Post originally posted June 27th, 2017
The story:
As a wedding present, Zeus gave Pandora a box (in ancient Greece this was called a jar) but warned her never to open it. Pandora, who was created to be curious, couldn’t stay away from the box and the urge to open the box overcame her. Horrible things flew out of the box including greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death. All of life’s miseries had been let out into the world. Pandora slammed the lid of the box back down. The last thing remaining inside of the box was hope. Ever since, humans have been able to hold onto this hope in order to survive the wickedness that Pandora had let out.
I also considered titling this post “The Democrat party retreat from the Russian Front” as that it is now what it is transpiring. After nearly a year of baseless accusations against Donald Trump of colluding with the Russians, people are growing weary of it. The country sees that democrats have no message other than hate. They’ve bet their fortunes on hate and now have lost election after election riding that horse. It’s gotten so bad that the democrat rank and file has had enough and is asking their leaders to back off.
But rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare.
In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift.
“We can’t just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio aren’t really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBC Thursday. “They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to make the mortgage payment, how they’re going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like.
That may prove to be the least of their concerns. The bloody FBI was willing to pay $50,000 to a shadowy group for a discredited dossier that was supposed to bring Trump down. Now that group is stonewalling investigators:
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.
What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources say it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump agenda.
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”
Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democratic ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.
Fusion GPS ended up shelling out $250,000 to Steele. The entire collusion/investigation was premised entirely on a fraud.
And now, finally, the attention is being turned to where it should always have been– on Barack Obama. This is something about which I’ve been writing since January.
It is amusing that democrats routinely berate Trump as being Putin’s pal when it is obama who has been Putin’s b*tch for the last eight years. Never mind that obama has interfered in elections both in the UK and in Israel. In 2012 obama promised to be more “flexible” for “Vlad” and since then he has taken it up the wazoo for Putin.
obama didn’t react to any of Russia’s actions- whether it was the Ukraine, Crimea, buzzing ships and aircraft, or hacking US assets. Now he musters a half-assed response after an election he fully expected to go for clinton and only because she lost and he needs badly to save face. Had she won, this would not even be a story the media would care about. obama has done nothing but project weakness around the world and has emboldened these actions against us.
THAT is what should be irritating you.
Obama knew about Russian hacking efforts since 2015 and did essentially nothing. Now as the collusion fantasy evaporates, Adam Schiff, searching for a way to salvage his reputation, has turned on Obama:
President Obama’s decision to not act sooner on Russian election interference last year was “a very serious mistake,” says California Rep. Adam Schiff.
“I think the administration needed to call out Russia earlier, and needed to act to deter and punish Russia earlier and I think that was a very serious mistake,” Schiff said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Schiff, the top ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that Obama was hesitant to confront Russia over its active measures campaign for fear of being seen as helping Hillary Clinton and of fueling Donald Trump’s allegations that the election was being “rigged” against him.
“But both of those factors did not outweigh…the public’s need to know” about Russia’s hacking, Schiff said.
“The American people needed to know,” he added.
Damn right they needed to know. Damn right it was a mistake. We also need to know why Obama has been so astonishingly soft on Russia for eight years. Exactly what was he promising Putin in the flexibility? Why wasn’t Russia the “yuge” enemy under obama that it suddenly became once Donald Trump was the GOP candidate?
There has been zero evidence produced showing any collusion between Donald Trump, his campaign and Russia. There is evidence that Barack Obama knew about the threat long before Donald Trump was the candidate, let alone President. The really big question is, why didn’t he do a thing about it? The Washington Post reports that Obama had a laundry list of possible retaliations against Russia but chose impotence instead. One excuse for the lack of response was so he would not tip his hand as to secret methods being used. In their zealous attempt to defend Obama, WaPo has chosen to go ahead and leak those techniques which apparently have been offered up by Obama holdovers.
A recent Washington Post story disclosed classified secrets as part of a larger story about Obama administration cyber efforts against Russia. It was published days after a New York Times story, which revealed details of a secret Israeli cyber operation that Trump is said to have leaked to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The sensitivity of the material being leaked has heightened criticism both of the former Obama officials who are suspected of unveiling these secrets and of the Trump administration for its seeming inability to stem the disclosures, according to these officials.
Anger is running so high that multiple current U.S. officials have named some of the former Obama officials they believe are behind the unauthorized disclosures, which Trump officials say are aimed at kneecapping the current administration and also rewriting the record of the Obama years.
“They [former Obama officials] offer ridiculous explanations about why Obama couldn’t act more forcefully, and then they apparently leak even more information about certain U.S. measures they claim have been taken against Russia,” said one senior U.S. official who deals closely with the matter. “The publication of this information, if it’s true, could do some damage to our national security, but the sources don’t seem to mind doing that if it helps advance their political narrative.”
The sources leaking this information appear to be the same former Obama administration allies and holdovers behind a months-long series of damaging leaks.
Robert Mueller has been given permission to go wide ranging in his investigation. That can mean Trump and his staff, but it also can mean the Clinton’s, Lynch, Susan Rice and Barack Obama.
I have said repeatedly that had there been anything to the Russian-Trump thing it would have leaked already. It hasn’t because I doubt there is anything there. But there’s a lot of smoke coming out of that plane in which Clinton met Lynch and there is a lot of smoke coming from that Susan Rice’s unmasking pile and there’s a lot of smoke coming from that pile of Obama flexibility and inaction despite knowing Russia was messing with us.
In their hatred of Trump and spitefulness at losing the election democrats have opened Pandora’s box. Watch as they, as did Pandora, try fruitlessly to shut it.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.