Trick Numbers on FNS

Vincent J. Curtis

30 Jan 2017

As the news media spins itself into full opposition mode, even Fox News is getting into the act.

One of the lessons of the campaign was how much Trump knows and what Trump knows.  Another lesson is that one needs to listen very carefully to the question actually being asked and answered by Trump.  Trump is mentally very quick and can follow the twists and turns to questioning that half-clever media types like Chris Matthews throw quickly at him.  Not listening carefully to the question Trump is actually answering has caused the media to caught misleading the public, much to Trump’s benefit.

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, it was Chris Wallace’s turn to learn a lesson from the Trump administration, in his case from the lovely and talented Kelly Anne Conway.

Wallace tried to catch Trump in declaring something false.  He employed the clip below (courtesy of Fox News) to trip up Ms. Conway:

“TRUMP:  If you are a Muslim, you could come in.  But if you are a Christian, it was almost impossible.  I thought it was very, very unfair.  So, we are going to help them.  

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE:  First, that's not true.  I want you to take a look at this.  As you can see here, in 2016, almost as many Christian refugees were admitted as Muslims.  And second, President Trump is barring people from seven countries, the ones you can see on the map, but not included on the list are Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  And Saudi Arabia is where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from.  

Why are they not on the list?  

CONWAY:  This was the seven countries was offered by President Obama and his administration.  In 2015 – “ 

For the first part, the figures Wallace quoted were as follows:

Christians:  37,521

Muslims: 38,901.   FY 2016.

If it were me, I would have told Wallace that he needed to check the numbers because they didn’t sound right.  Luckily, David French of National Review does have the figures, and he reported on NRO as follows:

“Sadly, during the Obama administration it seems that Christians and other minorities may well have ended up in the back of the line. For example, when Obama dramatically expanded Syrian refugee admissions in 2016, few Christians made the cut: The Obama administration has resettled 13,210 Syrian refugees into the United States since the beginning of 2016 — an increase of 675 percent over the same 10-month period in 2015. Of those, 13,100 (99.1 percent) are Muslims — 12,966 Sunnis, 24 Shi’a, and 110 other Muslims — and 77 (0.5 percent) are Christians. Another 24 (0.18 percent) are Yazidis. As a point of reference, in 2015 Christians represented roughly 10 percent of Syria’s population. Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation for the disparity.” 

The figures Wallace quoted were refugee claims from all over the world for Fiscal Year 2016, which included places like Christian South Sudan.  In respect of Syria and Syrian refugees, Trump was absolutely right and the problem of the treatment of Christians in Syria and Iraq is what is of concern to Christian Churches in the Western World.  Wallace’s figures were irrelevant to the matter at issue.  Perhaps an overzealous or inattentive researcher put Wallace in the wrong, but Wallace was wrong.

The second part of the question, of why Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan weren’t on the list, seems to me to be a little hasty and false in tone.  This is just Trump’s first week.  As Conway pointed out, Trump is merely repeating what the deity Obama Himself did in 2011, in respect of countries that had been named either by the Congress or by the deity as terrorist states.  So the gales of concern seen on the streets yesterday was brain-dead anti-Trump partisanship running wild.  Next week, after his Secretary of State is confirmed, a more refined and nuanced policy can be put into place, and after a top to bottom review of refugee policy has been completed, after 90 or 120 days.  In the meantime, the U.S. holds where it is.  This isn’t unreasonable.

Wallace also raised the issue of Steve Bannon’s telling the media that they ought to be embarrassed and should shut up and listen for a while.  Wallace asked Conway if she understood how offensive Bannon was.  Note the formulation, “do you understand…”

When I was touring GITMO on behalf of the Buffalo News in 2008, I was paired with a TV news team from Portugal.  Normally, print media were not paired with TV media because of differences in style, but that’s what happened on this occasion.  Whenever we got to speak to responsible authorities, the TV interviewer would interrupt the opening remarks of that person with a series of argumentative questions.  Finally, I got tired of it and told the TV crew to shut up and let the person complete their opening remarks, then ask questions.  I turned to our media-minder and unloaded this military nugget: “I find I learn more when I shut up and listen.”  I was gold thereafter.  The TV crew actually learned some things from my questions that I thought about as the remarks were going on.  The TV crew needed visuals, hence the interruptions, while I needed facts, which I could get either from the remarks or from questions afterwards.

Thus Bannon’s remark that the news media should shut up and listen for a while is sound media advice - if the media are interested in learning something new and not just making the news about them.

