The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Clown Show

For the moment at least, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates (she served in that capacity for eight days) is the Wonder Woman of the democratic left. Her testimony before Congress was clear and concise, believable, and well structured. And for that, she deserves credit for honesty and balance.

But what Yates told the Senate subcommittee was already well-known. Although every Democrat inquisitor made dark allusions to the truly unhinged meme that Trump and the Russians colluded to defeat Hillary Clinton, there wasn't one scintilla of evidence offered to support their position. Neither she nor former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper could confirm their veiled accusations of collusion.

The editors of the New York Post summarize:
Clapper did say that the Russians have been trying to interfere with US elections since the ’60s and now “must be congratulating themselves for having exceeded their wildest expectations.” But he offered zero evidence that Russian meddling had actually shifted any votes.

And he admitted that Moscow launched cyber attacks “against both political parties.” Yes, he claimed that no “Republican-related data” was released, but in fact the leaks of Democratic e-mails included the party’s “opposition research” file on Trump.
Does any thinking person actually believe that if there was evidence of collusion it would not have been leaked in the past 100 days, or for that matter in the 100 days leading up to the election. The white-hot hatred of Trump within Democratic ranks is so pronounced that someone, someplace within the government would have taken the risk and leaked the smoking gun.

The problem for Democrats is that there is no smoking gun. In fact, it appears that there is no evidence of collusion whatsoever ... because ... it appears there was no collusion. Of course, that really doesn't matter. Keeping "the Russian" connection in the news (the trained hamsters in the media lap it up) allows the Dems to hurt the credibility of this administration, focus public attention away from important issues (like the on-going collapse of Obamacare), and hope to erode any support that Trump may have. It actually might work.

And Michael Flynn? Yes, it does appear he did some unethical things, but did he collude with the Russians to unseat Hillary? Not one piece of evidence indicates anything of the sort. You'd think that the now disgraced Flynn had worked within the Trump administration for three years as opposed for three weeks (before he was fired). You'd think that he negotiated the catastrophically bad Iran deal in 'collusion' with the Mullahs (oops, sorry that was John Kerry under the direction of national security advisor Susan Rice) or decided to topple Mohamar Kaddaffi in Libya and create a failed state (oops, that was done in 'collusion' with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) or advise the past president that ISIS represented no significant threat to the US referring to them as "the JV team," (nuts, that doesn't work either). Comically, Flynn worked for Obama for a far longer time than he worked for Trump.

Heh. What a clown show!