Libertarian Leanings

Blue Wave Theory of Operation

In The Glory of Timely Leftist Overreach Dov Fischer offers some needed perspective on that "socialist wave" that swept Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Democratic nomination for a Bronx congressional seat.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got 16,000 votes and Joseph Crowley got 11,000 in a District of, uh, 691,000 people. Even ten percent is not an endorsement of an ideology. Look more closely at that District: (i) more than 40% of the population speak Spanish at home; (ii) 57% were born in Latin America; (iii) ethnic-racial composition 50% Hispanic, 11% Black, and 18% White.

The passage above illustrates the leftist/Democrat strategy as it was meant to work. Our totalitarian Democrats have abandoned all attempts at appealing to more conservative American voters, adopting a strategy, instead, of importing a new socialistically oriented electorate from Central and South America. Keys to the success of this strategy are 1.) lax or nonexistent enforcement of immigration laws and 2.) lax or nonexistent validation of voter identification.

Read the whole thing.  Fischer makes quite a few other entertaining observations.

Formula For Failure - A Retrospective

George Packer's New Yorker article, Witnessing the Obama Presidency, from Start to Finish, is a look at the Obama presidency through the eyes of Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser.  Rhodes has just written a book about it.

Ben Rhodes was the President’s speechwriter, foreign-policy adviser, and confidant. His book records the Administration’s struggle to shape its own narrative.

No doubt Packer considers the Obama presidency a success of historic proportions, and if there is any failure to be associated with it, it is a failure of the American people to fully appreciate and get behind Obama.  But the impact of Packer's article is that it explains the failures of the Obama Presidency, unintentionally of course.

Barack Obama was a writer before he became a politician, and he saw his Presidency as a struggle over narrative. “We’re telling a story about who we are,” he instructed his aide Ben Rhodes early in the first year of his first term. He said it again in his last months in office, on a trip to Asia—“I mean, that’s our job. To tell a really good story about who we are”—adding that the book he happened to be reading argued for storytelling as the trait that distinguishes us from other primates.

Seems a misguided theory that the United State presidency would be a struggle over narrative.  In retrospect it's a theory that fits the Obama presidency.  Think of ObamaCare as not so much an effort to improve health care than as a statement, a narrative: "This is who we are."  It went through congress and was signed into law on a strictly partisan vote with Republicans shut out of the negotiations.  It was Democrats saying who they were and who the Republicans were not.  When finally implemented — as much as it could be — health care costs went up instead of down as promised.  Some people were helped, and others — most — were not.  If you liked your health care plan, you could not keep your health insurance plan, as Obama had promised.  And if you liked your doctor, you couldn't necessarily keep your doctor, as Obama had promised.  Your doctor had to be part of your new health insurance network that replaced the one you couldn't keep because it didn't meet Obama's requirements — like men having to be covered for birth control pills.

The presidency as narrative is risky business when there is an ever changing narrative, especially when elements of it seemed to have a shorter and shorter shelf life.  But there is no doubting the centrality of narrative to Obama's presidency. 

Obama’s audience was both the American public and the rest of the world. His characteristic rhetorical mode was to describe and understand both sides of a divide—black and white, liberal and conservative, Muslim and non-Muslim—before synthesizing them into a unifying story that seemed to originate in and affirm his own.

Unfortunately, it was only in rhetorical mode that Obama understood both sides of a divide, but that was the narrative.  In reality, Obama had no interest in the any side of any divide other than his own.  This is a point that Packer himself inadvertently reinforced when he described the rise of Ben Rhodes.

The journalistic cliché of a “mind meld” doesn’t capture the totality of Rhodes’s identification with the President. He came to Obama with an M.F.A. in fiction writing from New York University and a few years on the staff of a Washington think tank. He became so adept at anticipating Obama’s thoughts and finding Obamaesque words for them that the President made him a top foreign-policy adviser, with a say on every major issue. Rhodes’s advice mostly took the form of a continuous effort to understand and apply the President’s thinking.

Rhodes brought nothing to the table other than a world view in lockstep with Obama's and a talent for putting it in grandiose words.  And that accounts for his meteoric rise in Washington politics.  Ben Rhodes didn't bring a specialized knowledge of foreign policy.  He was not the man to point out alternate perspectives to Obama, to shed new light on issues, or, heaven forbid, to challenge Obama's assumptions.  Rhodes was a magnificently successful sycophant, a yes man.  His selection as an adviser meant that U.S. foreign policy was guided almost solely by Obama, or more accurately by Obama's whim when reality stepped in to crush Obama's naivete.  Syrian red line?  Tell Vlad I'll have more flexibility after the election?  It was a foreign policy that almost invariably reacted to world events rather than dictated them, always with an eye towards domestic political consumption rather than productive results on the international stage.

There were two moments during their ten years together when a gap opened up between the President and his aide. The first came at the start of Obama’s second term, when the promises of the Arab Spring were unravelling. The second came with the election of a successor who pledged to dismantle everything Obama had stood for. In each case, Obama was forced into a reconsideration of his idea of progress, and Rhodes, a step or two behind, had to catch up. The drama of “The World as It Is” lies between these points.

A step or two behind and having to catch up.  That was Obama's idea of an adviser.  What advice could Rhodes possibly have given that Obama didn't already know about?  As a sympathetic observer George Packer is fully on board with the Obama/Rhodes approach, and equally oblivious.

In “The Final Year,” a new documentary that focuses on Obama’s foreign policy at the end of his Presidency, Trump’s victory leaves Rhodes unable to speak for almost a full minute. It had been inconceivable, like the repeal of a law of nature—not just because of who Trump was but also because of who Obama was. Rhodes and Obama briefly sought refuge in the high-mindedness of the long view—“Progress doesn’t move in a straight line,” Rhodes messaged his boss on Election Night, a reference to one of Obama’s own sayings, which the President then revived for the occasion: “History doesn’t move in a straight line, it zigs and zags.” But that was not much consolation. On Obama’s last trip abroad, he sat quietly with Rhodes in the Beast as they passed the cheering Peruvian crowds. “What if we were wrong?” Obama suddenly asked. Rhodes didn’t know what he meant. “Maybe we pushed too far. Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” Obama took the thought to its natural conclusion: “Sometimes I wonder whether I was ten or twenty years too early.”

Ponder the sentences I highlighted in bold print.  You question, could you have been wrong?  Of course not.  The "natural conclusion" is that you're ahead of your time.  Isn't that a relief.  Ben Rhodes thought so.

Rhodes wrestled with this painful blow. It sounded like a repudiation of everything they had done. But then he found an answer, and it was in keeping with the spirit of his years in service to Obama: “We were right, but all that progress depended upon him, and now he was out of time.”

"And now he was out of time."  Thank God!

Well, Do You Think About Things That You Do Think About?

Something is a recent blog post by Rod Dreher reminded me of a scene from a play.  The play, Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, dramatizes the 1925 trial of John Scopes who was eventually convicted and fined $100 for the crime of teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school.  It was the conflict of science vs. religion, enlightenment vs. bigotry, knowledge vs. ignorance.  In a dramatic climax science and enlightenment delivered a crushing defeat to the forces of ignorance. Though John Scopes and his fictional counterpart Bert Cates were both convicted, science and knowledge were vindicated in a fiery courtroom confrontation in which the progressive defense attorney thoroughly discredited the Christian conservative.

DRUMMOND (Sharply) The first day. Was it a twenty-four-hour day?

BRADY The Bible says it was a day.

DRUMMOND There wasn’t any sun. How do you know how long it was?

BRADY (Determined) The Bible says it was a day.

DRUMMOND A normal day, a literal day, a twenty-four-hour day? (Pause. BRADY is unsure.)

BRADY I do not know.

DRUMMOND What do you think?

BRADY (Floundering) I do not think about things that . . . I do not think about!

DRUMMOND Do you ever think about things that you do think about? (There is some laughter. But it is dampened by the knowledge and awareness throughout the courtroom, that the trap is about to be sprung) Isn’t it possible that first day was twenty-five hours long? There was no way to measure it, no way to tell! Could it have been twenty-five hours?

But in his blog post, The Backlash Is Building, Dreher shows that roles have gotten reversed over the decades.  In 1925 the public school teacher was punished for teaching the forbidden knowledge, the theory of evolution because it was said to contradict the story of Genesis as told in the Bible.  Progressives fought against that law and fought against the notion that there are some ideas that need to be suppressed.  Nowadays the progressives are the ones who punish heretical thought. 

When former Google engineer James Damore wrote an internal memo suggesting that Google's management might try a different strategies in their efforts to promote diversity at Google, retribution against him was swift and harsh.  His sin was to suggest that there are differences between men and women that might be taken into consideration.  Damore was fired.  But then unexpectedly, Damore's firing raised something of a backlash in the progressive ranks.

One of Dreher's readers writes:

The firing of James Damore back in August was what really made me start hesitating about my previous view that “political correctness” was, as Vox, the New Yorker, and all the other right-thinking people say, a Fox News attempt to discredit politeness. Here was a guy who was making a calm, carefully reasoned argument that some of Google’s diversity initiatives might not be the best way to achieve diversity, and that Googlers should be free to criticize such policies. In response, not only was he fired (and with a publicity that basically guarantees he’ll never work for a Silicon Valley firm again), but he was subjected to a regularly scheduled bout of Two Minutes’ Hate every day for weeks.

Now, I have no idea whether Damore’s arguments were sound. For all I know, the studies he cited might be garbage or his inferences might be wrong, although I doubt it, in light of at least some psychologists’ willingness to come forward and defend some of his claims. I have no investment in whether his arguments were successful, and for that matter, I doubt he did either. The point is that the very possibility of debate on this issue was foreclosed.

Dreher's leftist reader gets it about the nature of political correctness:  it's purpose is to end debate or preclude the possibility of it.  But I find the reader's disinterest in the soundness of Damore's arguments to be astonishing.  Why would one not examine Damore's arguments and form an opinion?  If Damore's ideas are so heretical that to voice them is to risk firing, blackball, and possibly financial ruin, isn't it worth the investment of a little time and effort to understand what they are?  What could be that bad about them?  Dreher's reader wasn't interested.

Or maybe there is some defensive self censorship going on.  But doesn't that seem particularly timid? Don't progressives pride themselves on speaking truth to power?  In this case truth was spoken anonymously.  Still, it's an encouraging development that progressive authority is questioned.  But even as they inch away from progressive dogma, doubters seem reluctant to think about things that they don't think about -- not interested in the soundness of opposing arguments.

Another of Dreher's leftist readers confessed:

I found myself perplexed that so many of the wonderful, God fearing people that I knew and loved had voted for Trump.

And so, for the first time in my life I began to really read people with whom I did not agree. I read conservative Reformed writers. I began to read your blog. I sought out other voices, some that had voted for Trump, some that fell closer to the “Never Trumper” category.

An amazing thing happened. I began to see that there were enormous logical inconsistencies in some of the things that I had thought, especially on cultural issues. I saw that my beliefs couldn’t stand up to rigorous thought and scrutiny. And more than that, if I claimed Christ, there were things that I believed and espoused, especially regarding abortion and sexuality, that had to change. I had gone looking for intellectual rigor and much to my surprise I found it not in Cultural Leftism, but in orthodox Christian, especially Reformed (broadly defined), thought.

So where do I find myself now? I still see Trump and his crew as an existential threat to our Republic. The wholesale destruction of democratic norms and the open and blatant corruption pains me (I might be unusual among [former] Leftists in that I have always had a great love of the Republic, with all of its flaws and foibles. It comes, I think, from being a deep student of the Revolutionary era).

