The Todd connection

The public shaming and termination of Ronna McDaniel by NBC/MSNBC’s partisan talent represents an almost unbelievable failure of self-knowledge. One wants to shout Look in the mirror, you fools! The mob in this case was led by Chuck Todd, who is himself a pathetic excuse of a journalist. Todd’s role in this episode rankles. He was among the many of his tribe who promoted the Steele Dossier and the Russia hoax during the Trump administration.

The Steele Dossier was an obvious fraud used by Todd and his colleagues to cripple and defame President Trump in office. When it comes to “denialism,” Ronna McDaniel has less than nothing on Todd. I wrote the post below the break on November 15, 2021 (it’s here in our archives). It followed up on my 2019 post “Spot the crime in progress,” in which I discussed Todd’s Meet the Press segment with Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS. (I have posted video of the segment at the bottom.) I wrote in that post that the segment was valuable in its own way — it provided an illuminating display of three tools at work. It’s their world. We’re only living in it.

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The mainstream media are beginning to crawl backwards like sand crabs from the Steele Dossier. Linking to Paul Farhi’s Washington Post story on its confrontation with its own reporting, Sara Fischer highlights the media’s “epic fail.” (Syntax is apparently part of the “fail.”) Becket Adams expands on the doings at the Post in the Examiner story “Washington Post edits and adds editor’s notes to at least a dozen Steele dossier stories.”

Despite the supposed “epic fail,” the media gloriously succeeded in its mission to defame Donald Trump and to cripple the Trump presidency. It was a job well done.

What did Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman have to say to Farhi about the Post’s correction and excision of key parts of their 2017 and 2019 stories identifying Sergei Millian as one of Steele’s key sources (“Source D”)? Farhi tells us: “They declined to comment.” That is pathetic.

Recall that BuzzFeed published the Steele Dossier in January 2017. It is posted online here. Howard Blum usefully extracted Steele’s identification of unnamed sources in his ludicrously breathless Vanity Fair story:

Source A—to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier—was “a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure.” Source B was “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.” And both of these insiders, after “speaking to a trusted compatriot,” would claim that the Kremlin had spent years getting its hooks into Donald Trump.

Source E was “an ethnic Russian” and “close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

This individual proved to be a treasure trove of information. “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot,” the talkative Source E “admitted there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.” Then this: “The Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the WikiLeaks platform.” And finally: “In return the Trump team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defense commitments in the Baltic and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine.”

Then there was Source D, “a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow,” and Source F, “a female staffer” at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel, who was co-opted into the network by an Orbis “ethnic Russian operative” working hand in hand with the loquacious Trump insider, Source E.

I thought at the time that Steele’s “sources” were a joke and so they have proved to be. Did the “veteran reporters” (as Farhi describes them) Hamburger and Helderman really think that Steele had picked up the phone and debriefed a “senior Russian foreign ministry figure” or “former op level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin”?

We now know that the Steele Dossier was commissioned by Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS working on behalf of the Clinton campaign. It was paid for by campaign counsel Marc Elias and the law firm Perkins Coie. Rep. Devin Nunes pierced the veil of the law firm cutout in late 2017 and called out the FBI for its reliance on the dossier in taking out FISA warrants on Carter Page without relevant disclosures. The memo setting forth Nunes’s findings is posted online here. What we have are intimations of immorality: the biggest scandal in American political history by far.

Yesterday [i.e., November 14, 2021] Chuck Todd interviewed Adam Schiff in an eight-minute Meet the Press segment. Though the competition is stiff and there is room for argument, Schiff may be the most despicable man in Congress. Todd raised the issue of the Steele Dossier with Schiff in the last three minutes and let Schiff move on with the assertion that he was right to “raise questions.” Todd’s performance was characteristically lame, as is his crawl backwards from the dossier.

Todd welcomed Fusion GPS principals Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch to promote their book on the dossier in November 2019 (video below). The book is aptly titled Crime In Progress. Simpson is a perpetrator and the crime is still in progress. Chuck Todd et al. are aiders and abettors.

Invasion of the porn snatchers (UPDATED)

Thanks to the many readers who have written us, we are aware of the graphic pornographic ads that have invaded the top of our comments. We have asked our publisher to help us remove and block them, but it remains a work in progress. So long as the problem persists I can only ask readers to avoid clicking on comments. Don’t do it! We will let you know when we have resolved the issue. Until that time, we can only beg your indulgence and apologize.

UPDATE: The porn ads are coming by way of Disqus, our ad-on comment platform whose ad content we have no direct control over. We’re working with Disqus to fix this, but may have to shut down comments at least temporarily if Disqus can’t move quickly or effectively to quash this.