Anyhow, after fighting Conway for much of the interview, Wallace decided to try Bannon’s advice.  At the end of the segment, he shut up and let Kelly Anne Conway say what she had to say, uninterrupted for what seemed like more than a whole minute of airtime – eternity by TV standards.  Wallace got the best part of his program letting Conway say her piece because she was not contentious or advancing partisan talking points.  Bannon’s advice worked in that instance.

The media assault against Trump is continuing, and until a few people in the media are fired, while the rest shut up and listen for a while and try to use their noodles for more than developing partisan attacks, the media will continue to embarrass themselves before Trump’s electorate.

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John Lewis – Plantation Democrat

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Jan 2017

On Friday, Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) told NBC News’ Chuck Todd that he felt that Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate on account of Russian hacking, and that he would not be attending Trump’s inauguration.  The obvious follow-up question was, “Well, who then is the legitimate President-Elect – Hillary Clinton?”   That question went unasked on account of Todd’s tongue being black from eight years of licking Barack Obama’s boots.

John Lewis is regarded as a hero, at least within the Democrat party, on account of his activities in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.  As a young man, Lewis was deeply involved in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that organized the 1963 March on Washington, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign; and he was a freedom rider.  The incident for which he is most famous is the “Bloody Sunday” incident at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

At that incident, some 600 freedom marchers crossed the bridge, and were met by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to disperse.  Rather than do so, the marchers stopped and prayed.  The police responded with tear gas and night sticks.  Lewis had his skull fractured by police, but he managed to escape.  Before he was taken to hospital he went before television cameras to call upon President Johnson to intervene in Alabama.

Lewis tried to enter Congress in 1977.  Georgia’s Fifth District was vacated by Andrew Young, and Lewis entered the Democrat primary against Wyche Fowler, Jr.  He lost to Fowler in the run-off 62 – 38.  Lewis was thereafter given a job in the Carter Administration.  He resigned that job in 1980, and was elected to Atlanta City Council in 1981.  Fowler was elected to the Senate in 1986, and the Fifth District again beaconed Lewis.  Lewis defeated Julian Bond in a surprising upset in the run-off 52 – 48.  Lewis was elected and re-elected to represent the Fifth District ever since, winning (when he was opposed) by wide margins.

The Fifth District lies in the north of Atlanta, and is a solid Democrat seat.  Since 1845, the Fifth District has been represented by a Republican for only eleven years.

Lewis himself has been described as one of the most liberal representatives in the Congress, and certainly the most liberal to represent a district in the South.  He has been labelled a “far-left Democratic leader” by GovTrack, and a “hardcore liberal” by Issues2000.  The Washington Post described Lewis in 1998 as, “a fiercely partisan Democrat…”  The Associated Press described Lewis as a “fierce partisan critic of George W. Bush” and said he was “the first major House figure to suggest impeaching George W. Bush.”  In the 2008 election, Lewis first endorsed Hillary Clinton, but later changed to support Barack Obama after sampling the political winds.

Later in the 2008 campaign, Lewis said that John McCain and Sarah Palin were “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” that brought to mind “George Wallace.”  In January, 2016, Lewis twice compared Donald Trump to George Wallace - before the Iowa Caucuses, and the New Hampshire primary.

That blow to the head must have changed something in Lewis’s mind.  Alabama Governor George Wallace was a Democrat.  The whole South in that era was Democrat.  The cops got their government jobs through their connections either with the Klan or the Democrat party.  Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were both reluctant to intervene in the civil rights disturbances in the South in the early and middle 1960s.

So what political party did Lewis join?  The Democrat party!  As between a party that at the time embraced Rockefeller Liberals and the party of George Wallace, Lewis chose the party of Wallace.  If you were going to have a career in politics in the South at that time, pragmatism dictated that you join the Democrat party.  And that’s what Lewis did.

To be sure, Lewis maintained a far-left liberal progressivism, but he still had to wait his turn in Democrat party politics to get his chance at Congress.  The black, Democrat Fifth District was not sufficiently impressed with Lewis’s credentials to give him the job in 1977.  He was obliged to go through a routine, and then he was chosen nine years later when it was his turn.

Luckily for Lewis, the politics in the Democrat party started to turn towards his far-left views more and more as the partisan divide grew between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.  Factional Democrat party partisanship for its own sake could therefore and in good conscience become part and parcel of advancing Lewis’s liberal views.

Tellingly, when Clarence Thomas was undergoing his high-tech lynching at the hands of Senate Democrats, what did we hear from Lewis?   Nothing.  Crickets.  The conscience of the Congress was silent when a conservative black man was being abused by fellow Democrats.  Lewis’s record appears empty of defenses of black Republicans.

