While David Gergen Slept

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Apr 2017

On a CNN (Clinton News Network) Sunday talk show, David Gergen was asked to evaluate the speech that Donald Trump gave in Harrisburg, PA on Saturday night.  Gergen’s reply contained the following extracts:

“He played to their fears…At the same time, to bring your campaign speech into the presidency is something presidents rarely do. This is the most divisive speech I’ve ever heard from a sitting American president…”

This is the sort of observation that infuriates Trump’s supporters, and gives validation to the notion of “fake news.”  To say such a thing, David Gergen must have been asleep during the entire Obama presidency.  Obama became famous for his two faced talk and his constantly imputing bad motives to his opponents.  Obama would complain about partisanship in one breath, and then indulge in it wholeheartedly in the next.  Obama would go out of his way to infuriate his opponents.

What Trump’s supporters love most about the man is that he gives back Obama’s crap with both barrels.  Where Obama smirked, laughed at, and mocked those of other views, Trump puts on no air of superiority; he slugs it out with all the grace of a Rocky Marciano fight.

Men of Gergen’s ilk, and worse – like Chris Matthews and Steffy – will observe that Obama was opposed immediately by Senator Mitch McConnell and House Republicans from the very start, and that this justifies similar treatment of Donald Trump.  Well, if the game is tit for tat, then why hide behind the façade of objectivity?  And if it was wrong for Obama, why is it not wrong for Trump?

Barack Obama was elected while promising to “fundamentally transform” America.  He wasn’t elected on account of that promise, but because he was black, he was not Republican, and the chance seemed there that America could finally put the issue of race behind it.  Few paid attention to it, thinking it was just campaign rhetoric.  Old Mitch McConnell wasn’t fooled.

Obama’s political mates were Saul D. Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Father Flager, and Jeremiah Wright.  A fundamental transformation of America meant a new constitutional order.  The courts and the presidency would take over the business of legislation.  The Congress would do as it was told, or face destruction at the next congressional election.  The new order would bring in a reign of extreme progressivism, the effects of which are seen on college campuses today.  To say nothing of Black Lives Matter, transgenderism, Islamophobia – mania, and many other nihilisms.

The American people were quick to deny Obama the compliant congress he needed to complete his fundamental transformation.  They returned a Republican congress at the earliest opportunity.  The American people signed on to an Obama presidency in order that racial tensions be ended; they did not sign on to an overturning of the constitutional order.  Mitch McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity were onto Obama from the first, and that is why they all hoped he would fail.  In contrast, sensible people – and that excludes most Democrats these days – want Donald Trump to succeed in making America great again, to return to the constitutional order, and to a revival of the economy.  And Trump is striving to do exactly that.  Trump is carrying out his campaign promises to the best of his ability.

For David Gergen to say that bringing campaign speeches into the presidency is something presidents never do, means that no president he is aware of ever brought their campaign promises into their speeches as president.  They were all phonies who talked one way but did another upon gaining power.

Gergen must have been sleeping during Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural, and through every speech he gave to Congress.  Lincoln must never have spoken about ending slavery in the Union once he was in office.  Gergen might have been thinking of George H.W. Bush and his “read my lips – no new taxes”, a brief four years in the last forty when Gergen was awake and aware.

As for the most divisive speech he’s ever heard from a sitting American president, one could choose any of a number of Obama’s speeches, and in particular his speeches during the 2016 campaign, when he made America look like a banana republic.

The David Gergens of the world are why America needs Donald Trump and why the media is held in such disrepute today.

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March for Science: beating in "truth"

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Apr 2017

Superficially, the Indigenous Research Institute and the Departments of Physics and Astronomy of McMaster University couldn’t have more different approaches to science, truth, and knowledge.  In actuality, the IRI and Dr. Fiona McNeill, Director of Radiation Sciences, both share the belief that when it comes to truth and knowledge, Might Makes Right.

Dr. McNeill wrote about the March for Science that is going to be held this Saturday.  Earth Day.  At City Hall and in about 500 other places around North America.  The Wikipedia entry on the subject lists it as “Part of a series on Protests against Donald Trump.”  It was inspired by the Woman’s March in Washington, held on 21 Jan 2017, and this one features Bill Nye “the science guy” as an honorary Co-Chair.  March for Science on Earth Day is as spontaneous as the Normandy invasion.

Dr. McNeill writes that “effective polices that use science are only put into place when the public and governments believe the evidence…Scientists need to learn that facts may matter.”  So, how do you get people to believe the “evidence?”  By beating it into them through protests like the one planned for Earth Day.

A scientist who doesn’t believe that “facts may matter” is no scientist at all.  But the point of the Earth Day March for Science is the mobilization of opinion for progressive political causes under the banner of “Science” and a general condemnation of Donald Trump.

Two major political objectives of the March for Science is to re-generate enthusiasm for the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, and, strangely, to condemn the use of the MOAB device in Afghanistan against an ISIS position.  In the latter case, the official M for S line runs that the MOAB is an “example of how science is weaponized against marginalized people,” (like those in ISIS!) “causing them irreparable harm;” and that the cost of building one means “diminished resources for vulnerable and marginalized communities in the US.”

