Tuesday, March 22, 2022

This Thing All Things Devours


Leftism is entropy and it portends death.


In Christianity and Culture, T.S. Eliot wrote of liberalism:

 . . . it is something that tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negative: the artificial, mechanized or brutalised control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.

When one studies the Left from every angle, from inside and out, in both its historical manifestations and its present-day actions, then the human and social particularities cancel out, and its one essential characteristic—what we might call its “chief feature”—comes clearly into focus. That feature, that essence, is entropy: the implacable tendency of ordered systems to run down, to yield to chaos, to exhaust their source of energy, to rust, to decay, and to decompose.

Order is difference. It is inequalities, gradients, distinctions. It is this thing over here being dissimilar from that thing over there in a way that offers the potential for movement, for action, for work. Order is, as Eliot says, the accumulation of energy, just as the warmth of the sun lifts to a hilltop the rainwater that, flowing downward again, powers a mill-race. Entropy is what makes the water end up at the bottom sooner or later, its energy released and spent. Entropy is what reduces mountains to rubble, and what makes bodies rot. Whenever something somehow stands up, entropy is what, sooner or later, grinds it down.

Order is the electric difference between a man and a woman that drives the dynamo of life and regeneration. Entropy is what seeks, in these dying times, to make the sexes the same. Order is a diverse global community of nations and cultures—in individual homeostasis, but with a thousand points of difference, and gradients of assets and needs, that make possible an infinitely complex web of mutually profitable relations and exchanges. Entropy is open borders and mass migration. Entropy is what peels the skins off nations and cultures and boils them together in a pot.

It is only because some things are higher, and other things lower, that we can aspire to anything at all. Order, by preserving differences, is what enables us to stretch our souls.

Entropy levels, flattens, diffuses, deflates, destroys. It is the relentless enemy of everything superior, special, noteworthy, exceptional, and distinctive. It seeks, without pause, to make everything equal to everything else. It is the heat-death of the Universe.

Leftism is entropy.


X22, On the Fringe, and more-March 22

 



300th episode update: Since there was nothing yesterday, there has been a few things today, none of which are interesting to me. :( Still need more pics or videos before assuming the worst.

Here's tonight's news:


Conspirators in Their Own Words ~ VDH

Noble left-wing ends always justify odious means, in this case projecting one’s own conspiracist efforts by smearing innocent others as conspiracists.


For the last five years, the Left—defined as the fusion of the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, the radical new Democratic Party, and the vestigial Hillary Clinton machine—has crafted all sorts of conspiracies to destroy their perceived conservative enemies. 

Their method has focused on one major projection: alleging conspiracy on the part of others, which is a kind of confirmation of their own conspiracies to destroy their opponents in general, and Donald Trump in particular. 

Now they have been caught admitting to such nefariousness. Apparently, they still are exuberant about their slick shamelessness and simply can’t keep quiet. Or they believe radically changed conditions, such as the implosion of the Biden Administration, prompt necessary admissions. 

Hillary’s the One 

For nearly five years anyone who objected that the partisan Christopher Steele and his “dossier” were fraudulent, that Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was a paid opposition hit team, and their joint birthing of “Trump-Russia collusion” was a myth, was smeared as a denialist or conspiracist. 

But examine what has transpired since 2016. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation found nothing. Mueller in congressional testimony was either addled or disingenuous. He even claimed he knew nothing of Fusion GPS or the dossier, the twin catalysts for his own investigation. 

The more Mueller meandered, the more it was clear that his henchman, partisan lawyer Andrew Weissmann, had hijacked the left-wing “All-Star” and “Dream Team” of lawyers and was running the charade. The more the Left boasted of the legal eagles set to tear apart Trump, the more glaring their failure to find any such evidence supporting their conspiracies. 

Christopher Steele, once the object of left-wing adulation who sought to warp the 2016 election by leaking his smears, is now a pariah. Indeed, he is relegated to the clown-like status of a Michael Avenatti. Steele has testified to what we already knew: He has no notes or sources to substantiate his ludicrous file. 

One of his two “Russian sources” turned out to be a left-wing minor researcher at the liberal Brookings Institution, Igor Danchenko. He is now under indictment for lying. The other is a former Clinton operative Charles Dolan. He now admits he has worked for the Russian government and its affiliates for years. 

So ponder that creepy circular firing squad: Hillary Clinton paid for Christopher Steele to find dirt on Donald Trump. She hid her checks by using the firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS. 

