The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

B.I.T.S.

Posted on | February 7, 2023 | Comments Off on B.I.T.S.

URGENT MEMO FROM

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Johns Hopkins University Medical Center
Baltimore, Maryland

Biden-Induced Tourette’s Syndrome can be diagnosed by its telltale symptom, as the patient begins loudly shouting obscenities whenever Joe Biden appears on the nearest TV. The mere sound of Biden’s voice seems to cause BITS sufferers to start screaming incoherent sequences of curse words, vulgarities, slurs, epithets and sexualized insults. Researchers have concluded that these symptoms are involuntary and that the expressions voiced are entirely irrational, as the patient does not believe, e.g., that Biden literally sodomized his own mother nor that the President of the United States could literally shove the 4,000-page $1.7 trillion “omnibus” spending bill up his own rectum.

While some BITS sufferers are capable of restraining themselves during brief exposures to Biden — a 30-second sound bite on the news may produce only a slight rage-inspired trembling of the hands, sometimes accompanied by throbbing veins in the forehead — they generally lose control when forced to listen to Biden speak for more than a few minutes. All of which is to explain why Robert Stacy McCain will not be “live blogging” tonight’s State of the Union Address. The psychiatric staff has concluded that Mr. McCain might become a danger to himself and others, were he to attempt watching this hour-long event. Perhaps tomorrow morning, after a good night’s sleep and a nutritious breakfast, Mr. McCain will be able to glance briefly at transcripts of President Biden’s speech without erupting in dangerous fits of rage, but it would simply be too risky for him even to try watching the speech on live TV tonight.

We thank you for your understanding in this time of crisis.



 

 

Crime Reduction in Polk County, Florida

Posted on | February 7, 2023 | Comments Off on Crime Reduction in Polk County, Florida

Say hello to 21-year-old Alex Michael Greene and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because Mr. Greene shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday in Polk County:

Pandemonium took over on Winter Haven’s Havendale Boulevard at about 2 p.m. Monday when a suspect connected to last week’s mass shooting in Lakeland fled from law enforcement officers, was involved in several crashes and a carjacking, and was then shot to death by a Lakeland Police captain whom the suspect tried to run over.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said officers and detectives from the Lakeland Police Department, the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were watching 21-year-old Alex Michael Greene at a residence just outside of Eagle Lake “because they suspect he was involved with the shooting last Monday of 11 people in the city of Lakeland.”
Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor said they had a warrant on Greene for a burglary and they were hoping to bring him in to question him about the shooting, as well.
They were about to serve the warrant when Greene jumped into a white Silverado pickup truck and sped away, with Lakeland Police officers chasing him. Greene traveled north into Winter Haven, winding up on Havendale Boulevard as he weaved in and out of traffic. . . .
Judd said LPD Capt. Eric Harper, a 20-year law enforcement veteran who is in his 40s, “obviously sees the danger and is trying to pit the suspect and stop him so that we don’t have this pursuit on a very busy road.”
A pit maneuver involves a law enforcement officer purposely running his or her cruiser into the back side bumper of a vehicle to cause it to spin and stop. The Silverado came to a stop in front of Prime Care Chiropractic Center at 1400 Havendale Blvd.
Judd said Greene then got out of the truck and began running in and out of traffic, with Harper running after him.
“Why he and the captain weren’t run over is just the grace of God, because traffic was all over the place,” Judd said.
Greene then ran to Andreas Family Restaurant, next door to the chiropractic office. An older woman was visiting with friends in the parking lot, her passenger and driver’s side doors open as they exchanged a potted plant. Greene spotted the open car, circled the building and ran back to the woman’s Toyota Camry. The woman, who had witnessed the crash and saw Greene running, slammed her passenger door shut and ran to the driver’s door, but Greene beat her to it, shoved her out of the way and got into her Camry. She tried twice to open the door, but he began driving off.
Harper was now in front of Greene and the Camry, his service pistol pointed at Greene as Harper ordered him to get out of the car. Instead, Greene aimed the car at Harper . . . Harper then shot Greene at least six times.
Despite the gunshot wounds, Greene pulled back out onto Havendale Boulevard, heading west for about 50 yards until the car veered over the landscaped median, crossed the eastbound lanes and slammed into The Hamilton Company office, a security company, coming to rest halfway into the building. . . .
Greene was rushed to Winter Haven Hospital, where he died.

