Autopsy on the democratic party
Month: October 2017
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Addendum to Clinton Uranium
The section titled “Nuclear Regulatory Commission” is an important one for understanding whether or not, as is strongly implied in case being made against the Clintons, uranium mined in the U.S. under the deal would fuel the Russian nuclear arsenal.
Categories
Clintons and uranium deal
Two things about what is said in this article. First, it appears that Hillary is exonerated by the facts but, the article suggests too that there is room left for legitimate suspicion, of the kind and enough that I have to think that if those who oppose Donald Trump had the same information as this article reports on Donald, they just might want an inquiry.
That Bill Clinton had ties, some kind of ties, to Russians who were tied in some way to the company that would own uranium mines in the United States, this seems true. That Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation took money from Russians tied, in someway or another, to the uranium company involved in the matter, according to the article, is true. Again, in my mind, this is grounds for suspicion, grounds enough to make the request for further inquiry, motives aside, a legitimate one.
Did the Clintons do anything wrong? As the article points out, they did not make the deal and, it appears, with or without Hillary’s approval, the deal would have gone forward. But there is legitimate reason for suspicion that Russian generosity to the Clintons, in the form of the generous fee paid Bill for a speaking engagement, and gifts to the Clinton family Foundation.
So, as I have said before, I do think that those who oppose the idea of an investigation into the uranium story stop opposing for opposing an inquiry will provide those whose real motives are to divert attention away from Trump’s Russia problems greater legitimacy in that opposition will create the appearance (at the least) that there is something to hide.
Two House committees have said that they will investigate the Obama administration’s approval of a deal that gave Russia a financial interest in U.S. uranium production. We covered the issue during the 2016 presidential…
This article is very much relevant to a few of the themes that have been on my mind recently. The relationship of our current capitalism to humane treatment of human beings is one and here, the profit motive is sound business motive for advocating (and using money gained from the business to advocate loudly) for more sentences and longer sentences. We already have one of the highest, if not the highest, incarceration rates in the world, many there, by the way, because a president from the lefter side of the spectrum decided to show that a democrat could be bad ass on crime, too, and initiated harsher sentencing guidelines including the “three strikes” mandates.
So, human beings are being locked up and American corporations profit by their being locked up and such a thing has been allowed to happen in the name, ironically, of a free market. What could be wrong with doing what has to be done to keep stock holders happy, even if it means there are prison money backed lobbyists in the back rooms (I think they might be able to come out now) doing deals to insure a growing clientele.
Another theme has concerned the danger of neoliberalism. Mr. Clinton was very much a neoliberal and his administration’s policies certainly were something other than a decent liberal would approve, for one the dealings with laws pertaining to businesses, particularly the banking sector where rather lenient and that push for loosening did have something to do with bankers, mortgage lenders, and stock trading companies feeling liberated enough to do what they were doing when the economy fell apart at the end of the George W. Bush’s administration.
Neoliberal have avoided taking any blame for what happened just before Obama took office and, too, do not like it mentioned that the Clinton era get tough on criminals policies have much to do with the numbers of people in prison, so many that Obama was trying to let some out because the population was so outnumber what jails were capable of holding that conditions within became so bad that some were beginning to recognize that inhumane treatment of human beings within these institutions was not the exception but the rule.
What should become an iconic example of the neoliberal mind at work is to be found in this passage from the story:
Alex Friedmann, who is an associate director with the Human Rights Defense Center, a prisoner advocacy group, and an activist shareholder in GEO Group, said the company has worked to amass political influence because public contracts are its lifeblood. ‘They have to lobby and curry political favor because that’s what their business model is based on,’ he said.”
I do not think I need to explain.
A Trump administration policy change helped reverse the fortunes of GEO Group and others in its industry.
WASHINGTONPOST.COM
Categories
When others own our lives
This man expresses a notion of the employer/employee that are rather common and that have much to do with how deeply engrained in the American psyche is the notion that a worker is never the equal of his boss and in ways that go beyond management of a business. The “owner,” in our world where business is one of the most powerful forces shaping the lives of individuals, power in the hands of the bosses can be a very dangerous thing and ownership of people, the power to profoundly affect another’s livelihood and the life that individual is able to live, if we are humane, has to be seen as a clear and present danger of the most consequential kind.