Lewis’s attack on Donald Trump is newsworthy partly because the ‘conscience of the Congress’ is the one saying what other Democrats fear to say but would like to – that Donald Trump is illegitimate.  It is not clear whether other Democrats put Lewis up to putting that sentiment into the public discussion, but one thing is for sure: that Lewis expects to hide behind his reputation as ‘the conscience of the Congress’ that was built on his having his head broken at Selma in 1965 – by other Democrats.

John Lewis has long been a fiercely partisan Democrat hack.  He is the kind of black man the Democrats love to have, on account of his race and his reputation as a civil rights organizer who paid the price.  He gives them cover from their own racist past.  His reputation gives moral cover whenever Democrats act immorally.  He represents one of the safest black Democrat seats in the House, which was long Democrat and black before him, and will be afterwards.  He has been a part of the Democrat House leadership since 1991.  There is a reciprocity between him and the party.  If he has had good, long relations with any black Republican, it is hard to find in the public record.

In short, John Lewis has become what has been called a “Plantation Democrat.”  His past reputation is protecting him from the consequences of many of his extreme views, but after his calling Trump’s election “illegitimate” without saying who is the legitimate successor to Barack Obama, his high reputation for being a ‘conscience’ of anything is becoming more and more threadbare.

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America is a Republic, You Idiot!

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Jan 2017

I am not going to count the number of times that Barack Obama referred to himself in his “Farewell Address,” (75 by someone’s count), or observe the chasm that exists between what he said and the actual facts.  And I don’t want readers to choke on the hypocrisy laden in his remarks.  Instead, I want to focus on the difference between a Republic and a Democracy, as it pertains to the speech.

Okay, first let me get this bit of fiction dealt with.  Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams from my Father,” turned out to be a work of fiction.  Parts of the “memoirs” were fictionalized for effect - something he couldn’t remember because they actually didn’t happen, and he knew they didn’t happen.  Hence, when Obama says something unverifiable that is intended for dramatic effect, as he does in the italicized part below, it probably is a lie.

"I first came to Chicago when I was in my early twenties, still trying to figure out who I was; still searching for a purpose to my life. It was in neighborhoods not far from here where I began working with church groups in the shadows of closed steel mills. It was on these streets where I witnessed the power of faith, and the quiet dignity of working people in the face of struggle and loss. This is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together to demand it.”

Barack Obama came to Chicago to start a political career, which he always wanted.  He knew his political worth (being a ‘clean’ black man who didn’t sound like Jesse Jackson), and there he met Bill Ayers.

Okay, that is off my chest.  Now, let’s get to the business of Republic versus Democracy.  America is substantively a republic, in particular a constitutional republic; and is only accidentally a democracy.  That is how the best philosophers would put it in technical language; the Founding Fathers had all been immersed in the philosophy of John Locke, and understood the difference.  When asked what form of government the Fathers had chosen, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

As a constitutional scholar, which he reputedly was, Barack Obama ought to know the difference, superficially at least.  He ought to know it, if not understand it.  On the final exam, he ought to know the correct answer is A and not B, even if he doesn't understand why.  In his speech, he betrays no understanding of the difference, and the scholar appears nowhere even to know the difference.  The scholar does not, in fact, understand the difference.

In the passages below, which were extracted from his speech, I’m going to substitute the word “Republic” for “Democracy” where he erred.  I hope the reader sees a profound difference in meaning, intent, and power when the correct word is substituted for the incorrect word:

“We, the People, through the instrument of our [republic], can form a more perfect union.”  (Isn’t that more true?)

“It’s what led patriots to choose republic over tyranny.”  (Here Obama uses the correct word.  He demonstrates that he knows what the patriots chose, and it wasn’t democracy.)

"In ten days, the world will witness a hallmark of our [republic]: the peaceful transfer of power from one freely-elected president to the next.”  (It is in virtue of being a constitutional republic that the transfer of power occurs peacefully.)

"That’s what I want to focus on tonight – the state of our [republic].”

"Understand, [republicanism] does not require uniformity. Our founders quarreled and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that [republicanism] does require a basic sense of solidarity — the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.” (This argument doesn't hold when you use the word 'Democracy.')

“A shrinking world, growing inequality; demographic change and the specter of terrorism — these forces haven’t just tested our security and prosperity, but our [republic] as well. And how we meet these challenges to our [republic] will determine our ability to educate our kids, and create good jobs, and protect our homeland.”

"Our [republic] won’t work without a sense that everyone has economic opportunity.”

"There’s a second threat to our [republic] — one as old as our nation itself. After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America. Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic.”