Scientists have had moral qualms about the use of science for making weapons since the development of the atomic bomb, but such developments have had the strange effect of keeping the peace.  The tactical use of the MOAB saved more than a few lives and limbs of people fighting on our side, and killed head-hackers, gang-rapers of adolescent girls, and those who roast people alive.

So far as the global warming hypothesis goes, that is an example of the banner of “science” being waved for policies that cause economic harm and that actually create more “vulnerable and marginalized communities in the US.”  Like coal mining communities, for example.  And the town with one large factory that employs semi-skilled labor.

The March for Science organizers have been criticized as being divisive, obsessed with identity politics, and for excluding scientists who don’t toe the Democrat party line.

Dr. McNeill should keep her scientist hat on at the rally and observe those around her.  That may help her understand some other realities on the basis of evidence.

By now it should be obvious that the March for Science is another political event intended to advance progressivist causes.  It has nothing to do with advancing the cause of science per se.

As I've said before, anybody who claims to "believe in science" must needs be pro-life, on the basis of the teachings of biology and of common sense ethics.  Let's see how many pro-life banners there are at these Marches for "Science."

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Mac Humanities launches Indigenous Research Institute

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Apr 2017

Another epic fail is in the offing at the McMaster Humanities Department.

“Indigenous knowledge is valid scientific knowledge.  That is the core value of a new institute…dedicated to advancing indigenous research.”  The author of those lines is in serious need of some of that old Greek knowledge, called philosophy.  Those lines were said by Chelsea Gabel, acting director of the new institute.

Now, there is no such thing as ‘indigenous knowledge’ any more than Newtonian physics is ‘Anglo-Saxon knowledge.’  However, Newtonian physics does provide valid, scientific knowledge, while the common opinion of a few, earnest indigenous people does not.

The equation of ‘indigenous knowledge’ with valid, scientific knowledge as being a ‘core value’ amounts to the assertion of demonstratively false relation as a philosophical principle, asserted on the basis of some unannounced and unexamined ethic.  Since two indigenous persons can disagree, which of the two divergent opinions count as the valid scientific knowledge while the other is error?  And how can an independent researcher decide which of the two is true, and therefore knowledge; or can both be wrong?

Research into safe drinking water and into the origins of Indigenous language and culture, two stated aims of the new institute, seems to me to belong in either the chemistry or medical departments in the one case, and anthropology in the other.  There is nothing specifically Indigenous about the causes or the effects of lead and mercury in drinking water, unless one is asserting that Indigenous persons are not of the species homo sapiens.

The Indigenous research institute is founded upon the principle of the subjectivity of truth.  Though popular nowadays among grievance-mongers, this principle is self-contradictory.  That is why Chelsea Gabel uttered the two outlandish sentences above with a straight face.  If Mac Humanities covets a good reputation, it needs to disabuse itself of the pragmatic theory of truth.

Chelsea Gabel went on to say that the methodology of new institute was "changing the way research has typically been done."  That's for sure.

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Mac Humanities Fail Again

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Apr 2017

You have to wonder what kind of education Mac humanities students are getting for all the money they are spending.  The piece below was written by another one of the grievance-studies profs at Mac Humanities.

RE: Mac protesters were defending their principles.

As a Professor of English and Culture Studies, Dr. Amber Dean seems strangely unfamiliar with that quintessentially English cultural phenomenon of “Speaker’s Corner.”  This is a place where anyone can go to harangue a length on anything they choose, and where anyone can go to listen and, within limits, to heckle.  Speaker’s Corner demonstrates “the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind, and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear.”

In Common Law, freedom of speech is not be limited to the inoffensive but extended also to “the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, so long as such speech did not tend to provoke violence.”  Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights accorded the right for speech to be offensive.

Amber Dean is not only incoherent but utterly at sea when she says in one place that she supports the right of Dr. Jordon Peterson to free speech, and in another says that his speech must be responsible, reasoned, rigorous, and have been peer-reviewed or he can’t be allowed to speak.  Free speech is, well, free.  If speech is free, then it isn’t subject to limitations Dr. Dean pulled from out of a conveniently placed hat.  Besides, what was "responsible, reasoned, rigorous, and peer-reviewed" about the protests against Dr. Peterson?

After a bit of thought, one can understand that if speech must be subject to peer review before it can be spoken in public, then absolutely nothing new can be said in public.  It must be said before it can be reviewed, and academic peer review is notoriously political.  That’s why speech needs to be free.

Amber Dean then wades into the human rights of students, and holds that the rights of students are superior to those of visiting professors.  But if a student felt his or her rights would be violated by listening to Dr. Peterson, there was nothing that required them to go and listen.  However, the disruption of Dr. Peterson’s talk did violate the rights of those students who wanted to hear him.  Those who disliked what Dr. Peterson was going to say could have protested somewhere else.  That way they could have protected and expressed their rights, and not have violated the rights of other students and of Dr. Peterson.  Somehow, this compromise escaped the notice of Dr. Dean.

