A Little Bit of Russiagate

Hardly enough to matter, now that the New York Times has declare their attention has officially shifted from the busted Russian collusion story to the utterly imaginary Trump racism threat. Julie Kelly at AmGreat The New York Times Is the Trump-Hate Drug Kingpin

If Russian collusion has been the opiate of the Trump-hating masses for more than two years, the New York Times was one of its biggest suppliers.

Since late 2016, desperate to drown their sorrows over Donald Trump’s shocking win, political junkies on the Left and NeverTrump Right eased their inner pain with a daily collusion fix injected courtesy of the Gray Lady. With one click on the front page or opinion section, Times’ readers could satisfy their anti-Trump addiction while making them feel, if only for a few fleeting moments, powerful and in control.

Pain would give way to rage, then a false sense of hope. Surely the man installed by Vladimir Putin would never serve out his term, they would say to themselves while feeding their insatiable craving. And just as the high wore off, the Times would offer another hit, provoking hallucinations about Trump and his corrupt family being hauled out of the White House in handcuffs by Robert Mueller.

So, in a way, you can’t blame the Times for obsessively covering the fabricated Trump-Russia collusion storyline. It’s what successful drug dealers do—keep their customers hooked on a steady drip of dope and desperate for more.

The paper’s executive editor admitted as much during a closed-door meeting with dozens of Times’ reporters on August 11, after a somewhat positive front-page headline about the president enraged Timesstaff and readers.

Ace does a good job with her in The New York Times' Dean Baquet Admits: When Our Russia Collusion Storyline Collapsed in a Pile of Failure and Mueller, We Just Juiced Up Our New White Supremacist Collusion Storyline

Kelly analogizes the Times, and the media generally, as drug-dealers selling a cocktail of hatred and conspiracy, keeping its users dissociated from reality for a full three year Lost Weekend.

But now that the first cocktail has lost its potency, they've quickly cooked up a new one.
Then came the crash.

Not only did Team Mueller fail to find proof of collusion, the deified prosecutor turned in an abysmal performance before Congress last month. The daily supply of Russian collusion dope dried up, but Trump-hating addicts don't need rehab just yet: The Times is stocking up another toxic potion--white supremacy--to poison the body politic and cure any collusion withdrawal symptoms.
Folks like Baquet can only be held partially responsible: There is no supply if there's no demand. The Times' readers demand that their Trump-hating addiction is satisfied every day--the Times is just doing what any corner-hustling dealer would do to delay their customers' sobriety.

Read the whole thing. It's a good one. Also, read the column she wrote on this subject -- cooking up the White Supremacy drug to replace the Russia Collusion drug -- last week, beforeDean Baquet did her the favor of confirming everything she said.

Scott McKay at AmSpec,  Dean Baquet Kills the New York Times, It’s hard to imagine America’s former leading newspaper recovering from what its executive editor admitted last week.

In a way, Baquet has done the country a favor. Now that his performance at the Times’ internal meeting has leaked out, there can be no denying the intentions behind the nonstop accusations of Trump’s racism — and that of every one of his voters by extension — to come in the next year and change before the November 2020 elections.

If the ownership of the Times had any integrity or business sense, they would drop Dean Baquet like a radioactive turd this very day. I can’t think of anything more poisonous than a newspaper’s executive editor essentially publicly admitting his plan to stoke racial animosity in an effort to influence a presidential election when his charge is to present that publication as an objective deliverer of news. Fulfilling that mission is now impossible.

I don't know; it seems their target audience isn't paying them for the truth, it's paying them to print soothing lies.

Nice Deb at PJ Media, Federal Judge Orders FBI to Search for More Christopher Steele Docs

After years of legal wrangling, a federal judge has given the FBI 60 days to cough up records of their communications with former British spy Christopher Steele after he was terminated as a confidential human source.

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch first sought FBI documents on Steele in May of 2017 through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The court initially sided with the FBI but reopened the case in 2018 when evidence emerged that Steele was an FBI informant. Judicial Watch again asked the FBI to search for their Steele records, but the FBI continued to stonewall, declining to confirm or deny that they even existed.

Now, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper has put an end to the cat-and-mouse game.

“Those records might either bolster or weaken Steele’s credibility as a source,” Judge Cooper said in his ruling. "That information, in turn, could provide a basis on which to evaluate the FBI’s performance of its law-enforcement duties, including its judgment in selecting and relying on confidential sources, especially in connection with such a politically sensitive subject.”

It's amazing how tenacious the DOJ and FBI are about continuing to hide all this information despite the Trump appointees running the show. It's almost like they're unaccountable or something.

Dan Chaitin, WaEx, Former US attorney expects 'blockbuster' FISA abuse report from DOJ inspector general

During an interview Monday on Fox News, Lewis said he used to work with Inspector General Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department and called him as "tough as a nail." Lewis added, "He’s tough, he is smart, and I think the report will be a blockbuster." He expects Horowitz's findings to make special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election "look like a sixth grade book report."

Asked to explain why, Lewis said, "It’s going to come out. It’s going to be hard-hitting. [Horowitz] spent almost two years interviewing various people — witnesses. Looking at what he describes [as] almost a million documents. And I think he’s going to make recommendations regarding prosecution and turn this whole FISA — this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the submissions, I think he will turn them on their head."

I encourage cautious optimism. Just a Little Bit.



The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Katie Williams and FMJRA 2.0: But They’ll Never Take The Man Alive ready at The Other McCain.