VDH: Scandals Sanitized with Linguistic Trickery

Victor Davis Hanson

"Throughout Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s massive report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are lots of strange things. One of the weirdest is the extent to which the FBI went to make up words and phrases to disguise reality.

"An early draft of the 2016 FBI report on the email scandal was reportedly subjected to linguistic surgery to exonerate the former secretary of state, who at the time was the Democratic nominee for president. Clinton was originally found to be “grossly negligent” in using an illegal email server. That legalistic phrase is used by prosecutors to indict for violation of laws governing the wrongful transmission of confidential government documents.

"Yet the very thought of a likely President Clinton in court so worried the chief investigator, FBI Director James Comey, that he watered down “grossly negligent” to the mere “extremely careless.”

"FBI investigators also had concluded that it was “reasonably likely” foreign nations had read Clinton’s unsecured emails. Comey intervened to mask such a likelihood by substituting the more neutral word “possible.”

"Former President Barack Obama was found to have improperly communicated with Clinton over her illegal server while she was in a foreign country. Obama had denied that fact by falsely claiming that he never knew of her server until much later, after it was publicized.

"The FBI hierarchy under Comey tried to hide the embarrassing details of Obama’s conduct. As a result, the FBI deleted Obama’s name from its report. In its place, the FBI inserted the laughable “another senior government official”—as if the president of the United States was just another Washington grandee who had improperly communicated on an illicit email server." . . .

Trump: Melania's jacket 'refers to the Fake News Media'

The Hill  "The Daily Mail first reported on Thursday that Melania Trump was photographed wearing the Zara jacket while boarding a plane to visit immigrant children held in detention centers. The visit came the day after President Trump signed an executive order undoing his own policy of separating families who cross the border illegally.
"Critics were quick to attack the first lady's fashion choice, calling it insensitive. 

"Democratic Rep. Dina Titus tweeted out her own version of the jacket by wearing a sign attached to her back, reading "I Care." 

In a self-righteous virtue-signaling tweet Democratic Rep. Dina Titus tbroadcast her own version of the jacket by wearing a sign attached to her back, reading "I Care."

Iconic image of crying child separated from family at border is fake news, child never separated

Legal Insurrection

"Featured on cover of Time mag and widely shared on social media."

"If the media wants President Donald Trump and others to stop calling them fake news then they need to stop being fake news.

"A Getty photographer snapped a picture of a crying girl a few weeks ago and became the go-to image for the border fiasco. Time used the picture on its cover to bash Trump, but the girl’s father said that the child and her mother were never separated.

"In fact, he told The Daily Mail, “They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border.”

"The Daily Mail spoke to Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, who resides in Puerto Cortes, Honduras:" . . .

But since when did they care about facts? Moore also told Time his story and put in the articlethat “the girl was carried away screaming by border agents.” The magazine had to go back and change the FACT that the girl and her mother went together.

. . .
Honduran Migrant Girl in Viral Picture Was Never Separated from Her Family
. . . "After seeing the photo, which was modified on the Time cover to depict President Trump looming over the girl, the girl’s father told several media outlets that his wife and daughter were never separated, but were actually placed together in a family-detention center.
"In addition to appearing on the forthcoming cover of Time, the photo was reprinted in several international newspapers and was used to promote a fundraiser that netted $18 million for separated families." . . .

Hillary Clinton’s Group Hauls in $1 Million Off Border ‘Humanitarian Crisis’

. . . "Clinton followed up on Thursday by announcing that her group, Onward Together, had exceeded $1 million in contributions and that the money would be split amongst left-leaning activist groups." . . .

UN accidentally rips Obama

What a terrific news peg. President of hope and change made things worse for his voters while his deplorable successor improved conditions for them.