McNair’s players considered walking out of practice over his remark, which suggested that letting N.F.L. players sit or kneel during the national anthem…
NYTIMES.COM
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We need more investigations
Thinking more about it (a lot of time to think these days), I want to call for even more investigations. There are a lot of things that have happened in recent and not so recent years that really do deserve scrutiny, not for the game of gotcha, but to once and for all come to terms with what actually happened, who was involved and, if there is culpability, who was culpable for what happened and if crimes were committed that deserved punishment, the latter not necessarily to actually punish anyone, but to know the kind of deeds done that broke the law, or didn’t break the law because there were, are no rules in place even if the deeds should be punishable under reasonable laws and their proper application.
Christopher Hitchens, because no one else would, tried Henry Kissinger for war crimes and others and presented a very good case, I think, for finding Kissinger guilty. That Kissinger and others responsible for the Vietnam war, McNamara, for example, Nixon, LBJ, for example, committed crimes or what the law should address in criminal terms, are pretty evident in the historical records if, for instance, ordering others to kill and be killed for no legitimate reason, should be taken to be a criminal act.
Those who sponsored the wars in Iraq, particularly the second one, were never held accountable for sending human beings to war—to kill and be killed—for reasons that have already proven to be fraudulent and, there is very good reason to suspect, considering the ties of the suspects to individuals and companies that benefited enormously from the wars, that a lot of people were killed and otherwise harmed for the purpose of enriching some others.
The reason the truth has not been prosecuted in regard to these matters is worthy of investigation itself because failure to investigate is one reason why the public does not trust its government. How can one trust government if the government hides truths for the purpose of protecting a certain grade of criminal and certain kinds of crime but never explains the criteria for reprieve. It does seem that, in the United States of America, some are above the law or, the law does not pertain to a certain class of person, those persons holding the highest offices in the land.
That there has been no full-throated investigation of the financial fiasco at the end of the George W. Bush administration stinks of cover-up and should raise many questions about the possibility that bribery of all kinds was taking place with all kinds of people involved—bankers, stock traders, corporate heads, regulators, law enforcement officials, presidents, members of congress from both parties, members of parties in leadership positions in the parties, even certain individuals contemplating running for the office of president who did not want those who would fund their campaigns treated as the criminals they were.
As for the investigations currently in progress and those recently finished (Bengazi, Clinton e-mails), I think it the only sensible path for true democrats to take—true to the cause of establishing a truly democratic government—is to let investigations go forth. Let the innocent have the opportunity to clear the record and the guilty be made responsible for their crimes. Where there is smoke and no fire, no harm done in being circumspect. Where there is fire, the causes need to be understood and means for prevention put in place.
The chunk of text below is taken from an article about a Harvard social scientist who gained wealth and fame by proving “scientifically” that she had a method of behavior by which, when properly learned (she offered to teach) would help them to acquire what they wished to have, most wanting, well, wealth and power.
Having worked in a College of Education for many years and watched how certain practices were “scientifically” proven to be properly “effective,” I came to understand that so much of what was said to be science was pure bullshit, its odor masked by a spray of methodology.
The book upon which I am currently working will say much about how bullshit deodorized for human consumption has guided educational practices that, themselves are not just bullshit but terribly harmful to human beings. The main claim for the efficacy of the instructional methods mandated under George W. Bush’s “reform” program, No Child Left Behind, was that they were “research based” and any method maker who could not prove that his or her method was research-based was said to be, in the educational community, of no worth, the methods proffered not to be used in any classroom in any school that wished to collect federal educational funds.
So, when I saw this today, because the issue is one of the most important discussed in the book, I felt it worthy of sharing.
And, while there are a host of people I know who really do not like it when I say that our “based in science,” college of education certified methods do not work, I say that the reason that schools do not work to prepare students for lives as effective members of a DEMOCRATIC society, is because the researchers do not acknowledge that in order to have research that leads to effective instruction, on first has to have a profound knowledge of what it means to be properly educated. The discussion of proper education does not happen because the means of discovering what is proper cannot be based in science, but in theory and philosophy, from good reasoning rather than analysis of numbers.
From, “When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy.”
Good science would follow if there were a proper conversation devoted to developing a good notion of good education. Why this discussion, if it takes place at all, is not a primary part of the expected work of the educator, seen often by administrators and faculty as a waste of time.
