Insurrection (Including J6) and the Second American Civil War

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/31/republicans-rigged-democracy-democrats-fight-back

[Crafty_Dog]

https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30

[G M]

https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30

So, America gets to follow California into Venezuala del Norte status? I think not. The coastal class is in for a rude awakening.

[G M]

https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30

So, America gets to follow California into Venezuala del Norte status? I think not. The coastal class is in for a rude awakening.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/04/09/liberals-announce-plan-to-crush-normal-americans-in-a-new-civil-war-spoiler-its-not-a-great-plan-n2469023?amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

[G M]

https://forwardobserver.com/2018/04/five-reasons-why-well-have-another-domestic-conflict/

[G M]

http://coldfury.com/2018/04/18/can-they-be-stopped/

Can they be stopped?
Posted on 4/18/2018     by Mike   

William Gensert doesn’t think so.

    In seeking and executing a warrant to search the offices and home of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, leftists have abandoned all pretense that they are not prosecuting civil war against Americans who disagree with them. They have decided that we represent an existential threat to the America they envision would exist under their tutelage. They won’t let us mind our own business, raise our children, protect our families, be productive citizens, and be left alone. That won’t do – they have plans for us. They want this war, and they will force this fight upon us.

    In the scheme of things, America is a young country. Yet its brief history is replete with people who underestimated Americans. Progressives are in the process of doing that today. It is a mistake that will cost them dearly.

    To succeed in fundamentally transforming the United States of America, the left must accomplish two things:

        Impeach President Donald Trump.
        Disarm Americans.

    The left, in a national fit of pique, refuses to accept the fact that a majority of the country rejects its “new America,” as personified by its hero and god, Barack Obama. He started the transmogrification, which leftists had planned to extend and codify during the reign of Hillary Clinton. Then Donald Trump came along, and their plan fell apart, hence the necessity for the usurpation of the nation’s constitution and the will of the people.

    The signs are there that Americans are going to fight this. There is a real possibility of blood in the streets. Regular Americans are tired of the Democrat elite telling them what they must accept.

    Leftists feel that they are right: America shouldn’t have a choice. In effect, people should not be allowed to vote for anyone leftists do not approve of, and they certainly do not approve of Donald Trump.

They didn’t approve of George W Bush or McCain either. But when they turned bland, middle-of-the-road milquetoast Mittens Romneycare into a RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST monster—then Paul Ryno, for that matter, pushing Granny off a cliff—the writing was on the wall for all to see. Lefty has modified Sherman’s famous quote and put it into practice: if nominated, Republicans will not be allowed to run. If elected, they will not be allowed to serve.

    And since they are on the side of what is right and just, anything they do, no matter how illegal, how immoral, how outwardly and obviously unfair and biased, is justified because the arc of history bends toward justice…or some such nonsense.

    There are an estimated 300 million firearms existing in America today.  And I wager that that figure is low.  I would also wager that most armed citizenry would be loath to voluntarily give up their guns – as well as being even more resistant to giving them up under duress.

    So there you have it: the left wants to wage war against the most heavily armed populace ever to exist on this planet, and as weapons, leftists are going to use rhetoric and clever metaphors, mellifluously delivered, à la Barry the brilliant.  When Charlton Heston said, “They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead hands,” it wasn’t a threat; it was a promise.

    It strains credulity that they are using every trick in the book, from opposition research in the form of the Steele dossier to Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, Strzok, Page, and probably Barack Obama himself, conspiring to sabotage the candidacy and later the presidency of Donald Trump, and they think there will not be a fight from a well armed populace?

Remains to be seen, I guess. I have no doubt that the Founders would have been shocked, dismayed, and angered to see what we’ve quietly surrendered already. As the bumper sticker says, they would have been shooting already. I’m sure there’s any number of doughty old-school Brits who are equally appalled at how far their once-mighty nation has sunk into the mire of ignominy and degradation, without there being any visible signs of righteous uprising there. At some point it’s just too late, and there’s no longer anything left worth the effort of trying to save.

Over here, Hillary!™ was as “moderate” a candidate as the Left will ever accept, and even at that they greatly preferred Bernie the Red—and would have gotten him too, had he not been swindled out of the nomination by the dirtiest, most brazenly corrupt political machine in American history. From here on out, any and every Republican must expect to be savaged and undermined by any and all means Progressivists can contrive, with the active connivance of the Deep State apparatus itself.

The Left probably doesn’t actually want a shooting war, not really. Rather, they don’t expect to get one, and will be surprised indeed if they do. This expectation, right or wrong, means their collective psychotic break over Trump was only the beginning; the response to their next defeat is going to be worse, much worse. Gensert’s conclusion is spot on: this will NOT end well. Not unless these screwballs suddenly discover a wisdom and restraint they’ve shown no sign whatsoever to date of possessing, it won’t.

[Crafty_Dog]

Deep implications about this tactic , , ,

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2018/04/moral-warfare-packetizing-shame.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FrzYD+%28Global+Guerrillas%29

[G M]

Deep implications about this tactic , , ,

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2018/04/moral-warfare-packetizing-shame.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FrzYD+%28Global+Guerrillas%29

That works both ways. And there are kinetic realities that may be attached.

Note that the left’s outrage mob is currently feeding on lefty Starbucks.

[Crafty_Dog]

Yes it works both ways-- what is left of American civic culture if this becomes the norm?

[G M]

Yes it works both ways-- what is left of American civic culture if this becomes the norm?

What civic culture?

[G M]

http://coldfury.com/2018/04/18/the-collapse-that-wasnt/

[G M]

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2018/04/21/draft-n2473193

7 Forces Driving America Toward Civil War



I was interviewed by a mainstream media reporter yesterday. I thought he wanted to talk tech issues, but we actually spent almost the entire conversation discussing the feeling that many conservatives have that America has gone off the tracks and is headed toward dissolution or alternately, a civil war one day. Obviously, this would be a terrible thing and ironically, twenty years ago, it would have been laughable. Today, the joke isn’t so funny because we are a deeply unhealthy society with a dysfunctional government and for all our money, success and storied history, we seem to be on an increasingly dangerous trajectory.

1) A Post-Constitutional Era: Liberals don’t believe in the Constitution. Typically they deny this, but that’s exactly what a “living” Constitution means. You make it up as you go along. The Founders foresaw the instability and danger that would be created by this approach, which is why they wanted us to be a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Unfortunately, America has in many ways already become a post-constitutional democracy and we’re one liberal judge away from abandoning the Constitution altogether. Once we get to that point, America just becomes the representation of that old saying, “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.” Of course people are not lambs and when large numbers of them believe they aren’t being treated fairly, they do have the option of getting away from the wolves.


2) Tribalism: The “you only have to listen to people you already agree with” nature of social media has dramatically ramped up the level of tribalism in the United States. The Right has gotten much more tribal since Donald Trump rose to prominence and the Left has taken tribalism into hyper-drive. Increasingly, liberals treat a range of opinion between Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton as legitimate while everyone else is viewed as a white supremacist Nazi primitive that must be driven down into the gutter for society to move forward. This makes any sort of dialogue or cooperation nearly impossible. When every issue is a zero sum war where one tribe must win or lose, a lot of people quite understandably ask, “What do we gain by staying allied to this other tribe?”

