The primary focus of this report from Reuters last night was the fact that the Russians have scheduled some “Vosok” (East) military exercises during the first week of Semptember and China will be sending troops to participate. This is both surprising and disturbing for a couple of reasons. First, the Russian military is currently bogged down in eastern Ukraine and having trouble conscripting enough troops to keep their forces together. Where are they getting the soldiers and hardware for these exercises? Also, China agreeing to send troops and participate is yet another sign that the CCP is increasingly comfortable with joining the new axis of evil and taking Russia’s side. But there will be more countries participating along with China and perhaps one of the bigger surprises was to see India included on the list. Since when is India taking Russia’s side against the west?
Chinese troops will travel to Russia to take part in joint military exercises led by the host and including India, Belarus, Mongolia, Tajikistan and other countries, China’s defence ministry said on Wednesday.
China’s participation in the joint exercises was “unrelated to the current international and regional situation”, the ministry said in a statement.
Last month, Moscow announced plans to hold “Vostok” (East) exercises from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5, even as it wages a costly war in Ukraine. It said at the time that some foreign forces would participate, without naming them.
Granted, this isn’t the first time that India has collaborated with Russia on either defense or economic initiatives. And to a certain extent, that’s understandable. When you’re situated that close to China and some other Russian allies, you do what you need to do to keep the peace and not wind up being invaded.
But choosing to participate in joint Russian and Chinese military exercises at this exact moment in time seems more than a little provocative. This would be an ideal moment for all of the countries in that region to project a neutral stance more than anything else. These exercises will be viewed in a very symbolic way, and those nations that choose to take part will essentially be signaling that they are throwing their lot in with the Russians and the Chinese if the ongoing conflicts escalate and expand.
It’s true that the United States has always had a “complicated” relationship with India because of our supposed alliance with Pakistan in fighting Islamic terror groups. Pakistan is India’s sworn enemy and they are two nuclear powers who keep the entire region on edge.
But has Inda somehow forgotten all that America has done for them? The tens of millions of jobs we outsourced to India over the past few decades have built up their economy and general prosperity immensely. We’ve also provided them with massive amounts of foreign aid when it was required. Without significant western help, India was basically just a massively overpopulated, poverty-stricken third-world nation. The west – particularly the United States – has improved India’s fortunes immensely and made them much more of an influential economic force.
India might want to rethink this decision. If they want to pick sides in the increasingly possible third world war to come, do they really want to side with the new axis of evil? Because long before any actual fighting breaks out, America and the rest of NATO could easily start severing some of our economic ties to their country and wait to see how well Russia and China are able or willing to bail them out.
It is a familiar pattern: the Left sees an organization or institution that is widely respected, and takes it over. It then politicizes, degrades and misuses that institution. The predictable result is that the public regard formerly enjoyed by the institution is lost.
That is what has happened with the FBI. The Bureau once enjoyed near-universal respect, but in the wake of a series of scandals culminating in the Mar-a-Lago raid, Rasmussen finds the FBI’s favorability rating dropping to 50%, with 46% disapproving.
This is the most startling finding:
Roger Stone, an adviser to former President Donald Trump, has said there is “a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI … as Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo.” A majority (53%) of voters now agree with Stone’s statement – up from 46% in December – including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree with the quote from Stone, including 26% who Strongly Disagree.
It seems shocking to say that the FBI is run by “politicized thugs” who have turned the bureau into “Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo,” but that is the way a little over half of all Americans now see the FBI. Nice going, James Comey and Christopher Wray!
NPR published the results of a new poll which found the majority of Americans consider what’s happening at the southern border to be an “invasion.” NPR is quick to point out that some of the claims made about migrants at the border are not true:
More than half of Americans say there’s an “invasion” at the southern border, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll, part of a broader decline in support for immigrants overall.
The poll found that a large number of Americans, including big majorities of Republicans, blame migrants for a rise in deaths from fentanyl — even though there’s no evidence directly linking them to the problem.
It’s true that fentanyl overdose deaths are up in recent years, and that much of the U.S. fentanyl supply is smuggled through the border.
But experts say the vast majority of fentanyl and other illegal drugs are smuggled through official ports of entry, hidden in large trucks and passenger vehicles, while a relatively small amount is smuggled by cartels across the border between those ports.
Republicans are also more likely to say immigrants are likely to rely on public assistance. The article notes that immigrants are mostly barred from federal assistance, which is true. Of course that doesn’t mean tens of thousands of immigrants aren’t relying on some kind of assistance. We’ve recently seen the mayors of New York and Washington, DC claim that the migrants bused from Texas are using up city resources and clogging up homeless shelters. So clearly there is some impact on the public when a million people come over the border in a year.
In any case, NPR has arguably buried the lede here, which is that a plurality of Democrats agree with this characterization. Here’s the chart showing the results.
It’s a bit hard to read at this size but it shows that 42% of Democrats believe the word “invasion” completely or somewhat applies in this situation. That’s significant more than the 34% who say it’s not true. But again, NPR doesn’t mention this result at all in the text of the story.
Other results in the poll show declining support for giving legal status to Dreamers (people brought to the country as children) and increased support for a border wall.
Again, sorry for the sizing but this shows support for Dreamers has gone from 65% in Feb. 2018 down to 51% last month. Support for building a wall along the border has gone from 38% up to 48% over the same time span.
All of this is a predictable reaction to far too many people coming over the border too quickly, creating a massive backlog of cases in our immigration system which will take years to clear. And when it is cleared, most of the people will have deemed to be what they are, economic migrants looking for a better life, not genuine candidates for asylum under our laws. Whether they understand all the details or not, a majority of Americans accurately perceive that our system is being gamed by a massive influx of people.
