Not at all Funny

As the evidence-free fantasy of "Russian Collusion" plods into its second year, there's relatively little to add, but that hasn't stopped the trained hamsters in the media from beating the story to death every single day (when they're not, as CNN did, repeating the word "sh**hole" over 100 times in a 24 hour period). After months and months of "investigation," Robert Mueller and his team of intrepid lawyers (almost all of whom were Clinton donors) have come up with no indictments that indicate collusion. In an environment in which asking for a double scoop of ice cream was the leak du jour, not a single leak coming from the deep state provides compelling evidence that collusion occurred, not one. Yet, there is copious and reliable evidence that the Clinton campaign not only colluded with a smear shop, Fusion GPS, to create a phony dossier, but paid for it. There's also the clear implication that the Obama Justice Department used the phony dossier with Clinton provenance to get the FISA court to approve spying on Trump's campaign.

Of course, in the fantasy world of those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, all of the actual evidence is fake and all of the fake allegations are real. Through the looking glass we go!

Andrew McCarthy provides an excellent discussion of the Fusion GPS dossier (and indirectly, of the Mueller investigation) when he writes:

How do you make someone look guilty of something he hasn’t done? You erect a formidable circumstantial case around the big hole in the middle — the hole that, in a normal case, would be filled by evidence that the suspect actually committed the crime. You don’t so much cover the hole as create distractions from it.

The biggest distraction is bad character: You must establish that your suspect is a five-alarm rogue. This is the fun part, the part you can feel righteous about. By the time you’re done, people will want to believe the scoundrel has done whatever he’s charged with. Indeed, if you’re the maestro, you’ve probably even convinced yourself that this sort of morality play is, shall we say, a well-meaning “insurance policy” against the ruinous harm the accused would surely do unless we convicted him of . . . something.

The rest is smoke and mirrors: Unable to demonstrate the actual commission of the offense, you compensate by showing, in dizzying detail, that all the conditions are in place for the crime to have happened just the way you claim it did. This doesn’t actually prove that that our suspect did anything wrong, just that he could have — or as you will call it: Corroboration!

To complete the web of suspicion, we sprinkle in the expert investigator. He has sources. We can’t say who they are, of course — that would be a security breach. But look, this guy is a pro. Not only are his snitches telling him our suspect is guilty; it seems that the sources’ stories get better every time a new detail about our suspect leaks out in the press.

Funny how that happens.

Not funny at all, actually.