Morrison Government re-election campaign limited by internal opposition to policy change

Posted on by February 10, 2019

First the Climate Sabotage

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in trouble – from within his own party as well as from the public opposition the Australia Labor Party. And it is all centred on an internal war in the party between conservatives and so-called moderates, which are a left wing group pushing climate/green energy policies for all they are worth. Criticising the Morrison government publicly is par for the course by this internal “climate opposition”.

A lot of the bitterness and infighting faced by Morrison was listed in a post last year about him being a dead man walking, but the internal sabotage against Morrison wasn’t going to quieten down just because they have entered an election year.

The Morrison government has been trying to push the line about energy security and lowering prices, guaranteeing power when renewables have failed miserably, even hinting at supporting the only reliable baseload power available – coal power. It was extremely relevant as it came just as hot weather coinciding with common wind power failures (eg 200,000 homes losing power in Victoria alone) and the stage-managed “independent” candidates against Morrison MPs were trumpeting climate, climate and climate. Some of the hard-fighting politicos on Morrisons side could have gone in hard on that.

Morrison’s energy minister, the realist Angus Taylor was hammering that when in stepped a supporter of the Greens/Climate alarmism wing of the party, Nick Greiner, now federal president of the party.

Morrison had just been talking publicly about meeting all climate targets etc, when the party president Greiner made his policy intervention on February 6.

“I accept the fact that having no sustainability policy would not be an appropriate way to go to an election,” he told ABC News on Tuesday.

“We do need a robust climate change policy, of course we do, and I believe there will be one, yes, before the election.”

Greiner does not seem to be some honest broker in this, or a truly “national” president. No, he is in on the green/climate alarmism side of this argument. Being allied to the so-called “moderate” (ie. “left wing”) of the New South Wales Liberal party, the home state of the PM Scott Morrison, Greiner has long adopted the positions of that left group pushing for more and more deference to the green energy side of politics. This – coincidentally, I am sure -, mirrors the policy of the lobbyist/faction leader Photios family, whose green energy/ climate group, Conservatives for Conservation, Greiner was happy to join as Patron.

This is one potential body blow to any Morrison fightback against the left wing Labor party whose 45-50% renewables energy policy would de-industrialise Australia. The fight against it would allow a real street-fighting politician to make great inroads into the opposition policies. It looks like Morrison might be fighting with one hand behind his back.  How can he have credibility on energy policy when public office holders in his party are going public to virtually sabotage the campaign?

Next came immigration sell out

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Morrison government treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has also dealt a public body to another Morrison policy, the fight against a virtual open borders policy failure by the opposition parties. With many of his party leaders and a majority of the public being for a large cut to the official immigration intake, Frydenberg went all in on another policy which aims at keeping the intake high – higher than the public and prudence deemed appropriate.    

On February 8, with a headline “States cautious as Frydenberg embraces immigration”, Frydenberg is mentioned this way:-

Frydenberg has argued forcefully for the need to maintain a strong immigration intake to safeguard the nation’s economy amid growing global headwinds, as the nation’s biggest states ratchet up demands for more infrastructure spending to cope with congestion problems.

In an apparent softening of the government’s position last year, when Scott Morrison declared Australia’s major cities were “full” and committed to lowering the permanent migration cap, the Treasurer yesterday talked up immigration as vital for the nation’s economic success.

How do they expect Morrison and his Liberal Party to defy huge odds and fight back against the Labor party when major, cut-through policies can’t be argued effectively. We shall see what Morrison does now. If he goes quietly on these two issues, to say that Morrison is fighting with one hand behind his back might mean that he is doing it willingly!

Australian Political Media: a case file example

Posted on by February 8, 2019

Political journalists in Australia can be as professional, fair or biased as anywhere else. However, the increasing allegation that political journalists can be or actually are activists is far more serious.

This is meant to be an early, direct, Australian Perspectives study of the Australian media (and journalists). It looks at a particular article by a journalist who we will come back to more than once over future months. He has a history as well as a future and this post will introduce him and highlight how political journalism works here, highlighting the question of “what is media activism?”

Peter Hartcher whose article is mentioned here, is an interesting case. A senior journalist in Australian political coverage, he is the Political Editor and International Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and has been so for some years. In his writings on national politics in Australia his articles give him a journalistic track record. This is one of his most recent – and targeted.

A headline isn’t the responsibility of the journalist and often has nothing to do with the bulk of the article or even of its thrust. Not this time, though. It is precisely on point. In the (opinion) article How conservatives stole the Liberal Party, published on 2 February, 2019 in the Sydney Morning Herald, a number of themes and issues were thrown up and they related directly to political narratives which are either peripheral or seriously contested.

