A Week of Aftermaths

Heading into next week, keep this in mind:

Of Course…

Most from PowerLine and Bookworm, as usual.

 

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The IG Report

So, the much awaited Inspector General from the Department of Justice is out. I haven’t yet read it, and may not bother. I increasingly detest bureaucratese, and since retiring, avoid it whenever possible. But it is important, and I’m interested, but Mollie Hemingway read it so I don’t have to. In my experience, she often comes to very much the conclusion I would, never exactly, but often close. So, what does she say, in one of those annoying Federalist 11 things posts? 🙂

1. [And this is perhaps the most important takeaway of all. Who the author reports to and supports matters, especially when many things are subject to interpretation.]Learn How To Interpret An IG Report
   The best way to understand an inspector general (IG) report is less as a fiercely independent investigation that seeks justice and more like what you’d expect from a company’s human resources department. Employees frequently think that a company’s human resources department exists to serve employees. There’s some truth in that, but it’s more true that the human resources department exists to serve the corporation.

   At the end of the day, the HR department wants what’s best for the company. The FBI’s IG Michael Horowitz has a good reputation for good reason. But his report is in support of the FBI and its policies and procedures. As such, the findings will be focused on helping the FBI improve its adherence to those policies and procedures. Those who expected demands for justice in the face of widespread evidence of political bias and poor judgment by immature agents and executives were people unfamiliar with the purpose of IG reports.

   The IG is also a government bureaucrat producing government products that are supposed to be calm and boring. In the previous report that led to Andrew McCabe’s firing as deputy director of the FBI and referral for criminal prosecution, his serial lying under oath was dryly phrased as “lack of candor.” In this report detailing widespread problems riddled throughout the Clinton email probe, the language is similarly downplayed. That’s particularly true in the executive summary, which attempts to downplay the actual details that fill the report with evidence of poor decision-making, extreme political bias, and problematic patterns of behavior.

2. FBI Agent Who Led Both The Clinton and Trump Probes Promised He’d Prevent Trump’s Election
3. Comey Mishandled The Clinton Probe In Multiple Ways
4. Comey Is Slippery And Weird
5. FBI Has A Massive Leak Problem And Is Doing Nothing About It
6. FBI Almost Got Away With Ignoring Clinton Emails On Weiner Laptop
7. Breathtaking Bias
8. Clinton Got Breaks, But Some Backfired
9. Obama Lied When He Said He Knew Nothing About Hillary’s Secret E-mail Scheme
10. FBI Agent Joked Clinton Associate Who Lied Would Never Be Charged, Questioned Legitimacy Of Investigation
11. FBI’s Insulting Response

 

Other than the first, I just gave you Mollie’s bullet points, she documents them well, and you do need to read them, which you can in her article, 11 Quick Things To Know About The Inspector General’s Report.

And that last one is very troubling. The FBI doesn’t think it has a problem. It does, it has gotten to the point that a fair size plurality of the electorate is calling for its abolition, and with cause. It is out of the control of anybody, and its bullying practices are increasingly abhorrent, as it’s seen that it is no longer properly enforcing the law, but persecuting individually selected people.

After reading a fair number of reports in the last couple days, I think this is the fairest one, not glossing over problems, but neither contributing to the witchhunt. On the other hand, more often than not lately, the worst interpretations have been the most correct, but one continues to hope for a bottom to the swamp. But we may not be to it yet.

Army of the Free

243 Years. That a pretty good chunk of history. Especially if you’ve spent it on point, dying for what you believe, like these guys.

243 years ago (yesterday) a little group of men formed an institution, it was called the Continental Army, at the time 243 years ago today, it would find it’s first great commander, a guy by the name of George Washington, as it learned about being an army, while in the field against the greatest empire in the world. But in a year the body it answered to decided we really were going to be a country when Thomas Jefferson told the world all about it. Eventually they ended up in winter quarters at a place in Pennsylvania called Valley Forge, and while they were there they learned quite a lot about being an army,

 

And so one fine day, the band played “The World Turned Upside Down”

And soon the old Confederation would be transformed into a real government, with a document that begins “We, the People”, and so, over time, the youngest country in the world would come to have the oldest continuous government in the world.

And over time the battle streamers would accumulate, Fallen Timbers, Tippecanoe, Lundy’s Lane and New Orleans, Vera Cruz and Mexico City. But then that army split, like the country it serves, and fought a war with itself. And being the army of the country that prides itself on being the most modern, perhaps it is fitting that it was the very first modern war, as well, but there were echoes of where we had been, and who we were.

And so, we spent 600,000 men to learn about modern war but eventually

But we were never the same again either, and we picked up some new music as well

But eventually as time passed by the Europeans decided they should try out this new style of war. It worked even worse for them so eventually we went and helped our friends out

And again a few years later

Always different, but always the same

And always expensive as well.