Amber Dean apparently doesn’t like it when protest tactics are returned upon herself and her friends.  These tactics may be wrong and offensive, but she has no rational defense against it, since these people are merely exercising their rights in accordance with her terms of analysis.

Common sense politeness forms no part of Dr. Dean’s analysis.

The Op-ed piece by Dr. Amber Dean is yet another appalling work product that has been published recently in the Spectator.from the Humanities Department of McMaster University  Mac Humanities must be the place where intellect goes to die.

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Another Tragedy at Mac Humanities

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Mar 2017

RE:  Protest is not censorship

An article appeared in the Hamilton Spectator under the headline "Protest is not Censorship".  The author was a self-identified Indian princess who was a student at McMaster University, Humanities faculty.  She said she was visiting the "traditional territory of Dish with One Spoon", which in local Aboriginal lore is the Niagara Peninsula - Hamilton area. 

The idea that ‘democracy requires intense opposition to oppressive ideas’ and to conclude it follows that democracy requires that certain public figures must be prevented from speaking, is incoherent.  Here is another, “The first step,” it is argued without blushing, “toward organized violence is a move to reject the humanity of certain people.”

Hence, if response to the disruption of the Peterson lecture, those wanting to hear him had pulled out their truncheons and beaten the protesters into silence, the author could have nothing to say against it.  She would not even be able to observe the irony.  All she could do is sputter with rage at her own argument turned on her.

The reason for the incoherence of the argument is that the author is trying to justify that might makes right, but for her side only.  As she says, “The idea that a speaker can be paid to deliver a speech and be granted access to power unmolested by public outrage and protest is a distortion of the principle of liberalism."  Speaking is power, therefore stopping from speaking is to deprive of power, in her line of thinking.

It seems never to have occurred to princess that those footing the bill have a right to get what they paid for, and never mind the gross mistake of equating public discussion with an immoral seizure of power.

That princess would venture to say what is or is not a distortion of the principle of liberalism shows a remarkable combination of arrogance and ignorance, to say nothing of cultural appropriation on her part.  That might makes right forms no part of the doctrine of liberalism; quite the contrary.  Princess should consult the works of John Stuart Mill to get informed on the subject, with all the precautionary trigger warnings required nowadays for weakling snowflakes.

To the humanities department of McMaster University, this work product ought to cause alarm and not a little self-examination.

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Vincent J. Curtis is an old white male living in the traditional territory of Lee Enfield.

Why Canada should Forget the Paris Accords on climate change

Vincent J. Curtis

13 Apr 2017

When Professor Winfield argues that Canada must carry through on its climate change strategies, he is drawing moral conclusions outside his sphere of expertise.  If he were speaking within his sphere of expertise, he would simply shrug his shoulders.

The one thing Canadians need to understand about carbon dioxide emissions is: “50 % of nuthin’ isn’t a hellofa lot.”

China by far ranks as number one on the list of emitters of carbon dioxide.  A distant second is the United States.  A more distant third is India.  Then comes Russia, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, Germany, Korea, and in tenth place, with 1.57 percent contribution, comes Canada.

It is a mathematical fact that Canada can do next to nothing to change the world-wide emission of carbon dioxide.  Why then must Canada carry through with environmental policies that are useless, self-defeating, and economically harmful?

It is so that certain people can thump their chests and strike moral poses, especially those in the environmental department.  It gives some people a talking point, a moral position - from which they can lecture about the immorality of others.  That’s it.  The economic consequences of this moral preening falls on still others.

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Achieving Diversity with Two People

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Apr 2017

Dr. Raza Khan is the head of the Muslim Brotherhood Association of Hamilton.  That makes it his duty to bring about, at a minimum, an end to the possibility of blaspheming of Islam in Hamilton without repercussion.  An end to the right to blaspheme Islam is the first and most important stage in the imposition of Sharia compliance in civil law.  Most people experience this imposition as a limitation to free speech in certain areas; and a civil penalty for being labelled "Islamophobic."  The obviousness of this aim is masked by a larger movement called progressivism which seeks to deny free speech to anyone whom they disagree with on any number of issues, and Islamophobia is often subsumed in this more general crushing of free speech.

A route to injecting a fear of being labelled an Islamophobe in Hamilton is to decry the general and rising atmosphere of hatred and racism in the city, an entirely fictitious assertion that is supported by other racial groups (such as Black Lives Matter affiliates) for their own purposes.  Having laid the premise for fear of hatred and violence founded upon a reaction to racism, combined with the fear of being labelled Islamophobic, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood of Hamilton then asks for possession of the levers of power that he cannot get through the ballot box.  The Muslim Brotherhood wants a seat on the Hamilton Police Board, from which pressure for greater sharia compliance can be exerted in the confusion created by progressivism.