3) Federal Government Too Powerful: Federalism is a safety valve on the American pressure cooker. As long as people in San Francisco can, for the most part, live the way they want to live while the people in rural North Carolina can, for the most part, live the way they want to live, it’s much easier for everyone to get along. When people are unnecessarily forced to live under rules they find abhorrent because the federal government has become an octopus that has inserted its tentacles into every minute crevice of American life, it creates discontent on a wide scale. If most Americans wanted to live like people in San Francisco, they’d live in San Francisco.

4) Moral Decline: As Samuel Adams once noted, “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”

A large number of Americans HAVE LOST their principles, manners and virtue and it shows through from the sort of politicians they elect, to their rudeness online, to the sort of shallow hedonism and fame whoring they find appealing. Americans are increasingly becoming a soft and decadent people which is problematic because the challenges may change, but we can be certain that Americans will face future challenges every bit as difficult as the ones past generations had to tackle. This is frightening because if you look at the “principles, manners and virtue” of Americans today, they don’t seem capable of dealing with monumental events like the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Depression or World War II. Most people in their twenties probably couldn’t tell you why all those events were such challenges in the first place. When America faces a challenge bigger than we can handle because of ineffective politicians and our “amusing ourselves to death” population, there are no guarantees our republic will survive. 

5) The Debt: America is a freight train heading toward a cliff, but because we’re not moving toward the edge at lightning speed, no one seems all that concerned. However, the fact of the matter is that a reckoning is coming. At some point, probably within the next decade or two, we will face a debt-driven economic collapse; borrowed money will stop flowing into the United States and Medicare/Social Security as we know it will fall apart because we will not have the money to pay it. If and when we get to that point, all bets are off because if regions of the country see an advantage to splitting off from the United States at that point, they will do it.

6) Lack Of A Shared Culture: There has never been a time when American culture was more fragmented than it is today. By that, I mean that there are legions of people with millions of fans or followers on the Internet that the vast majority of Americans have never heard of in their lives. We don’t have that shared love of anybody or for that matter, anything. Conservatives and liberals disagree on economics (capitalist/socialist), religion (friendly to Christianity/hostile to Christianity), the Constitution (support/believe in a living Constitution i.e. no Constitution), etc., on and on. The average conservative and the average liberal disagree on 95% of the issues and in the few limited cases where they do look at things the same, they won’t support a proposal by the other out of sheer tribalism. Over the long haul, there has be something more to hold a country together than, “We wear Nikes, like pop music and play golf.”

7) Gun Grabbing:  Liberals have fallen in love with the idea of ignoring the 2nd Amendment and confiscating all firearms. The logistics of doing this in a nation with hundreds of millions of guns (many of which are off the books) when many police departments and tens of millions of Americans would not cooperate is seldom discussed. Another thing that seldom seems brought up is that large numbers of conservatives would see this as a prelude to the government’s use of force against the citizenry. When it is discussed on the Left, there seems to be an assumption that lone resisters might get into firefights with dozens of police or soldiers, as opposed to ganging up with other formerly law-abiding Americans to waylay gun confiscators, politicians and anti-gun activists at THEIR HOMES in guerrilla actions that would be silently applauded and supported by hundreds of millions of Americans concerned about their freedom. Confiscating guns is a dangerous and stupid idea that could in and of itself end our republic if a serious attempt were ever made to implement it.

[G M]

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/20/far-left-protesters-target-nra-lobbyists-home/

Far Left Protesters Target NRA Lobbyists’ Home
JOHN SEXTON

Posted at 8:01 pm on April 20, 2018

 
The Washington Post has a story today about a handful of far-left gun control activists looking to up the ante by making their protests more personal. They’re doing that by protesting at the home of NRA lobbyist Chris Cox and also by targeting his wife’s interior design business.

SEE ALSO: CIA declassifies memo clearing Haspel in tape-destruction case

Last week, two gun control activists protested outside Cox’s Alexandria, Va., home and handed out fliers outside his wife’s nearby business.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cox have been targeted over the past few months by repeated acts of criminal and unlawful conduct, including having their home vandalized on two occasions and Mrs. Cox’s business on another occasion,” Elizabeth Locke, attorney for the Cox family, said in a statement. “These coordinated tactics have crossed the line of civility and human decency.”

An attorney for Patricia Hill, the alleged vandal, did not immediately provide a comment regarding the fake blood incidents. The other protesters say they have been careful not to cross legal lines and knew nothing of the vandalism. They are all part of a growing movement that thinks gun control advocacy should be more aggressive — and more personal…

“I don’t think the Cox family is getting enough social pressure,” said [Amanda] Gailey, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Nobody from their kids’ school or their yoga class sees [a protest] happening” at the NRA headquarters…

“If I made him uncomfortable at his house, too bad, he deserves it,” [Catherine] Koebel said in an interview. “I felt unsafe in my home because of his product.”…

“It is aggressive,” Gailey acknowledged. “I wouldn’t do that unless we were protesting someone who I believe is a truly indefensible human being.”

Amanda Gailey is the leader of a group called Nebraskans Against Gun Violence. In 2016, she was invited by the Obama White House to personally meet President Obama when he gave a speech in Omaha.


As for the tactic, it’s not anything new for the far left. They’ve been doing it for more than a decade on a range of issues. Back in 2003 the NY Times reported on activists who arranged to have a hearse sent to pick up a body at the home of a biomedical employee who, it turned out, wasn’t dead:

Late one recent evening, an undertaker dispatched a hearse to the home of a biomedical company employee to pick up her body.

No one, however, had died. The woman who answered the door was very much alive, although the coffin was intended for her. Aghast, she suddenly realized that the undertaker had been duped by an animal rights radical into sending the hearse.

If the goal was to scare her out of her wits, the tactic succeeded. Her voice cracked with fear as she insisted to a reporter that she not be identified, lest she and her family be singled out again.

In 2010, Allahpundit wrote about hundreds of SEIU union protesters who went to the home of a Bank of America executive named Greg Baer. Baer wasn’t home but his teenage son Jack was. He locked himself in a bathroom until they left. The added irony in that case: Baer is a lifelong Democrat. Occupy Wall Street protesters did much the same thing in 2011 and there have been repeated protests at Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan’s home in Pasadena, California.

Just last year, so-called Indivisible protesters used this technique against Republican members of Congress to pressure them into holding townhall events. There was a problem though as the protesters wound up at a house one GOP congressman and his family had vacated months earlier. Oops!

This form of protest isn’t quite normalized yet but that’s clearly what the far left hopes will happen. I’m a little surprised David Hogg or one of the other Parkland progressives hasn’t endorsed this yet. I mean, if you think these people are murdering children why wouldn’t you target them at home?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-elitists-trump-excuse-1524524140


The Elitists’ Trump Excuse
His critics may be more corrupting to democracy and decency than he is.
 
President Trump gives a thumbs up as he boards Air Force One upon departure from West Palm Beach, Fla., April 22. PHOTO: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS
 
By
William McGurn
April 23, 2018 6:55 p.m. ET

Let us stipulate that Donald Trump is unique. From his allusion to his privates during a GOP debate to the public berating of his attorney general to the nicknames he uses to disparage opponents, Mr. Trump tramples on the expected norms for a president.

