Barr Dumps On Trump - Stop The Steal Or Cut The Crap

Former AG Barr is interviewed by Jonathan Karl for The Atlantic on Trump's claims of election fraud.

Donald Trump is a man consumed with grievance against people he believes have betrayed him, but few betrayals have enraged him more than what his attorney general did to him. To Trump, the unkindest cut of all was when William Barr stepped forward and declared that there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, just as the president was trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by claiming that the election had been stolen.

 

In a series of interviews with me this spring, Barr spoke, for the first time, about the events surrounding his break with Trump. I have also spoken with other senior officials in the Trump White House and Justice Department, who provided additional details about Barr’s actions and the former president’s explosive response. Barr and those close to him have a reason to tell his version of this story. He has been widely seen as a Trump lackey who politicized the Justice Department. But when the big moment came after the election, he defied the president who expected him to do his bidding.

 

Among other sources we have a cameo from Cocaine Mitch, who confirmed that he exhorted Barr to blow the whistle on the election fraud stories so the party could focus on winning the Senate races in Georgia. Ooops.

 

A couple of passages leave us with a tough editorial judgment.

 

But Barr told me he had already concluded that it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election. He had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome. He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded. So, in addition to giving prosecutors approval to open investigations into clear and credible allegations of substantial fraud, Barr began his own, unofficial inquiry into the major claims that the president and his allies were making.

 

“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told me. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

 

And later, after Barr has aired his concerns with an AP reporter and is facing an enraged President:

As Trump ranted about other examples of fraud, Meadows continued to sit silently with his arms crossed, his posture suggesting that he, too, was upset by what Barr had done.

“You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to make legal challenges,” Barr said. “This would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”

Interestingly, Trump didn’t argue when Barr told him that his “clown show” legal team had wasted time. In fact, he said, “You may be right about that.”

The dilemma is obvious - was Stop The Steal "all bullshit" or "a clown show"?

ERRATA: Quite a descent - America's Former Mayor won't be practicing law in NY. 

Comments

[Jack Lillywhite]

Both a Clown Show and a Fraud! I know it is all "circumstantial" but can someone show me the miles and miles of videos or Biden's whistle stop crowds?

[Jack Lillywhite]

..or s/b of..

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--The dilemma is obvious - was Stop The Steal "all bullshit" or "a clown show"?--

Or just possibly was it an impossible situation in which, given our system and the unprecedented irregularities involved in the 2020 election, despite the clown show aspect of Trump's attempts to deal with what happened there may and IMO probably was extensive fraud amounting to well over the paltry 40,000 votes needed to put Biden over the top.
Given that is is nearly July and not even the first real audit has been completed and the fact the cheaters have been in charge of the evidence for all those months it seems to me Trump could have fielded and army of rugged Bill Barrs and fared no better than he did.

But yeah, given how honest and careful to abide by every jot and tittle of the law the progs and Dems are, everyone is probably right that there is no way such paragons of virtue with zero history of crooked machine politics in their past and present engaged in anything untoward. Crazy to believe otherwise.

[clarice]

wait for the audits.

[Narciso]

And epstein didnt kill himself, the guards said so, oops they lied.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

After all, it's not like Trump has been proven right over and over and over again when he has maintained a cabal of crooked liars and creeps have opposed him and us for the last several years and that virtually everything they have said and done, especially those things they most adamantly insist are true, have been malicious and disgusting self seeking lies to destroy their opposition and consolidate their power.

[Narciso]

And the bureau had an open case on seth rich till 2018.

[Narciso]

While they are clockwork oranging midwestern grandmoms a black panther wannabe is sniping cops

[fdcol63 🇺🇸]

Well, Sydney Powell, Lin Wood, and Rudy Giuliani definitely turned it into a clown show.

Instead of allowing themselves to get lost in the weeds of a larger conspiracy story … no matter how well-intentioned …. that was going to be much harder to prove, they should have just focused on challenges in the states that were really critical to the outcome of the Electoral College results.

But Robert Barnes was right … they each had character flaws (their own versions of the Tolkein’s LOTR “PRECIOUS”) that made them susceptible to such diversions.

[jimmyk]

Did Barr have no authority or responsibility to help conduct the investigation? Or at least discretion? Sounds like he just opted to keep his white toga clean.

[MissMarple2]

Pfui. I don’t trust any of them. Who recommended Barr, anywY?

[Narciso]

Why do these people in authority so called seem to know less than we do.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Concur with fdcol63 at 12:35.

[James D.]

Well, TM, I’m glad you can continue to get another hit of Orange Man Bad. Must be a nice distraction from the dementia-ridden jackass you supported ripping the country apart and flushing it down the toilet in every way possible.