Having rejected Hellenic reasoning in the 11th century because Islamic theologians discovered that such reasoning pointed out weaknesses in Islamic theology, Muslims are not at their best when trying to make a reasoned argument.  In an article demanding greater diversity on the Hamilton Police Services Board, a very small body, the spokeman of the Muslim Brotherhood of Hamilton couldn't resist saying that the Jewish Holocaust of World War II was less bad than advertized, and suggested that other groups suffered comparably.  He then turned to a minor and irrelevant squabble between two board members, raised the matter of the rising tide of hatred that is growing and building throughout the world (not Hamilton, the world!) and concluded that the Hamilton Police Services Board needed more diversity in order to better represent our "village."

Now, the Police Services Board is there to provide civilian oversight to policing policies; it is appointed, not democratically elected; and is primarily intended to represent the interests of the city and provincial governments that fund the police department. The couple of members of the Board who are not politicians or political hacks are on the board because of their expertise in actual policing.  The Muslim Brotherhood evidently believes it can corrupt civil policing to their purposes with a seat on the Board.

When Dr. Raza Khan writes of all the hatred that is building and growing throughout the world today, he doesn’t look to his own minority as a source of it. (The bombing of the Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, St. Mark and St. George, occurred the day before his article appeared.)  He does provide a long list of minorities that are allegedly subject to this hatred, and the one group he conspicuously failed to mention was Caucasians.

There are plenty of minorities in Hamilton.  My list would include Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, German and Hungarian.  There is a small group of Latins of Spanish origin who are too small in number to count as “a minority.”  In the 1901 census, my ancestors recorded that they were of the Welsh and “Scotch” minorities, while their neighbors were variously Irish, English, and American.  The idea of a minority is pretty elastic.

Dr. Khan’s complaint that the Police Board needs diversity reminded me of a story of a boy who wanted mixed jelly beans.  He was given two beans and told to mix them himself.

Dr. Khan’s thesis is the belief that skin color or being of a racial group makes that person representative of that skin color or racial group.  This is absurd on the face of it.  Old Adolf simply doesn’t represent my views on anything except dogs, despite his being a white male.  Likewise, I think my MP is bonkers on a host of issues despite his being white, male, old, and eloquent.  Inquire about Clarence Thomas as a black or Sarah Palin as a woman.

Given the few seats available on the Police Board, to satisfy Dr. Khan are going to have to look for individuals with some pretty weird combinations of features.  Just how many black, crippled, Jewish lesbians are there available to choose from for the Police Board?  To say nothing of homosexual Hindus with a liking for turbans and who speak Gaelic.

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The Significance of Vimy

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Apr 2017

With the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge upon us, it was odd to read the discordant history of Vimy offered by historian Ian McKay.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge opened on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917.  It was the first time that all four Canadian divisions went into battle together.  Except for the Corps Commander, all command positions were held by Canadians.  It concluded on 14 April as an unmistakable tactical victory.  Vimy was the first offensive tactical victory on the Western Front after three dark years of war, and it was the only one of that spring.  Yes, there was Verdun and the Somme, hard and bloody slogs, but Vimy was gained with remarkably few casualties.  That Vimy was quick, decisive, and relatively low in cost was due to the innovative artillery tactics and preparation of the Canadian commanders.  This success was not lost on the Canadian public.

In his work, The World Crisis, written in 1922, Winston Churchill referred to the “brilliant preliminary operation by which the British Army at the Battle of Arras captured the whole of the Vimy Ridge.”  Churchill invoked Vimy Ridge for favorable effect in his speech to the Canadian parliament of 30 Dec 1941, at a turning point of another war.

Because the Canadian victory was so completely unexpected by higher command, no preparations had been made to exploit the opening created in the German line.  Had a couple of corps of cavalry been waiting in reserve, their pouring through the gap opened at Vimy would have caused a large part of the German defenses to collapse.  Alas, it was a wasted opportunity, but a portent of what was to come.

After Vimy, the Canadian Corps, along with the Australians, came to be seen as the spear-point of the British military effort.  During the Hundred Days campaign, which opened on 8 August 1918, the Canadian Corps led the fight that drove the German army out of its defenses in the Hindenburg Line and all the way back to Mons, Belgium, where the war began, and recaptured it on Nov 10^th.  The defeats of the German army led the Kaiser to abdicate, the old German government to fall, and the new one to sue for peace.

Although Canada entered World War I with the declaration of war by the British government, Canada took its own seat at the Versailles Conference afterwards and was a separate signatory of the Treaty.  Canada was now a fully independent country, the senior dominion of the Crown, with her own foreign policy.  The Westminster Conference of 1931 granted Canada her formal independence from Britain.

All this started at Vimy.

Perhaps it is a bit much to lay all these developments of nationhood and of the spectacular growth of Canadian self-confidence on one victory, but Vimy is where it began, and so that victory has come to symbolize all that came after it.

World War I represented a useless slaughter of an entire generation of the youth of Europe.  It was seen as a near cultural suicide, to say nothing of the repugnance at the mud and filth and rats and the lice and the unburied dead and the disease that followed and the generals who wouldn’t visit the front.  Of course, those that experienced it and the attitude of the time were averse to that war, the war to end all wars they promised themselves.  Nothing can glorify war to those who have seen it.

