Brief Summary of IG Report

Liz Sheld:

“…The elevator pitch version of the IG report can be summarized as follows: the investigation found there was mind-blowing bias among senior officials in the FBI/DOJ against Trump and his moron supporters but the officials claimed it didn’t affect any of their investigations so it’s all good. Move along now…”

Original Here

Indictment or Whitewash? Both

Kurt Schlichter:

“The IG report, simultaneously a devastating indictment of elite misconduct and a total whitewash, is a symptom of the moral leprosy infecting our elite. It is rotting away our institutions, and the foundations of the United States as we knew it. But the elite can’t, or won’t, even admit to itself what we all see.”

Original Here

 

Moonset Over Mt. Baldwin

Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks of the Mt. Baldwin Roof Pendant. The McGee Creek Terminal Moraine is in the foreground.

Moonset Over Mt. Baldwin © Doug Santo

Racism is Wrong Even When Harvard Does It

Political correctness in higher education is out of control and leads to poor decisions and “preferred” minority groups with different acceptance criteria based on race and ethnicity. Hard to believe—or maybe not.

Glenn Reynolds:

“…I wrote four years ago that it looked as if Asian applicants to Harvard were getting the ‘Jewish treatment‘ — that is, being subjected to quotas, and rated down on “soft” qualifications, so as to keep their numbers lower than their objective qualifications would warrant. This is what Ivy League schools did to Jewish applicants for much of the 20th century, because Jewish applicants were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard, and whose parents weren’t rich enough or connected enough to contribute to the schools’ flourishing…”

Original Here

Grocery store and filling station in the high plains. Dawson County, Texas.

Russell Lee, March 1940

Finest Hour

Winston Churchill, on this day in 1940, delivers his “Finest Hour” speech:

“…What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.’…”

Their Finest Hour

Original Here

Satisfaction With U.S. Direction Reaches 12-Year High

Gallup:

  • Satisfaction rate of 38% is highest since September 2005
  • Second month in a row above 35%, also for the first time since 2005
  • Satisfaction rises among Republicans and independents, not among Democrats

Line graph: Satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S., 2005-2018 trend

Original Here

Tioga Pass

Tioga Pass © Doug Santo

Watch Journalists Mock Trump’s Announcement as a Candidate for President

Too good!

If America’s so evil, why does the left think immigrants keep coming?

Heather Mac Donald:

“…In coming to the US, if you believe the dominant feminist narrative, the female aliens would simply be exchanging their local violent patriarchy for a new one. Indeed, it should be a mystery to these committed progressives why any Third World resident would seek to enter the US.

Not only is rape culture pervasive in the US, but the very lifeblood of America is the destruction of “black bodies,” in the words of media star Ta-Nehesi Coates. Surely, a Third World person of color would be better off staying in his home country, where he is free from genocidal whiteness and the murderous legacy of Western civilization and Enlightenment values…”

Original Here

Obama’s silky lie and FBI bias in the Clinton investigation

John Kass:

“…Of all the silky lies being told in Washington over the findings of the FBI’s inspector general on the biased culture of those investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server, one lie seems to be ignored:

It’s the silky lie told by then-President Barack Obama.

It may have set the tone for the smarmy intrigue detailed in the FBI inspector general’s damning 500-page report on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

And Washington is revealed once again as our modern Versailles, a place of courtiers and lickspittles who’d use the Ministry of Justice to serve their ambitions.

Obama told his silky lie when his chosen successor was Hillary Clinton.

Clinton had endangered top secret information by using an unsecured, home-brew email server when she was U.S. secretary of state. Any other American who dared risk top government secrets on a basement server would have faced federal prosecution and prison.

Obama’s lie was told in 2015, when Obama was asked by CBS’ Bill Plante when he learned Mrs. Clinton had used an unsecured email server.

“The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” Obama said. He was so silky that you couldn’t even hear his tongue rustling along his teeth.

He waxed on about how his administration was all about “transparency.”

But Obama did not learn about Clinton’s home-brew server like “everybody else.”

According to the inspector general’s report, Obama was in fact one of 13 top government officials communicating with Clinton on her private email server, even as Clinton’s server was targeted by foreign intelligence services.

According to the IG report, before former (and fired) FBI Director James Comey took it upon himself to publicly criticize Clinton (and exonerate her from a criminal charge), a draft of his public address was heavily edited.

It was edited for Hillary Clinton’s benefit, to buttress the case that what she did wasn’t prosecutable.

But Comey’s comments were also edited to protect someone else. The IG report discusses a key paragraph in Comey’s statement summarizing the FBI’s thinking that “hostile actors” had accessed Clinton’s server.

The paragraph, the report said, “referenced Clinton’s use of her private email for an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary. This reference was later changed to ‘another senior government official,’ and ultimately was omitted.”

Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago. And Chicago Democrats are asking taxpayers to help build a great Temple of Love and Fealty to honor that “senior government official.”

And they’ll honor him by name.

Just chew on this apiece: How could Hillary Clinton ever be prosecuted without implicating Obama, who emailed her using a pseudonym?

Obama might have been portrayed as a victim of her use of a private server. She used that server to hide her dealings with the controversial Clinton Foundation from congressional inquiry. She should have been prosecuted.

But then, two things would have happened.

Her campaign would have fallen apart immediately, and along with it, Obama’s legacy.

The Obama White House, the senior pro-Obama bosses of the FBI and just about all the political suits thought Clinton would be our next president.