But since 2015, even as she continued to stride onstage and tell the audiences to face down their fears, Cuddy has been fighting her own anxieties, as fellow academics have subjected her research to exceptionally high levels of public scrutiny. She is far from alone in facing challenges to her work: Since 2011, a methodological reform movement has been rattling the field, raising the possibility that vast amounts of research, even entire subfields, might be unreliable. Up-and-coming social psychologists, armed with new statistical sophistication, picked up the cause of replications, openly questioning the work their colleagues conducted under a now-outdated set of assumptions. The culture in the field, once cordial and collaborative, became openly combative, as scientists adjusted to new norms of public critique while still struggling to adjust to new standards of evidence.
Cuddy, in particular, has emerged from this upheaval as a unique object of social psychology’s new, enthusiastic spirit of self-flagellation — as if only in punishing one of its most public stars could it fully break from its past. At conferences, in classrooms and on social media, fellow academics (or commenters on their sites) have savaged not just Cuddy’s work but also her career, her income, her ambition, even her intelligence, sometimes with evident malice. Last spring, she quietly left her tenure-track job at Harvard.
Some say that she has gained fame with an excess of confidence in fragile results, that she prized her platform over scientific certainty. But many of her colleagues, and even some who are critical of her choices, believe that the attacks on her have been excessive and overly personal. What seems undeniable is that the rancor of the critiques reflects the emotional toll among scientists forced to confront the fear that what they were doing all those years may not have been entirely scientific.
I am running into this a lot lately. More so than usual though I have been aware of the phenomenon for a very long time. I am going to be arrogant here, maybe, in saying that I am very uncomfortable with the truths I hold, most of the time. I somehow feel that what I know and understand resides in a tentative state and that with my kind of thoughtfulness comes an considerable amount of discomfort. I sometimes think that it is that discomfort that keeps me alive, the drive to discover the comfortable position what gives me reason to consider another breath.
I say this now because of the divide that exists in this United States of America is often characterized as difference of opinion. Again, boldly going forth, I think it has more to do with quality of opinion, some opinion the result of an unwillingness to study while resisting prejudice, long enough at least to familiarize oneself with enough information to earn the right to say “I understand what they are saying,” “I understand their position,” before making the claim that “they” are wrong.
Now there is much that gets said that, at face value, is, to thoughtful people, patently wrong. But there is much that gets said, or, in the case of what has motivated this outburst, much that some want to hide, because they fear that thoughts and the act of speaking the words that describe them may undermine their present system of belief, show that what they have accepted as real and right may be neither.
What set this off is that part of current American discourse that concerns NOT looking into things, the demonizing of honest attempts to do what is necessary to get at truth. Recent spats over whether or not to investigate this or that or he or she should be confounding to a people that wishes to base decision making on the best information, on what can be agreed upon to be the best truth available at a given time.
What has resulted is a game of offense and defense that would be comical if the consequences of its being played weren’t so dire. The current debate over global warming is an example, a number of organizations (corporations, for example) and individuals are doing what they can to prevent the process of getting at the truth from taking place. New Mexico’s attempt to ignore global warming and the theory of evolution in its science curriculum is but one example. Somehow, the decision to do so was overturned, the sponsors of deception publicly called out and shown to be foolish by a lot of sensible New Mexicans.
Certainly, Trump fans who are forever finding ways to discredit investigations into his and his campaign’s dealings with Russia are examples of people who only seek “truths” that reinforce the truths they already hold, many of these truths that stand as such in their minds because they will not and do not allow themselves to pursue any kind of information that may show that that in which they believe has no basis in truth.
It isn’t only a game played by conservatives. Many who consider themselves liberals believe what they believe because they understand themselves to be liberal and, ironically, are not liberals because they know that there are real grounded truths that recommend liberal positions, but remain liberal in good part because they avoid that that might disturb their liberalism and lives based in their belief in their own liberality.
So, why should anyone be too disturbed about inquiries concerning what some claim to be misdeeds by those identifying as liberal, the recent announcement that congressional committees would be looking into uranium deals made during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State? It seems obvious to me why it would be that, despite the fact that motives for such investigation are other than a desire to discover truth, there are aspects to the case that raise legitimate questions. In regard to James Comey, really, considering what he did in regard to Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency, questions about his motives related to matters Trumpian should be taken as fair ones even if he now seems to be serving the liberal side.
