TDS: It’s Exhausting

Prosecutors just released a lot of the evidence from their investigation that led to 16 criminal charges against Jussie Smollett, the gay black actor and former "Empire" star. Instead of explaining why all 16 of those charges were abruptly dropped all it does is make you go “huh?”

A brief recap in case you’ve dropped this gnat from your radar: Jussie staged a phony hate crime attack on himself in order to advance his pitiful career. He claimed two white guys wearing MAGA hats attacked him, tied a rope around his neck, poured bleach on him and then left yelling "This is MAGA country!" In Chicago. In the middle of a Polar Express deep freeze, where Jussie just happened to be out for a stroll in the middle of the dark and stormy night to get a Subway sandwich – not a Chicago dog mind you, not even a Jimmy John’s, a stinkin’ Subway.

Perfectly believable. Except for the facts. Jussie, who hates President Trump,

clearly hired two bro’s to stage a racist, homophobic attack on HIMSELF and then lied about the whole thing.

Because Orange Man bad. So stop picking on Jussie. All he did was tell a little fib, smear an entire police department, smear the brothers he paid to attack him, cause the cancellation of a hit TV show resulting in hundreds of people being unemployed and nearly cause a race riot - minimally in Chicago and more likely across the country - because, you know…TRUMP!

What is it with the left’s proclivity for fabrication? Jussie with the MAGA hats, Nadler, Schiff et al with Russian Collusion, Elizabeth Warren and her “Indian” heritage?

Which reminds me, here’s a radio crew – The Breakfast Club – grilling Lizzy on her claim to be a high cheek-boned Indian princess. Watch this Squirm of the day, where Warren gets a more honest grilling by Charlemagne than all of the MSM talking heads put together. As far as I recall nobody other than the President has actually called BS on her claim. Until yesterday.

"How long did you hold on to that, because there were some reports that said you were Native American on your Texas bar license and that you said you were Native American on some documents when you were a professor at Harvard?" Charlamagne Tha God asked.
"Like, why’d you do that?" he added.

“When did you find out that you weren’t?” the host pressed.
“Well, it’s — I’m not a person of color. I’m not a citizen of a tribe, and tribal citizenship is an important distinction and not something I am,” Warren replied.
“Were there any benefits to that?” Charlamagne Tha God asked.
“No, the Boston Globe did a full investigation,” Warren answered. “It never affected, nothing about my family every affected any job I ever got.”

My favorite part is when she shoots back this answer, almost as if she’s rehearsed": “No the Boston Globe did a full investigation.” Well there you go! A completely fair and balanced investigation. Maybe we should have the Boston Globe conduct the follow up investigation on Trump’s Russian Collusion/Agent status so Congress can finally put this controversy to rest.

Funny isn’t it, no matter what the question the answer is always “Trump is a (fill-in-the-blank) racist, fascist, homophobe, misogynist, Islamophobe. 

I believe there’s a name for that particular mental disorder, what is it again? Oh yes…

Unfortunately if you have this affliction you don’t move on from stage 7, you simply recycle.

My work is done here, and now, back to you Jerry.

It’s exhausting.

FLOTUS Friday: Coming and Going Edition

It’s nice to have a FLOTUS that looks good coming and going:

Leaving the White House for Japan

Arriving, Japan   

Returning to the White House from Japan, 5 days later

I defy anyone to look that good after an exhausting international trip. And she looked just as good at every stop in between.

    

   

The only thing the press was interested in reporting was the cost of Melania’s Japan trip wardrobe: $19,250 by their estimate. Expensive by my standards but then I’m not a billionairess accustomed to buying expensive clothes, and neither are any of the media mavens.

And as long as we’re speaking of FLOTUSes, file this under “is this real or is it an Onion article?” Guess who FireEye, Inc. just selected as the keynote speaker for their 10th annual Cyber Defense summit, an event intended to "bring together many of the world's leading security experts, frontline heroes, government leaders, and executives from various industries to address the challenges of today’s threat landscape."  Hillary Clinton! And they say the left has no sense of humor:

“Foreign actors” obtained access to some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails -- including at least one email classified as “secret” -- according to a new memo from two GOP-led House committees and an internal FBI email … “Documents provided to the Committees show foreign actors obtained access to some of Mrs. Clinton’s emails -- including at least one email classified 'Secret,'" the memo says, adding that foreign actors also accessed the private accounts of some Clinton staffers.