Some detect in Mr. Trump’s brand of vituperation an assault on the values and virtues that democracy requires to thrive. In this line of thinking, Mr. Trump is morally unfit for the Oval Office. Some speak even more darkly. In her new book, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says the world today has become a “petri dish” for fascism, calls Mr. Trump “the least democratic president of modern history” and notes that Mussolini, too, promised to “drain the swamp.”

There is, however, a flip side to Mr. Trump’s speech and behavior. It has to do with the willingness of those who know better (or ought to know better) to look the other way so long as Mr. Trump is the target. So which is more damaging to the American body politic—the schoolyard taunts and threats of Mr. Trump, or the anti-Trump opportunism of “polite” society?

The election and its aftermath have been an education in how the smart set responds when the American people refuse the judgment of their self-styled betters. In its most honest form, it is the “Resist!” movement. In the more genteel version, it turns out to mean not just opposing Mr. Trump’s policies, which people can reasonably do, but throwing fairness and principle to the wind so long as it might help bring down the 45th president. Consider:

• In the thick of the 2016 election, the New York Times ran a front-page article in which it advertised that the particular dangers posed by Mr. Trump’s candidacy meant that the long-held norm of journalism—objectivity—might have to give way to a more oppositional approach.

• Good liberals once found the idea of spying on American citizens without just cause unconscionable. But when the target is a former Trump campaign associate, it becomes OK to get a warrant based on an unverified dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

• James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, revised procedures to make it easier for executive branch officials to “unmask” the names of Americans in intelligence reports and share the information among themselves, making leaks all but inevitable. The illegal leak of Mike Flynn’s name in connection with a phone conversation with Russia’s ambassador was one result. But again, it doesn’t matter because he was a Trump transition official.

• When Sally Yates was acting attorney general and President Trump issued an executive order on immigration she objected to, Ms. Yates ordered the entire Justice Department not to obey, despite a finding from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel that the order was lawful. She was applauded in her insubordination by Andrew Weissmann, then a Justice attorney, who now serves on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. But it’s all for a good cause, right?

• In the middle of a #MeToo moment ostensibly all about more respect for women, the president’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has been derided as everything from a “summer whore” to “a slightly chunky soccer mom.” Though the columnist who wrote the latter has since apologized, the accomplished Mrs. Sanders must wonder what happened to “when they go low, we go high?”

• The pardon power enjoyed by the president is among the most unfettered in the Constitution. But because the president is Mr. Trump, and the pardon for controversial Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has opted for lawlessness: appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the pardon’s legitimacy, in clear violation of the separation of powers.

Meanwhile, week after week, the same people who accuse Mr. Trump of lacking depth and nuance toss off allusions to Hilter, Stalin and a parade of murderous dictators. Channeling Mrs. Clinton, they insist that anyone who would chose Mr. Trump over her—or God forbid, agree to serve in a Trump administration—isn’t just wrong but forever morally tainted.

The people aren’t stupid. The 63 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump—some as an unappealing but better alternative to Mrs. Clinton, but many with gusto—recognize that what is going on here is a concerted effort to overturn the results of a legitimate presidential election. Is it really unreasonable to ask whether this might be as much of a threat to American democracy as anything Mr. Trump has said or done?

To point to the double standard isn’t in any way to justify Mr. Trump’s more boorish displays. It is, however, to say that the standard ought to work both ways: Whatever the president’s sins, they are no excuse for not asking whether the double standards of his critics in polite society might be just as corrupting to American democracy—and why it is that Donald Trump’s “betters” are so often so much worse.

[G M]

https://amgreatness.com/2018/04/24/weaponizing-the-government-for-leftist-political-war/

Weaponizing the Government for Leftist Political War
By D Hawthorne| April 24th, 2018



James Comey is the deep state’s pathological equivalent of Sally Field. But focusing on his bitchy, vengeful, and sanctimonious personal psychodramas is a distraction from what really matters—the profound internal threats to liberty and equal justice under the law, enabled by Comey and other rogue actors.

Unraveling the Deep State Narrative: First of a Three-Part Series

The former FBI director deserved to be fired, is irrelevant moving forward, and will only marginalize himself further the more he talks and the more information comes out about how he tried to undermine a duly elected president.

While Comey’s interviews and book continue to get distracting press coverage, they are not the biggest news of recent days.

No, the big news is the cumulative significance of seemingly disparate but related events, including: the raid on attorney Michael Cohen’s office, home, and hotel and other Robert Mueller probe actions; the GOP establishment’s ongoing alignment with other statists; the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; the apparent growing alignment between Inspector General Michael Horowitz (appointed by Obama) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions; the pardoning of Scooter Libby, an innocent man railroaded by a Comey-appointed special counsel; the release of the Comey memos that showed President Trump wanted all collusion charges investigated and did not obstruct justice; and the electronic communication used to open a FBI counterintelligence probe that showed no official intelligence information existed to justify starting the Trump-Russia collusion review.

These events were significant because of their connection to the Left’s escalating contempt for their fellow Americans and the increasing tendency to turn political disagreement into political war, or what Kim Strassel calls “the intimidation game,” in which the Left seeks to “[m]ake political opponents pay a high price for expressing their opinions” through harassment from government agencies, followed by investigations and prosecution, and then blackmail.

Mueller, Weissmann, and Comey: Legacies of Corruption and Ethical Misconduct
To better understand how the intimidation game works to weaponize government and criminalize political differences, consider Robert Mueller’s record both as special counsel and previously as director of the FBI.

Mueller’s reputation as a “stand-up guy” is overrated. His partisan team has a history of corrupt legal practices and ethical misconduct, including withholding evidence, entrapment, thrown-out cases, overturned verdicts, and sizable monetary settlements. Mollie Hemingway and Julie Kelly have highlighted examples of Mueller’s history of abusing prosecutorial discretion from his tenure as FBI director and U.S. attorney. There are a startling number of legacy prosecutorial and law enforcement abuse cases touched by Mueller, Comey, and Andrew Weissmann, including: anthrax, Ted Stevens, Boston, Frank Quattrone, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, Cliven Bundy, Sandy Berger, Scooter Libby, AIPAC, Richard Jewell, Ruby Ridge, and Harvey Silverglate.

These black hats have never been held accountable for their misdeeds. Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, having prosecutors who are political partisans with a demonstrated contempt for the rule of law is not a formula for equal justice.

Mueller and His Special Counsel Team: Making Beria Proud
We are seeing the same illiberal behaviors play out now with the special counsel, leading Lee Smith to observe: “by using the justice system as a political weapon to attack the enemies of the country’s elite, Robert Mueller and his supporters in both parties are confirming what many Americans already believe…we are not all equal under one law.” Restoring this core principle of civil liberty is a cause around which all Americans of good faith can and must unite.

Yet Mueller is ignoring the people who actually appear to have colluded with Russia. Leading Republicans and Democrats agree no evidence of any Trump-Russia collusion has been found. If any existed it already would have leaked and Mueller would be acting on it. The Trump-Russia collusion story is a lie. This makes it all the more ironic that those pushing the collusion narrative are the only ones directly connected to any questionable Russian dealings.