[Narciso]

I noticed this with alberto gonzales as of his memoir he still didnt understand how fitz mueller and comey double teamed and the consequences of that march 10th 2004 decision.

[GUS]

Why is Barr's opinion of the ELECTION STEAL relevant. He's a hack. What did he do when in office???

[Narciso]

Nothing of substance gus

https://mobile.twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/1409195651225718788

[Narciso]

Gah

https://mobile.twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1409184318832926727

[sbwaters]

Both science and law require one to be able to raise questions and then pursue answers to those questions.

Neither Barr nor the "journalists" mentioned seem to understand that, or care.

Of note, but left unmentioned, is that Barr and the those repeating his remarks ignore legitimate ongoing audits that, if pursued in a timely fashion by State officials, if acknowledged at the time by by Pence, or if recognized by Congress on January 6th, would have addressed the issues Trump raised.

Instead, persistent, knee-jerk Trump critics stew in bitter soup of their own creation. To what benefit? To what end? To what glory?

[GUS]

When in history have states in play, shut down the counting, and kicked out election observers only to have a miraculous turn around. Georgia is patently obvious. Yet those who have profited off the gubmint don't want to hear it.

[jimmyk]

Georgia is patently obvious. Yet those who have profited off the gubmint don't want to hear it.

Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona are also pretty obvious. Maybe Nevada too.

[Narciso]

The Supreme Court deigns that a dyspeptoc cheerleader has atanding but on the fundamental questions it is silent.

[bubarooni]

Well, let's look at it.

The federal constitution is pretty explicit about the matter of who makes laws and regulations concerning elections; state legislatures.

There are no clauses such as 'except in times of pandemics'.

Nor was the constitution suspended.

There was no reason for those duly enacted voting laws in any state to be amended or suspended.

A pandemic is hyped (it was real though...) and under it's guise, state executive and judicial branch members gut the state legislatures laws regulating voting.

When state legislatures objected, the judicial branches either said 'Nope, it's okey dokey.' (state judiciaries) or declined to get involved (federal judiciaries).

The changes made by the state executive and judicial branches, especially in the form of mailing out unsolicited mail in ballots, were expressly made to obfuscate the origins of ballots. Combined with the mantra 'Every vote must be counted!' it constituted a blatant attempt to change the results of an election outcome that would have prevailed under the state legislatures constitutional voting provisions.

One need not believe that Italians using satellites to change vote outcomes altered the election while still believing that something untoward was occurring during the election.

It is somewhat remarkable that there are those out there who believe that the election was hunky dory, at least in it's results.

It is unremarkable that state legislatures have taken up their constitutional perogative to look at their laws and regulations concerning elections after state executive and judicial actors usurped their powers.

It is equally unremarkable that the benefactors of this remarkable usurpation of constituional authority are now using their consiglieres in the DoJ to try and block the state legislatures voting reforms.

For some, that is also hunky dory.

[Narciso]

To the point, bubarooni

[Narciso]

This is why i call them blankpages.

[Melinda]

Jon Karl using The Atlantic to promote a new narrative?

Why that’s almost FusionGPS-y!

[clarice]

Perhaps this explains TM's continued reliance on the NYT:https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-reporting
It's written for a certain demographic of which upper class Conn. residents are part of.

[Narciso]

Do they ever tell the truth

https://stundin.is/grein/13627/

[Narciso]

Shrines are different

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/what-happened-to-its-just-property-nyc-mayor-bill-de-blasio-is-finally-prepared-to-c/#disqus_thread

[bubarooni]

Get well MM!

[Jane]

Excellent bubarooni!

[GUS]

SBW, I admire and respect you. Always have.

One problem with BARR et al, is their INSIDER SWAMP STATUS for many many many years. It seems they can play chameleon and hold no real values nor true philosophy or heart felt moral compass.
My STATE DEPT BRO, former USAF OFFICER, is the families favorite son. He is a great person, his daughter, my god daughter niece is his offspring and honors grad at US AIR FORCE ACADEMY.
My bro has lived out of the country and in the country and out of the country and in the country, all this after his AIR FORCE career.
As he's been back in country the last 2 years, and in D.C., I've seen a change. He is far far far more willing to accept things from a D.C. viewpoint. I'm not. I live in (h/t Rush Limbaugh) REALVILLE. I earn my living and support my family. I have no GUARANTEE of a job, nor no PENSION. I get what I earn and do the best I can. THAT IS NOT WASHINGTON. They PROTECT the STATUS QUO, because they are PART of the STATUS QUO. Trump scared the living shit out of them.