The first and second paragraphs lays out his theme quite clearly:-

“(Cory Bernardi) quit the party two years ago to start his own, Australian Conservatives. And he waited for all the other disgruntled right-wing Liberals to join him.

“He’s still waiting….the defections and departures are all occurring at the other end of the Liberal Party spectrum, among the moderates. The conservatives feel no urge to leave. They’ve made themselves pretty comfortable.”

This idea that the Australan federal Liberal Party has recently become dominated by a conservative wing is hard to justify. Very hard. 

The Liberal party has been wracked by political infighting for years, and in NSW in particular it has been very vicious, but there is no question that the left, self-called “moderates” are in charge and moving to clean up everywhere. They send signals that they are in the “mopping up” stages set to get rid of all conservative opposition. This was the plot against Tony Abbott led in person by an MP member of his party’s left wing faction.

For Hartcher to even hint at conservative domination while having knowedge of that NSW suituation seems to stretch credibility. Some could even say its is a political  narrative intended by politicians to give a particular impression which is at variance to the facts. That’s where experienced journalists come in isn’t it? Not here. The opposite is stressed by Hartcher. The very fact that a conservative PM, Tony Abbott, was overthrown by a majority of the parliamentary party, in what everyone has said was a move against the conservatives, makes it hard to see as leaving much room for conservatives to “dominate”. Especially when that conservative was replaced by a strongly left wing PM in Turnbull.

Admittedly the “Moderate” (ie leftist) Malcolm Turnbull did lose the prime ministership too, but this wasn’t any clear-cut triumph of opposing conservative forces. Far from it. Because Turnbull had decided to call an election in July 2016 and lost many seats to just scrape in with a one-seat majority, he was always on a knife edge. With some conservative MPs threatening to vote against an environmental policy of his, Turnbull was beholden to them for a majority, but rather than carry on with their support, he called a leadership spill in August 2018 and found that a sizeable minority voted for someone else.

The conservative opponent, Peter Dutton, couldn’t even muster the 50% of the names to get an open leadership vote against Turnbull and by the end of the Turnbull dramatics, some of his own supporters were signing their names just to get a vote! With Dutton obviously not hugely popular and devoid of an obvious majority in his favour, Turnbull could have fought and won. But that wasn’t Turnbull. He didn’t stand and the leadership was won by Scott Morrison, the candidate supported by the very left-moderates Hartcher claims are now not in control of the Liberal party.

Hartcher knew this, knew all of this. Yet he not only pushes that line about “conservatives in control”, he doubles down on it later.

“most importantly for the conservatives, they managed to defeat the foremost moderate, Bishop…The conservatives are quietly thrilled that they so managed to intimidate the left that the moderates didn’t even try to support one of their own for the prime ministership. It was a pre-emptive surrender in favour of the compromise candidate.”

This is one of the worst….er… ”mistakes” in the whole article. It is written months after the leadership change, nothing hidden there. Hartcher knows that the same left/moderates got together in an encrypted WhatsApp list to discuss politics away from prying eyes. Julie Bishop (the Hartcher favourite and suspected leaker) was a candidate and nobody knows the truth about why they did it, but her own faction (yes, the so-called  “moderates” again) decided that Morrison was the better candidate. That is logical. After all, Bishop in West Australia – a lightly-populated state – had only a certain number of MPs to vote for the leader, compared to NSW where not only were there many times more MPs to influence, it was a State where the left/Moderate friends were in virtually total control. And far from just being a “compromise” candidate, Morrison was a creature of the Party machine and, with his handful of MPs loyal to him, was an active force in gathering numbers against Tony Abbott and allowing Turnbull to overthrow him.

Yet Hartcher claims the conservatives “managed to intimidate the left that the moderates didn’t even try to support one of their own”. This is laughable.

Hartcher knew that there was a WhatsApp list, a social media group which uses the favoured encryption for messages, where the left members of the list were screen-capped openly talking about voting against Bishop. This was to be in order to head off a possibility that Dutton could get enough votes to win by having Bishop votes cut into a Morrison vote count enough to make Morrison go 3rd  against Bishop & Dutton. Supposedly a new vote would lead to Dutton winning. What is obvious but unsaid by them at the time (or by Hartcher) was that it relied on acceptance that Bishop was so unpopular within the party that Dutton would attract votes to keep her out. It is all so highly convoluted that it is approaching the ridiculous, but in any case, the key point is that the left did any intimidation that was to be had, it was by the left “moderates” not conservatives! Hartcher knew this, yet still printed that pap about intimidation.

The article has a lot more in this vein of being anti-conservative. He inflates the supposed “independent conservatives” (people going against the government conservatives in selected seats for the next election) being against the Morrison government, when nearly everyone feels they are either Turnbull stooges or Getup plants. Getup, a hard left, part overseas-funded group has long made it known to be out for these conservatives and only awaiting some candidates.