The first thing that astonishes me is the confession that it might be unusual for leftists to harbor any "great love of the Republic."  We on the right always suspected as much.  There is certainly no love of the Constitution among progressives, but we never expected anyone come right out and say it.

The second thing that stood out was the admission of awakening to "enormous logical inconsistencies" in his own thinking, which came about when he began reading conservative writers.  Then in the very next paragraph, he says that he sees "Trump and his crew as an existential threat to our Republic."  He is pained by the "wholesale destruction of democratic norms," though it's not obvious to me what democratic norms have been destroyed.  But allow me to point out a logical inconsistency.  DACA.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.  DACA was the invention of former President Barack Obama.  Neither the House nor the Senate passed any legislation that would protect "undocumented" children -- those who were illegally brought to America, through no fault of their own -- from deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  Obama provided such protections for "Dreamers" by executive order. Doing so was so far outside of traditional democratic norms, that it should be considered unconstitutional.  Congress, the legislative branch, is supposed to pass legislation that the president signs or vetoes.  The president, the executive branch, is not supposed to make law on his own, yet the left embraces Obama's undemocratic imposition of DACA.

The DACA program was formed through executive action by former President Barack Obama in 2012 and allowed certain people who came to the U.S. illegally as minors to be protected from immediate deportation. Recipients, called Dreamers, were able to request “consideration of deferred action” for a period of two years, which was subject to renewal.

When Trump set a March 5, 2018 deadline to end the DACA program, unilaterally rescinding what Obama unilaterally imposed, the left howled in rage and ran to the courts where they found a sympathetic judge who ruled that a sitting president did not have the power to rescind the undemocratic action of his predecessor, and ordered that the DACA program continue.  The Trump administration appealed, but the Supreme Court declined to take up the case until the normal appeals process has completed. 

Here's the irony.  Trump imposed the March 5th deadline in order to push the House and Senate toward passage of comprehensive immigration reform that would include resolving the status of the Dreamers. The passage of comprehensive immigration reform by the House and Senate would be in keeping with the founding fathers' notion of democratic norms.  Trump was attempting to empower Congress.  Somehow, progressives consider this an existential threat to our Republic.

As to Inherit the Wind, it turns out there was more dramatic license taken than I had originally imagined.  Henry Drummond, fictional attorney for the defense and enlightened hero of the play, defeated a straw man in his cross examination of the hapless and bigoted Matthew Harrison Brady.  Brady was a creature from the imaginations of Lawrence and Lee.  He represented William Jennings Bryan who submitted to cross examination by Clarence Darrow in the real life Scopes trial.  But Clarence Darrow did not do as well the fictional Drummond in his cross examination.  Here is how the real life confrontation went, according to a University of Minnesota Law Library paper by Michael Hannon.  Questions are from Clarence Darrow.  Answers are from William Jennings Bryan.

Q—Then, when the Bible said, for in stance, "and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day," that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours?
A—I do not think it necessarily does.
Q—Do you think it does or does not?
A—I know a great many think so.
Q—What do you think?
A—I do not think it does.
Q—You think those were not literal days?
A—I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.
Q—What do you think about it?
A—That is my opinion--I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does.
Q—You do not think that?
A—No. But I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6,000,000 years or in 600,000,000 years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.
Q—Do you think those were literal days?
A—My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.

Unlike Brady, who lost all composure under the pressure of Drummond's questions, William Jennings Bryan was unflustered by Darrow's badgering.  Reading through the exchange I would have expected opposing counsel be jumping up to object: "Asked and answered," "Badgering the witness."  Further in the Hannon paper:

For later accounts it seems to make a difference whether the commentator actually read the transcripts of the two hour exchange between Darrow and Bryan and the contemporary accounts of the trial. Alan Dershowitz wrote of the Bryan versus Darrow duel:

"As usual, the real story, as told in the trial transcript and in contemporaneous accounts, was more complex and far more interesting. The actual William Jennings Bryan was no simple-minded literalist, and he certainly was no bigot. He was a great populist who cared deeply about equality and about the down-trodden."

Dershowitz also gives Bryan more credit than many other writers: “All in all, a reading of the transcript shows Bryan doing quite well defending himself, while it is Darrow who comes off quite poorly—in fact, as something of an antireligious cynic.”

There was an informality about the Scopes trial.  Bryan's testimony was voluntary. He was not sworn in.  As the trial progressed it was moved outside due to extreme summer heat.  They weren't sure at the end whether the judge or the jury should set the fine at $100.  It was a circus.  Through it all William Jennings Bryan held his own, contrary to what you might think if you get your history from the entertainment industry.

Funny to think that Inherit the Wind certain facts were suppressed in order to create the proper dramatic effect.  The play was about the battle to open young minds to theories of evolution, yet in making their point progressive playwrights had to hide the fact that the real life Christian conservative had held his own against the progressive in their debate over it.  Progressives are still busy hiding unfortunate facts.

The Secret Comey Memos

Byron York asks, "Why are the Comey memos secret?" You may recall that James Comey memorialized certain conversations he had with President Trump in form of memos to himself.  He then leaked them to the New York Times through a friend of his, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman.  He leaked the memos, he told Congress, for the purpose of getting a special prosecutor appointed.

Success!  That special prosecutor is Robert Mueller, who has convinced Judge James Boasberg that disclosure of those very memos "could reasonably be expected to interfere" with Mueller's ongoing investigation.  According to Congressman Trey Gowdy, Mueller and the Judge are correct.  Disclosure would interfere with the investigation.

"I have read the memos," Gowdy said on Fox News "Special Report" Monday. "They would be defense Exhibit A in an obstruction of justice case — not prosecution exhibit, defense Exhibit A. If Comey felt obstructed, he did a masterful job of keeping it out of the memos."

An obvious explanation for keeping the secret memos secret is that disclosure might reveal how utterly without merit an investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia really is, and by extension the pointlessness of trying to obstruct it.  All of which might hasten the point at which Mueller and his team of Clinton-contributing, Democratic prosecutors are out of work.

On the other hand, maybe Mueller is not really investigating Trump connections to Russia, but has other reasons for keeping the investigation open.  The Mueller-wears-a-White-Hat theory has Mueller investigating the investigators, perhaps in cooperation with the DOJ Inspector General.  Seems unlikely, but it's possible.  If we see indictments for lying to, or misleading, the FISA Court, or falsifying FBI form 302s, we will know which hat Robert Mueller wears, white or black.

Last updated February 15, 2018 at 12.38

The Democrats Respond To Trump's SOTU

How fitting that it was a Kennedy who delivered the Democrats' response to President Trump's State of the Union address.  Real Clear Politics billed it this way:

"Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, scion of one of America’s top political dynasties, is speaking after President Trump’s State of the Union address."

Last night the latest Kennedy aristocrat to burst onto the national scene launched into a diatribe remarkable for being so transparently dishonest, vicious, spiteful, and hypocritical. One straw man after another bit the dust as the photogenic Kennedy sought to establish himself as the new face of the same old Democratic party.  Good luck with that. 

Democrats may be looking to Joe Kennedy III to follow in the footsteps of Barack Obama whose breakout speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention inspired the nation and led to his election to the presidency only four years later.  Yet their speeches were not that alike.  Obama's held out the promise of unity, false promise that it was.  Funny that he noted there were those who would divide Americans, and then later we find that he, Obama, would be the divider.

"Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

Kennedy on the other hand takes division as the given.  The good, represented by himself and like minded aristocrats, must defeat the Trump-inspired racist rabble.

"This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us – they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.
For them, dignity isn’t something you’re born with but something you measure.

By your net worth, your celebrity, your headlines, your crowd size.

Not to mention, the gender of your spouse. The country of your birth. The color of your skin. The God of your prayers.

Their record is a rebuke of our highest American ideal: the belief that we are all worthy, we are all equal and we all count. In the eyes of our law and our leaders, our God and our government.

That is the American promise."

According the Joe Kennedy III, we are all worthy, equal, and we all count in the eyes of our law, our leaders, our God, and government.  Except somehow I don't think Hillary, or James Comey, or Loretta Lynch, or even Kennedy himself believe any of it.  In light of the sham investigation that held Hillary blameless for ignoring laws that sent others to jail, how could they believe it?  The law was certainly not intended to apply to Joe's great uncle Ted.  Ted Kennedy, you may recall, drove his car off a bridge and into a Chappaquiddick Island tidal channel with Mary Jo Kopechne in it.  He saved his own skin, but then didn't bother to report the accident for nine hours.  And he didn't bother to save Mary Joe.  She drowned, trapped in his car underwater.

Yes, Joe's speech was dishonest, vicious, and spiteful, but Joe Kennedy III was also being really dumb.  Really dumb.  Dumb like Hillary with her deplorables comment.  Kennedy had this to say about our year of strong economic growth and optimism:

"We see an economy that makes stocks soar, investor portfolios bulge and corporate profits climb but fails to give workers their fair share of the reward.
A government that struggles to keep itself open.

Russia knee-deep in our democracy.

An all-out war on environmental protection.

A Justice Department rolling back civil rights by the day.

Hatred and supremacy proudly marching in our streets."

The Democrats have painted themselves into a corner with identity politics.  Americans tend to reject policies that they see as encroachments on their freedoms, yet that's what the Democrats are constantly trying to sell to the voters.  Democrats have no issues that are not transparently about increasing their own power.  Democrats support labor unions and mandatory unionization wherever possible because union dues become party contributions.  Democrats support federal regulations on anything and everything because it provides an army of federal employees whose jobs depend on the Democrat vision of an ever expanding government, and because regulations can be used as weapons against political opponents.  Democrats support open borders and illegal immigration because Democrats depend on a stream of low income, unskilled workers who are more likely to become future Democratic voters.  Democrats oppose any form of voter ID validation because they make use of voter fraud in tight elections.

Most Americans do not belong to labor unions and many of those that do would prefer not to have mandatory dues automatically deducted from their pay.  Most Americans oppose unnecessary regulation and would prefer, if not smaller government, at least government that is efficient and cost effective.  Most Americans oppose illegal immigration.  Most Americans would like vote tallies to reflect an accurate count of legally cast ballots by eligible voters.  Democrats have decided that to win on these issues they have to convince voters that opposition is racist or cruel.

That leaves little else for Democrats to campaign on but the evil, the racism, the homophobia of whoever opposes them.  At the moment that happens to be Republicans, but the club could grow to include independents.  To use Hillary's words opponents are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it."  And just as Hillary miscalculated, Joe Kennedy III is not likely to shame anybody into anything.  Instead he will create even greater resentment in the hearts of Americans to those moralizing, pretentious progressives who want only to dictate to the rest of us.  Good luck, Joe.

Are We Looking at a Standoff?

Yesterday Michael Flynn entered a guilty plea to the charge of lying to the FBI about two meetings he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December of 2016.  According to reports Flynn is now cooperating in the investigation of alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia as it allegedly attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.  The stock market took a dive when Brian Ross of ABC News reported that candidate Donald Trump had instructed Flynn to reach out to Russian officials.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average which was hitting record highs suddenly dropped 350 points. 

Meanwhile euphoria gripped the fever swamps of the left.  Mueller had his "smoking gun."  With Flynn apparently poised to testify that Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians when he was a candidate, Mueller had proof that Trump colluded with Russians to rig the U.S. presidential election.  Then came ABC's correction.