Joe Biden came into office on the promise that he would restore competent management to the White House instead of daily Twitter fights. But I think that chart above shows people don’t see it when it comes to managing the border crisis. What they see is an administration that has set a historic record for the number of new migrants who were arrested last year and is going to surpass that record by a substantial amount this year. Meanwhile, Biden has lied (he claimed the influx was seasonal) and refused to visit the border himself (claiming, falsely, that he’d been there before). That lack of competence and engagement is leading people to believe the situation is out of control and that Biden isn’t up to the job of doing anything about it. If he wants to turn that around, he’s going to need to go to the border and explain his plan for dealing with the situation.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is Mark Twain’s oft-used sardonic advice on how to lie effectively. Progressive Democrats have updated Twain’s phrase with lies, damned lies, and health care promises.
The most recent example is Biden’s self-contradictory titled bill, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This will increase inflation and is primarily a health care expansion bill. The bill promises to lower drug prices (true, but at a prohibitive cost), to stop any increases in drug prices (how do pharmaceutical companies cope with inflation?), and to extend ACA (Obamacare) subsidies set to expire. The promises will be kept, strictly speaking, but the effects on Americans will be highly toxic, and Democrats know this.
Medicare will now negotiate drug prices, in reality dictating what it will pay. This brings to mind a soldier with a handgun “negotiating” with a B-52 bomber, or a weekend camper “negotiating” with a hungry black bear. Medicare can control and reduce drug prices, but price-fixing will suppress pharmaceutical research and development. Net effect: cheaper drugs but fewer miracle drugs in the future.
The CBO says the Inflation Reduction Act will cost at least $740 billion, so Biden will have to print more dollars, further jacking up inflation, giving the lie to the title. The bulk of spending will pay for extension of ACA insurance subsidies. Pelosi, et al. hail this as benefiting those in need, but that is another highly deceptive promise. The bulk of the enhanced subsidies will go to middle-class individuals who currently have private insurance but can save money by accepting these generous government handouts and canceling their private coverage. Result: Medicaid will drive private insurers out of the market, and Americans will be left with — surprise! — single-payer.
The assurances given for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act are a continuation of a “lies, damned lies, and health care promises” strategy Democrats have been deploying for more than 60 years, starting with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society addenda — Medicare and Medicaid — to the Social Security Act.
Medicare was passed in 1965, promising to provide all the health care needs for retired persons over 65 years of age. The original law imposed a payroll tax on every working American and placed the cash in virtual lockboxes with each contributor’s name on them. Sometime in the 1970s, Congress surreptitiously broke open the lockboxes, took the cash, and used it for other projects. They replaced the money with IOUs, which could not be invested and therefore cannot grow over time.
Medicare trustees say the trust will run out of money — i.e., be insolvent — by 2026. At that time, the promise of care for seniors will vanish like smoke on a windy day.
In the same year as Medicare (1965), Congress passed Medicaid, along with the fictional health care promise of all the care poor people need, for free, when they need it.
The bill approved the formation of fifty programs, each supposedly created and run solely by the individual states and funded jointly by state and Washington. Section 1801 of the Medicaid law states: “Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal officer or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided.” This is more than a promise — this is law prohibiting Washington from controlling Medicaid. Yet CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington) makes all Medicaid decisions, both medical and fiscal. Another false health care promise, AKA a lie — is exposed.
There are two more that are worse.
Democrats promise that Medicaid coverage will lead to timely, quality medical care. Americans know otherwise. More than 750 Illinoisans died waiting in line for medical care that wasn’t available in time to save them. Medicaid enrollees have worse medical as well as surgical outcomes than those with no insurance at all! Adequate, timely care for Medicaid recipients is simply another “lie, damned lie, and health care promise.”
No one mentions MERP (the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program), which allows states to claw back hundreds of thousands of dollars from the estates of deceased Medicaid recipients. “Medicaid is free” is another bare-faced health care falsehood.
EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Transport and Active Labor Act of 1986), the anti-dumping law, promised to prevent transferring acutely ill uninsured patients to county hospitals. It did not promise to create the uninsured mandate that cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and dramatically increased insurance premiums, but that is what it did.
The most egregious promises were made for the Affordable Care Act, starting with the title word “care.” President Obama guaranteed Americans that his namesake bill would reform health care so Americans could get “all the care they need when they need it.” After the bill was signed, he quietly admitted that the bill would reform health insurance, not care at all.
To pay for the massive expansion of ACA bureaucracy, more than $700 billion was taken out of Medicare. How does stripping the Medicare trust fund provide “all the care we need”?
The ACA’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility came with a reduction in payments to Medicaid physicians. Thus, more people would expect (and demand) medical care from fewer care providers. Half the physicians in Texas no longer accept Medicaid insurance. Wait times to see a physician increased to a medically unconscionable four months! Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died from complications of a dental cavity because there were no local pediatric dentists willing to accept Medicaid enrollees.
The promise of timely, quality care with the Affordable Care Act is an outrageous, intentional health care lie.
There are numerous other examples of lies, damned lies, and health care promises. There was HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), which did not make insurance portable. There was UMRA (the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995), which did nothing to reform the unfunded mandate.
Americans will continue to suffer from Democrats’ health care promises, AKA overt falsehoods, as long as progressives control the levers of power, both political and administrative.
Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is professor emeritus of pediatrics, pathology, and decision science.