[clarice]

I think bubarooni explained my skepticism about the election results. I think the cause was badly hurt by the nonsense about overseas ballot changing by satellite, which turns out to have been fraud by anti-Trumpers to poison the case.. It was standard election fraud pushed up a hundred notches by the use of the Covid fears and big money from people like Soros and Zuckerburg.

[GUS]

JimmyK, God bless you my brother.
When I posted about GA, my intent was to hand the baton to someone like you, who would further my TOME. As you know I am in Wisconsin. With all the bullshit that has gone on here, including BOXES for BALLOTS in 200 parks in the Madison area, and as HENRY HAS POINTED OUT.
Wisconsin was stolen.
It was likewise stolen when Scott Walker ran against a CADAVER named TONY EVERS.
The totality of the evidence in WI or in the U.S.A. even just the WEIGHT of ANECDOTAL evidences is overwhelming.
Thanks for filling in more detail.

[GUS]

Clarice, Tom Maguire, our GRACIOUS HOST, is not merely turning off his mind, in favor of NY SLIMES nonsense. He has been taunting those on his GRACIOUS BLOG, and he has used MEAN TWEETS TRUMP as his FOIL. Orange man bad, all my decisions to vote for COMMUNISTS GOOD. NEVER EVER EVER making a case for the COMMUNISTS HE VOTED FOR, rather, criticizing MEAN TWEETS TRUMP, because he is/was not popular at CT cocktail parties.

[GUS]

Hello Clarice. I have had this conversation with my lovely wife many times.
RIGHT NOW, as we CHAT, the DEMOCOMMIE PARTY has operatives in a board room around a $10,000 conference table, MAKING UP THE NEXT LIE, or the NEXT CONCOCTED SCANDAL. All of the LIBTARD talking heads are responsible to what they do and say. They have numerous scandals yet to be handed to ALL of the MEDIA OUTLETS. IT'S WHAT THEY DO.
Who was the last DEMOCRAT, that you actually believed or TRUSTED???? If there is one, then why hasn't this HONORABLE LIB, jumped ship or stood up for HIS/HER values??

[GUS]

The FULL COMMIE response to my last post is such tripe as QANON did or said X or Y.
oR wHITE SUPERMACY.

You've know me for a long long time. I do not know a SINGLE WHITE SUPREMACIST. Unless the definition is defined by THE COMMIES. And then YOU and I are both such.
I have zero interest in knowing WHO or WHAT Qanon is. I make my own decisions, and whether some group who sides with US, is nuts or conspiratorial or not. Has ZERO to do with me.

[Jack Lillywhite]

GUS,

You don't understand. Every right-thinking Caucasian is a white supremenmicist especiallly if they served in the military or civil police (that includes black police officers).

[Jack Lillywhite]

....supremisist...fat fingers...

[Jack Lillywhite]

...lets try this again:: Supremist....

[Stephanie Nene Not Your Normal Granma]

Suprem... you know the thing.

:)

Three women die together in an accident and go to Heaven. When they get there, St. Peter says. “We only have one rule here in heaven, don’t step on the ducks!”

So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one.

Well, along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw. St. Peter chains them together and says. “Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!”

The next day, the second woman steps accidentally on a duck, and along comes St. Peter, who doesn’t miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman.

The third woman has observed all this and not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very careful where she steps. She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks. And then one day St.Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on – Very tall, long eyelashes. and muscular.

St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.

The happy woman says. “I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?”

The guy says. “I don’t know about you, but I stepped on a duck!”

[GUS]

Stephanie. You are priceless. I can start to read a comment without regard to who posted it, and within one sentence, I realize......STEPHANIE!!!!
And then I read it and laugh. NOT KIDDING.

[Jack Lillywhite]

Quack, Quack: Steph

[Melinda]

LEAKED VIDEO: Shows Leftists Prepping To Infiltrate January 6th Protests

https://welovetrump.com/2021/06/26/leaked-video-shows-leftists-prepping-to-infiltrate-january-6th-protests/

[Dave (in MA)]

dementia-ridden jackass ... ripping the country apart and flushing it down the toilet in every way possible

Build Back Better

[Dave (in MA)]

So now she's chained to a gay guy in heaven. :)

[Dave (in MA)]

Finally, the case of white supremacist violence they've been waiting for,
https://www.wcvb.com/article/winthrop-massachusetts-shooting-june-26-2021/36851581

[clarice]

Pelosi kills the infrastructure bill and that's a good thing. It was a set up:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jun/24/pelosi-no-infrastructure-deal-unless-second-bill-l/

[MissMarple2]

Not only has my health deteriorated, but it seems like the whole damn country is falling apart.

