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national politics & policies political challengers

Defamed by the Devil

Challenged to a push-​up contest at a town hall campaign meeting in New Hampshire, Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) hit the floor and won.

The presidential candidate (polling at 5.4 percent in the Granite State) probably will not win the nomination, alas.

Or her lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

Lawsuit?

Yes, a slander suit against the author of What Happened.

It is one thing to publicly call out Mrs. Clinton for her prevaricative snipes — but sue her? 

Boldness, at the very least. 

Would you dare to stand directly in Hillary’s way? 

Not to give credence to old #ClintonBodyCount conjectures, which connected a number of strange deaths in close proximity to her and her husband’s transit through the firmament of power, including old and more recent “suicides” … but the hashtag #TulsiDidntKillHerself is now trending on Twitter.

The lawsuit — dubbed a publicity stunt by David Frum in The Atlantic — involves Hillary’s public speculations (or conspiracy theory, if you will) that Tulsi is a “Russian agent.”

“Tulsi Gabbard is running for President of the United States, a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain,” explains the lawsuit, filed in the State of New York. “In October 2019 — whether out of personal animus, political enmity, or fear of real change within a political party Clinton and her allies have long dominated — Clinton lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard. She did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent.”

I am not a lawyer, but … while Mrs. Clinton’s insinuations-​and-​worse were malicious and almost certainly untrue, perhaps even diabolical, in our politics lying is the norm and hardly legally actionable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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insider corruption international affairs national politics & policies too much government

Mrs. Clinton’s Fevered Nightmare

Hillary Clinton’s recent statements linking Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii) to the Russians — Mrs. Clinton’s current favorite enemy — provided Rep. Gabbard with an opportunity for a return volley, dubbing Mrs. Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

But what was shocking was Clinton’s confidence in making such a charge sans evidence

Or not, considering her long history of “vast rightwing conspiracy”-mongering.

Should we wonder about projection, here? Could Clinton see conspiracies everywhere because she is herself at base a conspirator?

Ask Julian Assange.

His Wikileaks site provided evidence of Clinton campaign malfeasance and sheer creepy weirdness before the 2016 election, and also, more famously, evidence of U.S. military war crimes. No wonder he earned the ire of Clinton and the superstate within which she has worked.

Assange is now in a British court, trying to resist extradition, a wounded man. “I can’t think,” he lamented. “I can’t research anything, I can’t access any of my writing. It’s very difficult where I am.”

What his barrister said is even more chill-​inducing: “This is part of an avowed war on whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers. The American state has been actively engaged in intruding on privileged discussions between Mr. Assange and his lawyer.”

Though we know little for certain, between a “sunlight” publisher and the dark, secretive Deep State, I trust the journalist at least a bit more. After all, the Deep State has Hillary Clinton on its side, along with known liars like James Clapper — who just had the temerity to call Trump’s lies “Orwellian”!

And no wonder Mrs. Clinton hates Rep. Gabbard, for the Hawaii congresswoman would halt the prosecution of Assange.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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The Real Scandal Continues

The Mueller Report goes public today, and though some hope to find within it a splinter of kindling upon which to light the bier for President Trump, odds are high for a fizzle, a wet firecracker on a Fifth of July morning. 

Still, the whole Russiagate issue has not lacked for entertainment value. 

As comedy.

Little wonder that some of the best commentary on the left has included the incredulous coverage of the brouhaha by a professional comic.

Jimmy Dore, late of The Young Turks, has from the beginning been a skeptic of the modern conspiracy theory about Trump’s alleged Russian Collusion. Now he gloats. Earlier this week, on his podcast The Jimmy Dore Show, he came out swinging, insisting that the Hillary Clinton campaign actually did what the Donald Trump campaign was accused of doing. But, he laments, “accountability is not coming” — no journalist will be fired, nor the worst fake news stories even be retracted.