McDaniel vs. NBC News

When I heard NBC News was hiring recently dismissed RNC chair Ronna McDaniel my first thought was, but of course they are! She was a mediocre RNC chair with little rhetorical flair or depth, and NBC News was hiring her because she’d help the cause of making Republicans look bad. (See: Michael Steele, the other former RNC chair that MSNBC hired and who now spouts reliably anti-conservative views on command.) Social scientists call this “pattern recognition.” NBC News isn’t about to hire, say, Sen. John Kennedy to appear on their network.

So the hysteria from the broadcast royalty at NBC News over McDaniel’s hiring reveals how fully the media has taken sides against Trump, and how cloistered and insecure they are that even the hint of someone who might defend Trump (albeit poorly in all likelihood) was intolerable. So she has to go. It’s moves like that that give cancel culture a bad name.

The claim is that McDaniel told lies. Yet ABC News had no problem hiring George Stephanopoulos, who lied repeatedly for Bill Clinton. Cue the slogan about liberal double standards here.

Remember the Nashville Six

Last March 27, in the run-up to the April 1 “Trans Day of Vengeance,” Audrey Hale shot her way into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. There Hale murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, nine years old and the daughter of Covenant Presbyterian pastor Chad Scruggs. The victims died of multiple gunshot wounds and Hale also applied blunt force trauma to William Kinney and Katherine Koonce.

A former student at the school, Hale carefully planned the attack for months. Police and the FBI blocked release of her “manifesto” and trans activists were adamant that the material not be released. The Trans Resistance Network proclaimed that Audrey Hale “had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others.”

Over at the White House, Joe Biden failed to identify or condemn the shooter, failed to name a single murder victim, and did not attend any of the funerals. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.”

Contrast that response with the case of Nex Benedict. The “gender expansive” teen did not die from “trauma” resulting from a high-school fight in Owasso, Oklahoma, in February.  The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide due to  “combined toxicity from diphenhydramine and fluoxetine.” On March 14, Joe Biden released this statement:

Jill and I are heartbroken by the recent loss of Nex Benedict. Every young person deserves to have the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are, and feel safe and supported at school and in their communities. Nex Benedict, a kid who just wanted to be accepted, should still be here with us today.

Nonbinary and transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know. But nobody should have to be brave just to be themselves. In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children. Bullying is hurtful and cruel, and no one should face the bullying that Nex did. Parents and schools must take reports of bullying seriously. My prayers are with Nex’s family, friends, and all who loved them – and to all LGBTQI+ Americans for whom this tragedy feels so personal, know this: I will always have your back.

To LGBTQI+ young people across the country – you are loved exactly as you are. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or alone, you can call or text 988, the National Crisis Hotline, and dial the number ‘3’ to talk to a counselor who has been specifically trained to support LGBTQI+ youth.

LGBTQI+ is a construct, not a community. The trans movement, as Bruce Bawer explains, is a “revolution against reality itself.” The struggle against trans violence is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

The Daily Chart: The U.S. Nuclear Deficit

I once asked a French acquaintance how it was that France managed to build over 5o nuclear power plants over the same time period that the U.S. built virtually none, and his answer was basically that France didn’t pay any attention to Jane Fonda.  Actually his explanation was more colorful (and accurate). Read this with a French accent in your mind:

“Ah, but it is simple you see: In France, our Communists supported nuclear power, whereas in the U.S., your Communists opposed it.”

True: French labor unions, where Communists have some presence, like nuclear power because it meant lots of union jobs. U.S. progressives say they like labor unions—but they hate construction and electrical unions.

But my follow up question to my French interlocutor is equally pertinent: How did France manage to build nuclear plants so much more cheaply than the U.S.?

“Ah, but it is simple, you see: In France, we have 200 kinds of cheese, but one kind of nuclear plant design. In America it is just the opposite.”

In any case, this figure shows how the U.S. abandoned nuclear power. Imagine how much lower our carbon footprint would be if we had kept up the pace of the 1950-1990 period. (Keep in mind that the plants that came online in the mid-1980s were begun 10 to 15 years before.)

Chaser—Even The Guardian gets it:

When New York’s deteriorating and unloved Indian Point nuclear plant finally shuttered in 2021, its demise was met with delight from environmentalists who had long demanded it be scrapped.

But there has been a sting in the tail – since the closure, New York’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up.

Castigated for its impact upon the surrounding environment and feared for its potential to unleash disaster close to the heart of New York City, Indian Point nevertheless supplied a large chunk of the state’s carbon-free electricity.