The remembrance of Vimy as the rise of Canadian consciousness and the rise of an independent nation is not a glorification of war, or of that war, or of that battle.  It is simply a recognition of facts.  The fact is that in the crucible of war Canadians succeeded where the British and the French failed.  Canadian amateurs innovated and succeeded where the highly schooled, highly credentialed and hidebound British and French commanders had failed.  They even failed to exploit our success.  At the end of the day, what did these highly regarded Europeans have over rustic Canadian colonials in the most demanding of tests that mankind puts himself through?  Not much where it mattered, it seemed.

This quite pragmatic decision was reached in Canada and imposed itself on the British government, if not on the British military command.

A celebration of the victory at Vimy Ridge is not a glorification of war.  It is a recognition that the blood and the death and the suffering and sacrifices made at Vimy and elsewhere by Canadians in that war led to the recognition of Canada as a modern state.

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With Nunes Out, the Heat’s on Schiff

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Apr 2017

Today, Devin Nunes stepped away from the investigation of the House Intelligence Committee into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and “Russia.”  He did not, however, recuse himself from the investigation into the surveillance of the Trump campaign by the Obama administration.

His Democrat counterpart, Adam Schiff, is hot on the case of the Trump-Russia collusion angle and has made extreme assertions of such without providing evidence.  After viewing for himself the same material that convinced Nunes of surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team, Schiff has fallen silent on that score.

Republican interests have nothing to fear from Nunes’s recusing himself on the Russian collusion angle.  As was reported here previously, Nunes could see that there was no evidence, and that if there were, Obama’s spy chief, Susan Rice, would have found it.  Besides this, the heads of the three agencies who were in a position to know, John Brennan (CIA), Adm Mike Rogers (NSA), James Comey (FBI), as well as James Clapper (Director of National Intelligence), all said publically that they found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and “Russia.”  There is no evidence of collusion because there was none.

The Russian collusion by Trump story is a straightforward disinformation campaign intended to discredit Trump, with his surprise win over Hillary Clinton.  The single piece of evidence offered as collusion led to the Michael Flynn affair, which exposed the surveillance of the Trump transition.  There is no other evidence that Adam Schiff can exploit to the detriment of Republican interests.  That is why Nunes can step away from the Russian collusion story and leave the field open to the Democrat partisan.  There is nothing to fear.

Schiff has nothing left to talk about except the search for evidence of collusion, and he will have to explain why he keeps coming up empty-handed.  Sooner or later, people are going to get tired of his saying that he has nothing to show for all his dire claims.  They will conclude themselves that the Trump campaign had no connection whatever with “Russia.”  Schiff, an unflinching Democrat partisan, will never cease to impute collusion and he will eventually be made to look like a 9/11 truther if questioned about it enough.  Look for the anti-Trump MSM stop asking about it, and letting the matter drop.

The story with truth behind it is the one Nunes is following.  We do not yet know the extent to which Susan Rice exploited the SIGINT capabilities of the US government to spy on Trump, but it was enough to alarm Nunes and silence Schiff.  The Flynn affair established the modus operandi: Rice found something embarrassing, circulated the unmasked information to NSA Director of Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes, who leaked it to friendly media.  The entire Russian collusion story began to distract attention from the embarrassing and authentic emails released by WikiLeaks first about the DNC and then of John Podesta.  The direct collusion between Trump and “Russia” story could gain traction in the MSM after the election, when it ceased to matter, by intervention by senior intelligence officials in the Obama administration, whom the media would assume to be in the know.  A powerful member of the NSA like Ben Rhodes would be assumed to be in the know.  Embarrassing leaks of the Trump transition came thick and fast soon after the election.

It is hard to imagine the Susan Rice could be running her own surveillance program and disinformation campaign without President Obama coming to know about it.  He would have to be on the distribution list of any intercepts that his NSA Director considered important enough to have the names of Americans in it unmasked.  That all these unmasked names were those of Trump campaign people, and that the intercepts had nothing apparently to do with national security, as Nunes has said, it ought to have occurred to Obama sooner or later what Rice was up to, if it had been going on without his knowledge and consent.  It was his responsibility to know if his NSA Director was abusing her powers and spying on the Trump campaign for political purposes.

I am not going to get into here an analysis of the self-exculpatory statements Rice has made on this matter that have turned out to be false.  They point directly at her guilt.

Devin Nunes made a shrewd political move by recusing himself from the investigation into the Russian collusion story.  His presence on the committee would only lead to false charges by Schiff that Nunes was obstructing the investigation.  With Nunes out of the way, Schiff is going to have to come up with other excuses his failure to find anything.  Meanwhile, Nunes is going to follow the story that is real and is significant: the spying on the Trump campaign by Susan Rice.  This unravelling of this story may also expose that the Russian collusion story is a disinformation campaign invented out of whole cloth to try to discredit the Trump administration.