Being an American is often about change but, we have that luxury because we have the unchanging basics, Here’s General of the Army Douglas MacArthur

Happy Birthday, Army

This We’ll Defend

Populism: the Last 50 Years

Frank Cannon at The American Spectator has some thoughts about the assassination of Robert Kennedy 50 years ago this month. Yeah, 1968 was quite the year, a major watershed, seemed like it then and it has proved so.

His impact has resonated well beyond 1968, however. As my late friend Jeff Bell argued in his book, Populism and Elitism, Robert Kennedy’s short-lived campaign drew strongly on populist impulses — that is, an optimism about the ability of people to make decisions about their own lives, rather than relying on elites to do it for them. This approach seemed to be giving Kennedy the momentum in the race, until that fateful moment on June 5th:

Kennedy’s assassination on the night of the California primary put a halt to that effort, not just for 1968 but (in large part) for the decades since. No subsequent liberal leader has made an effective effort to develop a form of left populism… Subsequent polling in 1968 found many white Kennedy voters lining up for Richard Nixon and George Wallace, although, with great difficulty, [Hubert] Humphrey got some of them back by the November election. But no Democratic presidential nominee has ever done as well as Humphrey with these voters in the five elections since. In short, the effort to keep the Democrats’ majority coalition together with a more populist appeal began and ended in the three months of Robert Kennedy’s campaign.

That is, I think beyond question. Many of Kennedy’s policies didn’t appeal to me, even then, but he did, then and now. In truth, of the brothers, with what we know now, he is the only one who does.

In addition, it strikes me that perhaps this is where the traditional liberalism was mortally wounded, as misguided as much of it was, in my view, it was honest and really did want to help people. What we have now merely uses people in an attempt to take and keep power.

In 1964, with the nomination of Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party had taken its first tentative steps towards a conservative populism. Since the 1950s, it had been defined by such leaders as Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller, who could best be described as conservative elitists. However, beginning with the tumultuous election campaign of 1968, this ground quickly began to shift. Richard Nixon and his “silent majority” powered a counter-conservative Republican populism, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan a decade later. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party came to be dominated by elite progressives, who had begun to gradually take over vast swaths of the culture and American institutions.

Since then, this state of affairs has come to predominate, though not without a few twists along the way. After Reagan, the conservatives who had found success with him during his presidency formed their own elite establishment, best represented by institutions such as the Chamber of Commerce, which dominated conservative policymaking, elevating business-friendly policies to the detriment of more populist issues — at least until 2016.

And then came Trump, the heir of both Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The author makes the point that Trump is different still again. Rather than conservative, he is anti-progressive (and a lot of that is conservative in nature). But it also owes a fair amount to Teddy Roosevelt, and his love for “The Strenuous Life”.

And in some ways, I suspect it is a very specifically American thing. We really are different, rowdier, prouder, and more passionate about our system, than pretty much anybody in the world. That doesn’t (and never has) precluded us from cooperating with other organizations who have similar goals or opposing those who would overly compromise freedom in any place or time. The main difference really, is that it is the almost unfiltered views of the American people. And the ‘elites’, left and right, don’t like that one bit, but that is how you get more Trump, longer.

A Summit and a Communique

So we have a joint communique. It reads well, it says things that need to happen, and probably its covered in fine leather, the best. What does it mean?

Everything or maybe nothing at all. It’s much too early to tell. On July 5, 1776, Tom Jefferson’s Declaration was mostly a list of people George III thought should be hanged. Its high flown and moving words meant very little until made good in Patriot (and British) blood.

It’s a good start, and you can’t reach the finish if you don’t start. It starts from the fact that last year, the whole nuclear thing became real for Kim, and he got scared right out of his mind when he saw a glimpse of the real power of the United States, sword unsheathed, coming at him, with a president who really would let slip the dogs of war. And to fight through to victory, not some measly little-limited war.

Call it a near-death experience, cause that is pretty much what it was, those change people. Maybe it has here too, he’s a young man, long time left to enjoy life.

Melanie Phillips has as good a write up as I’ve seen.

As Trump himself has said, however, this is merely the start of a process. It has been suggested that his strategy is to reel Kim in over time like a big fish on a line, with every step towards denuclearisation being rewarded by another step in relieving sanctions. And that may be so.

Certainly, Trump’s over-the-top gushing over Kim should not be taken at face value. This was just part of the choreography for his grand theatre of negotiation. Nor do I think it credible that either he or his hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or even more hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton could have failed to factor in the need for robust verification of the de-nuclearisation process and the difficulties in achieving that.