Singling Hartcher out in this way is not meant to be anything other than demonstrative of what we can (and often do) see in political reporting here and elsewhere. There are other journalists who publish conservative-tinged articles in what might be seen as similar fashion. What I have tried to show is that by being informed, readers can inform themselves as to the dangers of taking these “opinions” as true unless and until they have been weighed up in the light of other evidence available to those readers.

Candidacy of Supposed “Conservative Independents” against ex-PM Tony Abbott

Posted on by January 29, 2019
The main “Independent Conservative”[SIC] against ex-PM Tony Abbott

After much speculation, pushed heavily by the usual suspects, the left-aligned Nine/Fairfax media, aided and abetted by the publicly-owned ABC and a News Limited left web site news.com.au, the drums have been beating publicly against ex-PM Tony Abbott for nearly a year.

The hard-to-believe factor of his own party branch seeming to be against him, has been shown in other posts both where the actual lead up to even having Abbott as leader to get them into government was covered and here in a false dawn where the long-time Abbott fight to democratise his party seemed to be successful until the lobbyist and controller groups continued their “work”  to stop that reform.

While these internecine struggles have been going on in Australian politics for years, rarely, if ever, has it involved a concerted attempt to defeat a former Prime Minster. There’s plenty of suspicion to go around, but far from the party being a ”broad church” as former PM John Howard had long claimed, it has been increasingly obvious that under so-called “moderate” (that is left wing) control, the New South Wales branch of the party and a varying number of Liberal party branches and office holders all over the country didn’t see it that way in practice. Once Abbott had taken on NSW faction leaders about not being lobbyists as well as office holders selecting the candidates, a certain distance was set between Tony Abbott and that faction.

Abbott had taken the Liberals from an unwinnable position under Turnbull in 2009 (18% popularity) into a hung parliament in 2010 and a landslide government win in 2013, but his time in government was undermined by the leaks and public opposition by certain members of his own “team”. This led to his overthrow in favour of (& at the hands of) Turnbull in September 2015. The leader of the faction Tony Abbott had challenged when he got into government – the lobbyist chieftain – actually was meeting with other faction leader/plotters the night before the coup against Abbott.

‘Turnbull led the government to a humiliating crash in the election he called for 2 July, 2016, Abbott’s large majority being reduced to just a majority of one seat for Turnbull. As Abbott went about his way, speaking on policy but also speaking out under his own name whenever leaks of wrongful criticism came in from his own side, he never hesitated to speak out in favour of his policies and practice as leader. The aftermath was history.

The drums had been beating – with very obvious tame-media assistance – about a challenge to Abbott in his own seat of Warringah.

In a process which was anything but subtle, the Liberal Party forces against Abbott leaked plenty of hints and urges to get opposition to him. On 3 May 2018, the Guardian came up with

Liberal activists target Tony Abbott’s seat over climate change policy Sydneysiders urged to join party in former PM’s seat to ‘shift the politics’ and speak up for the environment” and followed up on 6 October, 2018 with another scare piece 

Tony Abbott faces campaign using tactics that defeated Mirabella in Indi  Voices of Warringah created after their MP’s refusal to engage, group’s president says.

A few weeks later on 7 November Miranda Devine exploded it all with her exposure of the real Liberal party insiders involved and the activist group with overseas funding ties, Getup, when she wrote Birkenstock Libs betray their party’s ethos, an article exposing the Getup/Liberal Party faction links to the group against Abbott.

Carrying their Getup handbags and with “anti- Abbott bumper stickers” the social set called North Shore Environmental Stewards met to discuss climate and see a film by Naomi Klein. As Devine explains later in the article,

(North Shore Environmental Stewards) is run by branch members loyal to NSW moderate MP Felicity Wilson, whose state electorate North Shore overlaps Abbott’s. Wilson is a protégé of dreaded lobbyist and moderate faction powerbroker Michael Photios, whose wife Kristina quit the Liberal Party two years ago in protest over federal climate policy.”

I won’t bore you with details about Wilson, (known in a political joke as “Duplicity Wilson” on account of various details of her background, residence and academic qualifications being questioned) but she is cemented into power as an MP with support of Photios.

The Challenge itself

With all the drama leading up to it, the new year has brought the challenge. First with Getup going public about Abbott as being one of its main targets Peter Dutton tops GetUp’s ‘hard right’ hit list for federal election  Tony Abbott in second place as activist group looks to extend list of targets and now, after a few candidates (one a former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Alice Thompson), we have the real, prepared, setup candidate, Zali Steggall.