And I don’t care what anyone else thinks, Trump was the best president of my lifetime.

[GUS]

Godspeed Lovely Miss M. Be well Get well. You are in mine and my families prayers. What would we all do without you my dear.
Get better and fight.

[Narciso]

So say we all miss marple.

[jim nj]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitt-romney-snarks-at-trump-pushing-the-big-lie-this-is-like-wwfits-not-real

Mitt Romney Snarks at Trump Pushing the Big Lie: ‘This Is Like WWF...It’s Not Real’

The World Wildlife Foundation? Does the rube mean the WWE?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/27/infrastructure-gop-senators-say-deal-can-go-forward-after-biden-walkback-.html

U.S. Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said Sunday that the bipartisan infrastructure deal can move forward, following President Joe Biden’s clarification that he’ll sign the bill even if it comes without a reconciliation package.

If "Republican" Senators really wanted to be useful they would stay off the Sunday talk shows.

[jim nj]

MM,

I want you here for his second term.

[Narciso]

How stupid is portman rhetotical.

[Dave (in MA)]

Mittens being unaware of a stupid fake sport's name change is the least of his sins.

[Dave (in MA)]

https://twitter.com/grandoldmemes/status/1409268399608369155

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--wait for the audits--

I have high low hopes thy can find some modicum of the truth but what they are auditing is a set of books, whether first, second or third IDK, that has had some susceptibility to being sanitized and which even prior to the sanitization is a system almost designed to prevent definitive post hoc examination.
It's like trying to separate the water from the urine in a public swimming pool. Good luck. I hope I'm wrong.

[Dave (in MA)]

Mike Gravel has thrown his last rock.

[GUS]

Romney is BRYLCREAM part DEUX.
He is a FRAUD. And he is stupid enough to not know he is laughed at.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--pelosi-no-infrastructure-deal-unless-second-bill--

Why does anyone even try to negotiate with that bitch-snake?
Anyone who attempts to resolve an impasse by negotiating a compromise deal over several weeks without telling the other side their "compromise" consists of suckering the other side into agreeing to the half they can agree on but that deal is contingent on the Dems ramming through the other half they don't agree on afterwards is not a person any self respecting human or even a congressman would deal with in any way.
The Dems spent four years blocking, obfuscating and resisting. Payment in kind you dopes, payment in kind.

[Stephanie Nene Not Your Normal Granma]

Michael Smith
·
I have been considering something I call the “One Person Fallacy”. It likely goes by many names and has many parents, but it is what I think of whenever I hear someone say “Well, if it saved (or will save) one person, it was worth it.”

I also think about it when someone forms a basis or a justification for some action by using some sort of unknowable or incalculable criteria, like Obama’s “jobs saved or created” statistic he used to back up his disastrous economic plans. It was the “if we saved one job, it was worth it” excuse.

Then I wondered why people, especially elected officials, engage in such obvious and sophistry – but alas, not for long, because I remembered something Adam Smith wrote.

When you say “Adam Smith”, most people of any historical knowledge almost always think of one of two things: either “Father of Capitalism” or his 1776 seminal work of economics, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, or simply “The Wealth of Nations” (which is credited for first defining what a capitalist economic system is) – but Smith, like many “economists” of his time were so much more, they were often polymaths who were versed in physical science, religion, philosophy, or some other academic discipline.

Smith also wrote an important tome titled “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, written in 1759, which delves into human morality and behaviors. Along the lines of my thoughts, Smith wrote:

“Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them?”

If you consider Smith’s words, it would seem that the answer to my question is that politicians and elected officials are wont to “make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man” while being able to “snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren”, unless, of course, the event is singularly damaging to themselves or their future prospects – then the cry with angst and anguish as if a finger had been separated from their hand – much like the difference in their reactions between a year of protests, riots and looting compared to the 3 or 4 hour event on 1/6.

It occurs to me that too much of our political discourse is based not on what is the best public policy for all, rather the policy that puts the politician in the best light, that he or she might aspire to some degree of credit for those policies based on the “One Person Fallacy”.

There is just so much of true value in Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, I'm inspired to read it again.

That Smith guy was one smart dude.

[Jane]

Steph,

Trey Gowdy just talked about that on his show.

Term limits sor everyone who works in the government!

[MissMarple2]

My sister brought me a Readers’ Digest. One of the articles listed the favorite desserts of all 50 states.

The favorite dessert for Utah? JELLO!! How appropriate!

[1/2aboy&1/2aman]

Miss M and Captain Hate, I wish both of you well.
“Well”!
Get well soon.