"This trend represents a third threat to our [republic]. Politics is a battle of ideas; in the course of a healthy debate, we’ll prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts; without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent is making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, we’ll keep talking past each other, making common ground and compromise impossible.”  (A shot at his successor…)

“The peril each poses to our [republic] is more far-reaching than a car bomb or a missile. It represents the fear of change; the fear of people who look or speak or pray differently; a contempt for the rule of law that holds leaders accountable; an intolerance of dissent and free thought; a belief that the sword or the gun or the bomb or propaganda machine is the ultimate arbiter of what’s true and what’s right.”

 “[A Republic] can buckle when we give in to fear.” (A democracy can buckle, but a republic won't)

“our [republic] is threatened whenever we take it for granted. All of us, regardless of party, should throw ourselves into the task of rebuilding our [republican] institutions.

“In his own farewell address, George Washington wrote that self-government is the underpinning of our safety, prosperity, and liberty, but 'from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken … to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth;' that we should preserve it with 'jealous anxiety;' that we should reject 'the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties' that make us one.”   Okay, so Obama recognizes that old George referred to the essence of the United States as self-government, and in political science self-government takes the form of a republic. 

"It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our [republic].”

“Ultimately, that’s what our [republic] demands. It needs you.”

The idea that Obama is some kind of brilliant constitutional scholar, or that he is deeply thoughtful at all, was put paid by all these examples where accuracy and clarity of thought escaped his attention.  That ‘republic’ is the more accurate term for saying what America is resonates with people who have even a modicum of understanding of the American system.

Let me now turn to a few other points.  For all his admiring talk of “democracy,” Obama fails to understand what democracy essentially is.  The kind of political organizing he knows, derived from Saul D. Alinsky, is anti-democratic.  Community organizing as practiced by Alinsky is gang-warfare perpetrated against elected government.  In Chicago, that government was corrupt, and the gang-warfare was justified on the basis of getting a piece of the pie for the community from a corrupt civic government upon the rules of that corrupt crowd.  Community organizing of the type Obama understands is a corruption of democracy, because violence and pressure are applied to duly elected representatives of the people in the constitutional order.

Obama thanked his organizers thusly:

“every organizer who moved to an unfamiliar town and kind family who welcomed them in”  An organizer of that sort operates in the mould of Saul D. Alinsky.

Lastly, he made this curious remark:

“That’s why I leave this stage tonight even more optimistic about this country than I was when we started.”  He is more optimistic than when he started because he wasn’t sure at the beginning that he was up to the job, and he is leaving the job to Donald J. Trump!

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The Russian Shiny

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Jan 2017

According to a report yesterday on the Clinton News Network (CNN), the most damning findings of the report on Russian “election interference” assembled by various Intelligence Agencies consisted in it being Putin’s goal ‘to undermine US faith in the democratic process,’ because of his grudge against Hillary Clinton.  Allegedly, the Russians paid social media trolls to, well, troll on social media – just like Media Matters did.  Damningly, Putin denied Russian involvement in the WikiLeaks revelations, calling accusations of Russian involvement “a distraction” from the content of the revelations!

Old habits die hard, and, like the RCA dog hearing the sound of his master’s voice, the Democratic Party did its utmost to do the alleged bidding of the Russian President.  What happened in the aftermath of Hillary’s defeat?  Democrat party operatives did exactly as Putin allegedly would have wanted – attempted to undermine US faith in democratic processes.

What did the bitter-enders in the Democrat party do?  It was the DNC that put the shaft to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.  It was operatives of the DNC who hired professional hooligans to start riots at Trump gatherings, and in fact shut down one of his rallies on account of the violence.  After the unthinkable happened, Democrat operatives constantly pointed out that Hillary won the popular vote, when the election is decided by votes in the Electoral College, which she decisively lost.  Then, they supported recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Elijah Cummings called upon the Comptroller-General to investigate the transition because it was in “disarray.”  Then, they called upon Electors to be faithless and to vote for someone other than Trump.  Then, House Democrats challenged the results of the elections of states during the official tallying of Electoral College votes last week.  Chief Senate Democrat Clown, Chuck Schumer, pledged a scorched-earth resistance campaign against Trump’s appointments and legislation on the basis of his illegitimacy.  Lastly, Democrats have tried to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s win by calling attention to this alleged Russian interference, of which this report by the intelligence agencies is a piece.