And wasn’t she prepared (well, in all but actual policy). In answer to a question about her climate policy, which she had claimed was the No1 issue, she said she would provide it “at a later date.” She was “prepared” enough with supporters, much advertising, T-shirts with her name on them for supporters and lots of prepared material but not, apparently, having her main, most important, actual climate policy at hand, even a day later!

Her claims/attacks on Abbott, some as personal attacks, include:-

World champion athlete-turned-barrister Zali Steggall has called time on Tony Abbott’s “destructive and divisive” 25-year career in federal politics, launching a major bid to seize the former prime minister’s blue-ribbon Sydney seat of Warringah…the four-time Winter Olympian said Mr Abbott was an “aggressive” national figure who had lost touch with the affluent electorate and deserved to be thrown out of Parliament for his role in the demise of Malcolm Turnbull, and views on the environment.

“I am in this to win it,” Ms Steggall told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “I want to beat Tony Abbott, who has been a handbrake on Australian progress on many fronts but particularly effective action on climate change.

And on radio:- 2

Ms Steggall tells Steve Price Mr Abbott’s policies were destructive and divisive and claims the most of the country agrees with her.

“I do indeed and I think all of Australia are extremely dissatisfied and absolutely repulsed by the conduct of the Liberal Party in the last 12 months.

“The revolving door leadership, the allegations of harassment and bullying.”

And so the die is cast. The much-announced challenge, with all the various left- hard left/climate alarmists/ lobbyists all coming together and, surprise, apparently “uncoordinated” (as if). The laughable claim is denied by the mere staffing moves from the Getup-pushed Kerryn Phelps supposed “independent” campaign in Wentworth. For the gullible, those who aren’t actually in a party are quite open about it, they are even moving Phelps-aligned fixers from one campaign to another..

And Getup has a lazy half a million dollars from a body with overseas funding links with which to play in this Warringah by election. 

We can expect massive coverage from all the tame media outlets. Not just the Nine/Fairfax, ABC, news.com.au and the other usual suspects, but the shows which will all have Steggall on all the time. I would think that their poor QandA show from the publicly-funded ABC would be very upset that they didn’t get advance warning of Steggall’s candidature. Seeing they have their first show of 2019 with every non-conservative they can find, we don’t have to doubt that the public-funded ABC will favour its usual half of the population only and so we shall much more of Zali Steggall.

Left Activist Group Getup assisting lobbyist and ALP/Green Campaign against Conservative Liberal MPs

Posted on by January 29, 2019

The Australian political action/activist group Getup has been flexing its muscles in Australian elections for years now, nearly always to the benefit of Green or Australian Labor party candidates, but always for solidly left wing reasons. Lately Getup has been supporting (and being asked for support by) members of the supposedly “conservative” Liberal Party.

Ex Liberal Party minister Craig Laundy and friends

Getup origins and connection to the phenomenon of “astroturf” – colluding/organised individuals bombarding organisations and corporations in unison to try and give impressions that they are spontaneous expressions of outrage from the public in general will probably come in later posts. This is because the history and practices of Getup are so international they deserve illumination. However, Getup is so ubiquitous in Australian elections now that their current campaigns are very relevant to events occurring at the beginning of this election year.

Suffice it to say that apart from its international impetus, Getup was formed with plenty of official ALP influence (Bill Shorten, the current leader of the ALP being on its board and financing of it with tens of thousands of dollars from the Australian Workers Union which Shorten led). Since then they have received millions of dollars from left sources (including another $million-plus from the most militant trade union in Australia), but it’s equally-important focus is on all things Green – both party and policy. A former leader of Getup actually stood for the Greens at elections and his girlfriend/partner ran a youth climate coalition and was a favourite of the progressive media.

This also matched ALP interests of course, the ALP being long into climate alarmism and determined to cut our coal use and gas exploration. While we were once one of the cheapest energy nations we are now one of the most expensive, all because of this climate/renewable energy obsession.

While Getup has been fighting hard to stop itself being classified as a political player (it claiming it is non-partisan saves it from intrusive book-opening as to finances), it has been known to accept money which cannot be ruled out as coming from overseas funders. The Wikileaks/Podesta emails indicated that money from various US left wing funders were sent to Australia through the Sunshine Project and that was in aid of a campaign to reverse Australian government policy in the acceptance of coal to export and for use in our own economy.

What is raising questions is the issue of Getup intermingling of funds from overseas for various projects to deal with the environment (the Sunrise-type monies) and money actually passed on to use in electing politicians. In many countries – the USA being particularly prominent now – the use of foreign money(directly or indirectly) in influencing elections of other countries has been looked on as very bad and in many cases highly illegal. Scandals in the Clinton administration and the latest Russian allegations in the USA are very relevant.