Earlier this month President Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law. The CHIPS Act includes about $52 billion in new spending to be delivered to the semiconductor industry in the form of manufacturing incentives and R&D money designed to spur more chip foundries in the United States. But when touting the new bill, Biden went just a bit beyond reality by claiming it would lead to more than a million new construction jobs.
Biden said the same thing when he announced the new law on August 9:
It sounds good but unfortunately it’s not remotely true. Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post asked the White House for the source of that claim. They were directed to a 2021 report by a semiconductor industry group which estimated the impact of a $50 billion investment in the industry.
When we dug into the report…we could not find any reference to 1 million construction jobs being created. Instead, the report predicted such an investment — roughly equivalent to the Chips Act — would create “an average of 185,000 temporary jobs annually throughout the U.S. economy from 2021 to 2026.”
Six times 185,000 adds up to more than 1 million. But note that these are not all construction jobs. In fact, few are construction jobs.
“The statement about 1 million construction jobs is not accurate,” said Sarah Ravi, a spokeswoman for the association. She directed us to a chart in the report that indicated that a $50 billion investment would create an additional 6,200 construction jobs.
Kessler looks at claims for various multiplier effects and induced jobs created by new hires spending their wages but there’s no way the number of construction related jobs ever gets anywhere close to a million. Eventually, the White House conceded the point.
The White House initially defended the figure but eventually conceded it was wrong. “There was a mix-up and this should have referred to the total jobs resulting from the legislation, but that doesn’t detract from the historic nature of this move to rebuild our manufacturing and supply chains here at home, and to win the competition with China in the industries of the future,” a White House official said.
Mix-up my ass. This wasn’t a mistake, it was an egregious lie which fooled a lot of people (31k liked the tweet and another 5k retweeted it). The fact that the White House has quietly admitted it had no basis in fact is buried near the bottom of this story and won’t be seen by most people. To his credit, Kessler doesn’t let the White House slide.
…there is no reason to get the number so wrong — twice. While the White House concedes a “mix-up,” the tweet has not been deleted; neither has the official transcript been corrected. The president earns Four Pinocchios.
So there you have it. The CHIPS Act seems like a good idea to me. The pandemic demonstrated that we’re too dependent on chip foundries in Taiwan. When the supply of chips gets disrupted as it has over the past couple of years, the impact can be pretty significant. But Biden’s attempt to turn this into a victory for blue collar construction workers is nonsense. The White House should be embarrassed.
“Is History History?” is the title of an essay out yesterday from the current president of the American Historical Association (AHA), James H. Sweet, who is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Before turning to the essay, let us stipulate starting out that academic history has almost fully surrendered to the worst excesses of leftism and identity politics, and the result is that the number of students majoring in history is plummeting. And the AHA is an abyss of political correctness. (For my sins I am an adjunct member of the AHA, piggy-backing on my misbegotten membership in the American Political Science Association.)
I have written at length about the problem with history elsewhere, taking as just one symptom that most biographies of major historical figures today that become best sellers are written by journalists and non-academic historians, and wondering why academic historians eschew writing old-fashioned biography any more.
Prof. Sweet appears to be a conventional academic liberal, though not perhaps a deep leftist. His major field of interest is African history, and in particular the slave trade. And yet in his AHA essay, he dissents, however gently and respectfully, from the near-universal hosannahs for The 1619 Project:
Whether or not historians believe that there is anything new in the New York Times project created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project is a best-selling book that sits at the center of current controversies over how to teach American history. As journalism, the project is powerful and effective, but is it history? . . .
Yet as a historian of Africa and the African diaspora, I am troubled by the historical erasures and narrow politics that these narratives convey. . . If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise. . .
The present has been creeping up on our discipline for a long time. Doing history with integrity requires us to interpret elements of the past not through the optics of the present but within the worlds of our historical actors. Historical questions often emanate out of present concerns, but the past interrupts, challenges, and contradicts the present in unpredictable ways. History is not a heuristic tool for the articulation of an ideal imagined future. Rather, it is a way to study the messy, uneven process of change over time. When we foreshorten or shape history to justify rather than inform contemporary political positions, we not only undermine the discipline but threaten its very integrity.
The whole essay is very much worth reading, despite his genuflections to the left that he makes throughout, no doubt intended as a measure of self protection. It didn’t work. You can imagine how this mild bit of heresy is going down on Twitter. The mob has been summoned to pick up their pitchforks, and send denunciations for printing this “appalling” article to the council of the AHA.
Periodically I hear from parents who says they have a child interested in studying history, and can I recommend a college with a good department. After Hillsdale and one or two other places, the answer is: No, there are none. Don’t do it. Academic history is now worse than a waste of time nearly everywhere.
Cue Prof. Sweet’s apology tour (and perhaps the removal of the article) in three, two. . .
Note from ghr: A college with a good department in the Social Sciences has been disappearing for the past forty years. Feminists, Lefties, Drunkies, Fascists, Gays, Racists, Foreigners and such seem to be leaders in DEMS American History classes selling their poisons.
Given the similarities between the Russia hoax and this get-Trump hoax, let’s assume the affidavit has the same issues as the Carter Page FISA applications.
MARGOT CLEVELAND
Ordering the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit would be wrong as a matter of law. But as a matter of lessons learned, Americans can infer that the unprecedented search of former President Donald Trump’s home rested on circular reporting, material omissions, misleading assertions, informants of unproven reliability, and an investigation undertaken by partisan agents.
Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart will hear oral arguments Thursday afternoon on the media’s motions to unseal the Trump search warrant materials. The Department of Justice, with Trump’s consent, already released the search warrant and the corresponding attachments: Attachment A, which described the places to be searched, and Attachment B, which identified things to be seized. The government also released a redacted Property Receipt list.
The Biden administration opposes, however, unsealing the affidavit filed in support of the search of Trump’s home, arguing that “the search warrant presents a very different set of considerations,” and that there are “compelling reasons, including to protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security, that support keeping the affidavit sealed.”
Precedent solidly supports the government’s argument. While the First Amendment provides the press and the public the “right of access to criminal trial proceedings,” neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the 11th Circuit — the federal appellate court that establishes mandatory precedent for the Florida federal district court where the case is pending — have addressed the question of whether the First Amendment right of access extends to sealed search warrant materials. However, other federal appellate courts have held that “there is no tradition of public access to ex parte warrant proceedings,” and based on that precedent, the DOJ argues that the “better view is that no First Amendment right to access pre-indictment warrant materials” exists.
The Sixth Circuit’s detailed analysis in In re Search of Fair Finance strongly supports the DOJ’s position. In that case, the federal appellate court explained that under Supreme Court precedent, for a First Amendment right to access a particular criminal proceeding to exist, the proceeding must have “historically been open to the press and the general public,” and “public access [must] play[] a significant positive role in the functioning of the particular process in question.” Then, after discussing the relevant history, the court concluded that there was no “historical tradition of accessibility to documents filed in search warrant proceedings,” and “that alone requires a rejection of the newspapers’ contention that there is a First Amendment right of access to them.”
Given the strength of the analysis in In re Search of Fair Finance, Reinhart is unlikely to unseal the search warrant affidavit because that precedent indicates there is no right to access the materials at all. However, rather than hold that there is no First Amendment right of access to the documents, to safeguard his ruling, Reinhart will likely alternatively rule that assuming there is a right of access, under the controlling balancing test, the documents must nonetheless remain sealed.
When the press (or public) seek access to judicial proceedings and records for which they have a First Amendment right to access, courts apply a balancing test to determine whether to open the proceedings or the documents to the public. A balancing test of the competing interests applies because the First Amendment’s right to access is considered “a qualified right.”
The balance test considers “the public interest in accessing court documents against a party’s interest in keeping the information confidential.” The DOJ stressed in its briefing that “courts consider, among other factors, whether allowing access would impair court functions or harm legitimate privacy interests, the degree of and likelihood of injury if made public, the reliability of the information, whether there will be an opportunity to respond to the information, whether the information concerns public officials or public concerns, and the availability of a less onerous alternative to sealing the documents.” Further, 11th Circuit precedent holds that “potential prejudice to an ongoing criminal investigation represents a compelling government interest that justifies the closure of judicial records.”
In this case, while there is a strong public interest in the documents, which raise serious public concerns, namely the apparent politicization of the DOJ and FBI and the targeting of a political enemy, the case law makes clear that the government has a compelling interest in keeping the search warrant affidavit sealed — at least at this point. The investigation, according to the DOJ, remains ongoing, and unsealing the document would reveal details that would harm the case and cause witnesses to hesitate in cooperating with the government. Under these circumstances, as strong as the public’s interest is in seeing the content of the affidavit, the court, as a matter of law, should keep the affidavit sealed.
A Hollow Victory
Keeping the search warrant affidavit sealed will be a hollow victory for the Biden administration, however, because the systemic abuse by the DOJ and FBI in the Carter Page FISA warrant process will leave Americans convinced that the latest sequel in the get-Trump franchise followed the same pattern seen with Crossfire Hurricane.
To obtain a warrant from the FISA court to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, the FBI improperly relied on press reports about Page’s supposed role in the purported softening of the RNC’s platform related to Ukraine. Those media reports were both unverified and false, yet the FBI included them as evidence to support a finding of probable cause.
Using press reports of Trump’s supposed mishandling of classified material and media coverage of the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago in the search warrant affidavit seems a likely scenario, then, especially given that government leaks about the documents began surfacing in February. With government leaks feeding the media coverage, the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit could likewise be assumed to include the same circular reporting seen in the FISA applications, where FBI tips prompted press stories which the FBI then used as evidence to confirm the government’s own evidence.
Another problem with the FISA applications concerned the use of second- and third-hand hearsay, unverified informants, and confidential human sources who lied to the FBI. Press leaks about the Mar-a-Lago raid, as well as the DOJ’s brief in opposition to the unsealing of the search warrant affidavit, indicate it was based on numerous witnesses and at least one confidential human source. A public hardened by the FISA abuse can easily assume that the affidavits included some exaggeration at best and outright lies at worst.
A third prevalent problem seen with the four FISA applications concerned the FBI’s withholding of material information from the FISA court — information that if disclosed to the court would have negated a finding of probable cause.
In the case of the search of Mar-a-Lago, it is easy to imagine several significant facts omitted from the search warrant affidavit, foremost of which is that Trump declassified the documents he stored at his Florida home. The affidavit could easily state that a CHS witnessed Trump possessing documents marked “classified” or “top secret,” and then add that Trump’s lawyer signed a declaration claiming that Trump had returned all “classified” documents. The implication, then, would be that Trump’s lawyer lied on his behalf and thereby obstructed justice, and that Trump illegally possessed government property.
But if Trump had declassified the documents while president, that implication no longer exists, meaning that the government would have needed to reveal that fact to the magistrate in the search warrant application.
Did they? Or did they omit that fact and others, as they had done with the FISA applications?