I was most interested by the body language between the two men, and also by something Kim said. Trump’s bombastic bonhomie seemed to me to signify the biggest beast in the jungle beating his chest to demonstrate his dominance; the more effusive the compliments, the louder the message that Trump could afford to be generous because the other guy had lost. It was not designed to make Kim look his equal. It was designed to humiliate.

That’s true, and I doubt it has much to do with Trump’s feelings (or lack thereof) for Kim. It’s a warning, to the Ayatollahs, to China, to the G7, to Putin, to all and sundry that the sheriff is watching them, and limited nonsense will be tolerated.

The only thing that has reduced American dominance in my lifetime is American non-leadership. America is still the worlds most powerful economy coupled with the worlds most powerful military just as it was in 1944. One is well advised to pay attention when such a one speaks.

And Trump is also right on Europe, there is very little support in America for continuing to support Europe, either militarily or economically. The Europeans have grown too arrogant, too sure of their entitlement, too lazy to defend themselves, and the people of America have noticed. Uncle Sugar is retiring. We’ll defend our friends, mostly the ones we restored from communism, and don’t want to go back, but that is close to the limit, and it just might be as anti-German as anti-Russian.

Melanie ends with this, and I think it a fair assessment.

The American strategy towards North Korea cannot be viewed in isolation from its strategy of isolating, weakening and ultimately destroying the Iranian regime. Tehran will be sweating that the outsourcing to Pyongyang of its nuclear weapons programme is not disrupted by the Trump/Kim negotiating process.

It cannot be sure. Trump’s policy of isolating Iran is already working. From being the unrivalled grandmasters of geopolitical chess, the Iranian regime now finds that the board and its pieces have been thrown up into the air by a vandal against the international order whose behaviour it cannot predict. And both China and Russia have already moved as a result to accommodate him.

Who knows where this will end? We cannot at present tell whether Trump will succeed or fail. But one thing seems indisputable: the assistance previously given by the US to the forces of utmost evil in the world has been stopped in its tracks. And only the most unhinged haters of this most extraordinary US President can deny that achievement.

The Lion Awakens

We touched yesterday on the whole Tommy Robinson thing, and there is more to say, best said from America, although many of my British readers will, I think, quietly agree.

You may have heard, and I referred to, the demonstrations Whitehall, just outside the fenced off Downing Street, itself a reminder of the problems that Muslim immigration has brought. The British are possibly the most polite amongst us (except of course at football matches) 🙂 But they have their limits.

Joshuapundit writing on Watcher of Weasels has more and some videos.

Tens of thousands of Brits attended a demonstration in London to free Tommy Robinson yesterday and it was not your typical demonstration. These people were energized and angry. Here’s is Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who addressed the crowd:

Here’s what the crowd looked like outside Number 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence. The ‘Tommy Tommy’ chant will be familiar to those familiar with Brit football chants:

When the London Police tried to suppress things, the crowd actually attacked them and a number of the police simply ran from the crowd.

Now, we’ve seen the British police run from Muslim mobs before. But this is the first time they’ve ever had to run from the British people. And high time too. They’re going to have to decide whose side they’re on.

The cops finally regrouped to block the demonstrators as they approached Buckingham Palace while the royal family was present inside.

British media is covering this as ‘a small demonstration of far right groups’ if they’re covering it at all. You take a look at these videos and tell me this was a small demonstration!

Emphasis mine.

Which is, of course, Fake News, the BBC, in particular, is every bit as adept at it as their buddies at CNN. But the truth stands on its own. Here are the videos:

 

And

 

Joshuapundit makes another point as well.

This whole scenario was so obviously reminiscent of the way Stalin used to handle this sort of thing that even a number of people on the Left who are not Tommy Robinson fans in the least are upset by it.

My original thought was that Robinson’s fate was a warning to others that you too can disappear and the papers won’t even write about it. They wanted to make an example out of him. They were probably going to wait a few months for the furor to die down and then have Tommy Robinson conveniently murdered in prison.

That plan seems to have failed miserably. Instead, they have made Tommy Robinson far more popular and a symbol of how the UK  is no longer a free country. If they keep him locked up or if they free him, he will remain a popular hero. And I don’t doubt they realize that murdering him in prison would make him a martyr as well.

Much as I hate to say it, I agree with him. This was an attempt to ‘disappear Tommy Robinson’. But thanks to the internet and some intrepid Britons not only are demonstrations happening in Whitehall but in San Francisco, in Sydney, in fact, wherever free men gather.

I think the elite in Britain have gotten so far from their roots, that they have forgotten the ancient wisdom of the people, who led us all to freedom. Rudyard Kipling put it best.

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

#Free Tommy

ps: Yes, the summit. I haven’t enough information yet to have a valid opinion, maybe tomorrow.