Of particular interest today, though, is that an Australian law was passed to disallow overseas money to flow directly to be used in election campaigning. Where it is relevant to Getup is that in December 2018 it received two large sums of money from overseas-linked entities, some half a million of which was directly conceded to be for the use of Getup in the 2019 federal election. It came from the Sunshine Project and certain background is important to consider.

While it was claimed that it was all from local sources this has not been proven and getting money from overseas and allowing an organisation to comingle funds in the manner described above could be overseas involvement in practice. The $496,000 to be used for the election campaign would then be used for direct campaigning.

Another large overseas amount of nearly $100,000, however, (also, fortuitously, just prior to the cut-off point for political money from overseas), was sent from the European Climate Foundation, an organisation part of whose funding and control links can be traced back to the Soros family and other usual international political and funders of so-called “progressive” causes through the Climateworks Foundation.

Getup hasn’t announced just what that large amount will be used for but one can see an arguable case might be able to be made that by pushing advertisements about the environment during an election campaign (OR against a particular politician) it might be argued that it is for a purpose to protect the environment, but a counter argument that it is (and must be) seen as being directly invested into a campaign.

When Getup publicly announce that they will attack various conservative politicians in the forthcoming federal election campaign, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton in particular, much attention is needed to be placed on the campaigns of those two men to see just what happens and how the Getup money/funding comes to be used.

That this is extremely relevant is shown by matters concerning the new candidate against Tony Abbott, Ms Steggall, to whom we will now turn.

Australia Day and Australian of the Year 2019

Posted on by January 26, 2019

Well we seem to have survived another few weeks of progressives of the left demanding that we change the date of Australia Day from January 26. The fact that this was the date in 1788 that the British arrived in Sydney Cove with their load of convicts to build Australia, is seen as dispossessing the local Aborigines of their sole occupation of the land, which they had had to themselves since they arrived some 50,000 years before.

Such arguments will never be satisfied, but for the sake of certain percentage of the people who identify as indigenous, the idea that we can’t all celebrate the advances since 1788 on January 26 has been brought up regularly over many decades. It is as regular as clockwork for some.

While many Aborigines accept and commemorate all sides of their heritage, including many with some European forebears, others are really against the date. Aided by clusters of whites, many of whom seem to “know” what all our indigenous people want on this issue – in spite of much pushback – they aim, as always, to dominate the public square. They have as much contempt for the views of the “People” as any progressive does and target their arguments to those who can impose decisions from above. Thus we have seen local councils in rich areas argue that they will not celebrate anything on the 26th January because “they” decided that it should be changed, no matter what their constituents think. So far, a supposedly conservative government has held them at bay, but with the high prospect of a left wing ALP government after May 2019, that barrier will probably be the first to fall.

There is a culture war being fought here (as elsewhere) and, as the late Andrew Breitbart enunciated it quite accurately, politics is downstream of culture and that battle is key, is engaged by the left and must be won to reverse the cultural tyranny the left will try and impose on us.

Australia Day, Anzac Day, and all other culturally traditional celebrations of our history are under attack from these left/progressive activists.  The battle must always be joined or defeat will be the option.

Australian of the Year Award comes back to the people

Australians of the Year 2019, Craig Challen and Dr Richard Harris

At least it looks like the current Australian of the Year Award committee has determined that the award cannot continue to seem like some plaything for all the personal choices of a “progressive” class alone. With this year’s choice and the past two also, they have possibly aimed to make it representative of the aspirations of all Australians.

This year, as in 2018, they selected real role models, the men who had played major parts in the international efforts to free the children trapped in a Thai cave last year. Craig Challen and Dr Richard Harris were role models for everyone, and their efforts and skills showed what sort of example such winners could set to all Australians.

The award was like that for many years, the winners inspiring people by their example, with nationally known artists and sports people also selected. Of course, the selection of many sorts of people offended some (especially those who hated sports) but they had united millions of Australians.

The critics had half a point, of course, because a lot of people  did object. However, when the insiders took over the process and got to help dominate the selection, their ideas resulted in an Australia of the Year Award that seemed to suit their view of it and nobody else seemed to matter. The results of their involvement was self-evident.

They might have finally learned their lesson with the appointment three years ago of David Morrison, the army General (former Chief of Defence Force) whose claim to fame seemed to be pushing for gender identity in the Australian Defence Forces and gaining much applause for it by the left mainstream media lackeys who push those narratives. A strange falling out with a leading transgender person who had also been in the army and who was a fellow candidate for Australian of the Year, Cate McGregor added to the controversy.

When Morrison started criticising Australia and Australians on so-called ”progressive” grounds, “identity” politics etc – he even demanded that the word “guy” be no longer used – he finally brought to wide attention the extent to which he was the exact opposite of any kind of “Australian” role model. His early months of criticising Australians soon led to him seeming to go into hiding until his era was over. Morrison was (hopefully) the end of an era in which selections were of people who spent their next year criticising Australia (or so it seemed).