I have posted several times now my reaction to authorities on colleges campuses, with “liberal” students’ support, refusing to allow speakers holding certain kinds of ideas from speaking on at their institutions of learning. One of the most offensive iteration of this was when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was invited to speak at Columbia (Columbia speech). The protests were proper reaction up to the point that they would have prevented Ahmadinejad from speaking, something some who where in protest of his appearance tried to do and though was the right thing to do, liberal included.
The truth is not just important, it is essential to good decision making. I will admit to holding on too long to believing what was terribly wrong with one of my favorite film makers, Woody Allen. He is and has been a horrible human being for a good part of the time that I helped to keep him rich and powerful by paying the price of admission. The “wrong truth” for me for a long time.
And the operations of the Clinton campaign? Guilty of no violations of proper conduct, conduct befitting an organization of moral turpitude and honest to the point of deserving respect? The democratic party? Oh yes, nasty people like Julian were prying into its secrets and, when those secrets were made public, so many a good liberal, instead of screaming at the DNC for truths revealed, screamed instead at people like Julian who, by the way, many were very happy about when the secrets he was revealing showed very bad behavior on the part of the opposition. Horrible republicans for latching onto this handed to them (probably paid for by them) opposition research? Worse somehow that the Hillary campaign paying for the research that became “the dossier”?
Only if one wants to make truth what he or she wants it to be and nothing more.
Categories
On Democracy
| On Democracy
by John Dewey
Democracy is much broader than a special political form, a method of conducting government, of making laws and carrying on governmental administration by means of popular suffrage and elected officers. It is that, of course. But it is something broader and deeper than that the political and governmental phase of democracy is a means, the best means so far found, for realizing ends that lie in the wide domain of human relationships and the development of human personality. It is, as we often say, though perhaps without appreciating all that is involved in the saying, a way of life, social and individual. The key-note of democracy as a way of life may be expressed, it seems to me, as the necessity for the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together: which is necessary from the standpoint of both the general social welfare and the full development of human beings as individuals.
Universal suffrage, recurring elections, responsibility of those who are in political power to the voters, and the other factors of democratic government are means that have been found expedient for realizing democracy as the truly human way of living. They are not a final end and a final value. They are to be judged on the basis of their contribution to end. It is a form of idolatry to erect means into the end which they serve. Democratic political forms are simply the best means that human wit has devised up to a special time in history. But they rest back upon the idea that no man or limited set of men is wise enough or good enough to rule others without their consent; the positive meaning of this statement is that all those who are affected by social institutions must have a share in producing and managing them. The two facts that each one is influenced in what he does and enjoys and in what he becomes by the institutions under which he lives, and that therefore he shall have, in a democracy, a voice in shaping them, are the passive and active sides of the same fact.
The development of political democracy came about through substitution of the method of mutual consultation and voluntary agreement for the method of subordination of the many to the few enforced from above. Social arrangements which involve fixed subordination are maintained by coercion. The coercion need not be physical. There have existed, for short periods, benevolent despotisms. But coercion of some sort there has been; perhaps economic, certainly psychological and moral. The very fact of exclusion from participation is a subtle form of suppression. It gives individuals no opportunity to reflect and decide upon what is good for them. Others who are supposed to be wiser and who in any case have more power decide the question for them and also decide the methods and means by which subjects may arrive at the enjoyment of what is good for them. This form of coercion and suppression is more subtle and more effective than is overt intimidation and restraint. When it is habitual and embodied in social institutions, it seems the normal and natural state of affairs. The masses usually become unaware that they have a claim to a development of their own powers.
Their experience is so restricted that they are not conscious of restriction. It is part of the democratic conception that they as individuals are not the only sufferers, but that the whole social body is deprived of the potential resources that should be at its service. The individuals of the submerged mass may not be very wise. But there is one thing they are wiser about than anybody else can be, and that is where the shoe pinches, the troubles they suffer from.
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| The foundation of democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in human intelligence and in the power of pooled and cooperative experience. It is not belief that these things are complete but that if given a show they will grow and be able to generate progressively the knowledge and wisdom needed to guide collective action. Every autocratic and authoritarian scheme of social action rests on a belief that the needed intelligence is confined to a superior few, who because of inherent natural gifts are endowed with the ability and the right to control the conduct of others; laying down principles and rules and directing the ways in which they are carried out. It would be foolish to deny that much can be said for this point of view. It is that which controlled human relations in social groups for much the greater part of human history. The democratic faith has emerged very, very recently in the history of mankind. Even where democracies now exist, men’s minds and feelings are still permeated with ideas about leadership imposed from above, ideas that developed in the long early history of mankind. After democratic political institutions were nominally established, beliefs and ways of looking at life and of acting that originated when men and women were externally controlled and subjected to arbitrary power persisted in the family, the church, business and the school, and experience shows that as long as they persist there, political democracy is not secure.