To give the Russian strongman credit where credit is due, it is a distraction from the content of the DNC and Podesta emails, all of which were genuine, to make noise about how they came into the public domain.  If the emails had proved to be faked, then a Russian disinformation campaign perhaps becomes a legitimate issue; but what need is there for a campaign of disinformation when the genuine information is so damning?  Hillary and the Democrats made Putin’s job too easy for him; he didn’t have to fake anything!  It’s not disinformation when the information is true.

This whole Russian interference angle is reminiscent of the Benghazi distraction.  The Benghazi distraction worked by waving a shiny object in front of the media and other investigators.  To distract attention away from the fact of the American ambassador and three other Americans being killed by al Qaeda in Benghazi, the “it was caused by a video” shiny object was concocted by Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama at a 10:00 p.m. phone call the night of the attack, while the attack was still ongoing.  Whenever the ugly fact of Benghazi was presented, the entirely bogus shiny “cause” was waved around.  The shiny lie was so transparent that it enraged those who sensed it was disinformation; people rose like trout to the shining spinner, a lot of time and effort was wasted debunking the video lie, and the disinformation campaign founded on the video canard served its purpose.  People never fastened onto the tragic failures of Obama’s and Hillary’s policy in Libya.

“Russian hacking” became the shiny object that was waved around after the DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks and again after the Podesta emails became public.  Democrats were scrupulous about not discussing the content of the emails, only darkly insinuating Russian involvement in their becoming public.  Russian involvement is a bad thing of course, and we all know the long record of love that Russian ex-Communists have for the party of Ronald Reagan and for plutocrats like Donald Trump.  The Democrat party has long been the opponent of Russian aggression, since the days of Teddy (Nuclear Freeze) Kennedy, and John (Genghis Khan) Kerry, in fact.

Now, try raising the matter of Hillary’s secret server being hacked, and what do you get from Democrats?  “Oh, there’s no proof of that.”  “Trump asked Russia to hack an American citizen!” and “James Comey!!”  Shiny objects of distraction everywhere.

Like nearly everyone else in the world, Putin no doubt had his cheering interest in the American election, and he perhaps had cause better than most to dislike Hillary Clinton. These in themselves are hardly damning, or even surprising.  Putin didn’t need to deploy a disinformation campaign to change the outcome of the American election.  The genuine information was damning all by itself.

There is a disinformation campaign going on to undermine US faith in its elections – the one being run by Democrats.

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Fat Megyn and Russian Interference

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Jan 2017

Surfing the internet today, I ran across an ad which featured Megyn Kelly.  Yes, formerly of Fox News and now to be the star of NBC News, Megyn Kelly.  The ad was for a diet supplement; a means of losing weight.  The ad claimed that Megyn Kelly at one time weighed 185 pounds, and was told by her bosses at Fox News to lose the weight or lose the job.

Allegedly, Kelly was thrown into a frenzy of dieting that didn’t work, and she was near to losing her marriage as well.  Then she found this diet product, and off came 65 pounds quickly.  That slender beauty we saw on the Kelly File was the product of this wonder diet supplement, apparently.

Let’s assume that the ad is largely true, that Kelly did once weigh a lot, and lost a lot under pressure from her bosses.  No doubt she put herself under a lot of stress.

So, what influence did this experience have in her coverage of the 2016 election campaign?  Megyn Kelly, at the first Republican debate, asked the first question – of Donald Trump, whom Kelly insinuated a misogynistic attitude towards women because he once accused some of being “fat….”as well as stupid and ugly.

“Only Rosie O’Donnell!” was Trump’s famous reply.  However, Kelly relentlessly bore in, trying to get Trump labelled as a secret misogynist.

Later in the campaign came revelations about Trump’s interactions with Miss Universe, 1996, a.k.a. “Miss Piggy.”  This was another occasion in which the host of the Kelly File gave lots of bad publicity to Trump for being so cruel to a woman for becoming fat on the job, and demanding that she lose the weight or lose the crown.  A woman can relate.

A real question is therefore raised, how much did Kelly’s travails over weight with Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch influence her reportage of Donald Trump?

Near the end of the campaign the pressures at Fox News began to grow.  Roger Ailes was ousted from his job as boss at Fox, in part because Kelly supported a lawsuit by Gretchen Carlson against Ailes alleging that he sexually harassed certain female on-air talent.  Kelly’s anti-Trump slant in reportage sank her ratings, while pro-Trump Sean Hannity’s ratings made him the star of week-night cable news.  Then Kelly asked for a raise in pay to a reported $25 million from a reported $15 million for her to agree to a renewed contract.

Kelly, at the instigation of Roger Ailes, was at the very top of her game in 2016, which is a good time to sell.  Fox did sell, and NBC News will now have Kelly, aged 47, for the declining years of her beauty.

