Columnist.
This one is mostly about Facebook, but it's also about human nature and motivation.
Last Tuesday, The New York Times featured a photo from the White House Easter Egg Roll.
It's what DC does best. First we had the March for our Lives, which was a blatantly political event masquerading as a student safety program, designed to keep the "gun control" issue alive for the November midterms. Then we got the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reshuffle.
For those who have been on Mars for the last month or so, there was a march in DC over the weekend, with numerous smaller marches around the country, on gun issues. The reactions have been primarily emotional and political, but precious few people have focused on defining and solving the problems that supposedly were the basis for the marches in the first place.
I got lots of pushback on my North Korea article, mostly from my conservative "Never Trump" friends. Key disagreements were as follows...
In the last few weeks we have heard little about North Korea and the potential meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Since the invitation to meet was verbal and came from Kim through a South Korean intermediary, conventional wisdom seems to be that nothing is happening, and Kim may not have really made the invite in the first place.
In the wake of the Florida school shooting, I have waited a while to comment to let the dust settle a bit. But now it seems more clear where the debate is headed and what steps should be considered that might have a positive impact.
My plea for total transparency by releasing the FISA applications and transcripts of the hearings was not an easy call. It has the potential to encourage political interference in what should be independent judicial reviews. But life is a negotiation with trade-offs, and the scales are tipped in favor of doing what might be needed to halt the critical deterioration of public trust in our institutions. The fact that nothing has happened on that front could either mean that wise men are debating it very carefully or something else entirely.
The common thread between the two is that political spin is getting in the way of problem-solving.
It's a truism that if you want to know the agenda du jour of the Left, you just need to glance at the most important real estate in The New York Times. Take the business section over the last few days.
We've all been there. Your organization is facing a controversial issue with strong feelings on both sides, but side A is particularly vocal and adamant. The organization commissions a six-month study of the issue, which concludes that side A is out to lunch. Rather than defer to the study group, side A bad-mouths the study, spins the results, and moves the goal posts. It is so invested in its predetermined outcome that it simply can't accept reality. That's basically what we have with the Democrat reactions to the Russian indictment.
I am not a lawyer — I don't even play one on TV — but I just did a layman's read of the 37-page indictment against Russians released Friday, reviewed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's comments, and have some commonsense reactions.
Evidence continues to show that we are looking at the biggest political scandal of our lifetime. Namely, that the federal government used its enormous intelligence and law enforcement power to attack the presidential candidate of the opposing party during the campaign and undermine his presidency, illegally misleading the FISA Court along the way to obtain permission to spy on American citizens who were part of that campaign/administration.
The hits keep coming. Info from the FISA application is continuing to bleed out, making it even more clear that the FISA Court was seriously, if not criminally, misled. It would be great if the actual applications and transcripts of the hearings were made public, but it appears that highly relevant information on the dossier, its author and sources of funding are nowhere to be found. Worse, we recently learned that Hillary Clinton's State Department was also a source of info for the dossier, provided through cutouts including longtime Hillary confidant Sidney Blumenthal. You can't make this up.
Now that we've solved Memogate — okay, maybe just provided a road map — we can turn to other things like Emailgate. Not unlike the stock market these days, don't blink or you'll miss something huge. The hits keep coming from DC. Today's entrant is the latest batch of text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI. There's lots here but two texts stand out.
A little over a week ago, prior to the release of the GOP memo, I suggested that it would be far better if the Democrat memo and all underlying info that didn't compromise national security were released at the same time. After watching the performance of both sides since, that suggestion has morphed into an impassioned plea. It's not just that I'm tired of the rhetorical tit-for-tat games, the latest of which is the Democrats' ploy to load up their memo with classified sources and methods that will require Trump to redact some sections and allow Democrats to claim that he is once again obstructing justice. It's that the cumulative effect is reaching the critical mass of destroying trust in the justice system. I'm not trying to go Boy Scout on you, but that's really not good.
Well, that was a home run. The State of the Union speech was beautifully written and brilliantly delivered. It hit the right balance of bragging about accomplishments, presenting a vision for the future, and celebrating America — all while repeatedly offering paths to reach unifying middle grounds on some key initiatives. Credit was constantly given to the American people, and the use of first-person pronouns appeared with about one-tenth the frequency of the typical Obama performance. Even the use of guests with personal stories served to underscore the points being made about issues ranging from immigration to the military to patriotism to foreign policy rather than simply tugging on heartstrings.
There is apparently a vote coming up today on whether to make public the House Intel Committee memo on possible FISA surveillance abuses that may have targeted Trump folks during the 2016 campaign. I would vote no. But before you shoot the messenger, let me explain why.
If you were one of the dozen Americans who tuned in to "Morning Joe" the other day, you learned what the Democrat spin is on the disastrous Schumer shutdown.
It looks like the shutdown is shutting down. In exchange for the GOP agreeing to hold open debates over DACA and immigration, Democrats withdrew the filibuster that was holding up the budget deal and closing the government. Non-essential employees rejoice!