Steele, who had not been in Russia in years, simply concocted the story, in part from the fantasies of a Clinton employee! So in the end, Hillary sought to smear Trump with a phony charge of Russian collusion by colluding herself with the Russians, albeit through various firewalls! 

When the investigators found nothing for their $40 million investment, serial leaking, and character assassination, when the author of the slanders cannot even point to a single source, and when his two informants are either under indictment or worked for both Hillary Clinton and the Russian government, then the accusers of conspiracy stand so accused. 

Gasbags Gaslighting 

When Donald Trump alleged that he had been wiretapped—apparently tipped off by a whistleblower—the country had a good belly laugh. Trump was deemed paranoid, a nut. Why would anyone in the lame-duck Obama Administration bureaucracy or the Clinton campaign have sought to monitor Trump’s communications? Who would even have had electronic access to such top-secret confidential communications, the very Domain Name System logs of candidate and then President Trump? 

But now we know that one Michael Sussmann—working again for Perkins Coie, and being paid by the DNC, as a front for candidate Clinton—contacted “techies” who as contractors had access to Trump’s most confidential and private communications. 

Sussmann then was told that a Russian bank, Alfa, had a back-channel line of direct communications with Trump. He then went to the FBI to substantiate to the media that his inventions were worthy of government investigation. Everyone from the ubiquitous Bruce Ohr to the Zelig-like Peter Strzok was somehow connected to the hoax. In truth, the bought techies searched Trump’s private logs for any and everything, and came up only with a Russian bank likely sending one-way spam to a Trump server. 

In other words, Trump was a recipient of electronic noise. But it was useful pings that gave the media a second life to “collusion”—another “bombshell” disclosure planted roundabout by Hillary Clinton who was still slandering Trump as a Putin puppet. 

Again, this sorry tale is not some allegation from the Right. We know the details from a writ of a federal prosecutor who had indicted Sussmann for purportedly lying. Soon he and his techie contractors will likely try to blame one another to avoid indictments, and we should expect even more conspiracies to emerge from those alleging conspiracy. 

Conspiracy Cons 

Most Americans concluded that January 6 was a buffoonish riot, in which hundreds of deluded protesters broke into the capitol, vandalized the premises, and disrupted the government. The public saw it as an embarrassment and believed the perpetrators deserved to be punished. 

But not the Left. They saw “conspiracy” in this keystone bunch. Soon they were screaming about an “insurrection” aspiring to a “coup d’etat,” and demanding over 20,000 soldiers to prevent a second wave. 

Very quickly, however, discrepancies in the left-wing narrative arose. “Five killed” proved to be one person “killed,” conservative protestor Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed military veteran lethally shot by a capitol officer with a checkered record, whose identity was mysteriously concealed from the public for months. 

The other four died from either natural causes or the press of the crowd. Officer Brian Sicknick was not murdered by insurrectionists as alleged. In truth, he died the next day of natural causes. Anyone who complained that the government suppressed communications concerning its preparations for the demonstration, thousands of hours of videos, and widespread use of FBI informants among the protestors was dubbed a nut, or perhaps an alt-Right traitor himself. 

Hundreds were arrested on trumped-up charges. Many sat in solitary confinement without charges filed for months. The Left cooed about a right-wing revolution foiled. 

But do not believe just conservatives that January 6 was a riotous charade trumped up into a politically useful “insurrection.” Instead listen to a left-wing New York Times reporter, Matthew Rosenberg. As an “investigative journalist” he both whipped up public outrage at the riot and in private bragged on a hidden microphone to a female acquaintance that it was mostly a bad joke, a break-in by spontaneously rioting buffoons. 

Or as Rosenberg put it of the supposedly violent insurrectionaries and the fear they instilled among reporters, “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there [January 6] outside and we were just having fun! . . . I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f-ck off!’”

And what did the ace New York Times reporter conclude of the trauma from the “coup”?

I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger . . . These f-cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f-ck up. They’re f-cking bitches.

And was the riot preplanned and carefully orchestrated? Hardly: “They were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”

How about the “conspiracists” who believed there were lots of FBI operatives and informants among the rioters? They too were on to something: “There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.” 

Rosenberg is no conservative. He is not even a disinterested liberal observer. He is an activist New York Times reporter whose official “disclosures” helped to feed the false narrative of a right-wing coup—one that we now know he never even believed in himself.

