Monthly Archives: October 2017

November 1, 2017 SnyderTalk: Delusion Run Amock

“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

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Delusion Run Amock

See this Washington Post article: “‘This is a nothing burger’: How conservative media reacted to the Mueller indictments”:

The revelation Monday of charges against three former Trump campaign officials in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into possible Russian influence in American politics delivered a sharp jolt to the news cycle.

Anticipation over the arrests had been high for days after news that the first charges in Mueller’s investigation were imminent had seeped out over the weekend. And the documents outlining allegations against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, business partner Rick Gates and former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, laid out what investigators had found in unvarnished detail.

For most national media outlets, the news that three campaign officials had been charged headlined websites and front pages and were the focus of most of the day’s coverage, including in the traditionally conservative Wall Street Journal.

But in the highly politicized media environment, where news is increasingly targeted to partisan audiences, the indictment story played out very differently on conservative sites, such as Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Caller.

Here is a look at the news as seen through a conservative media lens.

A ‘nothing burger’

The most notable conservative reaction came quickly, from the man who looms large over the investigation: President Trump.

“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign,” the president wrote on Twitter soon after the indictments were made public Monday morning. “But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????”

He added: “Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”

Subsequent narratives echoed the president, downplaying the significance of the arrests.

“These transactions predate Paul Manafort’s involvement with the campaign,” conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham said on her show. “The idea that this is a bad day for Trump because it in any way alludes to a collusion with Russia — you’ve got to be living on another planet if you think that.”

She added: “This is a nothing burger.”

Some reports seemed to hew closely to White House talking points.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s press secretary, said the arrests had “nothing to do with the president … Most of them took place well before the campaign ever even existed.”

The Establishment Media is Deluded

The revelation last weekend that arrests in special counsel Mueller’s Russia collusion investigation were imminent and the establishment media’s reporting on it over the weekend and on Monday are stark reminders that “liberal progressives” are in a feeding frenzy.  They have lost touch with reality.

That information was leaked out by someone in the special prosecutor’s office.  To the Washington Post, that wasn’t a problem.  This is what the Post said:

Anticipation over the arrests had been high for days after news that the first charges in Mueller’s investigation were imminent had seeped out over the weekend.

There was not a single word in the Post article about the illegality of the leak.  It was a felony.  The person or people who leaked the information should be charged with crimes, but that wasn’t an issue for the establishment media.  They are hell-bent of bringing down the Trump presidency because he had the audacity to shellac their darling, Hillary Clinton.  To them, that’s the only thing that matters.

The irony is lost on them.  The special counsel’s office is investigating criminal wrongdoing and engaging in criminal wrongdoing in the process.  Lewis Carroll would have had a field day with that mordant twist.

The Post is like other establishment media outlets.  This is all they saw:

For most national media outlets, the news that three campaign officials had been charged headlined websites and front pages and were the focus of most of the day’s coverage, including in the traditionally conservative Wall Street Journal.

Saying that the Wall Street Journal is “traditionally conservative” is telling, because it’s neither conservative nor liberal.  It tends to be objective.  To the establishment media, that’s a meaningless point.  To them, it’s splitting hairs.  As I said, they have lost touch with reality.

But the Post wasn’t through:

But in the highly politicized media environment, where news is increasingly targeted to partisan audiences, the indictment story played out very differently on conservative sites, such as Fox News, Breitbart and the Daily Caller.

The implication, of course, is that the Post isn’t partisan.  It is accusing the “conservative media” of partisanship while their own partisanship is lost on them.  That’s an example of the pot calling the kettle black.  That’s too fine a point for editors at the Washington Post to pick up.

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem to Be

See “The Papadopoulos Case” by Andrew McCarthy:

As related in my earlier column on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Paul Manafort and an associate, today on balance is a good day for the Trump administration. Of course, you never want to see your former campaign chairman get charged with crimes. Nevertheless, after all these months of investigation, the much-anticipated Manafort charges turned out to be unrelated to Russian meddling in the 2016 election, let alone to any purported Trump-campaign collusion therein.

On that collusion question, today’s other development in Mueller’s investigation seems more relevant. As David French and Dan McLaughlin detail, the special counsel announced the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos — which apparently happened on or about October 5 — to a single count of making false statements to government investigators. As Rich Lowry observes, Papadopoulos was a low-level Trump-campaign adviser. He had contacts with Russians who claimed to have close connections to the Putin regime.

As outlined in a 14-page “Statement of the Offense,” Papadopoulos’s principal offense was to lie to the FBI about when these contacts occurred. He told the FBI they happened before he joined the campaign; in fact, they happened not only after he was aboard but only because he was aboard. Upon close examination, the story unfolded in the offense statement is actually exculpatory of Trump and his campaign. To understand why, we need to revisit the term “collusion.”