Well, I reckon the folks in Winter Haven can thank the late Mr. Greene for adding some excitement to their Monday afternoon, and also thank Captain Harper for ending this young criminal’s already lengthy career. In addition to being a suspect in a drive-by shooting in Lakeland that wounded 11 people and made national headlines, Mr. Greene had a record stretching back to when he was still a juvenile. At age 15, he was charged with “possession of a firearm by a convicted felon,” and had “two convictions of battery.” So far as I can tell, he was always either (a) committing crime or (b) behind bars, and he certainly didn’t spend as much time behind bars as he deserved. While the crime rate in Polk County probably isn’t very high, it’ll be a lot lower now that Mr. Greene has reached room temperature.

By the way, witnesses said there were four occupants of the car that committed that drive-by shooting in Lakeland, which means that three of the suspects are still at large, and if they want to try emulating their late accomplice Mr. Greene, I’m sure Polk County law enforcement will be happy to subtract them from the population, too.

If you look at a map of Florida, you can see that Polk County — a family-friendly community with lots of retirees — sits right between Tampa to the west and Orlando to the northeast, with I-4 running through. So the small-town cops in Polk County have to deal with a lot of criminals passing through between these two major urban centers, and it keeps them pretty busy, which is why Sheriff Grady Judd’s TV press conferences have become so legendary. Just so you know, Captain Harper was previously a Polk County deputy, and was involved in the manhunt for Angilo Freeland in 2006. Freeland was a drug dealer who made the mistake of driving through Polk County, where he got pulled over. When the deputy started asking questions about his fake ID, Freedland took off running into the nearby woods. A deputy with a K9 then showed up to search the woods for Freedland, who fatally shot both the deputy and the dog. A task force then combed through the woods until they found Freedland. They fired 110 shots, hitting him 68 times.

When asked why they fired so many shots, Sheriff Judd answered: “That’s all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more.”

Sheriff Judd has been reelected by a landslide ever since.



 

 

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Canadian Child Actor Dopehead Matricide Edition

Posted on | February 6, 2023 | 2 Comments

Like most Canadians, Ryan Grantham looks harmless. He’s only 5-foot-2 and began appearing in movies and TV shows as a child. But despite his innocent appearance, Grantham is a deadly menace.

Like most Canadians. It is probably not necessary for me to remind readers of my longtime advocacy of thermonuclear warfare against Canada, which I consider as dangerous as the planet in Aliens: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

A nation that would elect Justin Trudeau is dangerous — I think every American can agree on this — and therefore my proposal for blasting Canada off the face of the earth should not be “controversial.”

A few years ago, Ryan Grantham began smoking massive quantities of marijuana, developed a psychotic disorder, plotted mass murder and decided to begin his killing spree by shooting his mother in the back of the head at the family’s home in British Columbia. Grantham did not follow through on his mass murder plans — which is unfortunate, because one of his planned targets was Simon Frasier University, a haven of “wokeness,” and he also planned to assassinate Justin Trudeau:

Grantham, 24, detailed his plans to harm Trudeau, 50, in a journal and a police statement, prosecutors in British Columbia argued on Tuesday, June 14. According to CBC News, the former actor attempted to act on his thoughts after he allegedly shot his mom, Barbara Waite, earlier this year.
In March, Grantham pleaded guilty to second-degree murder when his mother was found dead in their townhouse two years prior. During his sentencing, it was reported that Grantham obtained three guns, ammunition, Molotov cocktails, camping supplies and a map for the area where Trudeau and his family are located. . . .
Grantham’s attorney Chris Johnson argued that mental illness affected the way his client was acting ahead of the murder. “At the time of the offense, this killing was not done out of hatred or animosity,” Johnson said. “It was done in Mr. Grantham’s disordered thinking, to prevent his mother from seeing what he thought he was about to do.”