Belief in equality is an element of the democratic credo. It is not, however, belief in equality of natural endowments. Those who proclaimed the idea of equality did not suppose they were enunciating a psychological doctrine, but a legal and political one. All individuals are entitled to equality of treatment by law and in its administration. Each one is affected equally in quality if not in quantity by the institutions under which he lives and has an equal right to express his judgment, although the weight of his judgment may not be equal in amount when it enters into the pooled result to that of others. In short, each one is equally an individual and entitled to equal opportunity of development of his own capacities, be they large or small in range. Moreover, each has needs of his own, as significant to him as those of others are to them. The very fact of natural and psychological inequality is all the more reason for establishment by law of equality of opportunity, since otherwise the former becomes a means of oppression of the less gifted.
While what we call intelligence be distributed in unequal amounts, it is the democratic faith that it is sufficiently general so that each individual has something to contribute, whose value can be assessed only as enters into the final pooled intelligence constituted by the contributions of all. Every authoritarian scheme, on the contrary, assumes that its value may be assessed by some prior principle, if not of family and birth or race and color or possession of material wealth, then by the position and rank a person occupies in the existing social scheme. The democratic faith in equality is the faith that each individual shall have the chance and opportunity to contribute whatever he is capable of contributing and that the value of his contribution be decided by its place and function in the organized total of similar contributions, not on the basis of prior status of any kind whatever.
I have emphasized in what precedes the importance of the effective release of intelligence in connection with personal experience in the democratic way of living. I have done so purposely because democracy is so often and so naturally associated in our minds with freedom of action, forgetting the importance of freed intelligence which is necessary to direct and to warrant freedom of action. Unless freedom of individual action has intelligence and informed conviction back of it, its manifestation is almost sure to result in confusion and disorder. The democratic idea of freedom is not the right of each individual to do as he pleases/ even if it be qualified by adding “provided he does not interfere with the same freedom on the part of others.” While the idea is not always, not often enough, expressed in words, the basic freedom is that of freedom of mind and of whatever degree of freedom of action and experience is necessary to produce freedom of intelligence. The modes of freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are all of this nature: Freedom of belief and conscience, of expression of opinion, of assembly for discussion and conference, of the press as an organ of communication. They are guaranteed because without them individuals are not free to develop and society is deprived of what they might contribute.
It is a disputed question of theory and practice just how far a democratic political government should go in control of the conditions of action within special groups. At the present time, for example, there are those who think the federal and state governments leave too much freedom of independent action to industrial and financial groups, and there are others who think the government is going altogether too far at the present time. I do not need to discuss this phase of the problem, much less to try to settle it. But it must be pointed out that if the methods of regulation and administration in vogue in the conduct of secondary social groups are non- democratic, whether directly or indirectly or both, there is bound to be unfavorable reaction back into the habits of feeling, thought and action of citizenship in the broadest sense of that word. The way in which any organized social interest is controlled necessarily plays an important part in forming the dispositions and tastes, the attitudes, interests, purposes and desires, of those engaged in carrying on the activities of the group. For illustration, I do not need to do more than point to the moral, emotional and intellectual effect upon both employers and laborers of the existing industrial system. Just what the effects specifically are is a matter about which we know very little. But I suppose that everyone who reflects upon the subject admits that it is impossible that the ways in which activities are carried on for the greater part of the waking hours of the day; and the way in which the share of individuals are involved in the management of affairs in such a matter as gaining a livelihood and attaining material and social security, can not but be a highly important factor in shaping personal dispositions; in short/ forming character and intelligence. In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality. The principle applies with special force to the school. For it is the main business of the family and the school to influence directly the formation and growth of attitudes and dispositions, emotional, intellectual and moral. Whether this educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic way of life. *** There are certain corollaries which clarify the meaning of the issue. Absence of participation tends to produce lack of interest and concern on the part of those shut out. The result is a corresponding lack of effective responsibility. Automatically and unconsciously, if not consciously, the feeling develops, “This is none of our affair; it is the business of those at the top; let that particular set of Georges do what needs to be done.” The countries in which autocratic government prevails