Kelly’s personal experience with men pressuring her to lose weight may have influenced her perspective of the eventual Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and slanted her reportage adversely.  CNN, the Clinton News Network, also slanted its coverage of the campaign by reason of the fact that practically everyone at the network is a sold-out, card-carrying Democrat progressive.  But for better or for worse, the influence CNN and Kelly exerted on the election is deemed more or less legitimate.

What is not deemed legitimate is outside influence, specifically Russian influence.  It is alleged, in the aftermath of the election, that the Russians undertook a campaign of influence in the campaign to disfavor Hillary Clinton.  The aim was either to boost Donald Trump’s chances, or (when it became clear that Hillary was going to win) to create problems for her presidency.  As if Hillary hadn’t given House and Senate Republicans enough cause to create problems for her.

Nobody, except the most last-ditch, die-hard Democrats are alleging that the outcome of the election was changed as a result of the alleged Russian interference.  What has been done is that Barack Obama expelled thirty-five Russian diplomats and closed two Russian consulates as punishment for – harassment of American diplomats in Moscow over the last four years.

In what did this Russian interference consist?  If true in all respects, Russian interference for the most part consisted in leaking to WikiLeaks the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the gmail account of John Podesta.  Expert testimony before Congress this week affirmed that Podesta’s emails were genuine.  Since the DNC emails were also all genuine, Russian interference consisted in informing the American electorate in detail of the corruption in the Democrat party and especially in the circle around Hillary Clinton.  Something that the Main Stream Media could be counted on to cover up.

The DNC emails proved that the powers that be in the party were in the tank for Hillary, and were rigging the system to disfavor Bernie Sanders.  The revelations caused the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Later, as a result of the Podesta emails, her successor, Donna Brazile was also forced to resign and she was fired by CNN.  Russian interference, though formally illegitimate, actually served a legitimate function that should have been performed by the MSM.  It informed the American public of facts it needed to know, though the public already had a grasp the reality of the situation without Russian help.

To add insult to injury, today the Russian Senator Alexey Pushkov spoke correctly about Obama’s own conduct during the campaign, saying it was Obama who undermined American democracy,   “The U.S. democratic process was undermined not by Russia, but by the Obama administration and mass media, which supported [Hillary] Clinton over [President-elect Donald] Trump," Pushkov tweeted.

"The danger to democracy is within U.S. itself," he added, arguing that Obama is responsible for Republicans' growing trust of Putin.”

Pushkov is right.  It was said here and elsewhere that Obama’s engaging himself so deeply in the campaign made the United States to look like a banana republic.

Undoubtedly, the Russians have Hillary’s 33,000 deleted “personal” emails as well, showing her corrupt actions as Secretary of State for the benefit of the Clinton Foundation.  This would have served to have her impeached, or at least blackmailed, should she have been elected.

Megyn’s being told to lose weight may have slanted her coverage of Trump, CNN was always in the tank, Obama threw aside all pretence of dignity of the office he holds, the Russians exposed the truth about the DNC and about Hillary Clinton’s circle, and over all the noise the American people made their decision.  The guy everybody despised had to have something going for him, so they chose him.

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You are guilty men - all of you!

Vincent J. Curtis

7 Dec 2016

In Canada there is an annual ritual in which feminists gather in alleged memorium of the women who were killed in the so-called "Montreal Massacre."  Somewhat like a gathering of Remembrance Day, except the women remembered were murdered in cold blood, and what is being memorialized are not 'our glorious dead,' but the alleged misogyny of men, period.  My hometown newspaper ran a story this time about a school principal who would get his high-school aged charges together for this occasion and have a talk with them about the thing lurking deep within each of them that wants to brutalize women.

For years, the perpetrator of the crime was called "Marc Lepine," which was indeed his French name.  His Arabic name was Gamil Gharbi, and although he was an atheist, he father was, apparently, strict Islamic in cultural outlook.  The significance of this was not known until the rise of jihadist violence in the West after 9/11.  So, the canard that all men have within them this misogynist devil had more than a decade to take hold, and gave time for the name "Marc Lepine" to get planted rather than "Gamil Gharbi."  The possibility that the Montreal Massacre was rooted in Islamic misogyny rather than male misogyny as such is given no thought by anyone involved in the memorialization.  To do so would create too many conflicts of progressivist victimhood to sort out, and it is far more convenient to blame men in general rather than to be more specific in this case.

The latest occasion for this somber and pious humbug that is rooted in tragedy got me on my soap box as follows:

Few things in Canada are more absurd and asinine than the pagan rituals and chest-thumping moralisms that surround the “Montreal Massacre.”