“Disordered thinking”? Just your typical Canadian, really.

Grantham developed a psychosis from heavy marijuana and alcohol abuse, psychiatric reports would later find. . . .
According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 3 in 10 marijuana smokers develop “cannabis use disorder”, where they are unable to stop using the drug even when it causes them health and social problems.

Which explains my sophomore year of college, I guess, but why bring that up now? The point is that Canadians can’t cope with high-potency ganja. They start smoking weed and don’t stop until they turn into murderous dopehead zombies. And do crazy things like elect Justin Trudeau.

Oh, in pleading for leniency, his lawyer said Grantham “had been on a ‘downward spiral’ for months” before his crime, “and been spending a lot of time online.” Right — I’m a blogger, so if I ever go on a mass-murder rampage, I’ve got my excuse ready, “spending a lot of time online.”

You may think I’m exaggerating the menace of Canadian dopehead murder zombies, but John Hinderaker points out that British Columbia has basically legalized all drugs — heroin, fentanyl, you name it — because they don’t want cops hassling the junkies who crowd the streets of Vancouver (all of whom are Justin Trudeau voters, I’m sure).

As for Ryan Grantham, he was sentenced to life in prison, although he’ll be eligible for parole in 14 years. Recently, he was in the news with a report that he “is being held in a prison hospital and is receiving counseling.” He’s in the prison hospital because authorities feared “he could be ‘physically, psychologically and sexually intimidated’ due to his frail stature.” Yeah, it would be a terrible thing if the dopehead zombie who murdered his mother got raped to death by the other convicts.

Some people may think I’m being cruel, but remember, we’re talking about Canadians here. It’s not like they’re actual human beings.

 



 

 

Rule 5 Sunday: Heather Lee O’Keefe

Posted on | February 6, 2023 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Heather Lee O’Keefe

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Miss Montana USA for 2022 is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and volunteer grief counselor who enjoys long walks with her miniature Australian Shepherds and horseback riding; she qualified for the World barrel riding Championship while competing in the latter.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1981, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five 2023 Outlook Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon

EBL: MAGA – Balloon Attack!, “99 Luftballons”, Wolfhound, “Weatherman”, Groundhog Day, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Blondie, Cindy Williams RIP, Margaux, Romeo & Juliet, Emily Rudd, and Narvik

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Ireland Baldwin – a Chip Off the Old BlocksMaryland Bill Takes Aim at Chinese InvadersFish Pic Friday – Shawna WhitsettAmerica’s Greatest Breeding Project OverPin It DownTennis Star Shuts Down ReporterSome Wednesday WetnessFirefighters Injured In Dock AccidentSome Tuesday TanlinesAlas, RIP: Wednesday AddamsThe Monday Morning StimulusTrack Star Forced to WalkPalm Sunday and Give Her Some Respect

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FMJRA 2.0: The Machineries Of Joy

Posted on | February 6, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: The Machineries Of Joy

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This is an artist’s concept of the USS Montana (BB-67), who you saw as a shipgirl earlier this week. Essentially a “stretch” version of the Iowa class with an extra triple 16″ turret and additional 5″/38 dual purpose guns, the Montana and her sisters were planned to mob the bigger, heavier Yamato-class superdreadnoughts in hot four or six-on-one action…but then it turned out it was easier and cheaper to send the IJN to Davy Jones’ Locker with dive bombers and torpedoes from submarines, so the Montanas were shelved even before their keels were laid. The freed-up shipyard space went towards Essex-class carriers, and the Montana joined the HMS Lion, Sovietskii Soyuz, and Friedrich der Grosse* in the shadowland of ships that were planned but never built.
SOTD is from Klaus Schulze’s La Vie Electronique Vol.4.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Rule 5 Sunday: 2B or not 2B
Animal Magnetism
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
90 Miles From Tyranny