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Rice, Rhodes Disinformation Campaign Against Trump

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Apr 2017

The Trump wiretapping story is moving quickly to a climax after it was revealed that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice requested the unmasking of the names of likely Trump associates in electronic intelligence gathering intercepts.  It is also becoming obvious that the Trump-Russia collusion angle is nothing but a disinformation campaign orchestrated by outgoing Obama Administration officials in an effort to discredit the presidency of Donald Trump.  The most likely of Rice’s associates involved in this campaign is former Assistant National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes.

From the information thus far public, Susan Rice began requesting the unmasking of names from SIGINT (signals intelligence) intercepts involving Trump campaign officials at least as early as July, 2016, i.e. soon after his nomination, and perhaps even as early as the beginning of the year.  It seems that the purpose of Susan Rice’s requests was her interest in discovering what, if any, connection there might be between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime, or any other information that could prove embarrassing to the Trump campaign.  To be sure, Obama would have been aware of the unmasking since he too is on the distribution list of these intercepts that his NSA Director regards as important.

The purpose of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’s much criticized visit to the Whitehouse last month was to that he could see with his own eyes the log of requests that was kept on the Whitehouse computer system, kept so secure that even specially designated members of Congress can’t ordinarily see this information.  What he saw told him that Susan Rice was requesting unmasking and disseminating a lot of Trump-related SIGINT intercepts and none of it related to “Russia.”  This fact told Congressman Nunes that Susan Rice was, in effect, surveilling the Trump campaign by taking advantage of loopholes in the FISA act.

Rice found no collusion between the Trump team and Putin.  If there were, we would know about it right now.  The report of the chiefs of the intelligence services, ordered by President Obama to be delivered before he left office, was that they found no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and “Russia.”  With all this interest at the highest levels of the American government in finding a connection between Trump and Putin, if there was one, it would have been found by now.  It has not been found because one never existed.  Nevertheless, the Democrat party has, since WikiLeaks published the emails of the DNC that showed it working to ensure that Hillary Clinton was the party’s nominee for President, and Bernie Sanders was defeated, been interested in connecting nefarious acts by the Putin regime to the embarrassment of their party in the campaign.  They have been trying to change the story from the content of the emails to nefarious acts of Russian president Vladimir Putin, in effect trying to make themselves look victimized by an enemy of America.

When WikiLeaks released the authentic emails of John Podesta, the Democrats again tried to change the subject from the contents of the emails to the story of how they were being victimized by an enemy of America, Vladimir Putin, whom Trump seemed to be friendly towards. 

What surfaced in late December and early January were imputations at Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Lt-Gen. Michael Flynn may have feloniously breached the Logan Act by conducting foreign policy with Russia.  National media were fed this piece of disinformation.  In the first place, the national media do not of themselves think of such things; that an incoming National Security Advisor might have a telephone conversation with an important foreign ambassador prior to taking office is something they would think he would do in the normal course of his business in getting prepared.  And it is something he would do in the normal course of his business so that he would hit the ground running, as it were.  No one except in the Obama administration could have an objection to Flynn doing his job.  Few in the national media even know of the Logan Act, and even fewer would be prepared to offer a legal opinion on their own concerning the unobserved preparations Flynn was going through to get ready, and say that Flynn might be violating the act.

Who, then, in the Obama Administration would be in a position to know of the unobserved things Flynn was doing, to have an authority high enough to impress the media with the legal implications of the Logan Act, and to know who to leak a story to?  Why NSA Strategic Communications wizard, Ben Rhodes!

The story in the media that Michael Flynn may have breached the Logan Act was a shot at discrediting the incoming Trump administration.

Flynn stumbled under the pressure.  As an old intelligence hand, he knew his name ought to have been masked in the intercept of his communication with the Russian ambassador.  Thus, when he was asked whether the subject of sanctions came up in a December 29, 2016, telephone conversation he had while relaxing on a beach in the Bahamas with the Russian ambassador, he said no, even though he may have contributed nothing to that conversation.  One can imagine the Russian ambassador wailing on about the sanctions that President Obama had just imposed, and Flynn saying that the matter will be reviewed in due course once Trump takes office.  However, Flynn said no, sanctions had not come up in the conversation, fearing Logan Act implications.  Then the text of the intercept of that communication became known in the media.

For that text to implicate Flynn, Susan Rice would have to have requested that his name be unmasked, and then she would have circulated that unmasked intercept transcript to Rhodes, who could then leak it to friendly reporters in the media.  Because Flynn had misled Vice-President Elect Mike Pence, Flynn had to resign.

Trump has been dogged with suggestions that he benefited from “Russian hacking of the election.”  As we have seen, there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and “Russia” because there is none.  If evidence of such existed, Rice would have found it and Rhodes would have leaked it.  Moreover, one doesn’t hack and election; one hacks computers, thus the charge against Trump becomes a little obscure.