Laptop Lap Dogs

When Hunter Biden’s laptop turned up just days before the 2020 election with incriminating emails outlining how the Biden family had been shaking down foreign governments using Joe Biden prominence as a past senator and vice president, the Left screamed “conspiracy”!

Joe Biden swore it was “Russian disinformation.” He attacked Trump for “collusion.” Fifty former “intelligence officers” signed on to a public letter blasting the mysteriously appearing laptop as a likely Russian disinformation plot.

We should have been suspicious for a variety of reasons. The two chief signees were John Brennan, former CIA director, and James Clapper, former director of national intelligence. Both were infamous for two reasons. One, they were loud, paid cable-TV pundits, hired to vent their hatred of Donald Trump. And two, both had been previously caught lying under oath to Congress about intelligence matters.

Anyone who read the communications, listened to confirmations of Hunter’s onetime partner Tony Bobulinski, knew anything about Hunter’s serial drug addictions and propensities for losing drug paraphernalia, cell phones, and laptops, and digested the left-wing outrage, knew the laptop was genuine.

No matter—the New York Times and other media blasted them as “conspiracists.” And those smears worked. Social media silenced the story. The mainstream media squashed it as well. The usual mob of Democratic flunkies weighed in on the damnable Ruskies out to get Joe and Hunter by planting a laptop in a Delaware computer service shop.

Yet, after Joe Biden was elected, after it seemed likely that Hunter might well be indicted, in part for the accurate information on the laptop, and after Biden had imploded the Democratic Party and thus might be seen as “expendable,” the Left now confesses that that the laptop really was authentic all along.

Conspiracists’ Conspiracies

We remember the conundrum over the 2020 election. Most conservatives sensed that the election was “only” rigged in the sense that the Left earlier had openly conspired to sue states to drop or change balloting laws. They had sought to warp bureaucracies to change protocols, to pour money into key precincts to absorb the work of registrars, and to transition the nation to a 100-million early and mail-in ballots election. Mark Zuckerberg alone poured nearly $420 million in what the Left used to call “dark money” to alter the very way Americans vote.

It worked.

For the first time in our history, well over 60 percent of the ballots were not cast on Election Day. That fact alone rendered the second presidential debate irrelevant. More mysteriously, the usual rejection rate of mail-in ballots fell from 3-5 percent in most states to a fraction of that normal percentage. So the deluge of ballots meant not that more were naturally suspect, but fewer than ever before?

But again, don’t believe conservatives. The Left was so giddy with their massaging of the election that they wanted their skullduggery high-fived and immortalized. So the “conspiracy” was lauded in detail in Molly Ball’s infamous Time magazine essay, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” 

Note what she boasted about:

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents, and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. . . . The participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream—a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. 

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.

Ball even bragged of a new “conspiracy” between “left-wing activists” and corporate CEOs. The former on cue were to taper off their post-George Floyd street violence and the latter were to begin sounding off about social justice issues: “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.” 

If a conservative had written such a tale and serially used the word “conspiracy,” he would have been written off as insane. 

Note that all of the above admissions were either voluntary, or discovered through old “60 Minutes”-style ambush journalism, or arose due to criminal conduct, or were the result of likely political calculations. 

But again, it matters little because such exposés never come with apologies or efforts to atone for the damage. You see, noble left-wing ends always justify odious means, in this case projecting one’s own conspiracist efforts by smearing innocent others as conspiracists. 

Or as the late Harry Reid likewise bragged of his own lying about Mitt Romney’s tax returns in the 2012 presidential race, “It worked, didn’t it?”


Joe Biden Just Let the Cat out of the Bag: A 'New World Order' Is Coming


Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

While Joe Biden doesn’t do much in the way of solving any problems, I do have to say that he’s certainly is active — along with his administration — in spreading propaganda and the Democratic narrative on a variety of issues. We saw how his White House reached out to “brief” about 30 TikTok “influencers” on the Russian war against Ukraine. We later saw the result of that “briefing”, which was about selling why it was Vladimir Putin’s fault that the gas prices were going up, not Joe Biden.

On Monday, according to the White House, Biden met with “16 CEOs of major companies across several industries including energy, food, and manufacturing to provide a briefing on the latest developments on Putin’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine.” Can there be any doubt that they did the same thing they did with the TikTokers and handed out the talking points for the CEOs?

But while he was talking with the CEOs, Joe Biden said something that has a lot of people talking — he said the quiet part out loud. He noted the pandemic gave them “significant opportunities” to change things, that this was an “inflection point” in the world that occurs every three to four generations. Then he mentioned the “new world order” that was to come.