Clinton was asked when she decided to use her private email account to conduct government business and whom she consulted in making that decision. Clinton said she recalled making the decision in early 2009, but she "does not recall any specific consultations regarding the decision." Asked whether she was warned that using a private email account conflicted with federal record-keeping rules, Clinton responded that "she does not recall being advised, cautioned, or warned, she does not recall that it was ever suggested to her, and she does not recall participating in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed." – Fox News

Ha ha! Hillary-what-with-a-cloth-or-something Clinton. Seriously, that’s a good one!

Meanwhile Hillary gave the commencement address at Hunter College on Wednesday. The World’s Angriest Woman is still busy whining and crying over spilled milk.

She took the opportunity to talk about herself and, surprisingly, bash President Trump. The graduates, at least the ones that didn’t zone out appeared to enjoy her speech.

And they all received complimentary graduation beanies from the smartest woman on earth never-to-be-president.

The Hillary Clinton version of the Resist Pussy Hat

I’d Like To Buy a Vowel

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s American justice! And the wheels are coming off!

"Under long-standing department policy, a present president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited," he said. "Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider."

At least he finally admitted it: the sole intent of the Mueller investigation from the start was to create a road map to impeachment. If Mueller knew at the offset - as he clearly did - that he could not indict a sitting President why was he investigating? I assume that Deep State determined that the body responsible for pursuing Presidential wrongdoing – Congress – was too incompetent to do so, absent any evidence. Or could it be that Congress doesn’t have the Justice Department’s powers at their disposal to abuse in the pursuit of  creating such evidence?  You know, the power to spy on targets, threaten and/or prosecute for failure to cooperate and ruin them financially in the pursuit of evidence of guilt.

A slightly different angle, put forth by Roger Simon, is that the Mueller investigation was intended to induce obstruction of justice on the President’s part:

Robert Mueller's eight- to nine-minute statement Wednesday morning at the DOJ was designed for one thing only: to avoid having to answer one key question in his testimony. When did you know there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?

If the answer, as many, including Andrew C. McCarthy, are indicating, is somewhere in Fall 2017, what in the Sam Hill was Mueller doing putting the country through two years of prolonged agony? It's not likely he did all this to prop up CNN's faltering ratings.

Was it, just by chance, to induce obstruction from one Donald J. Trump who -- like a relatively normal person but with a shorter fuse than most, justifiable in this case -- would react like a stuck pig to being falsely charged for so long? That would have been essentially entrapment.

So let’s see: we have a staff of Democratic prosecutors seeking evidence – real or manufactured - of wrongdoing by anyone in order to use it against the sitting President in an attempt to take him down by any means possible but preferably impeachment. Our job is to sit by silently and assume it is all unbiased, nonpolitical and fair. Tough sell as it smells a lot more like a witch hunt. Which provides me with an  opportunity to reprise my March 23 observation on the Ferris Mueller report:

With apologies to Ben Stein

“In 2016, the Deep State controlled Department of Justice, in an effort to undermine the administration of…Anyone? Anyone?…Donald Trump, launched the…Anyone? Anyone? The Russian collusion investigation, which, anyone? Indicted or cleared?…Cleared the President. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effect? It did not work, and the Deep State sank deeper into their corruption and judicial overreach.”

Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? Fake News. Anyone know what this is? It’s when news is presented in a way that slants facts or makes them up out of whole cloth. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what  President Trump called this in 2017? Anyone? Something-h-u-n-t. “Witch Hunt.”

So far we have the E-word, entrapment, the I-word, impeachment, the O-word, obstruction and the U-word, unconstitutional. All we need to finalize this charade run by a batch of gameshow hosts is to buy the missing vowel. And remember: A is for America…not the other A-word.