[Narciso]

Does tbat seem kosher

https://www.newsweek.com/china-spymaster-dong-jingwei-makes-first-public-appearance-since-defection-rumors-1603603?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true

[Davod]

Ignatz. You are wrong. Anyone who negotiates like this is playing to their audience. If anything, it shows how scared they are of their base.

The smart thing to do would be to just do what they planned, get the Republicans to sign off the first part, then push the other part with on reconciliation.

[jim nj]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/u-s-military-launches-airstrikes-against-three-facilities-on-iraq-syria-border

At least one facility used by Iran’s militia forces to launch and recover drones was destroyed, a U.S. defense official with knowledge of the strikes told Fox News

[Neo]

There is one inescapable fact that left Barr on the sidelines … nearly all election law is state-based.
They didn’t just have to find evidence, they had to find evidence that they broke a federal law.

[matt - deplore me if you must]

Reflecting on AG Barr's interview I find it incomprehensible that, ever after Time Magazine revealed the unprecedented campaign to steal the election and even after uncovering the Bezos/Gates/Zuckerberg cartel's suppression of dissident thought and even after the huge discrepancies in vote counts between registered voters and votes cast and even after the massive resistance the Democrats have engaged in in opposing the audits he would even say such a thing. Unless the fix was already in.

Each of the above cases is established in fact.

In business every year companies that have inventory do an audit. Sometimes it's paper. Sometimes it is a physical audit. I have done both. How many lamps on the shelf vs the book count.

Every couple of years the state, or the sales tax department, or the SSA or the IRS does an audit and no one objects. It keeps the process honest.

But not in elections, which are notorious for fraud?

Someone's white toga has a great big shitstain on it.

BTW, paging John Durham.

[bubarooni]

Best wishes CH.

[Narciso]

Yeah baby

https://mobile.twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1409210585284333570

[Neo]

Non-Chinese who do propaganda for the CCP are known as a “white monkey”

[Narciso]

Heh

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/did-hancock-resign-to-put-his-family-first-/amp?__twitter_impression=true

[Narciso]

A rare bit of sense in bezos

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/25/ebrahim-raisi-khamenei-iran-president-supreme-leader/

[Narciso]

I guess assuming that a senior official in the dragons throne would have integrity would be too much, the cubans has aspillaga the russians gordievsky but nowhere at that level.

[James D.]

Matt @ 9:02

Not incomprehensible at all. Barr was always a dishonest swamp creature who was going to betray Trump and screw over the country. He never deserved one ounce of trust or goodwill.

[Narciso]

I didnt know his father was in the oss, i did know he was muellers boss when the investigation into bcci was shut down, also around the time of the horuichi incident.

[matt - deplore me if you must]

The Daily Mail is ahead of the NY papers and they did a big spread on the Pride parade in NYC today.It was all very parade-y, but man I really couldn't find a cisgender attractive birthing person among them. I hope I'm using the term cisgender correctly. I get so confused with Newspeak.

Trigger, victim (yes, victim) picnic, tree, give it a go, take a shot at it, shotgun shack, doing shots, rule of thumb(?), Killing it, going off the reservation, wife beater, no can do, and the list goes on.

Thought popo gonna be busy.
urgh, urgh a gurg!

[GUS]

Narciso, BEZO'S or any other OLIGARCH, makes decisions along the way, in order to enrich him/her self. What happens later is negligible. Do what you have to do to save yourself from harm.
Depending on the SLEAZE factor, or what promises have been made for your SUPPORT. This may save said oligarch millions if not billions.
Why is this corrupt trade off necessary.
Do the ZUCKERTURD, DORSEY, BEZO'S, ETC ETC OLIGARCH RICH KIDS, need to get PROTECTION??? They are BILLIONAIRS. Why would government protect them???

[jim nj]

https://michaelyon.locals.com/post/800723/darien-gap-love-lost-in-the-jungle

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Ignatz. You are wrong.--

Wouldn't be the first time. But it's possible they were intending to do the smart thing you mention until Bonehead Biden let the cat outta the bag. It's also possible they were intending to do it conditionally, the condition being there wasn't a firestorm of GOP outrage. And even Dems might be reluctant to pull a double cross of that magnitude in that it might be enough to shame even GOPe dopes into a little temporary spine.
IMO they never play it well when they play it so badly that even the GOP mushes recoil at the way they were nakedly played.