Ross issued a “clarification” to his report on ABC “World Tonight,” hours after the initial bombshell allegation about pre-election Russia contacts was made on air.

“A clarification tonight on something one of Flynn’s confidants told us and we reported earlier today,” Ross told ABC “World Tonight” host David Muir.

“He said the president had asked Flynn to contact Russia during the campaign. He’s now clarifying that, saying, according to Flynn, candidate Trump asked him during the campaign to find ways to repair relations with Russia and other world hot spots. And then after the election, the president-elect asked him to contact Russia on issues including working together to fight ISIS.”

The stock market began to rebound even before Ross's correction was announced, probably buoyed by the anticipated Senate tax reform vote.  By market close the Dow had recovered to where it was only 40 points down from its previous close, still well above the 24,000 barrier it had broken through on the day before.  Lefty dreams of impeachment began to fade.  There's still nothing about contacts between Trump's transition team and foreign leaders that was anything but the normal practice for an incoming administration.

But with Flynn's guilty plea we finally have a crime related to the 2016 elections.  Up to now the only known illegality is the leaking of unmasked names of Trump campaign personnel who were under surveillance by the Obama administration.  There may be other illegalities and in my opinion there probably are, like the surveillance itself, but the leaking of unmasked names are the only actions we know of with a certainty that are against the law.

Also since Flynn entered his plea, there's been a lot of talk about all the leverage Special Counsel Robert Mueller might now have for getting Flynn to incriminate President Trump.  With Mueller breathing down his neck, you get the sense that all the pressure is on Trump, but that may not be quite true.  The saying goes, if you take a shot at the king, you better kill him, so what might Mueller have to worry about if he takes his shot? 

Answer:  Uranium One.  

An FBI investigation that began prior to 2010 had accumulated substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in a scheme of bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering that was intended to expand Russia's atomic energy business inside the United States.  Documentary evidence showed that President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation received millions of dollars during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Rather than bring immediate charges in 2010, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) continued investigating the matter for nearly four more years, essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.

The first decision occurred in October 2010, when the State Department and government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, giving Moscow control of more than 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.

When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she “never intervened ... on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter.”

In 2011, the administration gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling U.S. nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.

“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials.

So how would all of this be a problem for Mueller?  Answer:  Robert Mueller was head of the FBI when the investigation began in 2009.  And, oddly enough, James Comey was FBI director when it ended in 2015.  

The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigations of all things related to Russia, his deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Counsel.  It was Andrew McCabe's wife, you may recall, who received more than a half million dollar campaign contribution from now Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe for her Virginia state Senate campaign.  Thicker than thieves.

To sum up the Uranium One scandal, a lot of money changed hands, Russia got uranium, the Clintons got millions, the Clinton Foundation got hundreds of millions, and the investigating team, that included Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, and James Comey, were apparently looking the other way while it all went down.  Inquiring minds are beginning to ask questions.

So, what will Robert Mueller do?  Can he keep himself out of the crosshairs when Congress begins to demand to know how the Uranium One deal really went down?  What does Robert Mueller know about Uranium One?  Will he help himself by going hard after President Trump, or somebody in his family like Jared Kushner?  

Or would he be better off looking into the origins and financing of the Steele Dossier?  That would turn his focus on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, since it's been reported that Hillary and the DNC paid for the dossier, transactions that sent Clinton campaign and DNC money through Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to "Russian sources."  And once his attention turns to Hillary's indirect collusion with the Russians, would his investigation then be expanded to include the Clinton Foundation.

Trump and Mueller may be at something of a standoff.  Trump can't fire Mueller, and Mueller doesn't seem to have anything on Trump.  So far Mueller's investigation looks like a rerun of the Scooter Libby persecution.  Is Michael Flynn playing the Scooter Libby role in Robert Mueller's shot at bringing Trump down?  And what happens if his shot doesn't kill the king?

Uranium One

The Uranium One scandal is back in the news, not that it was ever really gone.  According to The Hill, an undercover FBI informant who has gathered extensive evidence of corruption surrounding Russia's purchase of Uranium One and its U.S. assets, will soon testify before Congress.  The Hill has reviewed the documents.

An FBI informant gathered extensive evidence during his six years undercover about a Russian plot to corner the American uranium market, ranging from corruption inside a U.S. nuclear transport company to Obama administration approvals that let Moscow buy and sell more atomic fuels, according to more than 5,000 pages of documents from the counterintelligence investigation.

The memos, reviewed by The Hill, conflict with statements made by Justice Department officials in recent days that informant William Campbell’s prior work won’t shed much light on the U.S. government’s controversial decision in 2010 to approve Russia’s purchase of the Uranium One mining company and its substantial U.S. assets.

Campbell documented for his FBI handlers the first illegal activity by Russians nuclear industry officials in fall 2009, nearly an entire year before the Russian state-owned Rosatom nuclear firm won Obama administration approval for the Uranium One deal, the memos show.

The FBI and the DOJ have been less than cooperative with congressional investigations, seeking to prevent Congress from hearing testimony from its informant.  One gets the picture that there was a coordinated effort by Deep State officials and Clinton friendly media to kill the story and block the evidence from coming out.

Uranium One was a large enough concern for the informant that he confronted one of his FBI handlers after learning the CFIUS had approved the sale and that the U.S. had given Mikerin a work visa despite the extensive evidence of his criminal activity, the source said.

The agent responded back to the informant with a comment suggesting “politics” was involved, the source familiar with Campbell’s planned testimony said.

Justice officials said federal prosecutors have no records that Campbell or his lawyer made any allegations about the Uranium One deal during his debriefings in the criminal case that started in 2013, but acknowledged he collected evidence about the mining deal during the FBI counterintelligence investigation that preceded it.

In recent days, news media including The Washington Post and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith have inaccurately reported another element of the story: that Uranium One never exported its American uranium because the Obama administration did not allow it.

However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorized Uranium One to export through a third party tons of uranium to Canada for enrichment processing, and some of that product ended up in Europe, NRC documents state.

A Uranium One executive acknowledged to The Hill that 25 percent of the uranium it shipped to Canada under the third-party export license ended up with either European or Asian customers through what it known in the nuclear business as “book transfers.” 

The Uranium One scandal has been around for more than a year.  It was first revealed by Peter Schweizer in Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, which was released in July of 2016.  A few months later Andrew McCarthy reported on it in a National Review article entitled Clinton’s State Department: A RICO Enterprise.

In a nutshell, in 2005, under the guise of addressing the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Kazakhstan (where the disease is nearly nonexistent), Bill Clinton helped his Canadian billionaire pal Frank Giustra to convince the ruling despot, Nursultan Nazarbayev (an infamous torturer and human-rights violator), to grant coveted uranium-mining rights to Giustra’s company, Ur-Asia Energy (notwithstanding that it had no background in the highly competitive uranium business). Uranium is a key component of nuclear power, from which the United States derives 20 percent of its total electrical power.

In the months that followed, Giustra gave an astonishing $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and pledged $100 million more. With the Kazakh rights secured, Ur-Asia was able to expand its holdings and attract new investors, like Ian Telfer, who also donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Ur-Asia merged with Uranium One, a South African company, in a $3.5 billion deal — with Telfer becoming Uranium One’s chairman. The new company proceeded to buy up major uranium assets in the United States.

Documentation provided by Campbell and his testimony will soon be in front of Congress.  Will the Clinton Crime Family be finally brought to justice?  Time will tell, but it's an encouraging sign to see Bill's liberal allies, who once gave him a pass for his sexual harrassment and abuse, now backing away. 

Rats Moving Towards the Portholes?

There is an emerging picture that shows a Special Prosecutor who might just be taking very special care to avoid appearances of a Republican driven witch hunt.  Although Robert Mueller was ostensibly appointed to investigate Trump campaign connections to Russia, it's the Democratic presidential campaign that may be the one to come under fire from the Justice Department.  This particular suspicion is not new for me, though at times it has seemed quite far fetched.  It begins to seem less far fetched in light of an essay by Donna Brazile in today's Politico.

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC tells of Brazile's discovery that Hillary Clinton and the DNC may not have behaved in an entirely ethical manner in their treatment of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primaries.   Brazile writes:

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

This is an astonishing admission, given Brazile's well known loyalty to the Clintons and the Democratic party.  So, why does she bare her soul at this particular moment.  The answer may lie in the tenuous, verging on nonexistent link between the Trump campaign and indictments just handed down by Robert Mueller.

Greg Jarrett of Fox News reminds us today that no one in the Trump campaign has committed the crime of colluding with Russia.  There is a good reason to believe this.  "Collusion" is not a crime. 

It is not a crime to talk to a Russian. Not that the media would ever understand that.  They have never managed to point to a single statute that makes “colluding” with a foreign government in a political campaign a crime, likely because it does not exist in the criminal codes.

In fact, the indictments against Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, are all related to tax evasion, money laundering, and failure to register as a foreign agent, and all of those alleged misdeeds occurred before Manafort was connected to the Trump campaign.   As to the guilty plea by George Papadopoulos, he pled to a single charge of making false statements to the FBI, in which he misstated certain sequences of events around his attempts to arrange a Trump campaign meeting with Russians that never occurred.

But, as Greg Jarrett reports, there is evidence of other crimes committed by a political campaign in the 2016 presidential election.

It is against the law for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to funnel millions of dollars to a British spy and to Russian sources in order to obtain the infamous and discredited Trump “dossier.” The Federal Election Campaign Act (52 USC 30101) prohibits foreign nationals and governments from giving or receiving money in U.S. campaigns. It also prohibits the filing of false or misleading campaign reports to hide the true purpose of the money (52 USC 30121). This is what Clinton and the DNC appear to have done.

Most often the penalty for violating this law is a fine, but in egregious cases, like this one, criminal prosecutions have been sought and convictions obtained. In this sense, it could be said that Hillary Clinton is the one who was conspiring with the Russians by breaking campaign finance laws with impunity.

It is, perhaps, telling that today is the day that Politico carries an article by Donna Brazile lamenting a moral lapse where Hillary and the DNC stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders?  Brazile seems such an unlikely candidate for raising questions of integrity.  Back in November of 2016, Brazile was not in the least bit apologetic about helping Hillary beat out Bernie for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though CNN dropped her as contributor after they found she had leaked debate questions to Hillary ahead of a primary debate.

Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is not only refusing to apologize for giving debate questions to candidate Hillary Clinton. She's also saying she would do it again if given the opportunity.

“My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear,” she said in an interview with talk-radio host Joe Madison that aired on Monday.

...

The far-from-contrite political veteran also recycled her discredited claims that the hacked emails that exposed her perfidy against presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders were somehow altered by Russian intelligence agents.

A year has gone by.  The Hillary presidency, almost universally expected to be a slam dunk as the election returns began to come in, evaporated overnight.  And now today Brazile tells us about her emotional apology to Bernie.  She made it, she said, right after her alleged search for evidence of DNC corruption did not come up empty.

I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”

...

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.

Last year Brazile had no regrets after she had cheated for Hillary in the debates.  She said she would do it all again.  But this year she tells us Hillary was a cancer, or Hillary's actions were a cancer, and that she knew it before the election.  Donna Brazile is one of the Democratic party's most faithful.  She is a nationally prominent Democratic activist, and she has been for decades.  She was an adviser to Bill Clinton in his presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996.  Twice she was interim head of the Democratic National Committee.