Consider some of these examples of Leftist projection:

The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee covered up their payments to Fusion GPS for the so-called Steele dossier, with its Russian sources, by paying a law firm to fund the opposition research firm. That represents an in-kind campaign contribution far larger than any alleged payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels;
The 2010 Uranium One deal transferred control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves to a Russian entity, followed by related parties contributing $145 million to the Clinton Foundation;
FBI agents ultimately reporting to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in a prior role, and Andrew McCabe (when Mueller was FBI director) had gathered evidence showing Russian nuclear industry officials engaged in “bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering” in the United States. But Rosenstein and McCabe did not disclose it during the subsequent Uranium One approval process and the FBI, under Comey, let the investigation die;
Roughly two-thirds of the U.S., European, and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, a new Moscow high-technology center that included the transfer of dual-use technologies from the United States, donated to the Clinton Foundation or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton;
Both Podesta brothers—John and Tony—had their own shady Russian business deals; and,
Hillary Clinton appears to have compromised national security by, among other things, sending emails from Russia and emailing classified information, all via an unsecure email server.
Yet, Mueller has not interviewed Clinton, her campaign officials or other people connected to them, nor have any of their offices, homes or lawyers been raided.

What’s more, none of the special counsel’s charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, or others have anything to do with Russian collusion. Yet Mueller’s team continues to use scorched earth tactics. Questions abound:

Was charging Flynn a retaliatory action?
If people previously didn’t believe Flynn lied, why the ambush interview and charges?
Why did Comey change his story?
Why was Flynn’s judge recused without explanation, the sentencing postponed, and prosecutors ordered by the new judge to turn over exculpatory information? Is there an evidence problem that could lead to a dismissal?
Why was it necessary to conduct a 10-hour raid by 12 FBI agents of Manafort’s home, picking the door lock and entering with guns drawn when he and his wife were in bed?
Were those actions an abuse of law-enforcement power, done for the purpose of intimidation in spite of Manafort being a cooperative witness? Why was it necessary to pat down Mrs. Manafort while she was still in bed?
Why did they seize Manafort documents they knew were protected by attorney-client privilege?
Did a storage unit search violate Manafort’s Fourth Amendment rights?
Was the aggressiveness of the Michael Cohen raid about isolating President Trump by making it risky for attorneys and other advisors to associate with Trump?
Why was there “deafening silence” from the ACLU when Cohen’s home, hotel, and office were raided and confidential Trump attorney-client documents were taken, making it a “dangerous day . . . for lawyer-client relations”?
How is violating Cohen’s Fourth and Sixth amendment rights justified? Over only seeking information about Stormy Daniels and the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape? Is Mueller “laundering information to another prosecutorial authority”?
Shouldn’t Judge Kimba Wood have recused herself?
Was seizing Trump transition team emails, including potentially privileged information, from the General Services Administration justifiable?
More broadly, is the Russia investigation even legal if it was initiated based on false and misleading premises?

It is also striking that the same partisans who are happy to scream “Trump-Russia collusion” in spite of the perpetual absence of evidence, have a cavalier attitude toward attorney-client privilege, have no problem with agents feeling up Mrs. Manafort in her bed, and are more than willing to ignore the deeply troubling House Democrat IT scandal involving Pakistani intelligence.

Hillary Clinton voter and old-school civil liberties stalwart Alan Dershowitz asks the first big question about the Russian collusion investigation: “What is the crime?” He declares the Mueller probe is “‘being done backwards’ in a manner comparable to Stalin’s secret police . . . it raises great concerns about civil liberties.”

Another big question: Is Mueller looking for real crimes or is he just using the power of government to cover up crimes by deep state actors and punish their political opponents—including gathering private information that can be used as opposition research material during the 2018 and 2020 elections?

By its actions, the Left is proving it does not believe either in liberty or in equal justice under the law and they are willing to use the power of government against their fellow Americans to get their way.

[DougMacG]

All great points and it's hard to believe that:
1) weaponizing the entire Justice operation is but a tip of the iceberg in weaponized government.

Add these to all that:

2)  IRS Targeting.  Thus was no small matter, the nation's largest political scandal and political crime prior to 1) above.  All liberal groups were approved.  All conservative groups were stopped in the time leading up to the Obama reelection, and then "exonerated" by the Reid-Schumer-Durbin Senate Majority report.  No prosecutions.

3)  EPA / UN IPCC:  With government funding, they altered climate information for the express purpose of achieving Leftist political goals, larger government, smaller individual rights, global government socialist ideals over capitalism enforced by the heavy hand of government.  The number one cause of reported climate change is government 'scientist' alterations of actual data.  Larger than CO2 and larger than solar and wind variations.  If the earth was truly ending if people are left to their own free will, only big government can save us.  Only problem is that it isn't true and what part is true, big government makes worse.

4)  Dem Secretaries of State refused to cooperate with federal voter integrity study.  Why?  A certain percent of illegals vote.  Who looks the other way?  The stand down of weaponized government.  They used their power to cover up these (organized) crimes and they fight every effort to make the system accountable.  They refuse to ask citizenship on the Census.  They refuse to require ID to vote and they refuse to investigate after the fact.  Then say that ID is not necessary because of so few prosecutions.

5) While both Facebook and the Obama campaign admit their (secret) data mining operation reached EVERY user of facebook in the US, I allege that deep state government employees shared government program recipient information with Democrat campaigns, DNC and their Get Out The Vote operations.  Dem campaigns reached 50 million people through Facebook.  50 million people searchable by interests is a lot but that isn't the half of it.  More people than that have an interest in receiving a check from the government, and they aren't all on facebook.  How did they identify and reach all of the rest? And trust me, they did.  Campaign workers and the government office workers are often one and the same.  Did we really just witness the whole IRS targeting scandal, and FBI scandals, climate scandals, illegal voting scandal - and believe, no they wouldn't do THAT, share information improperly, release private information held by the government to leftist campaigns for (illegal) political advantage?  They wouldn't do that for moral reasons?  They wouldn't for legal reasons, who would prosecute them?  More likely we underestimate how many levels and departments of government shared information with how many levels of campaigns.  Census Bureau, Social Security Administration, Food Stamps, Section 8, HUD, Medicaid, Medicare, state programs, local programs, and yes, the IRS.  Whuch one says the were never 'hacked', data has never been compromised?  What we are missing is one whistleblower who witnessed it from the inside.  Who uses bleach bit on their servers and then crushes them with hammers rather than comply with subpoenas?  Who fleas to Pakistan to avoid answering questions?  Hillary claimed the Obama operation did not give them access to all their data,; what didn't they give her?  What are the secrets 'Wendy' Wasserman Schultz and so many other Dem Congress people are hiding in the Awan IT scandal. 

I'm not a conspiracy buff but this one is kind of obvious.  Somebody knows something behind the scenes and it isn't all information about wedding plans, grandchildren and golf.

Maybe I'll write dossier and see if I can get a FISA warrant.

[G M]

All great points and it's hard to believe that:
1) weaponizing the entire Justice operation is but a tip of the iceberg in weaponized government.

Add these to all that:

2)  IRS Targeting.  Thus was no small matter, the nation's largest political scandal and political crime prior to 1) above.  All liberal groups were approved.  All conservative groups were stopped in the time leading up to the Obama reelection, and then "exonerated" by the Reid-Schumer-Durbin Senate Majority report.  No prosecutions.