Since the plant’s closure, it has been gas, rather then clean energy such as solar and wind, that has filled the void, leaving New York City in the embarrassing situation of seeing its planet-heating emissions jump in recent years to the point its power grid is now dirtier than Texas’s, as well as the US average.

“From a climate change point of view it’s been a real step backwards and made it harder for New York City to decarbonize its electricity supply than it could’ve been,” said Ben Furnas, a climate and energy policy expert at Cornell University. “This has been a cautionary tale that has left New York in a really challenging spot.”

New York was warned that this would be the outcome, but climate cultists are immune to facts.

It Can’t Happen Here?

Some time ago, a house in my neighborhood started flying a gay/trans flag. In response, I suspect, two nearby houses started flying American flags. But recently, there was a change: the gay/trans flag was replaced by the Scottish flag:

If you remember Scotland as a country of highland clans, conservative Presbyterians and fearsome warriors, that may seem strange to you. But actually, it makes perfect sense: Scotland is being transformed into a far-left dystopia. Its leader, Humza Yousaf–not a Presbyterian, one supposes–has pledged to make Scotland “Tory free.” And Scotland has enacted a new anti-“hate” law:

Consider the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which takes effect on April 1 and extends the offence of “stirring up racial hatred” to the realms of religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and transgender ID. Appropriately, it replaces the old Scottish blasphemy law. Hate crime legislation, like edicts against blasphemy, isn’t only about order and justice but also defining what the community regards as sacred or taboo.
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First, blasphemy laws rarely defend all faith in general, but rather the specific beliefs of the authors – and in that spirit, the Stirring Up Act makes an interesting choice. It proscribes hate on the basis of transgenderism but not on the basis of sex, suggesting that transphobia is a more serious problem than misogyny and potentially creating a loophole by which trans activists can be horrid to feminists but not the other way around.

The act extends to private conversations, and seeks to turn Scotland into a society of snitches:

This leads us to the inevitable challenge of vexatious complaints: highly likely when the offences are so poorly defined and the Act covers everything from newspaper columns (oh dear) to tweets (yikes!) to private conversations (I’m going to jail).

Anonymous complaints are welcome; centres have been set up to receive them.

And the act institutionalizes its own biases:

[O]f course, this guff isn’t aimed at Islamists. Just as the liberal/Left state gets to decide what is or isn’t a crime, so coppers turned social workers are let loose to define the criminal type according to their own instincts. Police Scotland’s website says that hate crime is most likely to be committed by “young men aged 18-30”, especially those with feelings of social exclusion “combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”. In plain English, white, working-class boys.

Is there anyone to stand up against this assault on free speech, this institutionalization of left-wing perspectives? The columnist, Tim Stanley, points out that Scotland is already pretty much Tory-free. And, in any event:

No doubt the Conservative Party will squeal about the SNP’s war on free speech etc. But it long ago conceded all the Left’s points on devolution, equality, policing, secularism – and thus has surrendered in a culture war that it doesn’t have the troops to fight, even if it wanted to.

In America, the culture war continues, at least for now.

Corn Pop, call your office

It would be out of character for President Biden to have predicated his political origin story on a factual basis. Without even hearing what it is, you know it must have been fabricated. Washington Free Beacon reporters Joe Simonson and Andrew Kerr find this old fabulation regurgitated in the transcript of Biden’s interview by Special Counsel Robert Hur:

Fresh out of law school and working as a clerk at a high-powered Wilmington, Delaware, law firm, Biden, in his telling, was tapped to defend a construction company sued by a 23-year-old welder who “lost part of his penis and one of his testicles” to a fire that broke out when he was working inside a chimney at a Delaware City plant. Thanks to Biden’s shrewd legal defense on the construction company’s behalf, the injured man lost the case.

“I wrote this memo. And son of a b—, it prevailed,” Biden told Hur on Oct. 8. “And I looked over at that kid…and I thought, ‘son of a b—, I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.’”

Biden said he was so wracked with guilt that he concocted an excuse to avoid a celebratory lunch with one of the firm’s named partners and walked into the public defender’s office to ask for a job that very day. It’s “the only time I ever lied,” Biden told Hur on Oct. 8. Thus began, according to a New York Times report on the special counsel interview, “a career that would one day take him to the White House.”

But this story is almost certainly a complete work of fiction.

I would note that Biden’s “the only time I ever lied” (i.e., “the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking someone in the eye, and I mean sincerely”) is a drop dead giveaway.

Simonson and Kerr find it impossible to square Biden’s fabulation with “a review of court records obtained from the National Archives as well as contemporaneous news reports and interviews with Biden’s former law firm colleagues and federal court clerks.” It’s almost funny. As always: “Spokesmen for the White House did not respond to requests for comment.”

Whole thing here.