At the Ecole Polytechnique, Gamil Gharbi, the Canadian born son of an Algerian immigrant, entered a lecture hall armed with a Ruger Mini-14 and ordered the 50 men present to leave the room.  Recalling their lectures about fish and bicycles, the men dutifully obeyed and left nine women to their fates.  Gharbi killed six and wounded three.

He then moved throughout the building and killed eight more women, and wounding four men and ten women.  He then killed himself, as he planned.

Gharbi claimed that feminism had ruined his life, and this act was his revenge for it.  Of course, we learned all the wrong lessons.

Gharbi, or Lepine as he is popularly known, was an obvious head case.  He blamed feminism for his problems, and so of course this makes all men in some way accountable for his crime.  There is a Marc Lepine lurking in every man, to believe the feminists who certainly know how to capitalize on tragedy to advance their cause and to engage in self-pity.

What is asinine is that there are some men, like principle Timothy McBride, who buy this crap about all men having a small Marc Lepine lurking within them and who presume to lecture his male charges about it.  This raises a question: did McBride introspectively discovered a Marc Lepine lurking within himself?  If not, why would he presume to warn other men about the Marc Lepine that lurks within them?

The theory that Marc Lepine lurks deep in every man or even most men is an offensive myth perpetrated by self-pitying feminists who express an exaggerated grief in pagan-like rituals.  Feminists are exploiting this crime.  They’re all about fish and bicycles and equality until the fit hits the shan, and then it’s “women and children first!”

Another mis-learned lesson was gun control.  Gharbi killed with a Mini-14; but because that kind of rifle is popular with Aboriginal hunters, the government left it alone and made AR-15s restricted instead.   That was its political gesture.  Now, a concealed carrier in the classroom could have stopped Gharbi cold in his tracks, and that is why concealed carry is permitted in every one of the fifty States of America.   In Canada, instead of licensing conceal carry we went overboard in the other direction and Canadians are as defenseless against crime as they have ever been.

Marc Lepine was a head case.  He is in no way representative of men in general.  His crime is being exploited for social and political gain by people who were not his victims.

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You Can't Fix Ontario Hydro

Vincent J. Curtis

24 Dec 2016

My hometown newspaper published an article by Mr. Andrew Frame, P.Eng. in which he outlined a way in which the exorbitant electricity rates charged to Ontario electrical consumers could be substantially reduced.  Mr. Frame is a highly respected consultant in the Electrical business in Ontario.  His proposal seemed to me to be to aim at restoring the status quo ante 1998, when which Ontario Hydro was a government regulated monopoly.  The government of Mike Harris partially deregulated the electrical market in Ontario so that the Ontario government could get out from under the debt load of Ontario Hydro.  That debt exploded under the mismanagement of Ontario Premier David Peterson, who kept starting and stopping the construction of the massive Darlington Nuclear generation facility.  Much water has passed under the bridge since 1998.

Below is a commentary. 

Mr. Andy Frame proposed a means of reducing the cost of electricity in Ontario by between 30 and 50 percent, in his estimation.  He would do so by having the Ontario government pass new legislation that would, in effect, restore the status quo ante 1998 in respect of electrical generation, distribution, and delivery.  The old structure of Ontario Hydro would be restored, such as it can be.

I submit that his proposal is impossible.  In respect of Sir Adam Beck’s ideal of Ontario’s electrical supply at cost, the toothpaste is out of the tube and it is impossible to put it back.

The levels of government in Ontario are addicted to the tax revenues they receive from electrical generation, and Hamilton in particular is looking to sell shares in Horizon Utilities in order to raise capital.  His proposal would have government cease receiving these revenues altogether.  Mr. Frame would also have Ontario buy out existing contracts for wind and solar generation, and it would likely also have to buy out private ownership whose capital investments would become practically worthless as a result of the expropriation of powers Mr. Frame recommends.  The Ontario government hasn’t got the money for the capital purchase that would be involved.

The unraveling of Ontario Hydro began when Premier David Peterson bungled the Darlington file, with his repeated starting and stopping of the project driving the cost of that new facility out of sight.  He followed it up with an anti-Keynesian fiscal policy that doubled Ontario’s fiscal expenditures in five short years, running a deficit and increasing Ontario’s debt during good financial times.  He left a fiscal mess to his successor, Bob Rae of the NDP.  Rae, in turn, pursued a pro-Keynesian policy of running deficits in bad financial times, increasing further Ontario’s debt load.  All this time the province was seen as the guarantor of the debt of Ontario Hydro, as well as of its own.