But today she throws Hillary under the bus, and in the process throws Debbie Wasserman-Schultz under with her.  Both of them might soon be in potentially serious legal trouble — DWS for her connections to and employment of Imran Awan, Hillary for the offenses described above by Greg Jarrett.

It has been reported that President Trump met with Robert Mueller the day before Mueller was appointed to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.  It has also been reported that Robert Mueller loaded up his team with prosecutors who have personally contributed — some rather heavily — to the Democratic party and/or  Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton.  The total amount contributed by Team Mueller is reported to be in the vicinity of $50,000.  It makes sense to me that, if any Democrats are ever to be prosecuted by the Trump Department of Justice, it had better be loyal Democrats who do the prosecuting.

Hillary is toxic and the Democratic party is deep trouble.  For Hillary to take such a smack from Donna Brazile, an activist Democrat whose party loyalty seems to outweigh her honesty, it signals, at the very least, an astounding decline in Hillary's political influence.  The Clinton crime family remains afloat, but signs are it will soon be taking on water.  Today's confession by Donna Brazile suggests that the rats are headed for the portholes.

Congressmen Press the U.S. Mint for Action on Counterfeit Gold and Silver Coins

The following article was provided by Jp Cortez, assistant director at Sound Money Defense League.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Washington, DC (October 27, 2017) -- Congressmen Alex Mooney (R-WV) and Frank Lucas (R-OK) today delivered a formal letter to the United States Mint and Secret Service, urging aggressive action on the growing problem of high-quality counterfeits of U.S. precious metals coins entering the country from China and elsewhere.

“Enclosed herewith is a 1995 1 oz. Gold American Eagle coin, carrying a face value $50 and ostensibly minted by the U.S. Mint,” Mooney and Lucas wrote.  “You are free to keep it, as it’s a worthless tungsten fake.”

As members of the House Financial Services subcommittee which oversees the U.S. Mint, Congressmen Mooney and Lucas are seeking information from the government institution responsible for the production of coinage for the United States, such as “the nature and quantity of complaints – and resulting investigations – regarding counterfeit U.S. gold, silver, and platinum coins within the last two years,” and “what anti-counterfeiting programs, if any, are in place to protect the integrity of U.S. coins minted specifically of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium.”

The congressmen request information as to whether, and to what extent, the U.S. Mint has taken proactive steps to protect the integrity of America’s minted coins, including reviewing and implementing the anti-counterfeiting measures already put in place certain foreign government and private mints.

And they seek clarification regarding the “expected roles of the Secret Service, U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement, and other federal law enforcement agencies in detecting and investigating counterfeits of U.S. coins minted of precious metals and the extent of their coordination with the U.S. Mint.”

The congressmen also raised concerns about a Secret Service decision not to investigate the origin of a counterfeit batch of Gold American Eagle coins when the matter was recently brought to its attention.

“We commend Representative Mooney and Representative Lucas for their actions in defending sound money and for beginning to exercise Congressional oversight duties in accordance with Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution,” said Stefan Gleason, director of the Sound Money Defense League.

“We look forward to a meaningful explanation from the U.S. Mint and the Secret Service for what appears to be a lackadaisical attitude toward protecting the only constitutional currency that is currently even produced by the federal government,” said Gleason.

A full copy of the congressional letter can be found here.

The U.S. Mint produces American Gold Eagles, Silver Eagles, and other precious metals coins.

 

Crickets

Hey, Lefties: Where Are Your Pussyhats Now?   Good question!

No group was more offended by Trump’s remarks, or so it seemed, than the newly minted Puritans of Hollywood. Celebrities went ballistic, firing off furious and anguished tweets about the Republican presidential candidate. Film producers, television actors, movie stars: everyone had something to say about Trump and many equated his remarks to sexual assault. 

Oh but that was so last year.

Now, here we are, one year later, and the New York Times just published a bombshell expose about one of Hollywood’s most powerful men, Harvey Weinstein. The lecherous behavior of this disgusting man is one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets; no doubt the Times could have an ongoing series of articles about this movie-making, sexual predator. Like many Hollywood moguls, Weinstein parlayed his fortune and influence into political power, becoming a major Democratic party donor and fundraiser. Since 1990, he has contributed more than $1 million to Democratic PACs, officeholders, and candidates, many of whom must have been aware of Weinstein’s reputation as a first-rate vulture.

[...]

The ire about the p*ssy tape never was about sexual harassment or women’s empowerment. It’s just liberal politics as usual.

Media Ignores Massive September Employment Growth

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy lost of 33,000 jobs in September according to its payroll survey, buts its household survey shows "Employed" went up by 906,000.  That's an astonishing number.  In general, the media are focusing on decline in company payrolls and ignoring the household survey.  Under the headline "U.S. Sheds Jobs on Hurricane Loss, but Unemployment Falls" the Wall Street Journal highlights the 33,000 jobs reportedly lost in September. The Labor Department Friday reported the first decline in U.S. nonfarm payrolls in seven years, suggesting the economy took a hit from hurricanes in Florida and Texas. The "economy took a hit" but "unemployment falls."  How does that happen?  Easier than you might think.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures employment using two surveys, the payroll survey and the household survey.  The payroll survey counts the number of people on company payrolls as reported by the companies.  In the household survey, a households are queried as to the number of people in the household and how many are employed.  The household survey is generally considered more accurate because it takes self-employment into account and other forms of employment that might not show up on company payrolls. So the Journal reported on the payroll survey for jobs numbers and on the household survey for the unemployment rate, but it said nothing about the jobs numbers as reported in the household survey.  The household survey numbers are strikingly at variance with the payroll survey numbers.  Take a look at the snapshot below taken from the Household Data in the BLS Employment Situation Summary Table.

The unemployment rate is calculated as the percentage of people considered to be in the civilian labor force who do not have paying jobs.  The civilian labor force number is a moving target because people who have given up looking for a job, even though they may be employable and not employed, are not considered to be in civilian labor force.  In September the civilian labor force grew by 575,000.  Some of this is attributed to workforce population growth of 205,000, but the larger number, 368,000, includes the number of people who have started looking for work again after having previously given up.  Scrolling down on the BLS Employment Situation page brings you to Frequently Asked Questions and this (boldface is mine): 1. Why are there two monthly measures of employment? The household survey and establishment survey both produce sample-based estimates of employment, and both have strengths and limitations. The establishment survey employment series has a smaller margin of error on the measurement of month-to-month change than the household survey because of its much larger sample size. An over-the-month employment change of about 100,000 is statistically significant in the establishment survey, while the threshold for a statistically significant change in the household survey is about 500,000. However, the household survey has a more expansive scope than the establishment survey because it includes self-employed workers whose businesses are unincorporated, unpaid family workers, agricultural workers, and private household workers, who are excluded by the establishment survey. The household survey also provides estimates of employment for demographic groups. For more information on the differences between the two surveys, please visit https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ces_cps_trends.htm. It's safe to say that 906,000 is a statistically significant change.  In order for the unemployment rate to go down, employment had to increase by more than 575,000, and it did.  It went up by an astonishing number.  Compare that to August where, if you do the arithmetic, the chart shows that "Employed" went down by 74,000. What might account for a statistically significant change in the household survey?  One factor could be the business climate under the business friendlier Trump administration.  Another could be consumer confidence and general confidence which has seems to have gone up since Trump took office.  Improvements in technology and internet services might also have had an impact by making it easier for people to launch home based businesses.  And finally, the reduction in federal regulations may be making the prospects of joining the ranks of the self-employed less and less daunting.  Whatever, 906,000 is an astounding number. What is not astonishing is the media's unwillingness to report it.  They just can't bear the thought of good news on Trump's watch.

Facebook's Fight Against Fake News -- Under Direction of Then-President Obama

Who would have guessed that it was at President Barack Obama's urging that Facebook disabled Libertarian Leanings ad account?  Connecting the dots here!

A Fox News report describes Embarrassment at The Washington Post over a story implying that Obama reached out to Mark Zuckerberg specifically about Russian Facebook ads in the 2016 election.  The truth is Obama did not mention Russia when he spoke to Zuckerberg, but he did want Facebook to filter out other "Fake News."

The Washington Post has made a correction to an explosive cover story that undermines the entire premise of Monday’s front-page article headlined, "Obama sought to prod Facebook on Russia role."

The problem, according to a Facebook executive, is that when Obama reached out to the social media giant in 2016 to discuss political disinformation spreading on the site, he didn’t actually call out Russia – essentially making the Post’s headline misleading and inaccurate. Or, as President Trump would call it, “fake news.”

As first reported by Axios, the Post added significant information to the digital version of the story with the disclaimer, “This story has been updated with an additional response from Facebook.” The response from Facebook that didn’t make the paper’s print edition is vital and changed the story enough that the word “Russia” was removed from the updated headline.

The story detailed how then-President Obama gave Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a “wake-up call” regarding fake news spreading on his social media platform. After reporting that Obama “made a personal appeal to Zuckerberg to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously," the paper has added that Obama “did not single out Russia specifically."

So far as I know, while Obama did not specifically single Russia, he did not single out out Libertarian Leanings either.  However, Facebook did respond to Obama's appeal, and it did disable Libertarian Leanings' Facebook ad account in the aftermath.  Yes, my friends, the opinions that I have shared on Libertarian Leanings are fake news according to Facebook.  

My story begins in February of 2015 when I created a Libertarian Leanings Facebook page with the objective of increasing the reach of the Libertarian Leanings blog.  One of Facebook's tools that I thought would help me do this is Facebook advertising.  For a small fee, my range was $5 to $20, Facebook would promote a Libertarian Leanings post by advertising it on the Facebook pages of an audience that I could target within a certain set of parameters.  Truth be told, the advertising didn't help much.  Most Facebook users never bothered to click through to the Libertarian Leanings article that I hoped to promote.  Be that as it may, that advertising tool is no longer available to Libertarian Leanings.

Libertarian Leanings apparently fell from favor shortly before the November 8th presidential election.  On the Friday, November 4th I published an essay on the Libertarian Leanings blog stating my intention to vote for Donald Trump and the reasons for my choice.  Simultaneously, a link to the essay was established on the Libertarian Leanings Facebook page.  I went to Facebook and clicked on the button "boost" the post.  My ad was accepted and I began to see increasing numbers of "people reached" by my Facebook entry.

Then, inexplicably, I received notification that my ad was rejected.  I appealed the rejection, asking why the ad was rejected.  I got a reply saying that after further review my ad was acceptable.  The display showing number of people reached resumed its upward progress, and for an added bonus the boost button offered me the opportunity to add to advertising budget and reach even more people.  I took it.  Wrong move.

Clicking on the boost button got the ad rejected again.  Here is the exchange between me and Facebook.

What you submitted

Nov 4, 2016

Ad ID

6060171929831

Additional Information

I'd like to know specifically why the ad was rejected. What profanity should be removed? What viewers were harrassed, or whose racial, ethnic, or other attributes were disparaged?

Our reply

Nov 5, 2016

Hi Tom,

Thank you for notifying us about your ad disapproval.

We've reviewed your ad again and have determined it complies with our policies. Your ad is now approved.

Your ad is now active and will start delivering soon. You can track your results in Facebook Ads Manager.

Have a great day!