“As one…of the top military people said to me in a secure meeting the other day, 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946…Since then, we’ve established a liberal world order and that hadn’t happened in a long while. A lot of people died, but nowhere near the chaos. And now’s the time when things are shifting…there going to be a new world order out there and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

First, I’m not sure that Joe Biden knows what he’s saying from moment to moment, so the fact that he thinks he could lead a new world order is concerning, beyond all the things the phrase by itself might conjure up.

On top of that, listen to how he phrased things — how millions of people dying led to the present “liberal world order” and now there’s a new world order coming again? Please, tell us more, I’d like to know what further chaos is coming. And I thought all this thing about a new world order was supposed to be a conspiracy? Looks like Joe Biden doesn’t think it is.

But here’s a clue for Joe and the handlers: We are not run by the world — we are run by the Constitution. We are a free and independent nation — we are not controlled by the world. Yes, we have led the world for a long time, as a superpower and a light of freedom. Now, with the weak leadership of Joe Biden, a lot of bad actors may think that’s no longer true. Joe Biden seems determined to convince them of that.

We saw with the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions people being willing to give up their liberties and freedoms for the sake of “safety” and thinking that was a good thing to do when it’s a slippery slope. When governments think they can control you, they will. So it’s important to stand at every point against that slippery slope because we’ve seen how quickly that freedom can slip away.



Stefan Halper Was Just Another Hack Who Helped Peddle The Russia-Collusion Hoax

What Stefan Halper lacked in pedigree, he compensated for with his arsenal of connections that allowed him to whisper into the right ears just what the listener wanted to hear.



Nearly six years have passed since Hillary Clinton and her cronies launched their plot to frame Donald Trump as a co-conspirator of Russia to distract Americans from Clinton’s scandals. Since then, by bits and pieces, the public has learned of Clinton’s role in peddling the Russia collusion hoax to both the press and intelligence agencies.

While there is still much to uncover, a recent exposé of the man the FBI tapped as the key Confidential Human Source (CHS) in investigating the Trump campaign confirmed Spygate’s method of operation: creating mythical men on whose deceitful shoulders the media and the FBI then stood.

While Stefan Halper’s name and the monikers used to identify him in government reports—“Source 2,” or merely “CHS”—appeared regularly in reporting unraveling the Russia collusion hoax, only lately did Halper’s history undergo a thorough vetting. In a recent article, Real Clear Investigations’ Mark Hemingway traced Halper’s history through archived documents and interviews with associates. He uncovered two themes girding Halper’s parallel careers of government informant and Cambridge academic.

Stefan Halper’s Recipe for Success

From his earliest days in government until his retreat from Cambridge University following his outing as a player in the Russian collusion hoax, Halper advanced his professional persona, decade upon decade, by taking creative license with his credentials and exploiting his connections. Puffery appeared in both Halper’s public biography and resumes reviewed by Real Clear Investigations, leaving unanswered the question of whether Halper ever obtained the Ph.D. he claimed later allowed him to reinvent himself as an academic at Cambridge.

Before then, Halper appeared to muddle through a variety of low-level jobs in the federal government, until the mid-1970s. That’s when Halper’s career received a boost when he married Sibyl Cline, the daughter of the well-respected Ray S. Cline.

The senior Cline, who held top intelligence positions with the federal government since the second world war, reportedly arranged for the Ronald Reagan State Department to hire Halper. During the Reagan administration, Halper became close to, among others, Oliver North, but after the Iran-Contra scandal and some time in banking and D.C. think tanks, Halper transitioned to academia. He became a professor at Cambridge University in 2001, where three years later he would claim a second Ph.D.

In addition to the political and other connections Halper accumulated during his 30 years in the D.C. bubble, once at Cambridge, Halper expanded his network across the Atlantic. Halper became cozy with three other characters who later played roles—some prominent—in the Russia collusion hoax. These included Richard Dearlove, the former chief of the British intelligence service MI6; Christopher Andrew, the official historian for the domestic intelligence agency, MI5; and Christopher Steele, who worked under Dearlove at MI6.

Highly Useful Connections

While at Cambridge, the reinvented Halper leveraged his professorship, profiting to the tune of nearly $1 million by writing research papers of questionable worth for the U.S. Department of Defense. Halper added to his wallet by serving as a CHS for the FBI from 2008 until January 2011, when the FBI dropped him for aggressiveness toward a handling agent over a fee dispute. Two months later, the FBI reopened Halper as a CHS, giving him a stern warning that this was his last opportunity with the bureau.