Fiscal sanity was not restored until the election of Mike Harris.  To get the province out from under the debt of Ontario Hydro, Harris instituted the reforms of 1998.  Then Dalton McGuinty was elected and it was under him that things went all madcap.  Wynne inherited the mess from McGuinty.

For all this, the people of Ontario have no one to blame but themselves.  Those who today are in their seventies and find electricity unaffordable, were the ones who in their forties elected David Peterson and then Bob Rae.  They were in their fifties and sixties when they elected Dalton McGuinty.  They were stronger then, and had sturdier incomes.  Now their indulgencies and inattention have come home to roost.

The iron law of politics is that you get the government you deserve.  The fate of today’s seniors and of Ontario industry in respect of electricity costs should serve as a warning to today’s twenty to forty-somethings.  The decisions they make and fail to make today will have a powerful consequences on their lives after they retire.

Mr. Frame’s solution won’t work.  With all the debt and fiscal demands on municipal and provincial government that have grown since the days of David Peterson, it is impossible to go back.  Debt and mistakes have to be paid and paid for, and that can only come by working our way forward and by stop making stupid and obvious mistakes.

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Partisanship and Patriotism

Vincent J. Curtis

9 Dec 2016

There have been occasions when I questioned the patriotism of certain political parties in Canada.  But I never thought that scoring small, temporary political points could outweigh patriotism in the Conservative party.

The Bloc Quebecois was a party committed to patriotism all right – to an independent Republic of Quebec, and the extinction of the Canada I know.  A party committed to International Socialism is not patriotic because it is committed to a class struggle across national borders – class over country is their order of priority.  In general, any party committed to some ideology or other is committed to that Idea – and whether that Idea is good for this country or not is not even an examined question with them.  A Conservative party ought to have the good of the country - patriotism - as its highest priority – country over party, one would think.

But the temptations of political partisanship can sometimes outweigh the greater good that is implicit in patriotism.

So it was for me when Conservative defense critic James Bezan attacked the government over its quietly angling to buy a small number of F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets to tide the RCAF over until a decision was reached on the purchase of replacements for the F/A-18 A/B Hornets that are currently flown.

Bezan got big headlines.  He got the Liberal government to look defensive, and he may have weakened the government’s resolve to go ahead with the purchase.  He certainly made the Liberal government look bad to the left-wing of its political base.  Score a minor triumph for critic Bezan.

But let’s look at the larger picture.  In the first place, there is no doubt of our crying need for new fighters, and we are going to need something real soon to fill a capability gap that will grow between now and 2025.  The Super Hornet is particularly well adapted to fill that gap because it is interoperable with the current fleet.  So, unless Mr. Bezan is representing another defense supplier, what is the point of opposing the quiet purchase of Super Hornets except to make a partisan splash at the expense of the government?

These are Liberals we are talking about, and they need all the encouragement we can give them to spend money on more defense capability.

But look further.  In recent history, when have defense purchases gone quickly and well?  When Canada needed strategic lift capability right then, MND Gordon O’Connor just went out and bought three Globemasters from Boeing.  When we needed heavy lift helicopters, we just went out, cut a deal with the U.S., and bought fifteen Chinooks.  When we saw a deal for Leopard II tanks, we bought 100 of them, slightly used, from the Netherlands, more than we needed at the time.  But we got them.  When we needed artillery for Afghanistan we cut another deal and acquired a battery of M777 guns direct from the U.S. Marine Corps.  These proved so effective that we’re on track to receive a total of 31 more from the manufacturer, BAE Systems.

When the Canadian military really needs something, the government just goes out and gets it.  No fuss, no muss.

When the standard procurement process is employed, it means that the government wants to put off deciding.  It doesn’t want to spend money on defense.  The procurement process is a means of creating a massive smoke screen so that nobody gets blamed for nothing getting done.

Look at the process announced for determining what the replacement for the CF-18 is going to be.  It’s going to take five years.  World famous suppliers have been asked to fill out a pile of insulting paperwork to prove their capability, and they are supposed explain to experts in the RCAF precisely how to suck eggs.  Do you really believe that fighter pilots in the RCAF need to have explained to them the ins and outs of a Saab Gripen, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, the Super Hornet, and the F-35 JSF before they can make an informed choice about which one they want?

Look at the Surface Combatant Ship replacement process.  This is another acquisition being bogged down in counting angels on the head of a pin.  The government doesn’t want to spend big money on warships, and so the path to acquisition is littered with red herrings.

When the Prime Minister decides he needs to spend money on defense, money on defense will get spent.  Don’t discourage the man.  Shut-up already.  Patriotism over partisanship!

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