3)  EPA / UN IPCC:  With government funding, they altered climate information for the express purpose of achieving Leftist political goals, larger government, smaller individual rights, global government socialist ideals over capitalism enforced by the heavy hand of government.  The number one cause of reported climate change is government 'scientist' alterations of actual data.  Larger than CO2 and larger than solar and wind variations.  If the earth was truly ending if people are left to their own free will, only big government can save us.  Only problem is that it isn't true and what part is true, big government makes worse.

4)  Dem Secretaries of State refused to cooperate with federal voter integrity study.  Why?  A certain percent of illegals vote.  Who looks the other way?  The stand down of weaponized government.  They used their power to cover up these (organized) crimes and they fight every effort to make the system accountable.  They refuse to ask citizenship on the Census.  They refuse to require ID to vote and they refuse to investigate after the fact.  Then say that ID is not necessary because of so few prosecutions.

5) While both Facebook and the Obama campaign admit their (secret) data mining operation reached EVERY user of facebook in the US, I allege that deep state government employees shared government program recipient information with Democrat campaigns, DNC and their Get Out The Vote operations.  Dem campaigns reached 50 million people through Facebook.  50 million people searchable by interests is a lot but that isn't the half of it.  More people than that have an interest in receiving a check from the government, and they aren't all on facebook.  How did they identify and reach all of the rest? And trust me, they did.  Campaign workers and the government office workers are often one and the same.  Did we really just witness the whole IRS targeting scandal, and FBI scandals, climate scandals, illegal voting scandal - and believe, no they wouldn't do THAT, share information improperly, release private information held by the government to leftist campaigns for (illegal) political advantage?  They wouldn't do that for moral reasons?  They wouldn't for legal reasons, who would prosecute them?  More likely we underestimate how many levels and departments of government shared information with how many levels of campaigns.  Census Bureau, Social Security Administration, Food Stamps, Section 8, HUD, Medicaid, Medicare, state programs, local programs, and yes, the IRS.  Whuch one says the were never 'hacked', data has never been compromised?  What we are missing is one whistleblower who witnessed it from the inside.  Who uses bleach bit on their servers and then crushes them with hammers rather than comply with subpoenas?  Who fleas to Pakistan to avoid answering questions?  Hillary claimed the Obama operation did not give them access to all their data,; what didn't they give her?  What are the secrets 'Wendy' Wasserman Schultz and so many other Dem Congress people are hiding in the Awan IT scandal. 

I'm not a conspiracy buff but this one is kind of obvious.  Somebody knows something behind the scenes and it isn't all information about wedding plans, grandchildren and golf.

Maybe I'll write dossier and see if I can get a FISA warrant.

Don't forget this, as well.

https://nypost.com/2018/04/21/obama-bureaucracy-left-our-private-data-more-vulnerable-than-ever/

Obama bureaucracy left our private data more vulnerable than ever
By Paul Sperry April 21, 2018 | 9:51am |

Obama bureaucracy left our private data more vulnerable than ever
As it overhauled banking, the feds launched a massive data collection effort.

Without your knowledge or permission, the Obama administration collected and warehoused your most private bank records and continued to sweep them up — despite repeated warnings the data wasn’t being properly protected. Now there’s a good chance your personal information could be in the hands of identity thieves or even terrorists.

The government isn’t sure who has your information. It only knows the Obama-era databases have been breached by outsider threats potentially 1,000-plus times. That’s according to a recent investigation of cyber-intrusions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the sensitive information is stored.

The number of confirmed breaches of consumers’ personally identifiable information is “just north of 200,” revealed Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget chief who took control of the CFPB late last year, in testimony to Congress. “We think there’s another 800 [incidents of hacked information] that we suspect might have been lost, but we haven’t been able to nail that down.”

In fact, the bureau has suffered 233 confirmed hack attacks and another 840 suspected hacks, putting at risk the financial information and other personal data — including Social Security numbers and birthdates — of potentially millions of Americans.

Most people don’t know this, but after President Barack Obama created the CFPB, he had the powerful regulatory agency snoop into virtually every financial account held by Americans to assemble a massive and secret government database as part of the post-financial crisis overhaul of the banking industry.

Without asking if customers wanted to opt in, CFPB has collected and stockpiled from banks more than 600 million credit-card accounts and personal data from millions of home, auto, business and student loans.

For the first time, the government vacuumed up extremely sensitive personal finance information that even the IRS doesn’t collect — including credit scores, performance data on loans, telephone numbers, employment records, even your race and ethnicity, in addition to your date of birth, Social Security number and address. At last count, the CFPB had 12 consumer data-mining programs running.

The main purpose of the databases was to find “statistical patterns” of unfair or racially discriminatory lending to help make cases of bias against private lenders and credit agencies.

CFPB maintained in regulatory notices buried in the Federal Register that all this personal information would be safely stored in “locked file rooms, locked file cabinets” inside a building with “security cameras” and 24-hour security guards and that the computerized records would be “safeguarded through use of access codes.”

But it turns out the agency also shared the codes and files with outside agencies and contractors, including state attorneys general, trial lawyers and civil-rights organizations interested in filing class-action lawsuits against banks, according to regulatory documents and congressional testimony.

In 2015, the bureau’s inspector general warned that sharing the massive databases with outside contractors and storing sensitive private information on unsecured data clouds made the data vulnerable to hacking, identity theft and fraud.

I am very much concerned about the privacy of that data, about the use of that data
 - Mick Mulvaney
Among other things, inspector general Mark Bialek found that CFPB failed to ensure that the data it was collecting on credit-card accounts and loans followed new cyber-security safeguards in the wake of the massive hacking of the US Office of Personnel Management by the Chinese, which compromised the personal information — including fingerprints — of current and former federal employees. He also found that the bureau was using an “outdated encryption mechanism to secure remote access to its information technology infrastructure.”

“CFPB has not yet fully implemented a number of privacy-control steps and information-security practices,” warned Bialek in a 10-page memo to then-CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

Also, the agency failed to perform background checks on outside contractors with “privileged access” to the computer system and databases, nor had it adequately trained employees to avoid falling for e-mail “phishing” scams that hackers use to break into government computer systems, Bialek further warned in 2017.

But the warnings largely fell on deaf ears. The full extent of the security breaches were only uncovered and disclosed after the Trump administration recently took over the agency, which Obama made sure would be shielded from congressional oversight and audit. The new director testified that “everything” the agency keeps on file is subject to being obtained by malicious third parties.

“I am very much concerned about the privacy of that data, about the use of that data,” Mulvaney testified earlier this month before the Senate Banking Committee. “I am not satisfied with the data security right now in the bureau.”

He says he has put a “data collection freeze” into effect to stop the automatic electronic transfer of bank records to the government until “we fix our systems.” Meanwhile, he is working with the Defense Department to “test our vulnerabilities.”

Even now, it’s unclear who has your data. But one thing is for sure: These breaches demand an independent audit and criminal investigation to fully assess the damage to consumer privacy. Until then, CFPB clearly cannot be trusted to gather and handle any more data that’s personally identifiable.

Paul Sperry is a former Hoover Institution media fellow and author of the bestseller “Infiltration.”

[DougMacG]

From G M's post:  "The government isn’t sure who has your information. It only knows the Obama-era databases have been breached by outsider threats potentially 1,000-plus times."

Are they crooked or incompetent?  Crooked for sure, jury is still out on incompetent.  What outside groups would they want to wrongly access your information?  They already told us, the Obama campaign, the DNC  and all leftist causes and campaigns.  Also businesses and individuals who support their causes.