Given that the search warrant specifically authorized the seizure of “any physical documents with classification markings,” it seems reasonable to infer that the DOJ focused only on the markings and not on whether the document had been unclassified by Trump. The distinction between the two, however, proves significant because if Trump’s lawyer declared that Trump did not possess any classified materials, the markings would make that look like a lie to the court, unless the FBI disclosed Trump’s claim that he had declassified all of the documents before leaving office.
Leaks also indicate that videos from Mar-a-Lago captured the documents being moved in and out of the storage room, so it seems likely that the search warrant affidavit included some reference to those videos. If the videos captured Trump’s representatives to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) moving the documents, the question becomes whether the government informed the court of their legitimate role in reviewing Trump’s documents.
Another important factor for the court to know concerns whether the Mar-a-Lago documents were originals or copies because one of the criminal statutes cited in the search warrant, Section 2017, does not (or should not) apply to copies of documents possessed already by the government. Did the search warrant affidavit include that important detail?
And what about David Ferriero, who was the archivist at the time the NARA referred Trump to the DOJ for investigation? Did Ferriero provide any evidence relied upon in the search warrant affidavit? If so, did the government reveal to the court Ferriero’s apparent bias against Trump? The FBI failed to advise the FISA court of Steele’s anti-Trump bias, so it wouldn’t be shocking to learn that some of those relied upon by the government in the search warrant affidavit held similar anti-Trump views, which the FBI failed to disclose.
The breadth of the search warrant raises other concerns, namely: What else did the DOJ tell the magistrate judge to convince him to authorize such a sweeping raid of the home of a former president?
Fool Me Once
Given the craziness included in the FISA applications, it isn’t a stretch to think the storyline pushed in the search warrant affidavit to justify the Mar-a-Lago raid reached the limits of believability: Just as the FISA court believed probable cause supported the far-fetched scenario that Russia was coordinating with members of the Trump campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, a federal magistrate might fall for an equally implausible theory to justify a search of Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, without seeing the search warrant affidavit, all the public can do is speculate, but given the similarities between the Russia-collusion hoax and this latest get-Trump hoax, an assumption that the FBI Mar-a-Lago affidavit includes problems of equal gravity to the four Carter Page FISA applications seems eminently reasonable. Thus, a victory later today by the DOJ in keeping the affidavit sealed might be a win for the government, but it won’t play like one in Peoria.
Like many of you, I’ve seen Democrats posting on social media about the “great job” being done by the Biden administration. When I put forth responses such as, “Please cite the accomplishments to which you refer,” I’m always bombarded with hateful rhetoric about President Trump. Example: “Trump tried to overthrow the government!” I come back with, “When Trump was in office, our country was energy independent, the economy was booming, no inflation, gas was less than $2 a gallon, a border wall was being built, and we were disengaging from foreign wars.” Their response is generally an assortment of bitterness that is totally unrelated to the issues mentioned.
It’s no surprise that leftists have become so radicalized that they seem to have lost all reason and all perspective on matters related to Trump. It certainly tends to validate the Trump Derangement Syndrome that was coined to describe those who have lost all connection to reality when it comes to the former president. Moreover, it proves the power that propaganda has on the mind. If the MSM run an hourly drumbeat telling the public that Mr. X is a nogoodnik, the poison gets embedded into the psyche, which makes it nearly impossible to view him in any other way.
There’s a name for this form of psychosis: mass formation. Professor Mattias Desmet, a Belgian psychologist, gained worldwide recognition toward the end of 2021 when he presented the concept of mass formation as an explanation for the absurd and irrational behavior with regard to the COVID pandemic and its countermeasures. “In the beginning of the Corona crisis, back in February 2020, I started to study the statistics on the mortality rates of the virus, the infection fatality rates, the case fatality rate and so on, and immediately, I got the impression that the statistics and mathematical models used had dramatically overrated the danger of the virus,” Desmet said.
The professor went on to say that he quickly noticed that people simply didn’t want to know about the inaccuracies being promoted. He said it was as if they refused to see even the most blatant errors in the statistics being used. He decided to focus on the psychological mechanisms at play in the mind, and he became convinced that most people were made radically blind to everything that goes against the narrative they now believed in. They basically became incapable of distancing themselves from their beliefs, and therefore couldn’t take in or evaluate new data. The axiom “convince a man against his will, he’s of the same opinion still” seems applicable. It explains why people criticize Trump, even with all the evidence of his successful first term, while they give kudos to Biden, who has, undoubtedly, the worst record of any president in recent history.
A recognizable characteristic of mass formation is that once people are in the grip of it, they typically show a tendency of cruelty toward people who do not buy into the narrative or submit to it. They typically do so as if it were an ethical duty. Could this be why people not wearing masks were physically assaulted during the pandemic? Once “hypnotized” by a narrative, some will stigmatize non-believers, then attempt to destroy those who do not go along with the masses. People can be killed for not wearing a mask, and the hypnotized won’t raise an eyebrow. Children can die from starvation and friends can commit suicide from financial desperation, yet none of it will have a psychological impact on the hypnotized because, to them, the plight of others doesn’t register.
A perfect example of this psychological blinding to reality is how COVID jab deaths and injuries are simply unrecognized. People will get the vaccine, suffer massive injuries, and convince themselves how lucky they are because it could have been much worse if they hadn’t received the shot. They cannot conceive of the possibility that they were injured by the shot. Some have expressed gratitude for the shot, even after someone they loved died within hours or days of getting it. Only the psychological dynamics of hypnosis can explain this irrational and otherwise incomprehensible behavior.
