be a valid and proper pedagogical undertaking. Nevertheless, we asked why they were not wearing clothes. She explained that they had become hot and sweaty, and she believed that it was important that teacher and student should eliminate physical discomforts to maximize the learning experience.

We asked why they had an open bottle of vodka and a box of condoms. She explained that these items had been left in the car by her husband. Since her spouse is not an employee of the school district, we were unable to question him regarding this matter.

While we found Teacher 1’s answers to be unpersuasive, she made no direct declaration as to why she had engaged in this drunken, naked and nocturnal meeting with Student A. Consequently, we have no definitive proof that she was motivated by a desire to engage in sexual relations. Therefore, we make no finding regarding her motive or intent.

As a trial attorney might say at this juncture: “I rest my case.”

My Working Hypothesis

Shenanigans in our federal government are so numerous and they’re being exposed so rapidly that’s it’s very hard to keep up, much less to make sense of it all. Several months ago I developed a working hypothesis — a theoretical framework — to put new information into a plausible context. Here it is: Officials in the Obama Administration, together with their allies in mainstream media, the Clinton campaign, and “never Trumpers” in the Republican establishment, have been working to sabotage first Donald Trump’s campaign, and now his presidency.

I realize that to some I sound like a conspiracy nut who should be fitted for a tinfoil hat, but I haven’t had to change my hypothesis as new information emerges. It all fits. Six months ago I would have considered the above paragraph ridiculous. I never believed it could get this bad, but now I’m thinking it could be even worse. Did leftist Democrats in charge of our federal government weaponize our intelligence community to use against an opposing party candidate for president? Evidence is mounting and the question becomes: Who was involved? Many names we already know. Eventually we’ll be resurrecting the refrain from the Watergate investigation: “What did the [now former] president know and when did he know it?”

The latest datum is a plausible claim that Obama’s FBI planted a spy in the Trump campaign sometime around July, 2016. It could even have been even before Trump won the Republican nomination but neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice (DOJ) will reveal either the spy’s identity or the timing of his implantation. Both the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported on this last week but neither names him. Kim Strassel, who wrote the WSJ piece, said she believed she knew his identity but couldn’t completely verify it.

However, the anonymous source who calls himself “Sundance” at the Conservative Tree House web site does name him: Stefan Halper. So does The Daily Caller. A background article on Halper indicates he worked in three or four Republican Administrations from Nixon to Bush, including several campaigns but I had never heard of him. This is big, but you’d never know it if you get all your news from mainstream media (MSM). Except for the Washington Post, they’re giving it a good leaving alone.

When President Trump tweeted that President Obama was wiretapping Trump Tower, MSM outlets too numerous to list here ridiculed Trump and insisted it was an outrageous allegation for which there was no evidence. It was eventually proven true, however, when we learned about the “Trump Dossier” and its use to obtain a FISA warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign. We only know about that because of digging by Devin Nunes and his committee — and he only started investigating after Trumps wiretapping tweet March 4, 2017. He’s still at it.

Nunes has gathered lots of evidence but he’s still being stonewalled at FBI and DOJ. According to the Washington Post:

A subpoena that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued to the Justice Department last week made a broad request for all documents about an individual [the implanted spy] who people close to the matter say is a sensitive, longtime intelligence source for the CIA and FBI. The Justice Department has refused to provide the documents. Intelligence officials say the material could jeopardize the source, a U.S. citizen who has aided the special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.

President Trump, however, can force DOJ to declassify any DOJ documents or release them to Congress. So, why doesn’t he? Rush Limbaugh speculated on his program last Friday that Trump wants it all to play out on its own, that he wants his base to see him as the persecuted victim of a witch hunt by his opposition — the MSM and “The Swamp.” If Limbaugh is right, that wouldn’t necessarily negate my working hypothesis, but it’s troubling. Why not expose it all now? Is Trump playing “Rope-a-Dope” with his enemies? Is he timing the release for just before the mid-term elections? Is he waiting for a new John Dean character to emerge from the Deep State? For the “Why doesn’t he?” question, all I can do is speculate.

But for now, consider how MSM would react if there were evidence that George W. Bush’s FBI planted a spy in the Obama campaign, then used a bogus dossier for a warrant to wiretap his offices. What if the “national security” justification for all this turned out to be completely fabricated? That’s how this whole thing is shaping up, but you’d never know it if you got all your news from the New York Times and the alphabet networks.

Will continuing events prove it necessary to modify my hypothesis? We’ll see.