They’re Out There

Oh, they’re out there all right. Raj and I saw one with our own eyes at dusk one summer day over 40 years ago. And no, there were no chemicals involved.

“Our sovereignty is being violated by vehicles of unknown origin.” – Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations

The U.S. military has seen them.

   The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they could reach 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds (5000 mph!). – NYT

Daily invasions from the summer of 2014 to March of 2015? Why is anybody surprised? That was at the height of the Obama open door, open border years. Aliens from every corner of the earth arrived on our southern border; what made us think it would stop with that? Apparently America is not just the best place on earth to live and word spreads fast. It doesn’t really matter where these invaders are coming from, since we know nothing about them they pose a threat that we seem committed to ignore.

(The) growing number of such sightings in sensitive military contexts—reported by highly trained, highly credible witnesses and corroborated by some of the world’s most sophisticated technology, including several infrared videos shot from fighter jets…To him, they signal a potential high-level strategic threat of unknown origin—one the nation would be foolish to ignore. - History Channel

These UFOs perform maneuvers that are, shall we say, challenging to mere human pilots:

What was strange, the pilots said, was that the video showed objects accelerating to hypersonic speed, making sudden stops and instantaneous turns — something beyond the physical limits of a human crew.

“Speed doesn’t kill you,” Lieutenant Graves said. “Stopping does. Or acceleration.” – NYT

But I don’t want you to jump to conclusions, this is not evidence of visitors from a galaxy far, far away. As Christopher Mellon explains:

A UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet. It is simply a flying object that cannot be explained away through conventional means.

That’s the first thing I’ve read about UFOs that makes sense.  Keep in mind that most flying objects can still be explained through conventional means.

Side note: As a rule I’d never recommend anything from the NYT, but the UFO article is quite eye-opening. Also note that a six-part History Channel series, 'Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation' premieres Friday 5/31 at 10/9c. You might want to set your DVR.

Look! Up In the Sky! It’s a Virtue Signal!

If you’re out driving around in your car and a tornado suddenly appears your best bet is to seek refuge in a church. Your second best option? A Chick-fil-A, a temple of another sort. They’ll even let you in through the drive-up window if you need shelter from a storm.

Then again, they are known for their service.

But can you believe it? The staff encouraged them to come in without even asking what their birth-gender was, or how they felt about gay marriage!

This actually happened to a couple in Oklahoma City as a tornado touched down last Friday night. Surveillance footage shows the staff urging the two in a car to get out and come inside. The two then jump out of their car and slither in through the drive-through window. Would I be broadcasting my lack of virtue if I admitted my initial thought was ‘wow, I wish I was that young, thin and lithe’ ?

Speaking of which, I note that Mayor Pete’s position on Chick-fil-A has that hands-across-the-aisle “aw shucks, I’m just a regular guy” type of appeal going on:

"If you’re turned off, as I am, by the political behavior of Chick-fil-A or their executives—if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, so to speak, and you decide not to shop there, I’d certainly get it and I’d support that," Buttigieg said. "But the reality is, we, I think, sometimes slip into a sort of virtue signaling in some cases where we’re not really being consistent.”

So keep a sharp eye out for Millennial Pete Butt-a-guy. He knows all the buzz words and how to use them to shape his image. He was raised in the age of media mind control, understands it better than the media does and has the gift of glib gab that will allow him to exploit its power to the max. He’s sort of like an openly gay, 100% white Obama. And remember what Joe Biden said about Obama?

 “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man.”

I  can’t wait to see him interpret this sentiment for Mayor Pete:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream gay-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean that’s a fairytale, man.”

This post was brought to you by Chick-fil-A:

Proudly served at the White House since 2017

Memorial Day 2019. We Remember

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." —Winston Churchill

As we do on this day each year, we pause to remember the men and women who died fighting for our freedom.

We stand by humbly, gratefully, silently, to honor their sacrifice.

We remember…

We mourn for those lost…

And we mourn for those they’ve left behind…

As we reflect once again on the the steep price of freedom.