Don Surber  " 'UN poverty report blasting Trump, US for ‘hatred for the poor’ uses data from last year of Obama’s presidency," the Fox News headline said.
"Hahaha.
"This happened on Obama's watch, UN.
"What a bunch of losers.
"The international anti-Americans are just as incompetent as their domestic counterparts, who used horrific pictures of children in custody -- taken from Obama's concentration camps for youths.
" 'The U.N. report’s main contentions read like an attack on the Trump administration by the Democratic Party: America has 40 million poor people, including 18.5 million who live in extreme poverty; U.S. policies regarding the poor are 'cruel and inhuman;' the Trump tax cuts aren’t working and will worsen inequality; and the U.S. needs to spend less on defense of our nation and more on social programs," columnist Chuck DeVore wrote.
" 'But, wait a minute: the U.N. report’s main contentions are based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s official poverty measure data for 2016 – the last full year of President Obama’s second term. So it would be absurd to say that private citizen Donald Trump had any responsibility for the many shortcomings of the Obama administration or any other administration in power before he became president.' " ".   . . .

Updated: Charles Krauthammer and me

Lauri B. Regan  "The death of Charles Krauthammer affected me deeply, for he taught me by word and by example.  This article from four and half years ago explains why.  To my shock and delight, after it was published, he wrote me a personal note of thanks." . . .

● Krauthammer made a 2007 prediction that "If [Bush's] successors don't screw it up, within 10 years NASA will have us back to where we belong -- on other worlds." Five years later, he observed, "Is there a better symbol of willed American decline" than the voluntary "interment" of the space shuttle program. This is all the more poignant as China celebrates its first lunar landing (something to which Krauthammer ironically alludes in his final essay written four years ago), Iran brags of its second launch of a monkey into space, and Obama, clearly screwing it up, has relegated NASA to reaching "out to the Muslim world... to help them feel good...."

● In another 2011 column Krauthammer recognized that Martin Luther King Jr.'s

leadership, moral imagination and strategic genius... turned his own deeply Christian belief that 'unearned suffering is redemptive' into a creed of nonviolence that he carved into America's political consciousness.

"Contrast this with Obama's own ("Goddamn America") church experience and "leadership" of an America in which racial tensions have soared and relations have been set back decades.

. . . 

"Krauthammer observed that Obama's foreign policy is one

designed to produce American decline -- to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complimentary.

"But he recognized that the Europeans

can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the Untied States....

Europe can eat, drink and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us? . . .

Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics
. . . "A brilliant stylist known for an uncompromising honesty that challenges conventional wisdom at every turn, Krauthammer has for decades daz­zled readers with his keen insight into politics and government. His weekly column is a must-read in Washington and across the country. Now, finally, the best of Krauthammer’s intelligence, erudition and wit are collected in one volume." . . .

Critic-in-Chief  . . . "That is because he has been a brilliant critic of President Obama: a persistent, fearless, profound critic of Obama. Indeed, many conservatives, and some liberals as well, consider him the critic-in-chief. He has been on Obama’s case constantly, for his errors and follies in policy both foreign and domestic. In a column last month, he said that the “commander-in-chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes.” Krauthammer was speaking of the Afghan War. Only in August, Obama had declared Afghanistan to be “a war of necessity.” Now the president seemed very much unsure. Krauthammer concluded his column, “Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause?' ” . . .

"Krauthammer was admired across the political spectrum, unfailingly elegant and civil, and stubbornly independent-minded." . . . "He was, in particular, a jewel in American conservatism. He wasn’t always one of us. He started his career as a moderate Democrat, a speechwriter for Walter Mondale and then a writer for The New Republic in the 1980s. He was on the right flank of that magazine’s internal fight over the future of liberalism as a resolute Cold Warrior. He became detached from the increasingly McGovernite Democratic party and moved steadily right over the years.
"He believed in American power and the international order it had created, and had no patience for apologists for our enemies or for the gauzy clichés of supporters of “the international community.” A baseline of realism undergirded his thought, and he was equally willing to puncture the fantasies of the Left and, as necessary, the irrational enthusiasms of the Right." . . .

Charles Krauthammer, A Diagnostician Of Our Public Discontents, Contemptuous of Obama

George Will  "When he was asked how to become a columnist, Charles Krauthammer would say, with characteristic drollery, "First, you go to medical school." He did, with psychiatry as his specialty because, he said with characteristic felicity, it combined the practicality of medicine and the elegance of philosophy. But he also came to the columnist craft by accident. Because of one.
"It has been said that if we had to think about tying our shoes or combing our hair we would never get out of the house in the morning. Life is mostly habitual — do you actually remember any details of driving home last evening? The more of life's functions that are routinely performed without thinking, the more thinking we can do. That, however, is not how life was for Charles after his accident."
"In 1972, when he was a 22-year-old student at Harvard Medical School, he was swimming in a pool. Someone pushed the diving board out, extending over a shallower part of the pool. Charles, not realizing this, dove and broke his neck. At the bottom of the pool, "I knew exactly what happened. I knew why I wasn't able to move, and I knew what that meant." It meant that life was going to be different than he and Robyn had anticipated when they met at Oxford.
"He left two books at the pool. One was a text on the spinal cord. The other was Andre Malraux's novel "Man's Fate.  . . . "