The campaign by President Obama to reveal the full extent of Russian influence in the election amounts to a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  And this is exactly what a disinformation campaign is intended to do: to sow doubt in the target audience of the legitimacy of someone by means of false information.  The release of John Podesta’s emails was not a disinformation campaign because the emails were authentic; if the incriminating emails had been falsified then the release would have been disinformation.

The influence, if any, made by Russia the in the election amounted to nothing but the release of the Podesta emails, which were authentic.  If Putin were behind it, he did nothing but provide authentic information to the American electorate that happened to be unfavorable to Obama’s chosen successor, Hillary Clinton.  He would have done what the American media would not do, provide disastrously unfavorable information to the American electorate about Hillary Clinton.

The Rice-Rhodes disinformation campaign is designed to tie Trump’s success at the polls to nefarious Russian, i.e. Vladimir Putin, influence.  To besmirch Trump, you have to show collusion because no election computers were hacked.  You have to hold that Russia is bad for America, a strange premise coming from Democrats. Since you have to assume that the electorate is able to make up its own mind, you have to say that they were unduly influenced in some way, a way that is best not made clear.  Podesta’s hacked emails were authentic, no matter how they were obtained.  What has to be danced around is that the electorate pronounced a verdict on Hillary Clinton herself, and found Trump to be the lesser of two evils in the all in all.

By perfectly legal means Susan Rice sought to gain political advantage against Donald Trump on behalf of the Democrat campaign by unmasking the names of his associates caught in SIGINT intercepts.  These conversations were evaluated for potentially embarrassing information, and none of them, or very few, involved “Russia.”  If there were collusion between the Trump campaign and “Russia,” Rice would have found it.  What embarrassing material she did find, she circulated to Ben Rhodes, who knew what to do with it.  Barack Obama was not innocent in this, because he would have been on the distribution list.

Thus, the campaign to delegitimize Donald Trump is through a disinformation campaign, begun by Ben Rhodes with information provided by Susan Rice, and carried on by complaint people in the Democrat party.  There is no Russian collusion because it would have been found by now if it existed.  The “Russia hacked the election” business is without merit, or even sensibility.  The Trump campaign and transition team was surveilled by the Obama administration by the abuse of a legal process, and President Obama was aware it was going on.

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Chris Wallace Argues from Authority

Vincent J. Curtis

2 Apr 2017

If you’re like me, watching Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace has become really tedious since the election of Donald Trump.  Wallace keeps pushing the view that the sky is falling under Trump.  It is not hard to perceive Wallace’s liberal biases in operation.

This Sunday’s episode was no exception.  It started with the interview of new EPA Director Scott Pruitt, and the first question out of Wallace’s mouth put my finger over the mute button.  Two sentences into the answer Pruitt gave to that question, the mute button went on and stayed on for the rest of the interview.  Wallace had pulled a classic debating trick, and Pruitt fell for it.  The transcript of the interview shows Wallace pulling the same trick three times, and Pruitt falling for it all three times.

The trick is a variation of arguing from authority.  Wallace would quote the opinion of some alleged expert, and then demand an answer concerning the consequences of that opinion.  When used effectively, both the interviewee and the audience are overwhelmed – the interviewee is thrown onto a disadvantaged defensive, and there is no easy escape.  The logically proper thing for Wallace to have done, however, is get the interviewee to agree with the opinion of the alleged expert, and then to demand an answer to a question concerning the consequences of that opinion that the interviewee just agreed to.

This is how the interview between Wallace and Pruitt roughly went:

WALLACE:  When the Obama EPA announced its Clean Power Plan, it said that the reduction in carbon pollution would have the following health benefits.

By 2030, it said there would be 90,000 fewer asthma attacks a year, 300,000 fewer missed work and school days, and 3,600 fewer premature deaths a year.

Without the Clean Power Plan, how are you going to prevent those terrible things?

Unfortunately, Scott Pruitt did not begin his answer with a variation of, “You don’t believe that crap, do you Chris?”  In the first place, it is the Obama EPA and we all know how ideological it was.  They don’t believe in an absolute thing called, “Truth” what those relativists believed in was what they could get you to believe.  Second, there is a loophole in that description big enough to drive a truck through.  It is the word, “premature.”  No statistical study can be worth anything with an arbitrary term like “premature” in it.  A healthy 85 year old man hit by a car can be said to have died “prematurely.”  What constitutes a ‘premature’ death is a matter of opinion, and you can’t base a statistical study on that kind of opinion.  Lastly, ‘air pollution’ – let’s face it - is not a known cause of death, and so can’t be the cause of a “premature” death.

Pruitt did not give an answer like that, and this gave Wallace an opportunity to counter with another argument from authority:

WALLACE: But, sir, you're giving me a regulatory answer, a political answer. You’re not giving me a health answer. I talked about 90,000 fewer asthma attacks, 300,000 fewer missed days in school and work.

The Obama Clean Power Plan called -- said that carbon pollution from the power sector would be reduced by 30 percent. It would be one-third lower than it was in 2005.

Here's what the American Lung Association says, "Half of all Americans now live in counties with unhealthy air." You talk about all the regulatory overreach, but the question is, there are 166 million people living in unclean air and you are going to remove some of the pollution restrictions, which will make the air even worse.