[…]

Thus, I think the Papadopoulos guilty plea helps Trump in two ways.

First, it underscores that, whatever “collusion” might have happened, at this point there is no criminal-conspiracy case. Even though Mueller has patently gotten cooperation from Papadopoulos, there is no indication that the defendant has provided any evidence that comes close to implicating the president in a crime.

Second, the offense statement supporting the plea also helps Trump politically. There is an interesting footnote on page 8. Here’s the context: On May 21, 2016, Papadopoulos emailed an unidentified top Trump-campaign official, explaining with urgency that Russian officials (presumably including Putin, at least in Papadopoulos’s mind) wanted to meet Trump and “have been reaching out to me to discuss.” Mueller then drops this footnote:

The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated: “Let[’]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.

[…]

Andrew McCarthy used to be a federal prosecutor in New York.  He knows what he’s talking about.  Those in the establishment media who are giddy because they think they have something on President Trump are like children who are playing a gotcha game.  They should be careful because they may end up looking more foolish than they do already.  That’s saying a lot because they look like idiots.

Mueller’s Investigation

If Robert Mueller is a man of integrity, he will investigate his own office and find the criminal or criminals in his midst.  He will also dig into collusion on the part of Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Podesta, and others.  We know that they committed crimes, the same crimes the establishment media alleges that President Trump committed.

So far, we have seen no proof of their allegations.  All we have at this point are strongly-held beliefs.  To the establishment media, opinions and facts are the same thing.  Their inability to distinguish between the two is evidence that they have lost touch with reality.

There is more.  See “Obama-era uranium deal yields new questions, new accusations and new investigation”:

House Republicans announced a probe into the circumstances surrounding the sale of a uranium mining company to Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom, that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010. 

The deal had to be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a committee that is composed of representatives from several US government agencies, including the State Department, which at the time was led by Secretary Hillary Clinton.

New questions have been raised by Republican lawmakers in light of reporting by The Hill that while the uranium deal was being reviewed and approved, the FBI was in the beginning stages of a racketeering and extortion investigation into a US subsidiary of Rosatom. 

President Donald Trump seized on the new reporting, telling reporters on Wednesday that he feels the newly announced investigations into the sale are “Watergate, modern age.”

“I think the uranium sale to Russia, in the way it was done, so underhanded with tremendous amounts of money being passed, I actually think that is Watergate, modern age,” he said.

The Hill reporting raises questions about whether decision-makers on the uranium deal, including members of Congress, were informed of the racketeering investigation that was ongoing. Further, the Hill cites sources indicating that Russian nuclear officials routed millions of dollars to the US that were designed to benefit the Clinton Foundation at the same time the deal was approved. The Hill does not indicate there’s any evidence to show that Clinton was influenced by this.

The FBI criminal probe resulted in the sentencing of Vadim Mikerin, an executive at Tenex (a subsidiary of Rosatom), to a 48-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit money laundering. Mikerin pleaded guilty for his role in a bribery scheme where Russian interests had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks. 

Court documents connected with the case reviewed do not reference donations to the Clinton Foundation, nor attempts by US or Russian interests to influence the Uranium One deal decision.

Those “donations to the Clinton Foundation” are typically ignored by the establishment media.  They have been ignoring criminal wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation for years.  We’ve learned through experience that there is always a quid pro quo where the Clintons are concerned, and as a result of those deals, the Clintons keep getting richer.  It stinks to high heaven, but the establishment media doesn’t mind.  Why?

The answer is simple.  Bill and Hillary Clinton see the world the same way establishment media types do.  So what if they break the law?  The Clintons get free passes.  Ordinary Americans would be rotting in prison if they had done a tiny fraction of the things the Clintons have done.  That doesn’t matter to the establishment media because they are on a mission to bring down the Trump presidency.

Robert Mueller has a big job in front of him.  If his probe smacks of the partisanship that plagues the establishment media, ordinary Americans will reject all of his findings no matter what they are.

We are on the cusp of something big, and it’s probably not what the establishment media thinks it is.

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SnyderTalk Comment:

Right now, the market capitalization to GDP ratio is 139%.

See the chart below. The MC/GDP ratio is now what it was in 2007 when it started to fall. That was a prelude to the Great Recession. It’s not quite where it was when the stock market crashed in 2000.

The MC/GDP ratio can increase from here, but it is reaching the point where danger lurks.

With tax cuts coming our way and the amount of cash entering the market increasing, the MC/GDP ratio will increase. When it reaches the 2000 level of 180%, beware.

Given the amount of cash entering the market, the MC/GDP ratio may exceed 180% before the market crashes, but that’s nosebleed territory.

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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.