Krauthammer: Obama Showing "Arrogance And Contempt For The Voice Of The People"

Krauthammer: Obama's Reliance on Diplomacy Is 'Almost Pathetic'
. . .  "President Obama told the Diplomatic Corps Reception today that "in contrast to these terrorists, we will win this fight by building -- never giving up on diplomacy."
"Krauthammer said that the president just repeated the same thing he'd been saying for the past 7 and a half years, "which has yielded us the worst outbreak of terrorism that we have seen.' " . . .

Krauthammer's contempt for Obama manifested in this conversation

d by Sycophants' "

Beware leftist tears

Legal Insurrection

Rachel's tender tears  "Is there a more tender age than that of a child in the womb?

"Rachel Maddow's tears aside, expressions of outrage over government provisioning for displaced children entering the U.S. illegally portray such children as a means to an end rather than ends in and of themselves.  If Maddow and her like-minded minions are teary-eyed over images of children being ripped from the loving arms of their parents, then one would expect her to be cut to the heart by the ripping of children from their mother's wombs. Alas, her passions are selectively silent on the issue of the slaughter of innocents.

"Bible-thumping by the likes of failed candidate Hillary Clinton likewise reveal the true trajectory of this brewed up brouhaha.  Were Mrs. Clinton to remain consistent with the teachings of her progressive pals, then invoking the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth would be, at best, on par with any other philosopher at hand (e.g., Peter Singer, perhaps).  If all moral teaching is relative to the culture from which it arises, then why would Mrs. Clinton seek to impose a dusty ethics prevalent in first-century Galilee upon a situation occurring in Central America some twenty centuries hence?" . . .

Fox News Host: Rep. Elijah Cummings Would ‘Rather Cry on Television’ Than Fix Immigration  . . . "Trish Regan said that Democrats don’t really want to fix the problem:

“They do not want to, because they would much rather cry on television like Elijah Cummings did. They would rather show, in some cases, fake photos… They would rather play this out on a very emotional level because you’re appealing, in the Democrats’ mind, to people’s hearts, and nobody wants to see children separated from their parents. But at the same time, it plays to a hatred they can gin up as we go into ’18 for Donald Trump.”

Samantha Bee: ‘Keep Chasing Kirstjen Nielsen Out Of Restaurants’

Daily Wire

"Samantha Bee has figured out how to get press for her ratings-challenged show: Attack President Trump and his administration — even his family.
"It's worked for other late-night talk show hosts, as well as the not-very-funny "stars" on Comedy Central.
"Bee, host of "Full Frontal" on TBS, made the news when she called Trump's daughter Ivanka a "feckless c**t." She apologized after advertisers warned that they would bail, but has since walked back her apology.
"On Wednesday's show, Bee called for opponents of Trump to keep harassing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Protesters this week stormed a restaurant where Nielsen was eating dinner with her family and shouted at the secretary, at one point chanting "shame."
"In a lengthy rant about the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" illegal immigration policy, Bee concluded with this: "Keep chasing Kirstjen Nielsen out of restaurants, you beautiful [people]," she said." . . .

Spoiler Alert: Robert De Niro and Peter Fonda have ruined two favorite movies for me

And maybe that’s at the root of Trump Derangement Syndrome: perhaps one reason that Trump is so hated is that he’s never been suspected of having anything but love for this country. And yet the more good he does for this country – in terms of our economy, unemployment, diplomacy and foreign relations – the harder they work to find things to condemn him for.

Well, there has been the apology as there was from Kathy Griffin, which as I recall she took back with great glee.

Stu Tarlowe  "You can call this a “spoiler alert.” The recent utterances of a couple of Hollywood actors have spoiled two of my favorite movies for me.