Now we have had a few years where selections have been genuinely inspiring for all Australians and the Morrison types are a memory, albeit a vivid one.

All we can do is hope that it continues, but with the constant pressure to change the date of Australia Day, they won’t give up without a fight and there are always more cultural battles to come.

NY Times drops leaked Trump FBI investigation story. The Federalist does some analysis

Posted on by January 16, 2019

Even for Americans, finding the truth behind the amazing myriad of anti-Trump/ “Russia”/Collusion/Conspiracy theories versus the Deep State/Captive Media counter theory is awfully hard. This is mainly due to the almost absolute certainty of the journalists, politicians and public commentators reporting on each new snippet of information or actual allegation.

As outsiders looking in, the idea that the media is hindering understanding rather than diminishing seems a little trite in view of the mounting evidence.

This blog has indicated previously how people should go far wider than the legacy media for answers and that if there ever was a beneficial side to the turmoil caused by the challenge to the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, it was the rise and rise of new investigators and “citizen journalists” who have shown time and time again, a knack for exposure of facts affecting the narratives received by the public. That early post is woefully out of date now and many more sites and investigators have added much to the uncovering of information relevant to the current allegations/investigations. Meanwhile, the drawn-out Mueller enquiry seems to have nearly frozen many other official oversight attempts and some of these non-legacy media outlets have carried the investigations forward and have been responsible for much of what the public can uncover.

Pulitzer prize-worthy work from many journalists have carried this forward also and Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist is one of them, with article after article exposing much of the false analysis as to the trump presidency.

As a simple example of flimsy reporting (“flimsy” is being polite, I feel) as against good, old fashioned, capital “J” Journalism look at the New York Times article relating to the leaked story about the FBI opening an investigation into Trump after the May 9, 2017 Comey firing. 

I’m not actually linking to it, but the URL is here:- nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html

The “re-broadcasting” was immediate: Like this:

CNN :             FBI investigated how Trump’s actions seemed to benefit Russia …

BBC:               FBI probed whether Trump was working for Moscow – NYT

Al Jazeera:    FBI investigated Trump’s Russia ties after Comey firing: NYT | Trump …

VOX:               How the big new New York Times scoop changes our understanding of the Trump-Russia probe

MSNBC:        NYT: FBI worried Trump was in Russian employ after Comey firing.

Much of this was reporting from the article and much “analysis” was seemingly linking it to previous theories and basic acceptance of its facts by the reporting outlet.

There was plenty of social media pushback of course, but, as usual, much of that was devalued and never being allowed to get aired on most of the media which was publishing their own analysis of the original Times article.

Valuable counter facts and analysis was on offer, though, and whilst Mollie Hemingway was not the only journalist to strip the NYT article bare, her article was one of the most  complete trashing of unprofessional analysis that I have seen in a while.

Please read the whole article.

Mollie Hemingway (@MZHemingway )  is not the only independent journalist out there, of course. She is joined by many others, most of whom don’t get as widely read as they should and many come from publications which are out of the legacy media loop of “liberal” political leanings. It is only when the general public get to look at the sheer quality of their work, will they start to see how independent journalism, conservative journalism and all New Media have their own place.

The New Congress and Implications for 2019/20

Posted on by January 16, 2019

The post-2016 Mid-Term election Congress has commenced in Washington DC. The implications  are always important, especially one such as this where, as one of the two houses of Congress, the House of Representatives, has changed control from Republicans to Democrats. President Trump still has a Republican-controlled Senate with an increased GOP majority yet, at 53 seats, still well below the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Republicans are in no hurry to destroy the filibuster and that will probably wait until when next the Democrats are in control.

As expected, however, the new Congress started at full pace or, rather, started long before the commencement with new rules and dozens of letters, indicating the investigation priorities of the new regime to various bureaucrats and departments. By indicating the investigative priorities of the new Democrat-controlled committees, they put the political class on notice as to where this Democratic House was headed.  Nancy Pelosi is back as House Speaker and the Republicans are supposedly getting used to the new minority position.

And, as of Day One, a new motion to impeach President Trump. Who would have guessed?

The Guardian put it another way, with this rather flowery take on it

Two images captured the mood in Washington this week as excited children crowded into the normally staid House of Representatives to help the re-elected speaker, Nancy Pelosi , welcome the most diverse new intake of lawmakers in US history, while Donald Trump surrounded himself with tough guys at a surprise White House press briefing, delivering another hardline push for his wall project on the US-Mexico border.

Getting to the detail of Democrat control and impact on the government of Donald Trump, these early plans were flagged by various outlets, a summary of aspirational, but Big Government  plans here.