[Narciso]

Logistically i see a problem

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9730765/Marco-Rubio-speaks-Miami-condo-collapse-tragedy.html

[Narciso]

They need exploding shock collars to learn the lesson again

[Stephanie Nene Not Your Normal Granma]

Michael Smith
·
People who read my writings know my mind sometimes (often?) works in strange ways, making connections or drawing stimulation from strange places. This afternoon, I walked in the den and Thor: Ragnarök was on the idiot box. It was on the scene where Thor’s sister, Hela, was revealing the true history of Asgard by bringing down the domed ceiling in Odin’s throne room, destroy8ing the “happy happy” mural of Odin, Frigga, Thor and Loki and revealing an older mural underneath depicting the violent conquest of the Nine Realms, with Odin using her powers as the mechanism behind his rise.

While Hela was in the process of handily destroying Asgard, its heroes and army and beginning the fulfillment of the Ragnarök prophecy, I realized that the Asgardians had no idea who she was, how powerful she was, and how to defeat her (or at least escape immediate death) because they did not know their own history.

Apparently, her existence and the tales of her exploits were lost in time because the Asgardian rulers forbade any teaching about that period of their history. Odin defeated and banished her once, and if the Asgardians, knew anything about her and had been exposed to their own history, they might have stood a chance of defeating her.

Then I thought about how America has been rendered into a mortal version of Asgard and her people – we are too ignorant of our own history to know how to defeat our own Hela, the surging scourge of leftist progressivism.

There have been several polls conducted by respected pollsters (Gallup, Pew and Harris to name a few) that indicate the American educational system of government schools is doing a terrible job of presenting American history. In 2003, George Gallup introduced one of their polls by noting, “If Jefferson and Madison returned today, they might be alarmed by the widespread ignorance of American history and civics among U.S. citizens. For example, slightly more than half (53%) of Americans do not know that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution of the United States are called the ‘Bill of Rights’."

And it hasn’t gotten any better over time.

In 2016, a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that only 20.6 percent of Americans were able to identify James Madison as the father of the Constitution, more than 60 percent thought it was Thomas Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

College graduates only scored marginally better that the average citizen. The survey also found that roughly 60 percent of college graduates could not correctly name a requirement for the ratification of a constitutional amendment, and 40 percent did not know Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war, less than half knew that the Senate oversees presidential impeachments.

And it isn’t just founding history and civics, multiple surveys in 2019 and 2020 revealed startling ignorance about the Holocaust and WWII. For example, a 50 state survey conducted by Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany found that 63 percent of all national survey respondents do not know that six million Jews were murdered and 36 percent thought that "two million or fewer Jews" were killed during the Holocaust. Additionally, although there were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust, 48 percent of national survey respondents cannot name a single one, that 56 percent of U.S.

Millennial and Gen Z were unable to identify Auschwitz-Birkenau, and there was virtually no awareness of concentration camps and ghettos overall. Only six percent of respondents are familiar with the infamous Dachau camp, while awareness of Bergen-Belsen (three percent), Buchenwald (one percent) and Treblinka (one percent) is virtually nonexistent.

The survey synopsis goes on to note that “Perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations of this survey, 11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.”

The fight against things like the teaching (indoctrination) of Critical Race Theory is not really against the primetime and weekend lineups of MSNBC and CNN, or the CRT theoreticians, it is against the educational establishment that does not teach history at all, rather opting for a campaign of activism based on censored, stilted, and politicized versions of the historical record, absent of context and supporting a curriculum specifically designed for a particular negative outcome.

Perhaps this is rhetorical, but how is it possible for anyone to understand current events without historical context? How is it possible to for anyone to understand how ridiculous the contemporary and ubiquitous charges of fascism, Nazism and racism are if they do not know who the historical fascists, Nazis and racists were and what they did? How can they be expected to defend against communism if they do not know the evil done in the name of that ideology?

The short answer is that they cannot know anything. They cannot defeat Hela because they know nothing about her.

Worse than that, what they “know”, what they have been taught, is horribly wrong. As Reagan so accurately observed, “It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

I have always thought it interesting that when the African American Smithsonian released their take on “Whiteness and White Culture, they listed things like rugged individualism, emphasis on the scientific method, the Protestant work ethic, respect for authority, planning for the future, being on time, taking action, writing things down, and using proper language (as if those were negatives). I have always wondered if they even had a clue what a negative light they focused on “Blackness and Black Culture”, especially since those are the very things upon which America was founded and are the characteristics that produced our success as a nation. While thinking they were attacking “White Culture”, they missed - because the logical conclusion is that black Americans are the opposite of those listed characteristics, the idiots at the museum confirmed every single racist stereotype of blacks in America.

Ooops.

I’ve no problem with examining American history - but examined in proper context. To ignore all the good that has been done so the sole focus can be placed on the bad is not the way history works. That is propaganda and to ignore the aggravating elements of context creates a false history, a misleading narrative of events.