It seems surreal to think people can be turned into mind-numbed robots with no will of their own. Nevertheless, it does explain why no amount of success by President Trump can be viewed fairly by those who have been mesmerized by powerful media organizations and left-wing Democrats. It also explains why people have been assaulted and even killed for the simple act of wearing a MAGA hat. Keep in mind that the left, in its continuous attempt to blame what they do on the right, still warns the public about white supremacists, who Biden says are the greatest threat to our country. Being blinded to the riots, looting, killing, and arson committed across the country in 2020 by BLM and Antifa, while calling for the harshest of punishment for the January 6 demonstrators is a perfect example of mass formation.
This is no longer the party of FDR, JFK, or even Bill Clinton, and it’s time to start calling a spade a spade.
Imagine this scenario:
You have a neighbor, Mr. Jones—a kind old man whose wife died years ago, who works in his small garden, wears the same old jacket all the time, and has a funny but genuine laugh.
One day, suddenly, Mr. Jones disappears.
Several days later, you notice some activity in his place—it looks like Mr. Jones—and you go to say hello. But suddenly, you realize this is a stranger. He looks like Mr. Jones, sounds a little like Mr. Jones, and acts in some ways like Mr. Jones. But it’s not him.
This person lives in Mr. Jones’ place, wears his clothes, works in the garden, and even has a strange imitation of his laugh. “Who are you?” you ask. He responds, “Why, I’m Mr. Jones, of course!”
But it’s not him.
This creepy scenario is what has taken place with the Democratic party.
One of the stated goals of communism, from the Congressional Record in 1963, was to take over one or both political parties from within.
They’ve succeeded.
In 1949, William Z. Foster, a chairman of the Communist Party USA, dedicated a book by writing “To My Great-Grandson Joseph Manley Kolko Who Will Live in a Communist United States.”
He seemed quite confident.
One of the many challenges real Americans now face is to start calling “Democrats” what they actually are. They’ll protest. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck, we need to call it a duck.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that communism is just a myth, that it isn’t real, or even if it is real, it only exists in faraway places like China, and anyone who mentions it is a conspiracist who deserves ridicule.
But let’s review a few basics:
They’re raiding and jailing their political opponents.
They’re turning the FBI, CIA, and IRS against American citizens.
They’ve come out against freedom of speech, religion, press, the Second Amendment, and other core American ideals.
They’ve abandoned the rule of law, and now have one set of laws for themselves and another for the rest of us.
They’re deliberately trying to bankrupt us—sometimes directly (through shutting down businesses), sometimes indirectly (through wasting trillions of our dollars.)
They’re indoctrinating our children with radical ideologies.
They celebrate infanticide.
They’re making secret deals with foreign entities against our interests.
They’re deliberately keeping our borders wide open to erase our national identity.
They mandate groupthink and conformity and punish anyone who doesn’t parrot their chosen narratives, however absurd.
They’re purging the best from our military and converting what’s left into a tool of Wokeism.
They’ve transformed our once-great American cities into crime-ridden hellscapes.
They relentlessly stoke division between everyone and never miss the slightest opportunity to accuse someone or something of being racist, sexist, phobic, supremacist, etc.
They constantly work to slander, cancel, and erase our Founding Fathers, American heroes, and America itself. (E.g., they removed the statue of Theodore Roosevelt from the American Museum of Natural History.)
They want to defund the police, release criminals from prisons and disarm the rest of us.
They defend terrorists. (Joe Biden: “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.”)
They’ve ignored the first principle of the Nuremberg Code, which was written in the aftermath of WWII, and which explicitly prohibits coerced consent for experimental medications. (See, e.g., here or here.)
They’ve tried to corrupt elections on a national scale.
They’ve openly stated their desire to abolish the family structure itself.
They’ve threatened to abolish the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, and dismantle the electoral college system.
They’re criminalizing normality on multiple fronts.
They’ve taken down American flags and raised other flags in government buildings and city streets, symbolizing their stealth political takeover.
Their leaders have literally kneeled to one form of the cause they actually serve in the Capital building.
This list could go on, yet they accuse us of turning against America.
All the above is straight out of the communist playbook.
For anyone new to all this, some good places to start are the documentaries The Agenda (parts I and II) by Curtis Bowers, resources from The Epoch Times, or books such as The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen or Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover. (While Hoover was flawed and the FBI has clearly gone downhill, the book itself, first published in 1958, is illuminating.)
If you’re reading this, the above is probably restating the obvious and confirming what you already know.
But many still haven’t put all the pieces together. Others find it all too wild or disturbing to think about. They’re still going about life as if the ground hasn’t shifted beneath their feet. The idea that we’re living through a worldwide communist revolution just seems too strange and bizarre.
But those who have actually lived through communist revolutions have been trying to warn us. Those who lived through Mao’s cultural revolution in China (Xi Van Fleet), former KGB agents (Yuri Bezmenov), FBI Directors (Hoover), Soviet prisoners (Solzhenitsyn), and many more have been sounding the alarms.
Few listened. Now we’re getting a taste of what they were trying to warn us about.
Tyrants don’t simply announce themselves openly and honestly. “Hi! I’m trying to become a tyrant, and I’d like to enslave you. Will you start obeying everything I say?” The serpent in the garden of Eden didn’t say, “Hi! I’m trying to turn you against the Almighty. Eat this, please.”
Instead, they make lofty, inspiring speeches. They promise free things. They appeal to our sense of hope, fairness, and justice. They claim to hold the solution to racial harmony, violence, and the literal death of the planet. They bribe the corrupt, seduce the gullible, and slander, disarm, and imprison everyone else.