Did you find our support helpful? Please give us feedback

Thanks, Michael Facebook Ads Team >On Fri Nov 4, 2016 16:06:03, Tom Bowler wrote: >Ad ID : 6060171929831 >Additional Information : I'd like to know specifically why the ad was rejected. What profanity should be removed? What viewers were harrassed, or whose racial, ethnic, or other attributes were disparaged? >

Your reply

Nov 6, 2016

So now that you've reconsidered my ad and decided that it complies, and offered me the option to boost it, you've rejected the boost for the same reasons you rejected the original ad. Can you explain that to me?

Apparently, appealing the decision was no longer an option because the ad had been appealed once and then ultimately denied.

I was annoyed, but in the end I prevailed.  In spite of Facebook's efforts at blocking my message, I was able to get Donald Trump elected!  Of course, it's within the realm of possibility that other factors contributed to Trump's victory.  In any event, I didn't bother to pursue the issue of my rejected Facebook ad.

And then, on February 20, 2017 I received five identical emails from the Facebook ad team notifying me that my advertising account was disable

"Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation
From Facebook Ads Team advertise-noreply@support.facebook.com              
Sent Mon, Feb 20, 2017 12:26 pm
To Tom Bowler [redacted]*

Header Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation
Account Id: [redacted]*

Hi Tom,

Your ad account has been disabled for promoting ads which violate our Facebook Ad Guidelines.

Any ads you are running under the Ad Account ID listed above have been turned off. If you believe this has been a mistake, please contact us.

We also suggest reviewing our e-learning Blueprint module to better understand Facebook Ad Guidelines."

*Account Id redacted by the Libertarian Leanings security team

There was a button that said I could "Learn More."  The button took me a form where I could sign up to learn by providing my name and email address.  I decided I'd pass on the educational opportunity.  Five messages.  In case I missed the point.  I replied to one of them:

From: [redacted]*
To:
Subject: Policy Disabled Ad Account Help

Account Admin Name: Tom Bowler
Account Id: [redacted]*
Account Admin Email: [redacted]*
Is this your account?: Yes
Advertiser Account ID: 10152309798028414
Please provide information that will help us investigate: I haven't boosted any of my posts since November 4th when my boost was inexplicably rejected. I was never told why it was rejected, just as there is no indication why you are disabling my account at this time. I would like to know why, but only out of curiosity. I have no plans to spend money advertising on Facebook in the future.

*Account Id and email address redacted by the Libertarian Leanings security team

Oddly enough, later that afternoon I was given a reason that my original boost was rejected. And then rejected again after it was temporarily given a pass.

Your Ad Is Not Delivering
From Facebook notification+odv=ofg1@facebookmail.comhide details
Mon, Feb 20, 2017 5:26 pm
To Tom Bowler [redacted]*

Your Ad Is Not Delivering

Your ad's image contains too much text which is preventing delivery of your ad to your audience. Click any of the links below to manage your ad, and make changes to reduce the amount of text in your ad's image to fix this issue.

The following ad needs your attention (1) View Ads

Account: Tom Bowler Campaign: Post: "I will be voting for Donald Trump next Tuesday...."Ad Set: Post: "I will be voting for Donald Trump next Tuesday...."
Boosted Post: Post: "I will be voting for Donald Trump next Tuesday...."

Three days later, on February 23rd, I got a note from Mary of the Facebook Ad Team explaining nothing.

Facebook info+j3r1n1sa.aeaskwoqp4bua@support.facebook.com
Re: Policy Disabled Ad Account Help From Facebook info+j3r1n1sa.aeaskwoqp4bua@support.facebook.comhide details
Thu, Feb 23, 2017 7:25 am
To Tom Bowler [redacted]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for reaching out to us. Your account has been disabled for not following Facebook's Advertising Guidelines.

Ad accounts are evaluated for policy compliance and quality of ad content. When accounts have run ads that are not policy compliant, they are disabled.

Your account was disabled for running misleading ads that resulted in high negative feedback from people on Facebook. Our goal is to provide the highest quality user experience. We reserve the right to reject any advertising that we deem contrary to these objectives. Similarly, we reserve the right to close an account creating ads contrary to these objectives.

For this reason, if any of your ads have been removed or your ad account has been disabled, we will be unable to reactivate either. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please consider this decision final.

Thanks for your understanding,

Mary
Facebook Ads Team
Facebook

I replied to Mary of the Facebook Ad Team:

-----Original Message----
From: Tom Bowler [redaced]

To: Facebook
Subject: Re: Policy Disabled Ad Account Help

 

Hi Mary,

Thanks for your reply. Sadly, you have not answered my question. Specifically, why was my account disabled? To say that my ads were misleading provides no information. What ad? How was it misleading? What was the substance of the negative feedback?

I'm suspicious because the last thing I attempted to advertise on Facebook was a post explaining my vote for Donald Trump. The post was not so much a plug for Donald Trump as it was a slam of Hillary Clinton. That was November 4th. Then three months later you decide to disable my account. No advertising in the meantime.

Is this part of Facebook's crackdown on "fake news?" The sequence of events leads me to only wonder if it was my extremely negative view of Hillary Clinton that was considered "misleading" by the Facebook Ads Team. Undoubtedly there are some in the Facebook community who would find the appearance of so a negative view of Hillary Clinton on Facebook something less than "the highest quality user experience." Is that the real problem?

This is not an appeal of your decision to disable my account. When the ad for my November 4th post was rejected, I immediately decided that I had purchased advertising on Facebook for the last time. That decision is final.

That said, I would still like answers to my questions and I believe I deserve them. What ads were misleading? In what way were they misleading? What was the substance of the negative feedback?

Sincerely,

Tom Bowler

 

Mary from the Facebook Ad Team replied the next morning:

 

Re: Policy Disabled Ad Account Help

From: Facebook info+j3r1n1sa.aeaskwoqp5kle@support.facebook.com
Fri, Feb 24, 2017 8:40 am
To: Tom Bowler [redacted]

Hi Tom,

After careful review, I’ve determined that we’re unable to take further action regarding this matter.

Thanks,

Mary
Facebook Ads Team
Facebook

 

After careful review, no explanation -- none forthcoming, and none needed really.  Facebook's fight against Fake News was a transparent ploy to suppress conservative and libertarian viewpoints, or anything that might have negatively impacted Hillary's presidential aspirations.  This was exactly what President Obama was asking Zuckerberg to do.  And so the good folks at Facebook took action,but their effort failed.  While they might have limited the reach of Libertarian Leanings and others like me, they were unable to suppress Hillary.

Gold and Lord Rama - The Reason for the Diwali Season

The following article was written by Jp Cortez, assistant director at Sound Money Defense League.  It was originally published at www.soundmoneydefense.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 19, 2017 marks an important holiday in the Indian culture. Diwali begins. Diwali is one of the biggest festivals for Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. It is a lavish celebration of the victory of light over darkness with its gleaming candles, luxurious works of art, and opulent feasts. Diwali is also characterized by gift giving. Buying and gifting gold is considered auspicious during Diwali.

Given the nature of the holiday and the number of people who celebrate it, according to CNBC, the past few years have seen a tendency for the gold price to rise around Diwali. Last year during Diwali, Mihir Kapadia, founder & CEO of Sun Global Investments, said “As heavy consumers, the festive seasons always tend to surge the demand, and considering the current low prices, this should increase the market activity and thus push the prices a little.” Kapadia continued, “We do not expect it to boost prices significantly as the overall market is subdued due to the worries about rising interest rates.”

There is no shortage of economic analysis during the buildup to this year’s celebration as The Economic Times reported “bullion has climbed almost 10 percent on the Indian market this year as world prices increased on… reduced chances of a further hike in U.S. interest rates in 2017.”

However, history shows that rising interest rates do not necessarily make bonds and cash more attractive or push the demand for (and therefore the price) gold down. Interest rate hikes are usually a gold bullish event.

“Gold prices going down after rate hikes is a myth propagated by the financial establishment and portfolio managers who may be intellectually lazy or have a vested interest in scaring people away from gold,” says Stefan Gleason, president of U.S. precious metals dealer Money Metals Exchange. "In reality, central banks are almost always behind the curve, and real interest rates may be going in the opposite direction despite the rate hikes." 

Slaying the Beast Takes Multiple Blows

Diwali is a grand, extravagant multi-day festival celebrating many things by many different groups of people. One of the more popular tales remembered and celebrated during Diwali is that of the brave Lord Rama. According to legend, he returned from exile after having saved his kidnapped wife and slayed the evil demon Ravanna.

This tale of glory and triumph evokes the sound money camp’s monetary hero, gold, facing the evil government and its minions, the “professionals” who often have a cynical bias against the yellow metal.

In the grand battle, Rama fights fiercely against Ravanna and his footmen. After a long and taxing battle, Rama delivers a blow that decapitates Ravanna’s central head. Unfortunately, another head appears in its place. Finally learning that Ravanna’s secret was an immortality nectar held in his stomach, Rama fired an arrow that finally laid Ravanna to rest.

Like Rama, gold finds itself fending off attacks from all sides. The federal government has been striking blows at gold since 1933, when Roosevelt banned all private possession of gold and required it be handed over in exchange for paper money. Gold has had all sorts of taxes levied against it. Gold and silver coins were stripped of their constitutional role as the only forms of money states could recognize as legal tender in payment of debts. Today, countless Wall Street types make a living trying to pierce the armor of gold in print and on television.

Fear not! It’s true that sound money’s lionhearted soldier hasn’t launched the fatal arrow that finally slays the fiat money system run by the world’s central bankers. But the battle is tipping further in the direction of our fearless hero every day.

States are taking the necessary steps to unshackle gold from its bureaucratic chains. 36 states across the union have an exemption against sales taxes being levied in precious metals purchases. Arizona has moved towards widespread acceptance of gold and silver by recognizing its legal tender status while removing capital gains taxes on precious metals holdings, with Wyoming, Idaho, and Tennessee not far behind. Texas is setting an example on how to shore up pension funds using gold, not to mention creating its own bullion depository.

Step by step, hard money forces are making advances. They still have a long way to go, of course. But they can draw inspiration from previous epic struggles against powerful foes.

During Diwali, millions of people around the world will celebrate the victory of their courageous and valiant hero, Lord Rama. Meanwhile, we can all celebrate gold’s continued ability to not only survive the onslaught coming from gold-cynics everywhere, but also to steadily re-establish itself as constitutional money.

To Limit And Control The News

One thing you can almost always count on:  When the liberal media accuses the conservatives of some unethical abuse of power, the abusive action is something liberals would do themselves, or something they've already done. 

Case in point is this sanctimonious Independence Day drivel from the Washington Post's Richard Cohen.  Cohen contends that Trump is causing harm to the news consuming public with his battles against the media.

Bradlee was on the mark. President Trump is not in a fight with CNN as depicted in the ludicrous video he tweeted Sunday in which he wrestles the cable news network -- or with the Times or the Post. This is not a struggle between the White House and some corporate behemoths, but a continuing, persistent and hugely unprecedented attempt by the government to limit and control what you can see or read. It's not about us. It's about you.

Funny that Cohen should bring up the now infamous video of Trump body slamming CNN in a wrestling bout.  Apparently The Donald picked up a video created and posted by a Reddit user, HanAssholeSolo, and retweeted it.  CNN did not take this lying down, tracking down the Reddit user and forcing him to apologize and take down the offending video by threatening to publish his identity.  The Conservative Treehouse made a screen grab of the threat.

In an article identifying the originating source of the wrestling gif tweeted last week by President Donald Trump, CNN says they’ll keep his name private so long as the person remains compliant to the media thought police.