By all means, enjoy your picnics, parades and celebrations today – it is a holiday after all. But do pause to remember and honor all the brave Americans across the centuries who have sacrificed their lives in the fight against tyrants, tyrannies and terrorists.

These enemies of freedom will always be in our midst and will always be a threat to liberty. God willing, America will always be there to vanquish freedom’s adversaries. 

“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.”  -  Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, 1981

- Originally posted May, 2015

Wishing you all a tranquil, thoughtful Memorial Day.

And remember, you are now free to move about the country in white shoes…or go barefoot.

Holiday Special: Roasted Wolf

Here is an interesting little cautionary tale. That it involves the schadenfreude-y takedown of a feminist writer for getting a key fact - that supports the premise of her new book - not just wrong but completely wrong is just a holiday bonus. 

The writer, Dr. Naomi Wolf:

Liberal progressive feminist author, journalist, and former political advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore

The fact she got so wrong? This:

In her brand-new book, she claims that Victorians were executing men for sodomy for longer than previously believed. She bases this claim on having discovered in court records the phrase “death recorded” listed with sodomy convictions. But in this terrifying (for authors!) clip from BBC radio, she learns from an actual scholar that “death recorded” is a 19th century legal term that means “death sentence commuted.”-  How To Roast Naomi Wolf

In other words Dr. Wolf’s book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love, claims that these men were executed for sodomy based on the term used in court documents “death recorded” - which she took to mean executed. In fact, as painfully pointed out in the interview by BBC Radio’s Matthew Sweet, it actually means pardoned. How embarrassing; it’s like opposite day and nobody told her.

But shoot, sometimes stuff you believe with your whole heart and soul to be true just…isn’t. Damn it. It’s called confirmation bias. As Alan Jacobs noted:

I wrote about the power of what C. S. Lewis called the Inner Ring: “Once we are drawn in, and allowed in, once we’re part of the Inner Ring, we maintain our status in part by coming up with those post hoc rationalizations that confirm our group identity and, equally important, confirm the nastiness of those who are Outside, who are Not Us.”

This sort of thing happens again and again. Take Global Warming for instance – which had to technically change its name to Climate Change in order to accommodate some Inconvenient Truths. When the Inner Ring becomes a religion certain truths are assumed to have been previously proven and can now just be accepted on faith.

If you don’t believe me just ask one of (Dr.) Naomi Wolf'’s very satisfied customers, Al Gore. Naomi is the genius that advised him during his Presidential campaign in 2000 to switch his wardrobe up to “earth colors.” That would have put him over the top but for the hanging chads.

Remember when Algore was just a political hack wearing green and brown suits? Boy, those were the days. Somehow that beta-boy morphed into a god-like global warming guru. Writing about him back in 2000, even Maureen Dowd didn’t see that coming:

Time magazine revealed that Al Gore hired Ms. Wolf, who has written extensively on women and sexual power, as a $15,000-a-month consultant to help him with everything from his shift to earth tones to his efforts to break with Bill Clinton.

"Wolf has argued internally that Gore is a 'beta male' who needs to take on the 'alpha male' in the Oval Office before the public will see him as the top dog," write Time's Michael Duffy and Karen Tumulty.

Of course, when a man has to pony up a fortune to a woman to teach him how to be a man, that definitely takes the edge off his top-dogginess. – NYT

I blame Naomi Wolf for his transformation. He was simply an annoying Superman wannabe…

before she decided to transform him into an Earth-Mama. Now he’s just another old, fat, pontificating ass in an earth-toned vest trying to make another billion dollars off his new religion.

But getting back to Dr. Wolf, another complete phony, I would like to pass along a little advice. Credited to Mark Twain, it is good advice for anyone but most especially writers claiming to be experts: “It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So.” Although in the case of progressives that might be a draw these days.

Next time you’re working on a book don’t follow the Michael Mann hockey stick approach to research. Unless of course your objective is to con the world into buying into a totally hypothetical man-made myth, like, say, global warming. In that case never mind. Just go ahead and make an ass out of yourself. It might be worth the money.