Once they’re in power, the mask comes off. But by then, it’s too late.
The symbol of Fabian Socialism is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Too few of us see the wolf under the disguise. Far too many of us complain: “Why are you being so mean to this poor, innocent sheep?”
The word “Democrat” is now part of their disguise.
Few communists today call themselves communists. Some don’t even know they’re communists themselves. “Sure, I walk, talk, and act like a duck, but don’t call me a duck!” But the key lies in what they do, not the word on their name tags.
Others know exactly who they are. John Brennan, for example, admitted to voting for a communist party candidate in 1976. He eventually went on to become Director of the C.I.A.
Hoover said, “…we may not learn until it is too late to recognize who the communists are, what they are doing, and what we ourselves, therefore, must do to defeat them.”
We Americans have had it so good for so long that we’ve become complacent. Too many of us can hardly recognize wolves in our midst.
But that’s no longer Mr. Jones living there.
Viktor Orbán from Hungary recently said as much: “Don’t be afraid to call your enemies by their name.”
It’s time to put them on the defensive. We can stop calling them Democrats.
10 Similarities Between The FBI’s Mar-A-Lago Raid And Spygate
AUGUST 17, 2022
The DOJ and FBI think they can execute the same game plan they did for the last six years without the public noticing. They can’t.
by MARGOT CLEVELAND at the Federalist:
The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago reveals the deep-state cabal and their corrupt media partners deployed no fewer than 10 of the same tradecrafts used to push the Russia-collusion hoax. And with that, history is repeating itself with the same corrupt plot.
1. A Shocking Storyline of Trump Putting America at Risk
With the Russia-collusion hoax, Democrats and a complicit media cartel warned the country that Trump’s relationship with Russia presented a clear and present danger to America. While the reporting oscillated from Trump being too pally with Vladimir Putin to Putin having leverage over Trump, to Trump being a Russian agent, the narrative underlying the hoax was one that, if true, presented the public with a serious national security concern.
Similarly, the hoax surrounding the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home rests on claimed misconduct which, if true, raises concerns of a dire national security crisis. Like having a Russian stooge or agent in the White House, Trump keeping supposedly top-secret documents unsecured in his Florida home suggests a serious threat to our national security.
In both cases, the seriousness of the supposed threat to America’s national security seeks to justify the government’s extreme measures to target Trump.
2. The Building of a Narrative
To support the idea that Trump’s supposed misconduct created a serious risk to America, both the Biden administration and the press quickly converged on the “classified materials” narrative. But none of the crimes on which the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was premised involved crimes related to the illegal possession or storage of “classified materials.” Nonetheless, the media coverage immediately framed the raid as based on the presence of “classified” and even “top secret” materials. Supposed government sources even went so far as to claim the material kept at Trump’s home related to nuclear secrets.
Coverage of the raid sought to further cement this narrative in the public’s consciousness by quoting past public officials bemoaning Trump’s disregard for American secrets. By quickly framing the raid as concerning classified materials, the bad guys hoped the public would ignore the outrageousness of a search of a former president’s home. The backlash came nonetheless, but had the public understood that the fight concerned documents desired by the United States archivist, even stronger pushback would have been likely.
This same scenario played out with SpyGate, with the supposed standard-bearers of journalism reporting Trump and his campaign’s every connection to Russia to create a backdrop against which Trump would be believed to be a Russian collaborator. But unlike SpyGate, Americans have seen this show before and recognize the plot.
3. Leaks, Leaks Everywhere, and Not a Name to Seek
To build their preferred narrative, the Department of Justice and the FBI began leaking like a spigot. While Attorney General Merrick Garland stoically proclaimed during his press statement that he will speak through his court filings, his underlings sowed various storylines throughout the press — and always as unnamed sources.
Americans saw the same scenario from 2016 on, when leaks to the media revealed everything from the FISA surveillance of Carter Page, to the briefing of President Donald Trump on the salacious details of the Steele dossier. The leaks, then, sought to further the Russia-collusion storyline, and now they seek to push the idea that Trump committed a crime that threatens our country’s national security.
4. Same Suspicious Names
The names of the players involved in the Russia-collusion hoax and the hoax that’s going nuclear represent the fourth similarity. With the Russia-collusion hoax, the New York Times and the Washington Post served as the unofficial scribes for the government leakers, pushing whatever storylines best furthered the plots.
Shortly after news of the raid broke, the New York Times and the Washington Post began running tips from “unnamed government sources” “familiar with the investigation.” Not only were the same outlets used to peddle the DOJ and FBI’s selected and slanted leaks, but some of the same journalists involved in the Russia hoax have been covering the raid, such as Tom Hamburger whose emails with Fusion GPS exposed his connection to the scandal.
And then there’s Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who lied to the American public about the FISA applications used to surveil Carter Page. Schiff quickly expressed concern about the “top secret documents” the feds seized from Mar-a-Lago, but he remains snail-slow in apologizing for perpetuating the Russia-collusion hoax.
5. Don’t Question Authority
Schiff also pushed another ploy used in earlier get-Trump hoaxes, namely condemning criticism of the FBI. “The GOP’s unfounded attacks on the FBI are grossly irresponsible,” Schiff wrote in reference to criticism of the raid, adding that it “will only lead to further violence, if they do not stop.” Schiff’s comments add to those made by FBI Director Christopher Wray and Garland, both of whom chastised those who dared call into question the FBI’s integrity.