Beyond these money-making ventures that kept Halper connected with players at the DOD and FBI, the academic apparently stayed close to elite members of the American media, including David Ignatius, the foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post. According to Steven Schrage, who completed his Cambridge Ph.D. under Halper’s supervision, “Halper knew Ignatius for decades” and “bragged’ that “Ignatius was his press contact.”

Another Cambridge student, the Russian-born U.K. historian Svetlana Lokhova who was later sold as a Russian “honey pot,” likewise connected Halper to Ignatius. Lokhova told The Federalist that in May 2018, shortly after Halper was outed as a CIA and FBI informant, she spoke with Ignatius, and when she “registered surprise about Halper’s role” as a CHS, that prompted Ignatius to say he “always found Halper reliable as a source.”

These connections all later proved key to advancing the Russia collusion hoax, but it was Halper’s role as a Cambridge academic that cemented his insertion into the scandal. As a faculty member at the British university, Halper participated in seminars and conferences, including the mid-July 2016 Cambridge University conference at which Halper first met then-Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

Enter: 2016 Campaign

While initially Halper seemed uninterested in the young Trump advisor, that suddenly changed after Dearlove arrived at the conference and spoke privately with Halper. According to the conference organizer, Halper suddenly “seemed desperately interested in isolating, cornering, and ingratiating himself to Page and promoting him­­­self to the Trump campaign.”

Hillary Clinton surrogate Madeline Albright also attended the conference, serving as a keynote speaker. While there, Albright attended a small, private dinner with Halper. Then, just days after the Cambridge conference ended, Albright proclaimed that “Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton.” The Clinton booster added that “Russia was likely behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails.”

That Albright began peddling the Russia collusion hoax in late July 2016, not long after leaving Halper’s side, seems suspect given that earlier that month Halper had forecast a similar approach to defeating Trump during a Cambridge lecture series on “the phenomenon which is ‘Trump’s maverick candidacy.’” At the time, Halper told his audience that “the deficits in Clinton’s campaign” left the election “almost too close to call.” “If the media focuses on Clinton, she will lose, whereas if they continue to focus on Trump, he will lose,” Halper predicted.

Worming Into Trump Campaign Connections

Two weeks later, the FBI launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign. Soon after that, Halper’s long-time handler, Stephen Somma, visited Halper at his home to request his assistance. According to Somma, he proposed meeting with Halper because Halper “had been affiliated with national political campaigns since the early 1970s,” while Somma “lacked a basic understanding of simple issues, for example what the role of a ‘foreign policy advisor’ entails.”

During Somma’s August 11, 2016, visit with Halper, the FBI handler asked Halper whether he knew George Papadopoulos, who then was serving as a Trump campaign advisor. Halper didn’t, but agreed to speak with Papadopoulos.

Halper then volunteered that he knew a second foreign policy advisor, Page, and asked whether Somma and his team had any interest in Page. Halper also told Somma he “had known Trump’s then campaign manager, [Paul] Manafort, for a number of years and that he had been previously acquainted with Michael Flynn.”

Halper’s claim to know Flynn proved another unsupported boast. He nonetheless told Somma and the other members of the Crossfire Hurricane team of an “incident” he supposedly witnessed at Cambridge involving Flynn. According to Halper, after Flynn spoke to a small group over dinner and drinks at Cambridge, another attendee, the Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova, “surprised everyone” and jumped in Flynn’s cab, then left with Flynn to London. Halper added that he was “suspicious of Lokhova” because of her Russian connections.

However, contrary to Halper’s tale, Flynn had never met Halper and Halper had not attended the Cambridge gathering at which both Flynn and Lokhova were guests. Halper’s claim that Lokhova left with Flynn also proved false. Nonetheless, press reports later repeated the story and suggested Flynn had been compromised by the unnamed Russian student. Lokhova would later sue Halper for defamation, pinning him as the source of the false reports.

Somma and others, however, seemed unaware of Halper’s fabrication. They couldn’t believe their “luck” that Halper supposedly knew three of the four subjects of Crossfire Hurricane. So, over the ensuing weeks, Halper would wear a wire and question Papadopoulos, Page, and even the co-chair of the Trump campaign, Sam Clovis.

Fabricating an Excuse to Spy on Trump’s Campaign

That Halper could arrange a meeting with one of Trump’s top campaign officials mere months before the November election is a testament to Halper’s 50 years of political schmoozing and ladder climbing—further confirmed when Clovis proceeded to have an unguarded hour-long chat with Halper discussing details about Trump’s strategy to defeat Hillary.