"First it was Robert De Niro (now known as “Punchy”) who robbed me of my enjoyment of one of my favorite films, Taxi Driver, by showing us that in his real-life persona he’s even more of a lunatic than Travis Bickle, the disturbed character he played in that movie.

"And now it’s Peter Fonda, managing to take away my enjoyment of a film that was an anthem of my generation, Easy Rider. In case you haven’t heard, Peter Fonda publicly called for horrendous things to be done to President Trump’s 12-year old son, Barron, in addition to referring to the president with the same type of latrine-mouth vitriol that De Niro so enjoys spewing.

"Fonda has since issued an apology and withdrawn the vulgar comments and threats. Although the agency charged with protecting the president and his family has not officially commented, it’s speculated that Fonda’s apology just may have been inspired by the Secret Service having “a little talk” with him.

"But that apology won’t keep me from seeing Peter Fonda in a different light now than I’ve seen him in for all these years since he starred in that iconic film. Maybe he never thought of Easy Rider the way I did, as a celebration of America and its beauty and its freedoms, even as it exposed some of the country’s ugliest flaws.

The Person Who Doxxed ICE Agents Is A Far Left Professor At NYU

Weasel Zippers

"Via Daily Caller:

A New York University professor is the person responsible for creating a database of over 1,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees’ personal information and spreading it to Antifa.

Sam Lavigne, a far-left artist and game designer, is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He created a database of 1,595 ICE employees using their LinkedIn profiles and shared it to his 3,600 followers on Twitter Tuesday morning.

Antifa, the far-left organization labelled as “domestic terrorists,” picked up the database and spread it to their followers on Twitter hours later. The database also spread to a subgroup on Reddit that encourages spreading personal information — such as where they live and their contact information, known as “doxxing” — of people who they consider “Nazis” or “alt-right,” which, according to them, includes ICE and the NSA.

“Doxxing ICE agents is good and moral,” one Reddit user posted on a thread that shared the database.

Keep reading…

DRUDGE: Flashback: Obama Sued By Illegal Immigrant's Family For Wrongful Death In Detention Center

Daily Wire

"Amid a media-inflamed firestorm over President Trump's "zero tolerance" illegal immigration policy and an Obama-era Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that forces illegal immigrant parents to be temporarily separated from their children, several outlets have provided a number of unfortunate flashbacks to the Obama administration's jam-packed immigrant detention centers (like these four).

"On Wednesday, the Drudge Report provided another one: The tragic case of Roberto Aguilar Batista, 38, whose family sued President Barack Obama and multiple federal agencies after Batista died from complications of diabetes while being held in one of the administration's ill-equipped detention centers.

"In a report published August 29, 2014, CBS2 Los Angeles provided some of the details of the case (formatting adjusted):" . . .

Border Patrol Agent Sets The Record Straight On CNN, Embarrasses Host
"On Wednesday, CNN host Brooke Baldwin had on border patrol agent and National Border Patrol Council spokesman Chris Cabrera, with Baldwin seemingly looking to smear and shame the men and women who police our border. Cabrera, though, took the opportunity to hit Baldwin with the reality of the situation at the Southern border, exposing the false and shallow liberal framing of the issue from the mainstream media, including CNN." . . .

Starbucks burned by social-justice appeasement as growth stalls, stock plunges

Washington Times  "Starbucks may have appeased progressives with its social-justice workshops and open-bathroom policy, but such moves have failed to caffeinate the company’s bottom line.

"The coffee giant’s stock took a tumble Wednesday after CEO Kevin Johnson announced that Starbucks would close 150 company-owned stores next year instead of the expected 50, with an emphasis on underperforming shops in densely populated urban areas, and lowered growth projections.

"Mr. Johnson acknowledged that the decision to shut down 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 for anti-bias training, driven by the high-profile arrests of two black men in Philadelphia, played a role in the company’s sluggish second-quarter performance.

“ 'In this current quarter, certainly we had an unplanned initiative driven out of the Philadelphia incident, we closed all our stores for training, we had to delay some marketing, but none of that is an excuse,” Mr. Johnson told CNBC. “The fact is the way I think about a growth company at scale is we’ve got to deliver consistent growth, month after month, quarter after quarter, and year after year. And we have not done that.” . . .