The direct threat is: “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”

This perfectly illustrates how suppression of the news works and who does it — almost always it's the media.  Oh sure, sometimes presidents ask news organizations to hold off on releasing a story.  The Bush administration tried to convince the New York Times not to print a story that revealed a secret program in which banks cooperated with government to track terrorist financing.  The Times said no to President Bush and published it anyway. When the media whine about Trump trying to control or suppress the news, remember that they are the ones who do it the most, sometimes resorting to blackmail to do it.

Tactical Tweeting

From the WSJ

President Trump is having a hard time getting legislation through Congress, but his Administration is moving fast to roll back Barack Obama’s pen-and-a-phone lawmaking. The latest example, which barely registered in the press, is the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision last week to rescind the unilateral rewrite of the Clean Water Act.

So, instead of screeching about the number of babies that are going to die because the EPA no longer regulates the puddle in your backyard, the press is focused like a laser on Trump's tweets.

Ya gotta love it. Trump forges ahead, dismantling the Obama legacy, and MFM barely notices. Consumed by tweets.

Why Good Economics Matters Now More Than Ever

The following article was written by Sound Money Defense League Assistant Director Jp Cortez.  It was originally published at www.soundmoneydefense.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a newsletter published in 1970, economist Murray Rothbard wrote, “It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”

This is an oft-quoted platitude within circles of libertarian philosophy and Austrian economics.

Today, we are seeing the embodiment of Rothbard’s fears. The woeful state of economic understanding has reached a critical mass. Economics has taken a back seat to issues deemed more important. What’s worse is that when economics is discussed, millennials tend to lean socialist.

I have a vested interest in seeing economics and sound money flourish as I work in the field. Yes, I believe that tying a nation’s currency to gold keeps government spending in check. This is hardly professional bias though, as we all have a vested interest in seeing economics and sound money championed, many just don’t recognize it. This piece is aimed at anyone with a vested interest in maintaining a standard of living higher than that of the depression-era breadline vagabond. Economics transcends race, gender, and political identification.

Let’s begin by examining the first of two reasons that good economics is paramount.

Good Economics Is Important Because We Are Seeing a Rise in Bad Economics

Despite the corruption and backhanded actions of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to win the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders experienced a meteoric rise reminiscent to that of Ron Paul’s, whose 2008 presidential campaign trained his supporters’ focus on economics. Paul championed policies in the spirit of economists that I personally revere: Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Nobel Prize Laureate Friedrich Hayek, among others.

Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign had an equal but opposite effect. From teenagers to senior citizens, many loved Sanders’s critique of the broken system that favors the wealthy and stifles the poor. His “solutions” are abysmal, yet despite the countless examples of current (and more importantly, collapsed) socialist-Marxist/Leninist calamities, a self-described socialist found a foothold in the United States.

The revolution inspired by Sanders is anti-intellectual. The “economics” that stemmed out of the Sanders campaign was not economics at all. His school of economics was built on people shouting about their feelings and promoting egalitarianism for the sake of egalitarianism.

Good economics is grounded in axiomatic truths and empirical facts about the world around us. Sound money keeps governments and central banks (called the Federal Reserve in the US) from endless money printing and devastating inflation. Yes, that means the government won’t be able to provide every service that one desires. That is a good thing. Government is the bastion of inefficiency and the epitome of waste. Strictly from an economics standpoint, the market is far better suited at providing products and services.

The espousal of socialist policies in economics is dangerous and irresponsible. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much intellectual firepower to write off socialism as wildly inefficient. But it does take some. Socialism falls apart quickly when one understands the economic calculation problem, which explains the importance of prices based in subjective value in a free market system and explains how centrally planned economies, devoid of market prices, are doomed to suffer from inefficiencies in the form of widespread shortages and surpluses. Without these rudimentary economic blocks, “free college, health care for everyone, and massive taxation on the 1 percent to pay for these policies” sounds desirable.

We must learn, though. We must strive for intellectual growth. We must take the lessons we’ve learned from history and apply them to the word we live in today: socialism does not work. Socialism kills. (Even Scandinavian socialism isn’t as great as socialists say it is).

Socialism has been proven to be a terrible economic policy repeatedly. At some point, the value of human lives outweighs the desire for a politician to conduct a social experiment on how quickly he or she can rid their country of any and all valuable resources. That point is now. We must understand that socialism is an exercise in futility and inefficiency. Understanding good economics kills off the allure of central planning that continues to be peddled by politicians on the left. In fairness, understanding good economics helps wade past the bad economics posited by the right as well.

For a multitude of reasons, it’s a good idea to take a politicians’ statements with grains of salt. As far as economics goes, economist Thomas Sowell said it better than I ever could.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Sound economics based in sound money policies make it possible to eat reasonably priced meals because inflation tends to be lower in countries that practice these policies. Sound money policies make enacting socialist policies difficult. Understanding fundamental economics is the lynchpin to cultivating an environment conducive to having meaningful debate on other social issues. Which brings us to the second reason why economics is crucial.

Economics Is the Most Important Social Issue of Our Time

We should start by understanding that economics is a social issue. In fact, economics is the social issue. No issue influences individuals (read: all the individuals) within a society more than its economic practices.

Living in the United States in 2017 means exposure to all sorts of social issues including – but not limited to – same sex marriage, police brutality, safe spaces, drug legalization, and firearms ownership. To be sure, these issues are important and should be examined with sober eyes. But the issue of economics supersedes this list and every other list.

I believe consenting individuals should be allowed to do whatever their hearts desire so long as they aren’t violating the rights of another. I stand in solidarity with those who favor legalized same-sex marriages. I stand with those who want to see marijuana legalized nationwide and those who want to own automatic weapons.

But herein lies the danger of ignoring economics at the expense of other issues: Being “allowed” to smoke marijuana legally seems insignificant when a loaf of bread costs a month’s salary and your loved ones are dying of starvation, doesn’t it? I concede the subjective nature of this evaluation, but if I had to choose between the legality of same sex marriages and economic stability, I would choose economic stability without pause. Not because I don’t value personal freedom to do as one wishes, but because I understand that with economic stability comes the ability to fight another day for other issues.

Brazil, according to Bloomberg, was the second-worst economic performer of 2016. The other side of the coin is more uplifting: Brazil recognizes same-sex unions; allows same-sex marriages; allows adoptions by same-sex couples; allows individuals who identify as LGBT to serve in the military; and so on. Brazil’s removal of the proverbial shackles on homosexuals to live as they see fit is a big win for personal liberty, undoubtedly.

But one can’t help but wonder if the married same-sex couple in Brazil suffering from the terrible economic policies enacted by their country thinks, “13.2 percent of our entire country’s population is unemployed. That’s close to what the US faced between 1930-1931 as the Great Depression destroyed their economy. We can’t afford to feed ourselves or our family and we’re subjected to danger and crime as others are desperate to obtain food and money. But hey, at least the government recognizes our marriage!”

Greece is another example of the result of poor economic policies. Riots and crippling tax hikes to pay for irresponsible economic policies are commonplace in Greece, but hey, at least small amounts of cannabis have been decriminalized, right?

I don’t mean to belittle the importance of issues such as these. But as millennials, as members of the citizenry, and as people with a stake in the economic health of the nation we inhabit, our efforts are often misplaced. Sound economic policies should be pursued with at least the same amount of fervor as the myriad issues that don’t potentially end in economic collapse, death, crime, and general hysteria.

America finds itself on the cusp of revolution, but not necessarily the kind you might imagine. The revolution we are headed towards is an intellectual one. Good economics lies at the heart of this revolution.

Without good economics, we are powerless against the abuses of the Federal Reserve, the central bank that intentionally devalues the money in your bank account while it finances foreign wars and domestic programs that the government wouldn’t have the means to pay for otherwise. Without good economics, we are defenseless against the bad economic policies that lead to extreme levels of pillaging that socialists lovingly refer to as taxation. Without good economics, we subject ourselves to tangible, real-life danger and lose the opportunity to bring about the changes we wish to see.

America's Ruling Class...

Angelo Codevilla's article in The American Spectator, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, describes the stark political divide in America.  (My emphasis below.)

Important as they are, our political divisions are the iceberg’s tip. When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences “undecided,” “none of the above,” or “tea party,” these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.

As Codevilla observes, our ruling class wants power.  Everything — every policy, every crisis, everything — is contrived or manipulated to increase ruling class power.

Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly. This, incidentally, is close to Aristotle’s view of democracy. Hence our ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc. Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes, global cooling and global warming.

Donald Trump threatens our "ruling class" grip on supremacy.  Democrats were taken in when Trump launched his bid for the presidency.  They thought he would be the patsy, the walkover candidate, the doormat, the path of least resistance on Hillary's pre-ordained stroll to the White House.  But he won.  The ruling class is outraged.  All you have to do listen to Stephen Colbert.

Whether Trump can successfully halt the American decline and return power to the American people remains to be seen.  But he, like Codevilla, understands what we are up against.  It's no accident that laws and taxes have gotten enormously complex.

By taxing and parceling out more than a third of what Americans produce, through regulations that reach deep into American life, our ruling class is making itself the arbiter of wealth and poverty. While the economic value of anything depends on sellers and buyers agreeing on that value as civil equals in the absence of force, modern government is about nothing if not tampering with civil equality. By endowing some in society with power to force others to sell cheaper than they would, and forcing others yet to buy at higher prices — even to buy in the first place — modern government makes valuable some things that are not, and devalues others that are. Thus if you are not among the favored guests at the table where officials make detailed lists of who is to receive what at whose expense, you are on the menu. Eventually, pretending forcibly that valueless things have value dilutes the currency’s value for all.

Laws and regulations nowadays are longer than ever because length is needed to specify how people will be treated unequally. For example, the health care bill of 2010 takes more than 2,700 pages to make sure not just that some states will be treated differently from others because their senators offered key political support, but more importantly to codify bargains between the government and various parts of the health care industry, state governments, and large employers about who would receive what benefits (e.g., public employee unions and auto workers) and who would pass what indirect taxes onto the general public.

Fixing health care and reforming taxes are key first steps on the road to America's recovery.

Read the whole thing.

States Consider Removing Income and Sales Taxes from the Monetary Metals

The following article was written by Mike Gleason, Director at Money Metals Exchange.  It was originally published at www.moneymetals.com.

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Precious metals markets can certainly be volatile from week to week, but over time they are a more reliable store of value than Federal Reserve Notes. Gold and silver remain the world’s most enduring and most widely recognized form of money. And, as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, gold and silver coins are legal tender. Individual states thus can formally recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender alternatives to Federal Reserve Note dollars.

Both Utah and Oklahoma have passed legal tender laws in recent years recognizing gold and silver as money. The metals can be used freely as a means of payment and are free from all state taxes. More than 20 states have already removed sales taxes from precious metals transactions, with Alabama, Tennessee, and Maine now considering their own proposals to do so as well.

Other states, including Arizona and Idaho, are moving forward on legislation to exempt gold and silver bullion from capital gains taxes. Since Money Metals Exchange is located in Idaho, we would be particularly excited to see it become a haven for sound money.

Last Thursday a bill to eliminate capital gains taxes on precious metals passed the Idaho House Committee on Revenue and Taxation. Money Metals President Stefan Gleason testified before the Committee. Here is some of what he had to say:

Stefan Gleason: Our mission is to educate people also about precious metals and help them diversify into this reliable and more stable form of money, really truly a Constitutional money with tremendous history going back to the founding of our country. Gold and silver have been chosen for thousands of years as money because of their qualities as financial insurance, as a store of value, and its practicality as a medium of exchange. The bill I want to talk about today is a straightforward bill. Basically, we don't want to tax money in Idaho. Idaho already does not tax precious metals with its sales tax, and we're asking for it to be removed from the calculation of income tax in Idaho.