[G M]

https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/the-surprisingly-solid-mathematical-case-of-the-tin-foil-hat-gun-prepper-15fce7d10437

Not endorsing this article, but worth reading.

[Crafty_Dog]

Interesting indeed.

[G M]

https://pjmedia.com/trending/rep-brooks-congressmen-retiring-because-of-assassination-threats/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/30962/watch-tomi-lahren-gets-drink-thrown-her-verbally-amanda-prestigiacomo?utm_medium=email&utm_content=052318-news&utm_campaign=position1

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-misery-in-missouri-1529103599

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/21/america-wont-see-go-without-epic-fight/

[G M]

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/25/steve-scalises-call-for-civility-and-respect-draws-unbelievable-response/

[G M]

http://thedeclination.com/when-will-the-other-shoe-drop/

When Will The Other Shoe Drop?
by Thales | Jun 27, 2018 | Culture War

Francis penned an article this morning that bears some further questions. I encourage you to give it a read. As others have explained recently, including Ace, Kurt Schlichter, Tom Kratman, and many other luminaries on the Right, we are perched on the edge of a knife. Violence is simmering beneath the surface – perhaps even a full-blown Civil War. Francis explains:

There’s no reasoning with one who considers you evil. There’s certainly no compromising with him. He’s out to destroy you. He’ll take whatever opportunity you offer to slip the dirk between your fourth and fifth ribs and twist it. Nor is there any way for you to convince him that you’re not evil. He assumes a priori that everything you say is ultimately aimed at his destruction.

At that point it becomes war to the knife.

We haven’t yet seen violence with actual casualties. But we will.

So what gives? Why hasn’t it started yet? I was discussing this with a personal friend yesterday, a veteran, MMA fighter, and all-around guy you don’t want to fuck with. He is the sort of man that, were the war to start tomorrow, would be on the front lines. He expressed to me his fear, not for himself, but for his wife, his children, and the end of a relatively prosperous life. For even if he survived the conflict, he mused, life would never be the same.

Veterans are largely Rightists, and Leftists are largely pussies who have spent their lives avoiding any kind of real physical risk. So the Right has a much better sense for what a war within our borders would really look like. The Left, as Francis notes in the following quote, has no idea because they have not suffered consequences for this behavior up until now.

Bad behavior must be punished. The Left’s decision to use harassment and intimidation against conservatives and Republicans is about as bad as behavior gets without becoming legally actionable. Up to now, it’s met no significant degree of punishment. Therefore, as it’s getting its practitioners some of what they want (including a shameful degree of satisfaction), it will increase.

If it increases past a certain level, it will trigger lethal violence.

Rightists, like my friend, are rightly fearful of the consequences of this thing going bad. We have some idea of what this really means, and so we hold back earnestly hoping for another way. This, in turn (and sadly), emboldens the Leftists, most of whom have no Earthly idea what they are really agitating for, or the risks they are taking, because they have no experience with risks like these.

However, at some point Leftist derangement will exceed the Rightist’s reluctance to resort to violence. And when that Rubicon is crossed, there is no going back. Leftists are quicker to violence, but Rightists are far better at it. The consequences of this will be grave.

To top it off, nobody really knows exactly where the Rubicon is, in this political mess. Will it be gun control or confiscation? Will it be the next time a Democrat wins control over the federal government? Will they be hellbent on revenge and do something they shouldn’t? Will it be getting Rightists fired from their jobs, destroying their businesses and ability to earn, such that they have nothing to lose? Or will it be a cumulative ‘death from a thousand cuts’ situation, where all of these smaller, lesser attacks will, in aggregate, finally exceed the Rightist’s ability to tolerate?

I have no Earthly idea. But I do know that the Rubicon is somewhere, and that across its shore lies Civil War, or something approximating that. And so, in this, we are generally wiser (though not wise, see: Socrates) than our Leftist counterparts, who haven’t a clue about the hornet’s nest they’ve been poking.

If and when the Left crosses the Rubicon, they will certainly be surprised at what lies on the other side. One thing is certain, nobody is going to like it.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2018/31_think_u_s_civil_war_likely_soon

[Crafty_Dog]

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/394597-trump-era-ramps-up-tech-worker-revolt?rnd=1530397662

[G M]

https://www.westernjournal.com/james-woods-contacts-fbi-after-twitter-user-hints-at-murdering-trump-supporters/?utm_source=push&utm_medium=conservativetribune&utm_content=2018-07-01&utm_campaign=manualpost

Plan accordingly.

[ccp]

highest IQ in Hollywood:

JAMES WOOD - 184
With an IQ of 184, James  Wood has an IQ score higher than Einstein and on pair with Leonardo Da Vinci himself. He scored an astonishing 1579 in SAT include maximum score 800 in reading and 779 in math. Many people think that people with high intelligence tend to work in the lab, become a professor, research and gain Nobel prize. But it turn out is not the case with James Wood.

[EMMA WATSON IQ MADE HER AN OUTSTANDING HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS]



James Howard Woods is famous for his villainous role in a variety of films, including Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Ghost of Missisipi, Family Guy, Hercules, My name is Bill W….  He was born in 1947, studied high school in Pilgrim school in Warwick, Rhode Island. He later decided to pursuit an Algebra degree in Los Angeles University.

In the “ Inside the Actors Studio” show,Woods himself reveal that he has an astonishing IQ score of 184, a genius level score. And he also a member of the infamous MENSA, an organization for extremely intelligent people with IQ score of 139 at least.

In 1995, Woods attended SAT and get a very high score of  1579 include maximum 800 in verbal test and 779 in math test (Bill Gate himself scored 1590). Which lead him to a sponsorship in Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT).

In time when he studied in MIT, he joined Thema Delta Chi fraternity, as well as Dramashop club where he both acted in and directed number of plays which had turned his interest. Later, he drop MIT to pursue a career in acting and achieved various prize and honor include three Emmy Award and two nominated Academic Award.

In The Onion Field (1979), Woods portrayed a heartless cop killer, perhaps his darkest character to date. Critics and audiences alike were riveted by his performance. He received his first Oscar nomination for Salvador (1986) for his portrayal of a journalist who drives to El Salvador to document the country's military dictatorship.

Also, Woods took on a challenging film role. He tackled the part of Byron De La Beckwith, the suspected killer of Medgar Evers, the African-American civil rights activist, in 1996's Ghosts of Mississippi. His portrayal brought Woods his second Oscar nomination -- this time in the best supporting actor category.

Although recently his activities on Twitter has severly hampered his image in his fans and Hollywood, the 184 IQ score genius James Wood surely had a career to be remember.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/defend-pdx-patroit-prayer-portland-clash-today-2018-06-30/

https://www.facebook.com/events/176260383060930/  Read with care, including the comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmmYcYkx08


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mdmZ6_v0UQ  some witty voice over


http://video.foxnews.com/v/5804054996001/?#sp=show-clips

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

https://fee.org/articles/the-troubling-internal-logic-of-the-far-left-s-calls-for-violence/?utm_source=zapier&utm

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/04/democrats-majority-rules-norms-trump-2020-218947

[Crafty_Dog]

Recently more than once I remembered Konrad Lorenz writing about certain birds "mobbing", making the connection that this article makes.