I guess that when people expect and become accustomed to preferential treatment regardless of the quality of their input, equality seems an unnecessarily harsh disadvantage.

If America is in the middle of an existential crisis, it is not Critical Race Theory, the real existential crisis is the historical ignorance that allows this “theory” to be treated as fact and prevents its purveyors from being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.

[Narciso]

Of course another podcaster noted taikki waititi (god bless you) is maori, so asgard is australia and he may be a frost giant? Asgard was secured by comquest, surtur is the dark soul there in.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

So if Dong didn't defect did anyone?
And if no one did what was the point of the operation of misinformation?
And who ran it; the CCP, the CIA, both?
Since it was run to conservative outlets I'm guessing our spooks with just another dirty domestic op.

[Narciso]

Its a wilderness of mirrors it seems

https://youtu.be/cPSBhQp4pFw

[clarice]

Iggy, maybe the CCP found someone who looked like him (how hard is that in China?)but as he sounded differently he never did speak. It's all very mysterious.

[Narciso]

The counterexample was yurchenko who had a wry joke at our expense

[matt - deplore me if you must]

Back in the 1970's The People's History of the United States began the relativistic historicism. Native Americans who were busy slaughtering all and sundry were portrayed as Rousseau's noble savages when they were, in fact, just savages stealing each others property and slaving all day long.

Down Mexico Way, the Mexica were the most hated of tribes for their bloodthirsty ways, which happened to be to some degree worse that the other cultures bloodthirsty ways. Chichen Itza, Tenochtitlan, Teotihuacan. Virtually any pyramid in Mesoamerica had one purpose; human sacrifice.

Africans enslaved by Africans for the benefit of their own tribal wealth were sold to unscrupulous merchants who powered the slave trade in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Slavery is the great stain on our society, but 2.1 million Union soldiers and 340,000 dead erased much of that stain.

The Civil Rights Movement was just and needed to correct the aftermath of slavery. But Moynihan's 1965 book"The Negro family" was spot on in what he predicted for our society.

Until the projects and urban development, the African-American family was the most cohesive nuclear unit in our culture. As neighborhoods and livelihoods were ripped apart the disintegration began. The drug culture did spectacular damage and as a character said in one of The Godfather movies, "they'll keep it in their neighborhoods"

But the infection had already begun.

Gangs morphed from the juvenile delinquents of the Sharks and Jets into major criminal enterprises which are now largely controlled by the cartels. 90,000 overdose deaths last year.

And all the while the Marxists were re-writing history according to the Comintern handbook. race struggle became class struggle except it was the upper classes revolting against themselves. It wasn't as much the fellow travelers as a different kind of gangster bent on political power who rose. The Marxists were back in academia promoting Gramsci and Derrida and Foucault and Critical Theory until it has infected the Establishment worse than Covid.

Covid has been a tool of control for them.

Yeah, it's going to get nasty.

I am reading Trollope's The Vendee', which is an interesting counterpoint when considering the class struggle. The country society loathed the revolution and its impressment of citizens into their army. But the parallels to today's culture wars are unique. Faith, history, even reason and steamrollered by the Republic and an insurrection almost spontaneously occurs. I hope we don't get to that point.

[Narciso]

Didnt know that one, of course napoleon arose out of the abbatoir.

[jim nj]

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-a-free-society-becomes-a-police?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNzE2OSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzgwODA5MDYsIl8iOiJWOWV6cCIsImlhdCI6MTYyNDgwMTI2MSwiZXhwIjoxNjI0ODA0ODYxLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjYwMzQ3Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.d0Y-S7zy8

When a Free Society Becomes a Police State
For 26 years, the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily was a thorn in Beijing’s side. This week, the paper closed for good. What its death means for Hong Kong — and for us all.

[jim nj]

matt,

I thought I was reading another Michael Smith piece until I saw you tag at the end of it.

[Narciso]

I think they are getting ahead of themselves
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/china-plans-mars-base-with-astronauts

[jim nj]

https://www.nysun.com/national/the-biden-bait-and-switch-on-infrastructure-is/91551/

The Biden Bait-and-Switch On Infrastructure Is a Historic Double-Cross, Played Out in Public View

"What did they know and when did they know it? The ‘they’ in this case is the five Republicans who participated in the final bipartisan infrastructure session with President Biden. It sure looks like they were double-crossed in a classic bait-and-switch, a victim of a big lie in full public view."

[jim nj]

https://www.space.com/huge-new-comet-orbit-toward-earth

A week after astronomers noticed a new object in the sky, they've identified it as a comet.