Halper came away from these meetings with nothing of import to the investigation into Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia. Nonetheless, the FBI referenced Halper and portions of his wired conversations with Page in the four FISA applications that resulted in the FBI illegally surveilling Page. Omitted from the FISA applications, however, were comments Page made to Halper that conflicted with portions of the Steele dossier.

While the FBI used only minor details acquired by Halper in the FISA applications, Halper’s cross-continental connections with the intelligence communities, political players, and the press, likely advanced the Russia collusion hoax in ways still fully unknown. This likelihood seems strong when one considers how, when the Spygate scandal began to unravel, the same media that had peddled the Russia collusion hoax began a public relations campaign for the players behind the plot, including Halper.

Running Cover for Spies

At first, the press presented the unidentified Halper as “an American academic” and as “an informant” or “source” whose anonymity had to be preserved to safeguard him. To bolster his credentials, the reporting stressed Halper’s position as a professor, highlighted his longtime work for both the FBI and CIA, and cast him as an informant who “aided the Russia investigation both before and after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III‘s appointment.” Then, in a transparent attempt to paint the still-unnamed Halper as a selflessness patriot, the media focused on the “great risks” informants take “when working for intelligence services.”

After he was outed, the Russia-hoax team continued to highlight Halper’s position as a “Cambridge professor” and long-time CHS to preserve the myth of a respected academic and dedicated and reliable informant. The Washington Post ran a puff piece on Halper soon after his name became public, telling its audience “Halper’s connections to the intelligence world have been present throughout his career and at Cambridge, where he ran an intelligence seminar that brought together past and present intelligence officials.”

The Post continued its gushing profile by highlighting Halper’s collaboration with Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, and their sponsorship of a “seminar that drew Michael Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,” to attend. Also stressed was Halper’s academic work, with the Post noting that Halper had taught “international affairs and American studies at Cambridge from 2001 until 2015, when he stepped down with the honorary title of emeritus senior fellow of the Centre of International Studies, . . .”

The remainder of the article then unquestioningly parroted much of Halper’s resume, before quoting an unnamed U.S. government official saying of Halper: “He thinks well. He writes critically. And he knows a lot of people whose insights he can tap for us as well.”

However, as Real Clear Investigations revealed in its exposé on Halper, he held neither the academic cachet nor the gravitas a seasoned informant might. But what Halper lacked in pedigree, he compensated for with his arsenal of connections that allowed him to whisper into the right ears just what the listener wanted to hear.

In this respect, Halper proves no different than Steele or Rodney Joffe: They are all mythical men, molded by the Clinton campaign, the media, and those complicit in the government to sell the tale of Trump colluding with Russia. In reality, though, they aren’t the James Bond, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne that we were sold—they are the Three Stooges with better agents.


Yes, Inflation Is Hard, but Elites Think We Don’t Know How to Navigate It

Yes, Inflation Is Hard, but Elites Think We Don't Know How to Navigate It

(Laura Greene/The High Point Enterprise via AP, File)

Inflation is something that none of us needs reminders of. We see it every day, whether it’s at the gas pump or the grocery store. What’s most frustrating is that our elites in government and the media think that the majority of Americans are too stupid to figure out how to deal with it.

“Elites in government, industry, and the media expect all but the wealthiest Americans to sacrifice their savings and safety for a green agenda we don’t need or want while we ship billions to Ukraine for a war that the greed and corruption of our ruling class started,” Stacey wrote.

Stacey looked at the principles behind the article, so I thought we might look at the specifics of this Bloomberg piece, in which economics professor Teresa Ghilarducci is so earnest in her attempt to help all of us peons.

“First, you have to know your budget to control your budget,” Ghilarducci condescendingly declares after her overly long intro. “Budgeting takes effort, but it gives you power. And that power is even more important in inflationary times.”

Aren’t you glad your betters are looking down at you from the ivory tower to help you know how to take care of your money?

Now let’s look at the tweets that trumpeted this article.

Yes, Ghilarducci actually suggests selling your car and relying on public transportation to get everywhere. Like all elites, her default is that all of us poor, unwashed masses live in urban settings (she probably thinks we all live in slums).

Of course, the whole sell-your-car-and-take-the-bus strategy doesn’t do a thing for people who live in rural and many suburban areas, but that doesn’t matter. Nevertheless, it’s a slightly less stupid idea than Pete Buttigieg’s flippant “just buy an EV” plan.