===============================
Political Harassment Is for the Birds
What happened at the Red Hen is reminiscent of the way mobbing crows attack an eagle or an owl.
By Lance Morrow
July 6, 2018 5:55 p.m. ET
323 COMMENTS

Some birds are known to engage in an activity called “mobbing.” The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior says it is “a poorly understood phenomenon in which one or more members of a species, or even several species in concert, chase, dive-bomb, or surround a predator or kleptoparasite, often vocalizing rigorously.”

Swallows, gulls and terns, crows, blackbirds and orioles, tyrant flycatchers and parids—all practice mobbing. The “enemy” may be a hawk, an owl, an eagle or a similar aggressor. Sometimes the mobbers merely make a commotion. Sometimes they get violent.

“The intent of such attacks,” the Sibley guide continues, “is largely to encourage the ‘enemy’ to move on to another area.” Mobbing, in other words, is justified self-defense (who can complain about that?) and arguably heroic. On the other hand, one ornithologist’s victim may be another’s villain. In the woods on my farm last week, I saw five crows tormenting an owl that was perched (for the moment innocently) in a tall white pine. The crows’ only motive seemed to be recreational malice.

But perhaps deeper urgencies of bird politics—even ideology—were at work. To human eyes, the hawk has the charm of his rakish and soaring self-sufficiency. The owl makes his living as a predator but nonetheless is an elegant and sympathetic creature. Yet to the crow, an able and highly intelligent character, there is no such thing as an innocent owl.

I thought of mobbing birds after two news items late last month. First the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., expelled White House press secretary Sarah Sanders —not exactly mobbing, but close: a territorial gesture meaning: Your kind is not welcome here. Immediately after that, Rep. Maxine Waters took it to the next level, encouraging a crowd to harass, like birds out of Hitchcock, members of the Trump administration anywhere they might be found. The mobbers say it is a matter of self-defense, a call to arms of their righteous indignation. Prepare yourself. Mobbing is about to become the style of American politics.

No side, left, right, or otherwise, has a monopoly on violence; even Tibetan Buddhist politics sometimes turns savage. Lately there has been a pattern of hit-and-run Antifa squads mobbing a protest or a fixed line of march. Having a parade permit does not make marchers virtuous, but it gives them, for the moment, the protection of the First Amendment. The mobbing birds—this is the dangerous part—believe that their righteousness supersedes the Constitution.

Political animals are animals first. When we think about American independence, patriotic memory, which always involves some gentrification, likes to emphasize the Enlightenment thought that went into the project. But the colonists also engaged in a certain amount of animal behavior—vandalism, rioting by torchlight, work with tar and feathers.

During Donald Trump’s second summer in office, the American self-image is vexed and complicated. There are immigration dramas on the border; there is a sudden vacancy on the Supreme Court that many find deeply ominous; there is intolerable suspense over what Robert Mueller might have turned up, or not. This Fourth of July, what one heard (at least from the left) was less John Philip Sousa than rising notes of anger and hysteria.

In a Rasmussen poll published last week, 31% of American voters said it was likely “that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.” At the news of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, New York magazine’s Frank Rich remarked that “the discrepancy between this Court’s decisions and the realities of the fast-evolving modern America beyond its chambers could lead to a national conflict as convulsive as the one that followed the Taney Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857.”

One should not get carried away with the idea of a coming civil war. It’s always 1857 somewhere in America. Someone is always repeating the novelist John Dos Passos ’ line (published in 1936, in reference to the Sacco-Vanzetti case a decade earlier): “All right, we are two nations.” Lincoln warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” but America has usually been a house divided, one way or another.

In unexpected fashion, that might have been the secret of the country’s success. Since its founding, America has been a dynamic of selves and anti-selves: North vs. South, East vs. West, rural vs. urban, agricultural vs. industrial, black vs. white, frontier vs. Ellis Island, redskin vs. paleface, wets vs. dries, labor vs. management, hawks vs. doves, liberals vs. conservatives, Chamber of Commerce vs. Students for a Democratic Society, neo-Nazi vs. Antifa. Everywhere you look in the American drama, you see doubles banging against each other.

But the 21st century may be different in crucial ways. The cultural and financial gap between elites and nonelites has become vast and seemingly unbridgeable. The elites inhabit the 21st century, and the nonelites, in effect, dwell in zones of the 20th. (Mr. Trump’s wistful frame of reference is the 1950s.) Political passions are intensified and driven to extremes by social media. Anxieties and divisions multiply. And the astonishment of imponderable Donald Trump presides. America is definitely crazier than it was a few years ago.

So it is possible to envision something like a new civil war, but not along the lines of 1861-65, with two clear geographical sides and large regular armies fighting pitched battles. Instead imagine high-tech mobs, an intifada with stones and drones, locals and irregulars in improvised warfare with the feds. America could devolve, slow-motion, into an archipelago of warlord states—like China after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty—pitting the coasts against the interior, with progressive fortresses at Austin, Texas, and other big university towns.

There are all sorts of Fort Sumters waiting to happen. A ruling by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade? Or same-sex marriage? Or affirmative action? Suppose that Robert Mueller’s findings set off a constitutional crisis: Could Mr. Trump be removed from office? Could he be prosecuted while in office? No one envisions him departing quietly.

The Founders were fearful of mobs. Benjamin Franklin, with perfect accuracy, placed the principle of compromise at the center of the new American government. The essence of the problem today is that, between the crows and the owls, no compromise is possible. It was the same fatal impasse in 1860. Then again, it all might come to anticlimax. I have watched dozens of times as a group of crows—a murder of crows—has mobbed an owl, an eagle or a hawk. Frankly, these things tend to end when the crows get bored.

It would be nice if boredom proved to be the outcome of the current politics. But the likelier and somewhat darker denouement may be exhaustion, and a good deal of wreckage.

Mr. Morrow, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a former essayist for Time.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://reason.com/archives/2017/09/08/antifa-has-backed-its-message-with-viole

[G M]

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/07/09/democrats-love-socialism-because-they-want-to-take-your-stuff-and-enslave-you-n2498419

[G M]

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/376032.php

[G M]

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2018/07/16/cnns-philip-mudd-calls-shadow-government-rise-oppose-trump

Mueller is doing his best.

[ccp]

There has got to be more where this creature crawled out from :

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/the-daily-caller-names-founder-of-sleeping-giants-which-organized-breitbart-advertiser-boycotts/

[Crafty_Dog]

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/23/just-how-far-will-the-left-go/

[G M]

https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/34-years-ago-a-kgb-defector-described-america-today

[ccp]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/owning-liberals-feels-great-but-risks-backlash-at-polls/

I really don't know on these  point, but I am leaning towards agreeing with him.

We are as always fighting for the hearts and minds and most importantly the pocket books of the independents.

[DougMacG]

ccp:  "We are as always fighting for the hearts and minds and most importantly the pocket books of the independents."

Right, and we are doing so with two deep disadvantages, the Press 92% against us and our own side failing to make a coherent argument for the past 35 years.

My view is nicely put to words in his first paragraph:

Nikki Haley... explained... that the attraction of conservatism shouldn’t be “owning the libs,” in the popular parlance; instead, conservatives should try to convince. She explained, “I know that it’s fun and that it can feel good, but step back and think about what you’re accomplishing when you do this — are you persuading anyone?”