"This alien object was just designated as a comet Wednesday (June 23), only a week after astronomers first observed it as a tiny, moving dot in archival images from the Dark Energy Camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile."

[sbwaters]

Just finished Harry Stein’s "Will Tripp, Pissed Off Attorney At Law".

Highly recommended.

I admire two things especially:

1) That Harry can stare at Leftist misbehavior without hurling or turning away long enough to distill its essence, and

2) That Harry has the skill to model such lack of character through believable smarmy individuals.

It’s not a fun book to start, precisely because it is hard to look so closely at such lack of character, but who would have thought that that skill is what we have to develop to identify it, label it, and laugh at it until it shrivels.

They don’t shrivel easily. As Harry has one character say, "I do not embarrass easily."

No shit!

[Stephanie Nene Not Your Normal Granma]

Michael Smith
·
More thoughts inspired by Adam Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, this time dovetailing with the lack of knowledge of history that seems so prevalent today.

You really must marvel at the sheer amount of information available to everybody today. We have the contemporary iteration of the Library of Alexandria at our fingertips. A few whacks at a keyboard and Whoomp! Dere it is! (as the famous philosophers Tag Team would rap).

Why aren’t we all smarter? Doesn’t it seem that society just keeps getting dumber?

I think it has to do with social networking and something called social cognition. I don’t mean the social network in the sense of Twitter or Facebook, I mean the one-on-one exchange of ideas, the direct debates and the intellectual stimulation we get from engaging with other people with different ideas.

Psychologists define “social cognition” as “the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information about other members of the same species”.

I am certainly no psychologist or scientist, I’m just someone who knows how to find and read research and is smart enough to find and read/listen to people far more intelligent than I - but my definition of social cognition includes the “the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing of information” we get from other people about a myriad of subjects, not just information about them.

If our social networks are compared to a computer network, individuals are nodes on that network and groups of individuals are hubs or a sort of nexus. The individuals are almost like walking hard drives, some we can read, some use a different encoding system our operating system cannot access and then there are some are so corrupted the only thing on them is fractured gibberish.

The point being that these information exchanges are a “line of sight” thing, sort of like your Bluetooth having a 10-meter range. You gotta be close to get a good link and quality data transfer.

I think that is the part that is missing, the link. We have the illusion of connectivity today with the Internet, but I think the reality is that we are more isolated than ever. I think our problem is less the mountains of information to which we have access, it is the quality of the information and the strength of signal that truly matters.

We suffer delusions of being connected when the opposite is true, at least on an intellectual level. Humans are built to collaborate, even introverts like me. I joked the other day about a friend and I having a super weak “I” (introvert) on the Meyers-Briggs assessment, meaning I can be gregarious - become an “E” (extrovert) when necessary but will not like it. I remarked on the irony that introverts cannot get together to feel comfortable because, if we did, we would be extroverts!

It is true that I am not a social butterfly in person, my wife just says that I just do not like people (my rejoinder is that I do not like people who waste my time). She might be right – I have over 4700 Facebook “friends” and another 1300 or so who follow me. I have less than a dozen people I consider true personal friends and probably three with whom I carry on regular intellectual exchanges.

Mostly I just listen to the many voices inside my head and the post to keep them quiet, but I try very hard to produce accurate, truthful insights for people to read. What I post matters to me because it matters to you.

I began to think about how all of this comes together as I was re-reading Adam Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments” (which I posted about earlier today) and ran across this observation:

“In solitude, we are apt to feel too strongly whatever relates to ourselves: we are apt to over-rate the good offices we may have done, and the injuries we may have suffered: we are apt to be too much elated by our own good, and too much dejected by our own bad fortune. The conversation of a friend brings us to a better, that of a stranger to a still better temper. The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty, by the presence of the real spectator: and it is always from that spectator, from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence, that we are likely to learn the most complete lesson of self-command.”

The internet and the commercial social media are cold and distant, often becoming like the old game of “Telephone” where one person tells another something and that person tells another, and so on and so on, until at the end of the string, the resulting message is significantly unlike the original in many ways.

Probably not an original idea, but I think it is one explanation for why the weapons grade dumbass seems to be spreading.

It would seem with knowledge, as it is with friends, quality matters far more than quantity.

So, that was what I was thinking about when I was changing the cutter blades my thickness planer and tuning it up this afternoon.
Weird, huh?

By the way, I still have all my fingers in their near original condition, so I must have done it right.

[Narciso]

I think its too soon to determine is a commit its also 1 9 billion away (rounding off)

[Narciso]

Comet, its rather striking the megaton of stupid we are bombarded with, people read time magazine and think thet are informwed.