Mr. Dore also points to Tucker Carlson as a surprising purveyor of the truth about Julian Assange — that the Wikileaks guy, recently nabbed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, is not guilty of the crimes he is accused of. But Assange has humiliated nearly everyone in the political class. Dore wonders why Carlson can get this story right, but the major talking heads at CNN and MSNBC — all to the left — cannot.

Yes, why? 

Why is journalism now so lockstep in line with the corporatist Deep State and its major political operators?

I probably disagree with Dore on the answer. He thinks the Deep State’s main goal is to keep progressives out of power.

But the question is at least worth asking.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Morning Mind-​Probe

There’s news reporting, done well or not, and opinion, with which one can agree or disagree. But on MSNBC’s Morning Joe you get something even more illuminatingmind-​reading.

Yesterday, the show addressed U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s testimony the previous day before a Senate subcommittee. Viewers were shown The Washington Post’s succinct front-​page headline: “Barr thinks U.S. spied on Trump.”

 And heard the Attorney General tell Senators that he wanted to “explore” and “make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance” of the Donald Trump for President campaign. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he added.

“You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?” asked Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D‑N.H.)

“I think spying did occur,” Barr replied, “yes.” Barr defined “spying” as “unauthorized surveillance.”

“Someone’s been Trumped!” co-​host Mika Brzezinski exasperatedly declared as the footage ended. Co-​host and husband Joe Scarborough then took over, likewise uninterested in any such inquiry.

“[Barr] knows that what he’s saying is unbelievably reckless,” the clairvoyant former congressman informed. “And you can almost see in his mind, Barr going, ‘How do I answer this question so that Trump doesn’t tweet at me, so that I keep my job, but still not make a jackass of myself for lying?’”

As on-​set bobbleheads nodded, Mike Barnacle vouched for Joe’s telepathic veracity, sharing a tale that “two people who have known Bill Barr for 30 years” were “stunned.” These unnamed sources are known only to Mr. Barnacle, the disgraced former Boston Globe columnist, a plagiarist and fabricator of stories, once described accurately as “cynically churning out fiction clothed as journalism.”

“I want to satisfy myself that there were no abuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers,” Barr told the committee. “I think that is one of the principal roles of the attorney general.”

I agree … but you read my mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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The Anti-​Orange Man Cult

How do you know you are in an end-​time cult?

When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.

So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.

What did the cultists do?

Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.

But no. I am not talking about that, not directly. 

I refer to the Mueller Report.

“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-​in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”

Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.

To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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The Cohen Conspiracy?

The whole “Russia conspiracy” charge, relentlessly picked at and hyped since Donald Trump’s election in 2016 — and, more relevantly, since Hillary Clinton’s loss — suggests that Trump’s an evil mastermind. The infamous “dossier” that included tales of Russian harlots in a suite Barack Obama stayed in, suggests that Trump’s something of a madman as well as a narcissist.

Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, Esq., in his testimony before Congress, has called Trump a racist, con-​man and cheat. Cohen has publicly confessed his many grievous sins and technical crimes, re: bribery of hookers, etc., and generally repented of having served as the Evil Trump’s minion. Cohen has pleased Democrats by relentlessly castigating the president’s character, Igor finking on Frankenstein.

One important take-​away, however, is that the biggest charge against Mr. Trump appears untrue. Cohen did not go to Prague to meet with Russians to advance some nefarious business-​cum-​political deal.

So this is the end?

Sure looks like it, but I am waiting for someone to notice that Cohen’s testimony could be a ruse. 

Were Trump truly an evil mastermind, he would have figured that the only way to convince his enemies was to have the testimony of his innocence come from someone who hates him, who says all the right things against him.

In this scenario, Cohen still plays thrall to Trump. He has delivered the poison pill in the sweetest chewable form: his own public defection from Trump.

Is this psyop what’s going on?

Probably not.

But if one sees Trump as both an evil mastermind and a crummy, petty narcissist bordering on buffoon, then what would you believe? Were you right all along … but completely played?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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