My favorite quote when she suggests selling your car is the part where she declares, “Now may even be the time to sell your car. It certainly isn’t the time to buy a new or used one.” In other words, it’s a bad time for youto buy a car, but maybe you can convince some sucker to buy yours.

And then there’s the whole “eat lentils” thing. Actually, when you go into detail, Ghilarducci goes straight to the old lefty trope of going vegetarian.

“Meat prices have increased about 14% from February 2021 and will go up even more,” she writes. “Though your palate may not be used to it, tasty meat substitutes include vegetables (where prices are up a little over 4%, or lentils and beans, which are up about 9%). Plan to cut out the middle creature and consume plants directly. It’s a more efficient, healthier and cheaper way to get calories.”

In other words, do without, peasant. At least she didn’t try to talk us into eating bugs.

And about buying in bulk? Ghilarducci repeats the old saw about how you don’t really save that much by buying in bulk unless you “try to do it with a friend, so you can split some of the costs and ensure everything gets eaten or used.”

I picture most readers thinking, Don’t tell me how to shop! After all, buying some things in bulk can be a hedge against having to pay more for those things sooner rather than later as prices continue to rise.

And then there’s the bizarre paragraph about pet chemotherapy.

“If you’re one of the many Americans who became a new pet owner during the pandemic, you might want to rethink those costly pet medical needs,” she states. “It may sound harsh, but researchers actually don’t recommend pet chemotherapy — which can cost up to $10,000 — for ethical reasons.”

Wait, what? I can only imagine that most people would have the good sense to avoid expensive pet care when times are tight, no matter how much they love their four-legged family members. A veterinarian friend of mine told me that pet chemo isn’t a common treatment, even though it’s effective (and expensive). Regardless of what pet owners choose (or can afford) to do, Ghilarducci’s statement still sounds elitist and tone-deaf.

Ghilarducci wraps up her exercise in elite condescension with the hilarious notion that inflation is good for us. Much like MSNBC told us back in November that inflation is great because it’s a reflection of how good our government is to us, Ghilarducci now informs us that inflation helps us develop our brainpower!

“Try to be as flexible and creative as possible,” she cheerfully recommends. “Scientists tell us our brain plasticity will improve by trying novel things. There’s an advantage to mixing up what you consume to cope with unusual price spikes: You become more resilient as you create a locus of control and interrogate your habits.”

Think of how much better and smarter you’ll be as you sit and wait for the bus (because you’ve sold your car) and look forward to that hot, steaming plate of lentils that you’ll enjoy when you get off the bus (because who really needs a steak?). Just don’t think about how elites like Ghilarducci are probably not doing a thing differently because it’s only up to the peons to adjust to inflation.

Thankfully, we’re all able to think for ourselves and can come up with our own ways to battle inflation — including voting in November for representatives who are serious about finding a way out of this mess that the Biden administration and its elite buddies have gotten us into.


Why Hasn't James Clapper Been Stripped of His Clearances?


Scott Hounsel reporting for RedState 

In the liturgy that has been the total failure of our National Intelligence Apparatus, no character has been more prominent than James Clapper. The former Director of National Intelligence, and now CNN Talking-Head, has been perpetually wrong about the vast majority of his predictions or statements regarding intelligence matters, even to damaging others by his actions.

On March 5th, Clapper was on CNN performing his regular duties as a “far-left conspiracy theorist,” suggesting that Vladimir Putin was no better than Adolf Hitler.

“It’s always a mystery to us. And all we really have to go on, at least for me, is his behavior and statements, his demeanor, and what he is causing to happen. I think that really gives a real insight into his character and for me, he’s a 21st Century Hitler.”

Yet, CNN host Jim Acosta didn’t challenge Clapper on his statements, or on the fact that a great deal of the aggression of Putin was seen under Clapper’s time in intelligence. Instead, Acosta played stooge to Clapper’s ignoring the fact that Putin has always been the person he has been, and that a large part of his aggression took place during the Obama Administration.

Clapper’s statements, limited in context only to the current conflict in Ukraine, attempt to circumvent Putin’s history in the region. In 1999, Putin ordered his forces into Chechnya to restore Russian control of the then-independent region. In 2008, Putin’s forces entered the South Ossetia portion of Georgia, taking and holding control. In 2009, incursions into Crimea in Ukraine had begun, leading to the region’s annexation in 2014.  Clapper’s statements nearly echo the statements made by Western leaders about Adolf Hitler circa 1941.