And who wants to anger the next ruler? Careers were at stake, promotions, perks, power, just as it was back in the day, in old Versailles…”

Original Here

Tenaya Lake

Tenaya © Doug Santo

Thunderbolts

Four A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft fly next to a KC-135 Stratotanker during Saber Strike 18, June 8, 2018.

Mt. Dana

Mt. Dana, North Massif © Doug Santo

11 Quick Things To Know About The Inspector General’s Report

Mollie Hemingway does great work and this article is one of the best I’ve read on the DOJ IG report. Click on the link for more.

Mollie Hemingway

The IG’s Report May Be Half-Baked

Andrew McCarthy levels devastating criticism on the DOJ IG report. The FBI is in a bad situation. If by some chance you, or another regular citizen, were caught up in a criminal matter there is no way in hell you be given the same deference, the same latitude, the same benefit of the doubt that the IG gives to the FBI agents in the Clinton e-mail probe. Click on the link for the article.

Andrew McCarthy

Exceptionally Good Economic News

“…The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2018 is 4.8 percent on June 14, up from 4.6 percent on June 8,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said in its latest GDPNow report on Thursday.

The next GDPNow update is scheduled to be released on Tuesday, June 19…”

Atlanta Fed: Q2 GDP estimate rises to 4.8% from 4.6%

The DOJ IG Report is Bad Don’t Believe Otherwise

Kim Strassel:

1) Don’t believe anyone who claims Horowitz didn’t find bias. He very carefully says that he found no “documentary” evidence that bias produced “specific investigatory decisions.” That’s different

2) It means he didn’t catch anyone doing anything so dumb as writing down that they took a specific step to aid a candidate. You know, like: “Let’s give out this Combetta immunity deal so nothing comes out that will derail Hillary for President.”

3) But he in fact finds bias everywhere. The examples are shocking and concerning, and he devotes entire sections to them. And he very specifically says in the summary that they “cast a cloud” on the entire “investigation’s credibility.” That’s pretty damning.

4) Meanwhile this same cast of characters who the IG has now found to have made a hash of the Clinton investigation and who demonstrate such bias, seamlessly moved to the Trump investigation. And we’re supposed to think they got that one right?

5) Also don’t believe anyone who says this is just about Comey and his instances of insubordination. (Though they are bad enough.) This is an indictment broadly of an FBI culture that believes itself above the rules it imposes on others.

6) People failing to adhere to their recusals (Kadzik/McCabe). Lynch hanging with Bill. Staff helping Comey conceal details of presser from DOJ bosses. Use of personal email and laptops. Leaks. Accepting gifts from media. Agent affairs/relationships.

7)It also contains stunning examples of incompetence. Comey explains that he wasn’t aware the Weiner laptop was big deal because he didn’t know Weiner was married to Abedin? Then they sit on it a month, either cuz it fell through cracks (wow) or were more obsessed w/Trump

8) And I can still hear the echo of the howls from when Trump fired Comey. Still waiting to hear the apologies now that this report has backstopped the Rosenstein memo and the obvious grounds for dismissal.

Gay Pride or Progressive Politics?

Brad Polumbo:

“…The Pride movement has been hijacked by a left-wing agenda, and some of its advocacy is actually setting gay people back.

A quick look at the national Pride website reveals not a neutral agenda advocating for all gay people, but a blatant endorsement of progressivism — even on issues that have little to do with gay rights. Advocate.com, a news website affiliated with the Pride movement, contains a glowing profile of gun-control advocate Emma Gonzalez on its homepage, even nominating her for their “Hall of Fame.” Another article openly calls on gay people to “fight for gun reform.”

The Pride rallies last year in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles could have easily been mistaken for the gun-control-oriented March for Our Lives, pro-choice Women’s March, or any other left-wing rally. Rainbow flags reading “Make America Gay Again” openly mock President Trump’s signature slogan, and ignore the obvious reality that America has never been more gay-friendly than it is in 2018. One anti-Trump chant at last year’s D.C. rally went viral — “We’re here, we’re queer, get that Cheeto out of here.”

Apparently, so-called advocates of LGBT equality don’t think that gay people are capable of supporting gun rights or President Trump, even though he won 15 percent of the LGBT vote…”

Original Here

Russian Strategy

Interesting analysis.

:

“…Raiding is the way by which Russia seeks to coerce the United States through a series of operations or campaigns that integrate indirect and direct approaches. Modern great power competition will thus return to forms of coercion and imposition reminiscent of the Middle Ages, but enacted with the technologies of today. Although raiding will be Moscow’s principal approach to competition, international brigandry may be the best term to describe elements of Russian behavior that the West considers to be “bad” or “malign.” These are acts of indirect warfare, both centrally planned and enacted on initiative by entities within the Russian state empowered to shape policy – often in competition with each other. Brigandry may come with negative legalistic connotations, a byword for outlaw, but here the term is meant to define a form of irregular or skirmish warfare in the international system conducted by a partisan.

Russia is, at times, miscast as a global spoiler or retrograde delinquent. Delinquents commit minor offenses and have no plan. Spoilers react to plans, but have little strategy of their own. Raiders, by contrast, launch operations with a strategic outlook and objectives in mind. And while often weaker than their opponents, raiders can be successful. The structure of the international system and the nature of the confrontation lends itself to the use of raiding, which increasingly appears to be the chosen Russian strategy. By focusing on deterring the high-end conventional fight and restoring nuclear coercive credibility, both important in and of themselves, the United States national security establishment may be fundamentally overlooking what will prove the defining Russian approach to competition…”

RAIDING AND INTERNATIONAL BRIGANDRY: RUSSIA’S STRATEGY FOR GREAT POWER COMPETITION

Doug Santo