The Founders of our nation dealt with the collapse of the un-backed continental dollar, and that was fresh in their minds when they created our monetary system and established gold and silver as our nation's money. In fact, the dollar was defined as a fixed amount of silver, and even in the Constitution the Founders restricted states from making payment in anything other than gold and silver coins for payment of debt. For the first hundred years, our nation's money gold and silver coinage maintained its purchasing power pretty much consistently, except for a small period of time during the Civil War when we went off the gold standard.

But then about 100 years ago the Federal Reserve was created, and since that time we've seen a dramatic decline in the purchasing power of what is now considered the dollar but really is called the Federal Reserve Note. Of course, the last link to gold was severed officially in 1971, and that has led to an acceleration of this devaluation in purchasing power and an explosion in federal government debt during that same period of time.

The people that are most harmed by inflation are wage earners and savers. When the dollar goes down in purchasing power, they lose. Fortunately, an increasing number of citizens are recognizing that owning gold and silver as an alternative form of savings is a good way of protecting some of their wealth, protecting some of their purchasing power, and standing against this ongoing devaluation. It's also something that helps in periods of financial turmoil, which seem to be increasing under our current system. Gold and silver are a safe haven.

Under current law, however, when a taxpayer sells their precious metals, they may end up with a capital gain because it's measured against the Federal Reserve Notes that they sell it for. Now it may not be a real gain. In most cases, it's not a real gain. It's a nominal gain. It's an illusory gain. Yet it's still something that triggers taxation at the federal level, and a taxpayer has to include that in their taxable income if they sold gold and silver bullion or coins.

It's even taxed at a discriminatorily high 28% rate for long-term capital gains... It's 15 and 20 for other types of assets. Then Idaho in the calculation of Idaho taxable income essentially carries forward that income number, and then there's some adjustments that are made on various things according to Idaho statutes to arrive at the Idaho taxable income.

This legislation simply would back out the federal income or loss that somebody reports on precious metals out of their Idaho taxable income. This is something that Idaho can do. Obviously, we can't mess with federal tax laws, but Idaho decides what it's taxing as income, and we propose with this legislation that precious metals be removed, because it's money.

Also, weighing in on behalf of Idaho’s bill to free precious metals from state taxation was an executive of a freedom minded group in the Gem State.

Fred Birnbaum: My name is Fred Birnbaum, with the Idaho Freedom Foundation and I'm here to speak in support of this bill. I'll be very brief. I think Mr. Gleason covered just about everything. But I'll make a parallel point. Recently, actually this week, there was a lot of debate about a constitutional amendment, article five convention. I'm not going to re-open that debate. But I think it's relevant, to some extent, to this bill. I certainly don't want to overplay that point. What came up and one of the central issues was the unbalanced federal budget, if you will.

And the fact that we've accumulated about 20 trillion of federal debt and I think sometimes it's hard to think of the inflation that we currently have as inflation. It certainly varies. It hasn't been very significant, say in gasoline. It is in property. But the potential for inflation is huge because the Federal Reserve has now issued about 4 trillion dollars of digital money into the economy. It's pushed it since the recession. So, I think what this bill does, in many ways, is it's a prospective measure in that those folks who either own gold or silver now or may in the future, if we do have a real bout of inflation, this will protect them from that.

One of the challenges in getting this and similar bills passed is educating legislators on why gold and silver, being constitutional money, are different from other asset classes. Some politicians just don’t grasp the fundamental distinction.

Committee Chairman: Questions for Mr. Gleason? Representative Gannon?

Rep. Gannon: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Sir, one question I always have asked of me is, if we pass a bill like this, is, well are we picking winners and losers? What about if I invest in a gold stock and I make money on my gold stock or what about oil companies? If we open up the door to one particular kind of investment for a tax break like this, how do I explain to constituents that their particular investments don't get the same kind of tax break?

Committee Chairman: Mr. Gleason?

Mr. Gleason: Okay. Mr. Chairman. Representative Gannon. It's a good question. The key distinguishing characteristic here is that gold and silver are money. They're not a stock, they're not a piece of property and when it comes to mining stocks and things like that, obviously, that's not covered here.

We're talking about taking away taxation on the exchange of one form of money with another. So, people are not unfortunately able to deduct the loss that they take when they have Federal Reserve Notes and they dramatically decline in their value. There is no deduction for that. The deduction is basically everyone is paying the inflation tax and they are not able to recoup that or protect themselves against that, so gold and silver is another alternative form of money. It's actually much more stable and an historic form of money, and so that's how I distinguish this. This is about sound money and preserving people's savings and not giving any kind of special break for an investment class.

Fortunately, there are politicians who understand that not taxing money in any form is a matter of consistency. Idaho State Representative Ron Nate made a strong case for treating gold and silver the same as the Federal Reserve Note when it comes to taxation.

Rep. Nate: Thank you Mr. Chairman.

(I’m) in favor of the motion, this isn't just an investment. This is a money. And so, Federal Reserve Notes are the nationally recognized money, but according to Article I, Section X of the Constitution, the only thing that the states can declare as money, we can't coin our own money, the only thing we can use as money is we can declare silver and gold as money.

So, it's the only real state money that we have control of. And if holding money becomes something that is subject to taxation, then we have – I think – a perverse incentive in our government here, that the money that they declare, that the government declares is legal tender suddenly becomes a tax instrument for them as well.

This makes sense for consistency. If gold and silver coin are money, then we should not tax it when it increases in value. If you argue that we should tax it when it increases in value, then you should also argue that Federal Reserve Notes, when they diminish in value because of inflation, we ought to be able to declare capital losses on those on our tax forms as well.

But because we don't allow that, we shouldn't be taxing either capital gains or losses on gold and silver coin. This is a matter of consistency with regards to currency and the tax treatment of it. Thank you.

We’ll certainly keep you updated on the progress of the Idaho bill as it makes its way through the legislative process. In the meantime, the Arizona legislature looks poised to send similar legislation to its governor’s desk.

On Wednesday, the Arizona Senate Finance Committee heard testimony from none other than former Congressman Ron Paul. Dr. Paul was the leading voice in the U.S. Congress for sound money issues during his tenure there. He turned the once obscure idea of auditing, reforming, and ultimately ending the Federal Reserve into a national campaign issue when he ran for President in 2008 and 2012.

Here’s some of what Ron Paul had to say this week in support of Arizona’s bill to eliminate taxes on gold and silver:

Dr. Ron Paul: It would be legalizing competition in a constitutional fashion. It isn't like saying, "Okay, Arizona wants to print their paper currency again." Because you're not allowed to do that. On the monetary issues, the states are talked about in the constitution and they have restrictions, they can't print money but they also have been told in The Constitution that they can only use gold and silver as legal tender. So, the responsibility is one the states to follow the rules and that meant nobody was supposed to use anything other than silver and gold as legal tender. We've had a mess, it's gotten worse, it started in 1913, there was a climactic end in 1971 but the problems have continued.

If you look at some of the charts, things have been really rocky since ‘71, with the destruction of the value of the money. Since 1971, we've lost 95% of the value of the dollar. Believe me, the Gold Standard was invented a long, long time ago, from the beginning of recorded history. Five thousand years ago they used gold and silver, biblically gold and silver, real weights and measures, that's what they count it by. So, this is not brand new, it's the governments and the people who seek power are always undermining the restraints placed on governments by honest money. So, I congratulate you for hearing and dealing with this bill, because I think if you do pass this bill it will be a great step forward for a lot of people to understand the money issue and the freedom issue. Thank you very much.

Chairman: Thank you very much Dr. Paul.

If the bills in Arizona and Idaho become law, you can bet similar sound money efforts will spring up in other states. Of course, states won’t be able to abolish the discriminatory federal taxation of precious metals. But state level reforms will catch the attention of members of the U.S. Congress. Sound money victories at the state level will help build political momentum for sound money legislation at the federal level.

Groups such as the Sound Money Defense League are advancing the sound money movement by educating the public on the problems of our inflationary monetary system as well as working with allies in elective office to enact reforms. Setting gold and silver free as competing currencies to Federal Reserve Notes won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight, but real progress can be made and is being made one step at a time.

Mike Gleason is a Director with Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer with over 50,000 customers. Gleason is a hard money advocate and a strong proponent of personal liberty, limited government and the Austrian School of Economics. A graduate of the University of Florida, Gleason has extensive experience in management, sales and logistics as well as precious metals investing. He also puts his longtime broadcasting background to good use, hosting a weekly precious metals podcast since 2011, a program listened to by tens of thousands each week.

Listen to the Podcast Audio: Click Here

 

The Comey-Fitzgerald Playbook

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are calling for a special counsel to get to the bottom of Boris Badenov's fiendish plan to corner the market in upsidasium.  I made that up, but it's not far from the truth.  Norman Eisen and Noah Bookbinder are calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate possible Trump campaign ties to Russia.  It so happens that Noah Bookbinder is Executive Director of CREW.  Eisen and Bookbinder write:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Thursday that he is recusing himself from “any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”

Good for him. But it’s not enough.

...

[I]t is important here that the investigation be strictly independent, which may require additional measures. For example, in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation of alleged unauthorized disclosure of the identity of a CIA employee. Because Ashcroft recused, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey (now director of the FBI) had authority over the matter; Comey in turn appointed a special prosecutor, then-United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, to handle it. Comey initially appointed Fitzgerald under the special counsel regulations, but later felt the need to give him even more independence than the regulations provide. So Comey extended Fitzgerald’s authority in a pair of letters, one in 2003 and again in 2004.

The fairy tale about Russia "hacking the election" was dreamed up for just such a purpose — to justify an "independent" investigation of the Trump administration.  But there are two big reasons to doubt the validity of the Russian hacking story.  First, according to reports, no one in our intelligence agencies got to see any physical evidence that Russia was involved in hacking Democratic National Committee servers.  Since the DNC denied FBI access to them, agents were forced to accept the word of an outfit that was hired by the DNC, who said that the servers were hacked by Russians who wanted to help Donald Trump get elected.

According to one intelligence official who spoke to the publication, no U.S. intelligence agency has performed its own forensics analysis on the hacked servers.

Instead, the official said, the bureau and other agencies have relied on analysis done by the third-party security firm CrowdStrike, which investigated the breach for the DNC. “Crowdstrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” the intelligence official told BuzzFeed.

The second reason to doubt the validity of the Russian hacking story is the utter preposterousness of the notion that Russia would prefer President Donald Trump to a President Hillary Clinton.  As Peter Schweizer describes, Hillary Clinton, through the Clinton Foundation, was the one who had business dealings with Russia, not Donald Trump.

Then there is the glaring fact that the Clinton Foundation also scored $145 million in donations from nine shareholders in a Canadian uranium company called Uranium One that was sold to the Russian government in 2010. The deal required the approval of several federal government agencies, including Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The deal allowed Rosatom, the Russian State Nuclear Agency, to buy assets that amounted to 20 percent of American uranium. Rosatom, by the way controls the Russian nuclear arsenal.