MSNBC: ‘January 6 Now! January 6 Tomorrow! January 6 Forever!’
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

The Diversity of ‘White Supremacy’
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Farewell To A Master
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 01.30.23
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

You Can’t Run From ‘Air One’
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 01.31.23
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘A Very Minuscule Number’
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.01.23
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.02.23
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

The Long Overdue and Much Awaited Return of Aspiring Rapper Update
EBL
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In The Mailbox: 02.03.23
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending February 3: 

  1.  EBL (12)
  2.  357 Magnum (11)
  3.  Okrahead (10)
  4.  A View From The Beach (7)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

*The name assigned to the first H-class battleship of the Iron Blood by Azur Lane; as far as anyone can tell, there were no actual names attached to the projected ships by the Kriegsmarine.

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Next Media Narrative: How Joe Biden Defeated the Evil Chinese Spy Balloon

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | Comments Off on Next Media Narrative: How Joe Biden Defeated the Evil Chinese Spy Balloon

The first 20 minutes on Meet the Press will be devoted to praising Joe Biden’s courage — his steely-eyed resolve and decisiveness — in ordering the Air Force to shoot down this threat to America:

A U.S. military aircraft on Saturday downed the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had been floating over the United States for several days, according to a U.S. official and eyewitness videos circulating on social media.
The balloon was brought down just off the Atlantic Coast, near the Carolinas, shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops for all flights in and out of Wilmington, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Charleston, S.C. In a statement, the agency said the ground stop was to “support the Department of Defense in a national security effort.”
President Biden, when asked about the situation earlier Saturday, told reporters, “We’re gonna take care of it.”
The days-long ordeal has placed new strains on what was already a fraught relationship between world powers, leading the Biden administration on Friday to postpone a trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The balloon was disclosed to the public on Thursday after appearing over Montana the day before, prompting a temporary stoppage of all flights out of the airport in Billings.

Well, if it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, the balloon had already flown over the whole country and seen whatever it was the Chinese wanted to see, so I don’t grasp quite what this shoot-down accomplished. Karen Townsend points out that the Biden administration’s main concern seems to have been the danger that Republicans would pounce and/or seize on the story, but that won’t stop the Sunday talk shows from turning into revival meetings filled with hymns of praise for Brave Joe Biden.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

 

‘We May Never Learn the Full Story’

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | 1 Comment

The late ‘Tortuguita’ (left); Atlanta riot on Jan. 21 (right)

No sooner do I finish one long rant about media bias than another egregious example comes to my attention. The phrase in the headline comes from the last paragraph of an obtuse article in The Nation about the Jan. 18 death of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a/k/a “Tortuguita.” In case you missed it, “Tortuguita” was part of the Antifa mob who were camping on the site of a planned police training center in Atlanta. When a law-enforcement task force went to clear out these self-described “forest defenders,” Teran shot a Georgia state trooper and was killed by return gunfire. This isn’t one of those “gray areas” in the law — you shoot a cop, you’re likely to die in a hail of gunfire. At least that’s how it is (and has always been) in Georgia, but Teran wasn’t from Georgia. He wasn’t even American, but had come all the way from Venezuela and somehow got himself mixed up with this crew of Antifa terrorists who have spent the past several months making a nuisance of themselves. I’ve written three times about this story:

It is not necessary for me to debunk The Nation article, because John Sexton at Hot Air has given it rather a thorough fisking. John’s pet peeve is that so many in the media are trying to cast doubt on how “Tortuguita” got shot, despite the available evidence. My pet peeve, on the other hand, is the way this “forest” is depicted as some sort of pristine environmental treasure when, in fact, it’s just a bunch of scrub trees that grew up on the site (formerly the Atlanta Prison Farm) after it was abandoned a few decades ago. And of course, The Nation plays into this narrative, referring to the site as “the Weelaunee forest,” a name invented by the Antifa crew, and unknown to locals. Go research it yourself and I guarantee you won’t find the phrase “Weelaunee forest” in anything written before 2021. What they did was to find some old article that said the South River had been called “Weelaunee” by the Creek Indians who once lived in that area of Georgia, and for all I know, that’s true. But (a) it’s been called the South River for more than a century, and (b) the river is two miles from the site of the planned police training facility. Referring to this property as “the South River forest” is misleading enough; there is a creek, half a mile east of the site, which is a tributary of the South River, but so what? I grew up in Douglas County, Georgia, near a small stream that, like every other stream in the area, fed into Sweetwater Creek which, in turn, fed into the Chattahoochee River. But nobody called the woods in my neighborhood “the Chattahoochee forest.” Creating the name “Weelaunee forest” to describe the planned police training site in southern DeKalb County is a deliberate trick by Antifa, intended to create the (false) impression that this is some kind of sacred indigenous site. The word for this is bullshit. The descendants of the Creek Indians who once lived in this area have been residents of Oklahoma for the past 150-plus years, and couldn’t even plausibly make claim to build a casino on the Atlanta site (although if they did, no Antifa would protest).

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough about this topic for one day, but if you want to hear me rant some more, you can tune into The Other Podcast tonight at 7 p.m. ET, when I’m sure I’ll have plenty to rant about.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

 

The Grammar and Rhetoric of Media Bias

Posted on | February 4, 2023 | 3 Comments

Yesterday I recounted my experience of watching a couple hours of MSNBC — I watch, so you don’t have to — and perhaps I should remind readers that I’m old enough to remember what journalism was about before cable news and the Internet had permanently altered the media landscape. It took me more than a decade of toiling at local newspapers in Georgia before I got hired by The Washington Times in 1997, and then spent an eventful decade in the newsroom there before striking out on my own as a freelancer/blogger. Part of my experience at The Washington Times was dealing with the stylebook as dictated by our legendary editor Wes Pruden who, for example, banned the word “controversial” from the pages of the newspaper. You see, “controversial” is one of those words by which journalists introduce bias in reporting. It’s a lazy word, a label applied to stigmatize someone a reported doesn’t like, and whom he wants the reader to dislike, e.g., “controversial talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh.” And the stylebook as dictated by Pruden had a number of other rules like that, intended to prevent The Washington Times from being like practically every other newspaper in the country, written with little tricks of tendentiousness intended to prejudice the reader.

While every conservative thinks of himself as an expert on media bias, very few of them have the kind of experience I had, spending a decade on the national desk in a newsroom under Mr. Pruden’s authority. The simplest sort of work in such an environment — turning a wire-service report into a four-paragraph item in the “National Briefs” column — might require a rewrite to eliminate the elements of liberal bias. And, good Lord, the hassle of dealing with copy from our Capitol Hill bureau, where some of the young reporters didn’t seem to understand the importance of being independent from the journalistic herd, and would parrot the same Democrat talking-points that everybody else in the D.C. press corps was parroting. How many times is it necessary to explain that tax cuts do not need to be “paid for”? This is not a trivial point, as the rhetoric of “paying for” tax cuts involves an evasion of the fundamental question of whose money it is that Congress is spending.

Furthermore (and excuse me for belaboring this point, which involves one of my pet peeves), the idea of “paying for” for tax cuts ignores a fact of economics that can be easily demonstrated, namely that reductions in the rate of taxation generally yields a higher level of revenue. This is the famous “Laffer Curve,” and was the not-so-secret reason why Ronald Reagan’s presidency yielded one of the greatest economic booms in world history. And as the private-sector economy boomed, the amount of tax revenue received in Washington actually increased, thus proving the basic falsehood of Democratic Party rhetoric about “paying for” tax cuts.