The country witnessed a similar going-on-the-offensive counter to complaints over the handling of the Russia investigation. But after four years of government officials defending the men and women of the FBI and the DOJ’s handling of Crossfire Hurricane, Americans discovered the rot ran straight through to the top. So the silence-them schtick seen of late is unlikely to work this time.
6. Changing Narratives
Another ploy unlikely to go unnoticed by the country after living through six years of the SpyGate scandal concerns the ever-changing justifications provided for the government’s targeting of a political enemy. Within the course of one week, a complicit media rolled out for the feds a constantly changing series of excuses for the Rubicon-crossing raid.
First, the possible presence of “nuclear secrets” justified the raid, and then when social media mocked that theory, the press moved to the need to protect “classified documents.” Next, the media floated the idea that videos suggested the documents were not secure and then changed the storyline again to say Trump people might be secretly moving the documents. Later came the theory that a confidential human source prompted the search, and later the rationale changed to the search being justified by a supposed lie Trump’s attorney told that there were no documents present at Mar-a-Lago marked classified.
The justification-of-the-day routine hearkens back to the changing rationales proffered to support Crossfire Hurricane. It was a tip about George Papadopoulos — well that and all these folks having connections to Russia. It wasn’t really the Steele dossier until it was again. But wait, the firing of FBI Director James Comey — that needs investigation too.
Nothing stood up then as a solid justification because nothing mattered but getting Trump. Everything else was a pretext. Nothing stands up to scrutiny now either.
7. Court Filings Are Too Important to Share
Another similarity between the hoaxes concerns the need to keep the court filings secret. In SpyGate, it took years before the government released the FISA applications submitted to obtain a court order to surveil Carter Page. And once released, the redactions made much of the information useless. Later, additional disclosures and the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse revealed that the FISA applications, on which the government obtained court approval to spy on Page, were replete with false representations and material omissions. Those applications proved so defective, in fact, that the government later conceded probable cause did not support the surveillance of Page.
In the case of the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the government similarly claims the search warrant application is too vital to be released. As a matter of law, the DOJ’s position is sound. As a matter of lessons learned, the secrecy surrounding the affidavit raises serious concerns that the basis for the search of Trump’s home would not withstand public scrutiny.
8. The Return of the Confidential Human Source
Among the leaks spread over the last week, the most familiar one concerned the FBI’s claimed use of a confidential human source. That CHS provided the FBI with important evidence concerning the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago and reportedly informed the government that Trump had withheld more documents than agents knew. This reporting by the CHS supposedly led the FBI to move forward with the search warrant application.
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation also involved the FBI’s use of CHS, such as Christopher Steele, Stefan Halper, and Rodney Joffe. And that experience leaves Americans leery of the news that a CHS provided the intel necessary to obtain the search warrant.
9. A Partisan Bureaucrat with a Disdain for Trump
As stories of Russia collusion began to unravel, Americans also learned of the anti-Trump sentiments shared by many of the agents on the Crossfire Hurricane team. The text exchanges between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok first woke the country to the reality that politics played a part in the probe. Later, an independent investigation into the prosecution of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn revealed a “get Trump” attitude permeated the entire investigation.
While it has not yet been even two weeks since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, substantial evidence of a political motive already exists. First, we have the disparate treatment between the former Republican president and the Democrat president’s son who is under investigation and has been since 2018. Then there’s the difference between the FBI’s kid-glove handling of Hillary Clinton and the raid used with Trump. The latter difference proves especially enlightening because both cases involved the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
When NARA, which until late April 2022, was led by head archivist David S. Ferriero, learned of Clinton’s use of a non-governmental email account, Ferriero did not “initiate[] an ‘Investigation’ of Secretary Clinton’s email practices.” Instead, he communicated “with the State Department on this matter” and “deferr[ed] to the State Department’s review (and any other agencies conducting Investigations).”
In contrast, after NARA retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago and discovered some contained documents marked as classified, NARA immediately requested that the DOJ investigate the matter. The DOJ then used a grand jury to subpoena documents from Trump, as well as to obtain footage from security cameras — investigative techniques never used with Clinton.
That NARA prompted the investigation of Trump and the use of a grand jury proves especially suspect given that Ferriero led the agency at the time and later admitted to retiring to ensure President Biden could choose his successor, suggesting a partisan heartbeat inside the bureaucrat. Ferriero also called Jan. 6 the worst day of his life and claimed when he saw Trump leaving the White House for the last time with a box, he asked himself, “What the hell’s in that box?” Such a response suggests a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome — something seen throughout the Crossfire Hurricane investigation too.
10. A Quick Denial Before Downplaying the Problem
A 10th similarly seen between the Russia-collusion hoax and the latest crusade to crush Trump involves the media’s penchant for denying charges against the government only later to downplay what agents did. With Crossfire Hurricane, you saw the press denying that any spying took place on Trump or his campaign. But once it came out that the government had a confidential human source record conversations with members of the Trump campaign and that an FBI agent presented a briefing for Trump and Flynn as part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the media spun the significance of those revelations by framing them as “not spying.”
Less than two weeks into the latest investigation of Trump, the press is putting on a repeat performance as seen by the immediate denial of Trump’s claim that the FBI seized his passports. But when the government admitted to taking Trump’s passports by mistake, the press merely spun the story as a mistake promptly corrected.
The DOJ and FBI, however, are making a bigger mistake: They continue to think they can execute the same game plan they did for the last six years without the public seeing the similarities. They can’t, and the widespread backlash to the search proves Americans refuse to be fooled again.
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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