Equally troubling: some of those donations were hidden and not disclosed by the Clintons. President Obama required the Clinton Foundation to disclose all contributions as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming Secretary of State. But that did not happen. The only reason the hidden donations ever came to light is because we uncovered them by combing through Canadian tax records.

Lest anyone be tempted to dismiss Schweizer as an unreliable source, this uranium story was reported by the New York Times in great detail in April of 2015.

As the Times reported, the deal that Hillary's State Department approved gave the Russian government control over "a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity."   During her campaign Hillary also touted her opposition to completion of the Keystone Pipeline, supposedly for environmental concerns.  By these actions Hillary stood in opposition to America taking full advantage of two of its key energy resources, uranium and oil.  Unlike Hillary, Trump promised American energy independence through development of all American energy resources, especially oil and natural gas.  So we have to ask, how will Russia benefit from the election of Donald Trump when it means increased worldwide supplies of oil and natural gas and the attendant downward pressure on world energy prices.  Vladimir Putin and the Russians are heavily dependent upon oil and gas revenues.

Also consider that Trump has promised to rebuild the U.S. military, and in spite of all his bluster about NATO, his administration has declared its firm support, asking only that NATO member nations begin picking up their fair share of the cost.  

To sum it all up, with Trump as president Vladimir Putin and Russia are looking at lower revenues from sales of their own oil and gas, a modernized and unified NATO on the Russian border, an upgraded U.S. military, increased American defense spending, and the possibility of an arms race with America that the Russians can't win.  Again, the idea that Russia would prefer dealing with President Trump over a President Clinton is absurd.

Absurd though it may be, the Russian hacking story provides a rationale — a flimsy one — for launching investigations.  By providing the example of James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald and their work in the special investigation during the Bush administration, we can glean a sense of how Eisen and Bookbinder would like a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump administration.  The case of I. Lewis Libby is quite instructive.

Let's begin with the New York Times column by Joseph C. Wilson which was said, by opponents of the Iraq War and critics of President George W. Bush to refute one of the claims the president made in his 2003 State of the Union address.  In making his case for the invasion of Iraq Bush told the American people, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

A year earlier Joe Wilson was sent to the African country of Niger by the CIA to check out a forgery that falsely documented the sale uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  Wilson returned to report that no such transaction took place, and in his view, it was unlikely that such a transaction was even possible.  He said as much in his New York Times column.  But Wilson's column did not include all of the information that he passed on to his CIA debriefers.  He left out this from a July, 2003 statement by CIA Director George Tenet. 

He [Wilson] reported back to us that one of the former Nigerien officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.

In the view of the Bush White House, this part of Joe Wilson's report to the CIA confirmed rather than refuted Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein made an attempt to acquire uranium in Africa.  All the while, White House officials wondered, who is Joe Wilson and why did he go to Africa?  Robert Novak answered their questions. 

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report."

Novak's column set off the firestorm that ultimately engulfed Scooter Libby.  Critics accused the Bush White House of vindictively and illegally leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame.  The CIA would neither confirm nor deny that Ms. Plame was covert.  Under pressure the Bush administration agreed to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the source of the leak.  Acting Attorney General James Comey appointed his friend Patrick Fitzgerald to head the investigation.

Fitzgerald learned pretty quickly that Plame's identity was leaked by Richard Armitage, deputy to Secretary of State Colin Powell.  Fitzgerald also decided at that time that no laws were broken, but rather than shut down the investigation, Fitzgerald sought and received permission from acting AG Comey to continue the investigation to look into potential mishandling of classified information.

The fishing expedition was under way.  Fitzgerald zeroed in on a discrepancy between the testimony of Libby and that of NBC's Tim Russert.  Libby testified that in his recollection he first heard the name of Valerie Plame in a phone conversation with Russert.  Russert's recollection disagreed with Libby's.  Later, away from the grand jury room, Libby consulted his notes and found that Plame's name appeared in notes of his that were dated earlier than his conversation with Russert.  He went back into the grand jury to correct his testimony, but Fitzgerald said Libby's original testimony was a deliberate lie, not a case of faulty memory.  Fitzgerald indicted Libby for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements.

With no crime having been committed, what was the point, you may ask?  It was political.  Patrick Fitzgerald was really after Vice President Richard Cheney, and he wanted Libby to reveal or manufacture evidence that would convict Cheney — of something.  Victoria Toensing explains in an April, 2015 article. 

Consider that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew from the beginning of his investigation that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—not Scooter Libby—had “leaked” Plame’s name to Novak. Consider that Valerie Plame was not “covert” as defined by the criminal statute or Armitage would have been indicted. Thus, there was no underlying crime. Consider that in announcing the charges, Fitzgerald violated rules of professional conduct for prosecutors by going outside the words of the indictment by claiming that Libby had thrown “sand…in his eyes,” thus falsely insinuating that Libby had prevented him from knowing the leaker. Consider that Fitzgerald told Libby’s attorneys twice that unless he could “deliver” the vice president to him (i.e. provide evidence of Cheney’s criminal conduct), Libby would be indicted. Libby had no such evidence and so he was indicted.

Now we know from Judith Miller, former New York Times reporter, in her new book, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey,” that Fitzgerald corrupted her testimony, which was key to Libby’s conviction. Miller says that Fitzgerald withheld critical information. As a result, she “misremembered” what she had discussed with Libby and testified falsely at trial, mistakenly incriminating him.

Democrats would once again like to execute from the Comey-Fitzgerald playbook.  As with the case of I. Lewis Libby, there is no underlying crime to investigate, only a lot of partisan hyperventilation about ordinary and proper contacts, such as those between then Senator Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador.  The element of intrigue is introduced only by the ridiculous and farfetched story that Russia interfered in the November election in order to help Donald Trump become president, and that the Trump campaign colluded with them.  That fantasy hangs on because without it there is no rationale for conducting an investigation, and Democrats are desperate to investigate.

They are not really after Attorney General Sessions, though they would welcome his forced resignation if they could get it.  They want Trump.  He is their worst nightmare.  Obnoxious and rude, he seems to blunder into what should be scandalous and fatal gaffes, but instead of suffering a political knockout, there he stands.  When the bell rings at the end of the round, the Democrats slink back to their corner realizing they've punched themselves into near exhaustion and they're worse off for it than he is.  He's something they've never seen — a politician inviting them to take their best shot on the chance that it will give him the opening to deliver a knockout of his own.  And a knockout is what he intends.

Trump aims to strip power from the administrative state and restore it to the American people.  If he is successful, he will also have stripped much of the power from the party of big government — the Democrats.  The Democratic party will survive, of course, even if Trump is successful.  But it will have to reform to do it.  It will have to actually stand for things that help real American people.  The old corrupt leadership, endlessly promoting politically correct platitudes solely to increase their own power, will have to go.

But they will do anything to survive and hang on.  Players in the administrative state are at risk as well.  The leaks that forced the resignation of General Flynn as Trump's National Security Adviser were very likely illegal.  If the leakers are caught it could mean jail time.  Washington wants Trump gone, and an investigation by special counsel is just the ticket.

Updated March 6, 2017, 8:33am

Russian Hacking

The current fixation on "Russian hacking" by the Democrats and the media has always seemed farfetched to me.  It sounds more like Boris Badenov's fiendish plan to corner the market on upsidasium.  Nonsensical.  If the Russians really had the chance to pick the next U.S. President, why on earth would they prefer Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton?  After all, it was Hillary Clinton's Department of State that approved Russia's acquisition of 20 percent of American uranium production. 

And Hillary was running as Obama 2.0.  If you're Russia, what's not to like about that?  Obama was the guy caught on an open mic asking Medvedev to assure Vladimir Putin that he, Obama, would be a much better friend with much greater flexibility after the 2012 election.  It would be his last election.  Obama was the guy who all but invited Vladimir Putin to expand Russian influence into Syria when he, Obama, backed away from his own "red line."  Bashar Assad didn't go after all, in spite of what Obama said earlier.  Obama is the guy who partnered with Russia to put together the Iran deal, giving the number one state sponsor of terrorism a path to eventually acquiring nuclear weapons.  Obama was the guy who stood passively by while Russia took Crimea and moved into eastern Ukraine.   Putin had his way with Obama, and there is no reason to think he wouldn't have his way with Hillary.

By promising to make America energy independent, Donald Trump will promote development of our own oil and gas resources.  How will the increased supply of oil and natural gas and the attendant downward pressure on world energy prices benefit Vladimir Putin and the Russians when they are so dependent on oil and gas revenue?  By canceling the Keystone Pipeline, and restricting drilling operations, Obama and Hillary were much more considerate of Russian ambitions.  In spite of all the bluster, the Trump administration has declared its firm support for NATO, with only the desire that other NATA members begin picking up their fair share of the cost.  Is a modernized NATO on the Russian border something that Putin might find attractive?  Trump's America first strategy calls for rebuilding our military.  Is it reasonable to believe Vladimir Putin wants to risk an arms race like the one that brought the Soviet Union to an end?  The notion that Russia would prefer Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton doesn't pass the laugh test.   

So why are Democrats and the media humping this dumb Russian Hacking story like a two-dollar whore?  Mark Levin has put together a timeline that clears up some of the mystery.  It involves FISA, and it's political.

Radio host Mark Levin used his Thursday evening show to outline the known steps taken by President Barack Obama's administration in its last months to undermine Donald Trump's presidential campaign and, later, his new administration.

Levin called Obama’s effort “police state” tactics, and suggested that Obama’s actions, rather than conspiracy theories about alleged Russian interference in the presidential election to help Trump, should be the target of congressional investigation.

Drawing on sources including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Levin described the case against Obama so far, based on what is already publicly known. The following is an expanded version of that case, including events that Levin did not mention specifically but are important to the overall timeline.

1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

Barack Obama, notorious for putting government agencies to work punishing his enemies and helping his friends, wanted wire taps on the Trump campaign in June 2016, but the FISA Court wouldn't authorize it.  Who would have dreamed a joke — “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” — would be enough to get the intelligence agencies involved in tapping an opposition party presidential candidate?  But that's the most sensible explanation for the popularity of the "Russia hacked the election" fantasy. Andrew McCarthy has more and National Review.

From the three reports, from the Guardian, Heat Street, and the New York Times, it appears the FBI had concerns about a private server in Trump Tower that was connected to one or two Russian banks. Heat Street describes these concerns as centering on “possible financial and banking offenses.” I italicize the word “offenses” because it denotes crimes. Ordinarily, when crimes are suspected, there is a criminal investigation, not a national-security investigation.

According to the New York Times (based on FBI sources), the FBI initially determined that the Trump Tower server did not have “any nefarious purpose.” But then, Heat Street says, “the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server.”

Again, agents do not ordinarily draw FISA requests around possible crimes. Possible crimes prompt applications for regular criminal wiretaps because the objective is to prosecute any such crimes in court. (It is rare and controversial to use FISA wiretaps in criminal prosecutions.) FISA applications, to the contrary, are drawn around people suspected of being operatives of a (usually hostile) foreign power.

Mr. McCarthy concludes by giving the feds the benefit of the doubt.  It's too early, he thinks, to accuse the Obama administration of "pretextually using its national-security authority to continue a criminal investigation after determining it lacked evidence of crimes".  As for me, after eight years of President Obama, four of them with Hillary as Secretary of State, I'm way past giving them the benefit of the doubt.  I think the Obama administration used national security as a pretext to spy on his political opponent, Donald Trump.  I will continue to believe that until there is real evidence that proves otherwise.

Updated March, 4 2017, 6:30am