are just those in which there is least public spirit and the greatest indifference to matters of general as distinct from personal concern. *** Where there is little power, there is correspondingly little sense of positive responsibility. It is enough to do what one is told to do sufficiently well to escape flagrant unfavorable notice. About larger matters, a spirit of passivity is engendered. In some cases, indifference passes into evasion of duties when not directly under the eye of a supervisor; in other cases, a carping, rebellious spirit is engendered. . . . Habitual exclusion has the effect of reducing a sense of responsibility for what is done and its consequences. What the argument for democracy implies is that the best way to produce initiative and constructive power is to exercise it. Power, as well as interest, comes by use and practice. . . . It is also true that incapacity to assume the responsibilities involved in having a voice in shaping policies is bred and increased by conditions in which that responsibility is denied. I suppose there has never been an autocrat, big or little, who did not justify his conduct on the ground of the unfitness of his subjects to take part in government. *** I conclude by saying that the present subject is one of peculiar importance at the present time. The fundamental beliefs and practices of democracy are now challenged as they never have been before. In some nations they are more than challenged. They are ruthlessly and systematically destroyed. Everywhere there are waves of criticism and doubt as to whether democracy can meet pressing problems of order and security. The causes for the destruction of political democracy in countries where it was nominally established are complex. But of one thing I think we may be sure. Wherever it has fallen it was too exclusively political in nature. It had not become part of the bone and blood of the people in daily conduct of its life. Democratic forms were limited to Parliament, elections and combats between parties. What is happening proves conclusively, I think, that unless democratic habits of thought and action are part of the fiber of a people, political democracy is insecure. It can not stand in isolation. It must be buttressed by the presence of democratic methods in all social relationships. The relations that exist in educational institutions are second only in importance in this respect to those which exist in industry and business, perhaps not even to them. Excerpted from John Dewey, “Democracy and Educational Administration,” School and Society 45 (April 3, 1937); 457-67.
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I offer this link not because I agree or disagree what what is said here, nor do I necessarily subscribe to the actual motives of Judicial Watch. I offer the link because I think it is a perfect example of the kind of incident/event that some, because of their political persuasion and ideology try to ignore and ask others to ignore. But to ignore is to be caught out for being bias and biased thinking and deservedly so. The only viable political environment I know to be a healthy one for a democracy is one in which truth is in the open and all players participate in finding the truth and demand that all others show their good faith in democratic process by being truthful no matter what the consequences of truth telling might be.
This story, one being circulated now in various media for the purpose of providing a jarring counterbalance to stories concerning the current administration’s interactions with the Russian state and its leaders. I do believe that the truth is that that is the intention. But that the story is being used for such purposes has nothing to do with whether it is a story relevant to understanding our current political crisis and its legitimacy as a story.
What is reported about the Clintons, their dealings with a Canadian uranium company that wanted to sell shares in the company to Russian interests and contributions by the uranium company to the Clinton Foundation, are, as far as I can tell true. And it is also true that the Obama administration, it seems at the urging of Hillary Clinton, was helpful in getting the deal approved.
As a commentator on one of the news programs I watch, on a channel known to have a liberal bias, said, if nothing else, the optics are terrible. And I can see why those who do not like the Clintons, who do not like Obama, and who do not like those of the liberal persuasion, particularly those who are dogged in their efforts to bring out the truth about Trump and the administration, want to get word out again about what they want people to understand to be, as I have heard Trump himself say, ‘the real Russia story.’
To dismiss the story for it not being true, for it being unfair, or for it being irrelevant will be, and fairly be made to be seen as hypocrisy on the part of those who would like it to be that the events never occurred or that the events say nothing meaningful about the character and the political behavior of those implicated.
So, my point is that to get things moving in a better direction, people are going to have to start telling the truth and talking openly about what is true and that that seems to be true but needs further inquiry into whether it is or not. This will take courage and it will be costly in regard to wins and loses and alliances, partnerships, even friendships. Because it is so costly it is very difficult to get people to do and more so because it not only eats on alliances, partnerships, and friendships but because it is galling sometimes to be honest with oneself.
The Loretta Lynch Clinton meeting is something else Judicial Watch is going after and, if there are people out there that want to participate in meaningful cleansing of a corrupted political process, they should insist that every shred of evidence anyone calls for that has the potential to get at the truth be provided no matter who it hurts or how much it hurts.