My point, however, is not to teach an economics seminar, but rather to illustrate how the business of eliminating liberal bias from news coverage requires a close scrutiny of how sentences are structured. And that was my day-to-day job for a decade, so that I can claim an expertise in this matter which most of my peers do not possess. If you never worked for Wes Pruden, don’t imagine you can teach me anything about how media bias operates. With that in mind, read this report from CBS News:

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee is seeking information from the FBI about Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official in the bureau’s New York field office who was charged last week with violating U.S. sanctions on Russia and other related offenses.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, wrote a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday seeking material and information about McGonigal as part of an investigation into allegations of political bias at the bureau.
The Republicans are also requesting a briefing to discuss the FBI’s investigation into McGonigal, including whether the bureau is undertaking any review to determine how Russia and its oligarchs were able to influence senior FBI officials. Jordan and Gaetz set a deadline of Feb. 16 for Wray to respond. The bureau said it received the letter, but had no additional comment.
McGonigal, 54, was most recently the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York and retired from the bureau in 2018 after a 22-year career.
A five-count indictment unsealed in federal court in New York last week accused McGonigal of working for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, and federal prosecutors allege McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov, a former Russian diplomat who became a U.S. citizen, worked for Deripaska to investigate an unnamed rival Russian oligarch in 2021.
McGonigal is also facing federal charges in Washington, D.C., related to at least $225,000 in cash he allegedly received from a person with business interests in Europe and who worked for a foreign intelligence service.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges in both New York and Washington.
“This misconduct further erodes public confidence in the FBI’s conduct and law-enforcement actions,” Jordan and Gaetz wrote to Wray.
Citing reports from conservative news outlets that McGonigal played a role in the FBI’s decision to launch its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between former President Donal Trump’s campaign and Russia, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the Republicans said McGonigal’s indictment “raises new questions about the FBI’s counterintelligence efforts during his employment” with the bureau.
Jordan and Gaetz have requested Wray turn over to the committee all personnel records regarding McGonigal; documents and communications “referring or relating to the FBI’s process for assessing and responding to the investigation” concerning McGonigal; and material related to the FBI’s efforts to mitigate national security risks posed by McGonigal’s alleged actions.
Republicans have accused the FBI of improperly targeting Trump with its investigation into possible connections between his 2016 campaign and Russia. The GOP-controlled House has created a select subcommittee, led by Jordan, on the “weaponization of the federal government” that will examine recent actions by the Justice Department and FBI.
The Justice Department’s inspector general conducted a review of the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and concluded in a December 2019 report that agents made many procedural errors, including “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in warrant applications, but did not find “any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations.”
John Durham, the special counsel who was tasked in 2019 with investigating the Justice Department’s investigations surrounding the 2016 campaign, responded to the Horowitz findings at the time, and said he did not agree with parts of the inspector general’s report.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a statement. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Now, the lead byline on this article is Catherine Herridge, a national security reporter who used to work for Fox News, so I do not think she is responsible for the obvious elements of bias here. In fact, I suppose Herridge had to fight tooth-and-nail with her bosses just to get the basic facts into this story, as her editors seem intent on portraying this investigation as a Republican snipe hunt. Her bosses as CBS News do not want to admit the obvious fact that the whole “Russian collusion” narrative was bogus, manufactured by Fusion GPS under contract to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that the FBI was part of the corrupt enterprise that turned a partisan smear into a two-year investigation based on a hoax. Certainly it is not far-fetched to suppose that McGonigal’s role in this might be crucial to understanding the extent of corruption at the FBI. So why the emphasis-by-repetition on the fact that this is a “GOP-led” investigation? During all the years that the “Russian collusion” narrative was treated as legitimate by journalists, did CBS News ever emphasize the partisan aspect of the story this way?

Over and over, in a thousand different ways on a daily basis, we encounter the same basic problem: Media bias enlists journalists to become “Democratic Party operatives with bylines,” so that anyone who disagrees with the Democratic Party’s agenda — even including Democrats who dissent about some particular item on that agenda — finds himself doing battle against dishonest reporting. But perhaps saying this makes me “controversial” . . .



 

 

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