In two days (5% growth announcement) we can effectively make the argument that Trump and the Republicans have doubled the economic growth rate of the largest economy in the history of the world in less than 2 years.  You would think that statement deserves an exclamation point, but instead watch it go unreported.

 Simultaneously, we can make the argument that the dismantling of the capitalist engine in Venezuela is identical to what the left here is proposing, Ocasio, Sanders, Warren, Obama et al, and the results if they were to prevail will turn us in exactly that direction.

Taking investment that should go back into industry and confiscating instead for social programs harms both sides. Who knew? Now we all know if we would open our eyes or if someone would point it out.

But as usual, our silence will go up against their 92% negative media message that Venezuela's largely uncovered catastrophe and America's denied turnaround all happened by accident, not tied to any policies in particular, and that Trump is the worst ever, Kavanaugh is evil, and Republicans want to kill you with their disregard for government Healthcare and policy to separate children from their law-abiding, felon parents.

[ccp]

"two deep disadvantages, the Press 92% against us and our own side failing to make a coherent argument"

and I would add to this a majority of professors who often get much of their funding for their activities  from government  that they continue to turn around and promote.

[Crafty_Dog]

OTOH this forum has many threads with hundreds of thousands of reads , , ,

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/09/bay-area-professor-who-assaulted-7-conservatives-with-bike-lock-gets-probation/

[G M]

https://forwardobserver.com/august-update-on-the-second-american-civil-war/

August Update on the Second American Civil War
DOMESTIC CONFLICT FORWARD OBSERVER DAILY
By Samuel Culper  Last updated Aug 6, 2018

 
In previous posts, I’ve covered in detail why we’re already in a domestic conflict — the Second American Civil War, if you will (although I don’t favor the term “civil war” to describe it).

To recap: The current culture war won’t be a conventional war. We’re not talking about tanks in the streets or bombing insurgents into submission. The combatants of tomorrow won’t take part in pitched battles of maneuver warfare, but they’ll engage in what we’re already seeing:

diplomatic warfare
solidarity in international socialism and the progressive status quo
hyperbolic warnings on the international rise of Nazism/fascism
political warfare
soft coup against a sitting president
battle over mass immigration
struggle for political dominance in order to punish
economic warfare
boycotts
politicization of corporations and commerce
de-platforming
information operations/propaganda
selective reporting of the news
political messaging pushed through media/news outlets
censorship on social media platforms
cultural/class war
movies, tv, and music
education system
sporadic political violence
Scalise shooting
attacks on Trump supporters
In other words, our war includes all the activities below the threshold of conventional war, but above routine, peaceful competition. (Read: What will it take to start a domestic conflict?)

Each and every time we’ve experienced a tectonic shift in culture, there’s been conflict, and sometimes it turns into organized violence (actual war). There are three periods where this is especially evident:

Taxation and Liberty in the lead up to the American Revolution.

States’ rights and slavery in the Civil War.

Civil Rights and the cultural revolution in the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Each of these led to conflict, and only in the third example did these cultural shifts (or their battles for cultural supremacy) not lead to war. Whereas the Civil Rights movement was about achieving equal rights, the Leftist movements of today are about establishing political, economic, and cultural dominance. It’s not just a fight to put their people into power; it’s a fight to put their enemies out of business and bury opposing ideology. This kind of dominance portends domestic conflict.

The Leftist push for mass immigration is about achieving political dominance through voting.

The Leftist push in technology, mainstream media, social media, education, Hollywood, and pop culture is about achieving economic and cultural dominance through disrupting economic opportunity and re-defining Free Speech. (“I support the Freedom of Speech, but x is not free speech.”)

The Far Left — the coalition of communists, socialists, progressives, and their sympathizers — is maneuvering to dominate and eventually destroy America’s conservative and traditional societies. They’re doing a great job of isolating and challenging long-held American beliefs. Christianity is now oppressive. Capitalism is now oppressive. Family values are now heteronormative and oppressive. And in the Leftist world where power and influence often begins at victimhood, the desire to be oppressed far outweighs the actual oppressors. That’s why opinions once considered “American” and common sense are now oppressive — not because they actually oppress, but because the Left thrives on the appearance of oppression. Tectonic cultural shifts create earthquakes, and that’s what we’re seeing now. The Left is going Far Left so much so that there’s a war inside the Democratic Party over just-how-far-left-do-we-really-want-to-go?

Meanwhile, the Left continues to oppress to extend their cultural revolution.

This morning, InfoWars was permanently deleted from Facebook. YouTube then deleted the official InfoWars account with 2.5 million subscribers. Apple and Google are also censoring InfoWars on their platforms. (InfoWars’ major competitor, CNN, recently lobbied Facebook to ban InfoWars. And now four major companies de-platformed InfoWars within 12 hours. That’s coordination.) Love them or hate them, InfoWars undoubtedly had an impact on the election of Donald J. Trump. InfoWars was (and is) disruptive. And now they’re gone from major platforms — not because of hate speech or violations of the terms of service, but because it was disruptive to the Left’s cultural revolution.

As their slogan describes: “There’s a war on for your mind,” indeed.

 

If you’re concerned about where we’re headed as a country, whether on the near-end of the spectrum or the far end of the spectrum (social, political and economic instability; domestic conflict; or collapse of empire), and want to stay informed on what the headlines don’t cover, then I invite you to try us out. Our special operations and intelligence veterans track the day-to-day risk of global and domestic conflict. If you’re not happy within the first two weeks, I’ll refund your monthly or annual subscription cost – no questions asked. You can get access to our intelligence reporting and training area here.

[ccp]

"  current culture war won’t be a conventional war. We’re not talking about tanks in the streets or bombing insurgents into submission. The combatants of tomorrow won’t take part in pitched battles of maneuver warfare, but they’ll engage in what we’re already seeing:

diplomatic warfare
solidarity in international socialism and the progressive status quo
hyperbolic warnings on the international rise of Nazism/fascism
political warfare
soft coup against a sitting president
battle over mass immigration
struggle for political dominance in order to punish
economic warfare
boycotts
politicization of corporations and commerce
de-platforming
information operations/propaganda
selective reporting of the news
political messaging pushed through media/news outlets
censorship on social media platforms
cultural/class war
movies, tv, and music
education system
sporadic political violence
Scalise shooting
attacks on Trump supporters"


I don't know what more we can do.  The LEFt controls higher education the media and is increasing their ranks not with ideas but by importing people and promising them all sorts of goodies and making white men the bogey man.

We can only hope that things in the economy and the world improve under in our favor to convince the independents that our way is best for all .

Trump has been doing that with his policies but has lost independents with his personality flaws giving the LEFT wing its fuel to pour onto the fire.
I don't see ho w we can stop this trend especially with floods of immigrants who come here then watch 24/7 the LEFT demonize America. 

So what does Samuel Culper propose we do?

[DougMacG]

" current culture war won’t be a conventional war."

We keep calling it a war but it is the unarmed versus the armed so it can't be a conventional war.  It is what it always was, a bitter contest for the hearts and minds of the voters.

The left keep falling further off the edge. Yesterday I saw they were calling for abolishing the Presidency.

Get rid of the electoral college, get rid of the Senate, legislate from the judiciary, treat different people differently under the law, they don't even pretend to like the Constitution anymore.

Our best advertisements are when they speak freely.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/57674-from-uncivil-discourse-to-civil-war