Pruitt again failed to notice the assumption that Wallace was positing, that half of all Americans now live in counties with unhealthy air, according to the American Lung Association.  Therefore, he failed to counter Wallace by challenging the premise, and got beaten up as he was running around looking for cover.  The obvious challenge to make of Wallace was to ask what was meant by “unhealthy air?”  If the air is unhealthy, how is it that so many people are living so well in it?  Lifespan in America is getting longer and longer, and it doesn’t make sense to me that that could be happening if so many people were breathing “unhealthy air.”  I admire the Lung Association, but I think in this case their closeness to their issue is clouding their judgement.

Wallace would have been flummoxed because his premise was not just denied, but overthrown.  The weakness of arguing from authority, as Wallace did throughout this interview, is it is vulnerable to an attack on the objectivity of the authority, for that  destroys the argument being made.

This is the third use of the trick of arguing from authority that Wallace employed in his interview of Scott Pruitt:

WALLACE:  You had a famous exchange a couple of months ago -- actually last month that I would like to play right now.

JOE KERNER, CNBC ANCHOR: Do you believe that it's been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate? Do you believe that?

PRUITT: No, I would not agree that it's the primary contributor to the global warming that we’re seeing.

WALLACE: Mr. Pruitt, there are all kinds of studies that contradict you. The U.N.’s panel on climate change says it is at least 95 percent likely that more than half the temperature increase since the mid-20th century is due to human activities. NOAA, that’s our own, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says there's more carbon dioxide now than in the last 400,000 years, and NOAA says 2015 and 2016 are the two hottest years on record.

Mr. Pruitt, are we supposed to believe that that's all a coincidence?

Having been rehearsed through the arguments many times before through challenging Obama’s EPA in the courts, Mr. Pruitt ought to have had a good riposte at hand.  He did not, and the audience was witness to the spectacle of Chris Wallace beating Scott Pruitt all about the head with a stick, and Pruitt not knowing what to do about it.

The proper method of defeating Wallace’s arguing from authority and then challenging on the basis of that authority, is to dispute the authority!  What Pruitt should have started was with a logical truth: that correlation is not causation.  Just because A and B occur together, does not mean that A causes B.

Secondly, it simply isn’t so that 2015 and 2016 are the hottest on record.  The NOAA reaches that conclusion by statistical manipulation that many objective observers regard as fraudulent.  If you the lower the temperature record for 1928 by half a degree, as the NOAA did last year, you can make the temperature for 2015 look hotter and on an upward trend.  The world has experienced ice ages and temperatures as much as six degrees hotter than it is now, and man had nothing to do with it.  We simply do not know the contribution, if any, man makes to global warming because the issue of climate change has become so politicized that people like Dr. Judith Curry has been driven out of the field by harassment because her views are not in accord with the power brokers.

In answering like that, Scott Pruitt would have demonstrated a mastery of the subject that Wallace could not have assailed.  And Pruitt ought to have been rehearsed in these arguments because of his involvement in lawsuits against the Obama EPA on this very matter.

Wallace beat on Pruitt one last time with a logical fallacy that Pruitt failed to notice.  It went as follows:

WALLACE: Let me ask you one -- let me ask you one's last question, and again I apologize, sir. Because it goes to the whole question of commitment to trying to improve the environment. Under the president's new budget, the EPA is cut 31 percent, that is more than any other agency.

And I want to put up some of the cuts that are included in the president's budget. Here are some of the 56 programs that would be scrapped: Great Lakes restoration, water runoff control for farmers, pesticide safety.

What does that say about the commitment of this administration and you to cleaning up the environment when you're making a 31 percent cut in your agency and cutting things like that, water runoffs for farmers?

Here Wallace is equating commitment with money.  Pruitt had two ways of replying, and he chose neither, resulting in another beating from Wallace.  One way was to ask Wallace what success looked like?  It looked like less need for money.  Pruitt could have said that we are making great progress and less is needed from America’s hard pressed taxpayers to deal with the matters.  A second line of proceeding is even better, and plays into the known ideological excesses of the Obama administration.  It was to observe that pay for bureaucrats is not a measure of success of a program.  The Trump administration is committed to these goals, but it is simply wrong to equate our level of commitment to our willingness to pay for needless bureaucrats and regulators.  Full Stop.  Look at Wallace.

Wallace could only sputter at a reply like the latter.

Chris Wallace three times used argument from authority in a vicious manner characteristic of the left-wing.  It is indefensible, in my view, that Scott Pruitt three times fell for it in an area that ought to be in his realm of expertise.  As someone with a long history in politics, Pruitt ought to be well-verse in the vicious debating trick Wallace use on him.  Yet, he did not.

The GOP is not called the party of stupid for nothing.  Democrats challenge premises as a matter of routine; so much so that it is not worthwhile to listen to them.

For his part, Wallace’s liberal biases are making watching FNS too much like watching Rachael Madcow.

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