However, Kimberley Strassell of the Wall Street Journal put it this way:-

Apart from those controversial political “wishes” by Pelosi House Democrats, the Democrats introduced legislation to reopen the government and it actually got support from a number of Republicans, including 3 from New York State. As a portent of the struggles to come, the supposed “reopen government” legislation had serious abortion impact, ensuring serious Republican opposition from the start as well as signalling their legislative intent.

Big Changes to the Big Picture with this new Congress

Losing seats in the House isn’t actually rare after a win in a presidential race.  Barack Obama had a huge win in 2008, yet by 2010 with the Tea Party rising up over financial problems with the Obama Administration, it lost 63 seats and the control of the House (while retaining Senate control).

Control of the House brings the exclusive power to initiate money bills, giving it power over the purse. The Democrats will exploit this and turn it to their advantage and against the Trump administration. However, the key power now available and one which will be exploited to the hilt in todays massively politicised age, is the power to chair committees of investigation and – of course – the power to pass articles of impeachment against a President.

A change from the past two years is certain. Two years of a dragged out “collusion” allegation and investigation by Robert Mueller has been a disaster for good government, seemingly with no evidence of collusion found – so far.

With a very partisan media egging them on, Democrats have been pushing the Collusion narrative (plus everything else from dishonesty and lies to insanity and even treason!). Republicans have attempted  to conduct their oversight of the executive Branch but been stymied by the Mueller enquiry being used to stop release of reams of information sought on the basis that it is needed for an investigation (one with zero results against the Trump campaign so far).

Now, with the Democrats taking over the House, expect zero progress on any of these incomplete enquiries and they will be replaced by numerous enquiries from the democrats centred on one thing and one person – Donald Trump.

The Attack Begins

Conservative thinkers and bloggers had other ideas about the future plans of Democrats. In some detail,

The Conservative Tree House had some predictions before the change in control.

Sequencing the Resistance Process Through Likely Legislative Action – Tools: Cohen, Mueller, Horowitz…

Conspiracy theory? I didn’t think so and guess what has happened:-

Confirmed – Michael Cohen Will Deliver Public Testimony on Thursday February 7th….

Judicial Watch of the USA is an invaluable source of information and every western country should have such an organisation.

Posted on by December 28, 2018

Judicial Watch is a very important user of US Freedom of Information laws to expose – and enable others to expose – corruption and illegal actions within American institutions and the political class in general, and is led by Tom Fitton. Its social media presence can be accessed via @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton

Over many years, but particularly during the last years of the Obama administration and the era of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and the Benghazi atrocity on her watch, Judicial Watch FOI law suits have exposed the Hillary Clinton email scandal and the apparent coverup by formerly impeccably esteemed institutions. Judicial Watch has relentlessly dug for and tracked information from the US government exposing various of the scandals within the Department of Justice, the FBI and other institutions of the US government. It has been obstructed and delayed all the way but has doggedly kept on and looks like continuing this fight even as others would surely falter when faced with the massive bureaucratic obstruction.

also The following short speech by Tom Fitton expands a bit on the work of Judicial Watch, while this speech and the introduction by Joe diGenova lay bare the scope of the fight to expose the whole extent of the corruption surrounding the 2015/6 USA presidential election campaign

The video is from December 3, 2018, when the Center for Security Policy held its annual Freedom Flame Award Dinner in honour of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. It was introduced by Joe diGenova, founding partner of diGenova & Toensing, law firm and is a former United States Attorney, District of Columbia, introduced Freedom Flame Award recipient Tom Fitton

VD Hanson Summarises the Total Breakdown of Legality in the DOJ/FBI/Mueller Operation

Posted on by December 26, 2018

Victor Davis Hanson is a scholar and historian as well as being a brilliant contemporary commentator. His website includes details of his career and academic history

He has made a number of summaries of the questionable or even illegal actions committed during the US electoral process during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Unless there is a change in the actions of the US Department of Justice or the FBI, surely it can never recover the reputation it had as a “democratic” process. The apparent gross illegalities and an aftermath of bitter and often fanatical hysteria by a partisan media has gone so far as to open the political universe to a conclusion that unless the guilty are brought to account for their illegal actions, the US electoral process will be forever tainted.

In his recent article sub-titled Criminals and partisans, accusing others of criminality and partisanship in National Review, Hanson once again cuts through the obstruction to clearly lay out many facts for consideration in the analysis, beginning with a neat introduction,

So far, we know that the U.S. government decided to intervene in a political campaign to help one candidate and to smear the other — under the pretext of Russian “collusion.” And so it hired or made use of spies and informants including Hank Greenberg, Stefan Halper, Felix Sater, and others to contact Trump campaign officials to catch them in supposed collusion traps. It enlisted the help of foreign intelligence agencies, specifically the British and Australians. It misled FISA courts into granting warrants to spy on Americans and, post factum, threatened long prisons sentences with those surveilled and interviewed. And as a result, it has so far found no collusion but may well find some misleading statements in hundreds of hours of testimonies from the likes of Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and perhaps Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone.