The point is that Clapper has been in the room for the discussion for more than 20 years about Putin’s brutalities. The actions taken within Chechnya alone read like a liturgy of human rights violations.  Where was Clapper during the dozens of incursions into Ukraine during the Obama Administration?  Where was he when they took South Ossetia? Where was the talk of him being as bad as Adolf Hitler then?

Hitler himself didn’t — overnight — reveal himself as an aggressionist. If you look at the parallels that exist between Hitler and Putin, you’ll see a pattern. Hitler ignored and violated numerous treaties and peace agreements in the years leading up to World War II, as Putin has done with violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and other offenses and violations of human-rights agreements. Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, annexed portions of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and invaded Poland in 1939, all while European powers attempted to avoid war under all circumstances. Meanwhile, Putin has had a record of violating the sovereignty of various surrounding countries for more than a decade.

To heed Clapper’s statements regarding Putin in our current time would be no different than taking advice on Nazi Germany from Neville Chamberlain about 1943. Clapper and his bosses have been placating the Russians for more than two-thirds of the time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they now want to blame the fallout on Trump? A total and complete joke.

Yet, while Clapper’s statements on Putin and Russia are disqualifying on their face, they are not worthy of him losing his clearances. Being a partisan hack does not qualify one for being stripped of clearances; however, I believe Clapper’s history against Trump, as well as his cover for Biden, are deserving of that very action.

You may remember when Russia-gate was in its infancy, Clapper would often make the rounds on Sunday shows, speaking of information he had been privy to that would have dismissed the whole mess. In 2016, while he allowed for Democrats to attempt to defame Trump with suggestions of collusion, Clapper did nothing. In 2019, The Federalist reported that Clapper was aware of the lack of collusion as far back as 2016, but never stopped the ongoing action against Trump in the years that followed. This action was used by Democrats to attempt to fuel an impeachment of Trump, as well as expose that the tactics taken by federal investigators during the pursuit of the investigation, were unethical at best.

Yet, Clapper’s declarative statements regarding the matter were nowhere to be found — until 2017, when Chuck Todd asked the former DNI point-blank about any evidence regarding Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. Clapper then responded:

“We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, ‘our,’ that’s N.S.A., F.B.I. and C.I.A., with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”

This declaration didn’t stop Rod Rosenstein from appointing Mueller as Special Counsel, and several more years of costly investigation. Clapper was nowhere to be found to criticize or even question the needless investigation. Clapper knew Trump was innocent, and yet allowed Dems to politicize the matter as a means of “getting Trump.” Even in November of 2019, Clapper was again on CNN declaring that Trump was helped by Russia during the 2016 election, almost criticizing his previous statements. While I believe this lack of action rises to a level of dishonesty, again, I don’t believe that Clapper should have had his clearances stripped.

Yet, most recently, Clapper’s partisan-hackery took a turn for what I believe to be disqualifying of his intelligence clearances. At the end of 2020, it was revealed that the FBI had a laptop (or several) that belonged to Hunter Biden. On that laptop were numerous details about Hunter’s unsavory behavior, as well as details about his various business dealings, for which he lacked any qualifications besides sharing 50 percent of his DNA with a man who would one day be Vice President and later, President. It was the worst nightmare of those on the left, because all of the behavior that was warned to potentially come from a Trump, was found, in great pictorial detail, on Hunter’s laptop.

When it came time to report on these findings, the media went to insane lengths to destroy the truth, including digging up as many “intelligence officials” as they could to declare this laptop business as a “Russian Disinformation Campaign.” Who, you might ask, was among the first to sign up?  None other than James Clapper. Clapper signed a letter that stated that the growing Biden scandal had all the “classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

While Clapper, John Brennan, and other disgraced former intelligence officials covered for the left and the destructive information which would have derailed the Biden campaign, the media did everything within their power to use these nebulous and evidence-less declarations from partisan fools as a means to protect Basement Biden. By the admission of the very letter that was used to debunk literal facts, there was no evidence of any Russian involvement with the release of the emails or the information from the laptop; however, that didn’t stop Clapper et al., from stating so. Their way to fight real information was to create disinformation that alleged disinformation.  As a result, Clapper essentially told the American people that the evidence and intelligence said something that it didn’t say.

As a result, Clapper has irreparably destroyed the trust extended to him by the American people, and should immediately surrender his clearances or have them forcefully lifted.