The whole article should be read in full. Further insights go to exposing the sheer hypocrisy of ignoring obvious criminality, the winking at crimes committed by Obama/Clinton hacks while prosecuting anyone who could help in the hunt against Trump. Of particular interest is the recent trend of trying to get first-ever prosecutions for “lying to Congress” whilst forgetting the most obvious cases of covering for grievous lies by the Obama former CIA director John Brennan and the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:-

Brennan has never faced consequences for admittedly lying under oath to Congress about collateral drone damage and surveillance of Senate staff computers; James Clapper likewise admittedly lied to Congress about NSA surveillance and faced no consequences. Has any administration ever had its two top intelligence officials admit to lying under oath on matters of national policy and security, and with impunity to a congressional committee?

The importance of the Hanson analysis is amplified by one of his conclusions

…has it effectively served as a deliberate distraction from the felonious behavior of dozens of Obama-administration and Clinton-campaign officials — all determined to ensure, by any means necessary, that Trump would never be president?

Australians ripped off by their government, Reserve Bank and Regulators. Again

Posted on by December 7, 2018

Australia has often been treated abominably by its regulators, politicians and the supposed financial backstops meant to ensure good financial practice, the Reserve Bank Board. It seems to mirror the same mindset seen in the USA which has also crippled it recently but, worse than that, all the worst elements of the policy mindset that made for hardly any changes after the Global Financial Crisis still seem to be in place

Reserve Bank of Australia has form for mistakes with its interest rate policy.

Adam Creighton of the Australian summed it up in his article on 6 December Reserve Bank paves way for further cuts in official interest rates” :-

The Reserve Bank has paved the way for further cuts to the official interest rate and could even resor­t to quantitative easing — “printing money” to buy government bonds — to ward off a potenti­al downturn.
In a major speech last night, RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle ….also warned that a lending slowdown could hurt the economy, in a sign the bank is fretting about the potential fallout from an emerging slump in house prices­. “There is a risk that a reduced appetite to lend will overly curtail borrowing with consequent effects for the Australian economy,” Dr Debelle said.

Yet another negligent Reserve Bank Board has acted incompetently and will cost the Australian public (& economy dearly). In the Keating years, many of us (myself included, then having a new mortgage) blamed Keating for the horrendous rises in interest rates which crippled us but the then-Board of the Reserve Bank later took its share of the blame for also keeping to back the tunnel-vision of backing the steep rises in interest rates for far too long ,- until it crippled us in fact. Soon afterwards we had the Keating “recession we had to have”. Those mistakes cost many of us dearly and made us forever wary and to look to overall benefits and not to cripple the economy.

Now we have seen the same negligence unfold for some years, directly led by the Reserve Bank itself. This time it sunk interest rates for years to lower the exchange rate of the dollar and, time after time, as the value stayed high or barely moved, they kept doing it. The by-product of artificially low interest rates – raging speculation in the housing market – was as obvious to all as was the stress felt by self-funded retirees as their interest rates on savings plummeted.

Now the bank board is prisoner to the housing bubble created by the RB policies and the bank (& government) are scared stiff of allowing the natural correction that should occur. When you have encouraged so many people to get in on the bubble, to shove money at them and allow people with hardly any assets to own multiple homes on the basis of a capital gain in a short while, the obvious danger in this will lead to a crash in the market as they overreach. It is a natural phenomenon that the market will correct and remove that person or entity from the market by bankrupting or otherwise removing it from the now-corrupted market. Reserve Bank policy has made the housing sector and its participants virtually exempt from the normal processes of risk and bankruptcy. Seemingly without fear of failure, these participants can and do take excessive risks.

Just like the abominable Too Big to Fail politics that ruined the world at the GFC, this housing mess has been allowed to get out of hand. They won’t correct it and allow the speculators to fail, be weeded out, the normal processes of bankruptcy and creative destruction, because of the immediate damage flowing from it and the usual multiple trade jobs in the construction industry.

Just as those incompetent, Too Big to Fail banks were allowed to become Even Bigger and not go out of business to fix the market again, and lapsed into the same old practices which led to the GFC in the first place, so do our failures see their lifeline as being the policies of the Reserve Bank and government wishes of every kind. Now we see the ludicrous idea that state governments should be protected by regulators from suffering the consequences of their own policies! (See WA Treasurer calls on APRA to tailor policy to regional conditions as property woes weigh on economy).

It’s about time somebody called out the Reserve Bank and didn’t just put up with its mistakes.