‘The Trump Surveillance Story Explodes’

Barack Obama, Donald Trump

In his Talking Points Memo, Bill O’Reilly distills the Susan Rice twist in “the Trump Surveillance story”:

“Tonight we will give you just the facts, no speculation, no hysteria. The latest from Fox News correspondents Adam Housley and Malia Zimmerman is this: ‘Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.’ That is very troubling and if it can be proven, Susan Rice is in major trouble. Also, because the national security advisor was so close to President Obama, he will have to answer questions as well. So you can see an enormous story is developing and it really doesn’t matter whether the liberal mainstream media ignores it. Congress and the FBI will not. To be fair to Ms. Rice, she denies all wrongdoing and should be given the presumption of innocence. That is the American way. Here’s my question: If Susan Rice did surveil the Trump people for a year, what was her motive? This woman is a national security advisor, she’s got a lot of work to do. So why would she be running over to the National Security Agency or the CIA reviewing wiretaps? And why, if a Trump person was involved, would she want the name? The key question here is motivation. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should subpoena Susan Rice immediately, and both committees should send written questions to President Obama. Also, the FBI should interview Ambassador Rice and conduct a very thorough investigation of her behavior. Because if the Trump campaign or the transition team were being spied upon by the Obama administration, that has to be uncovered. Or am I wrong?”

The Factor pursued the Susan Rice story with FoxNews.com investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman. “We will be covering this story for weeks and months,” she predicted, “because it’s so vast and we don’t know so many things. We don’t know why they were surveilled and why President Trump and his family may have been included. This was going on for at least a year. We have intelligence sources and on Monday we were able to confirm that it was Susan Rice who did the unmasking. We believe someone in another agency may have told her to request the records and have those names unmasked. This whole thing was about embarrassing Donald Trump and making his presidency unstable, and it’s pretty clear that laws were broken.”

Equal-Pay Idiocy Refuted

Economy, Free Markets, Gender, Labor, Logic, Reason

The logic is as simple as it is foolproof. An “air-tight free-market argument,” as I explained: “If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. That entrepreneurs don’t ditch men en masse for women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”  (“The Week of Whining Womin”)

The logic is not, however, female proof.

Ridiculous:

 

What’s Islam Been Up To Lately? (4/4/017)

Britain, Crime, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Russia, Terrorism

Without further ado:

When it comes to Islam, Russians are very different to our overlords who art in DC.

Russians are quick to release to the public an image of the alleged suspect in the St. Petersburg subway bombing:

Russian authorities don’t seem to look away:

Chinese and Russians are known to object to the rape of their women. WTF! Didn’t they get the memo?

Meanwhile back in Sweden it’s submission:

Is Trump abandoning his promise to keep the unvettable out?

Neocons and neolibs have generally fought on the side of Islam:

Corporate culture and Islam: for it.

Gen. Mattis loves Islam. The political establishment loves him back:

The Westminster Bridge Attack & the West.

Theresa May, Islamic scholar:

Tommy Robinson: Much better than T. May:

Kill the Jews:

The Dhimma in Dar al Islam elect Muslims:

Die occasionally, for “Our Values,” say our representatives:

Patriots expunged from US Intelligence:

Doh! It’s because we’re free that they hate us! How do I know? “W” said so.

Bill O’Reilly’s Best Joke Ever

America, History, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-history

Bill O’Reilly is definitely funny. He’s funnier than his sidekick, Dennis Miller, whose humor hasn’t aged well.

O’Reilly was especially hilarious, the other day, when attempting to illustrate the historically unprecedented venom toward Donald Trump and his presidency. Said Mr. O’Reilly, “As a historian … “

LOL.

Bill O’Reilly is no historian. I suppose O’Reilly is an historian in the same way court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is. If you treat O’Reilly’s books as works of history, you’re in deep intellectual trouble. (Join the nation.)

Recommended, in the context of O’Reilly’s “scholarship,” is Thomas DiLorenzo’s review of Killing Lincoln, O’Reilly’s “big, boring bag of nothingness” about the assassination”:

Over 100 books are already in print on the subject, and all O’Reilly and his coauthor do is cut and paste what others have written on the subject, but without including a single footnote! The authors also have the annoying habit of writing things like, “in his mind, he was thinking that . . ., ” as though they could know what Lincoln was thinking when he did this or that 150 years ago. This is a standard practice of the “Lincoln scholars,” who also constantly claim to know what was “in his heart” (nothing but love and kindness, of course) in their writings.
There is nothing at all in O’Reilly’s book about Lincoln’s policies and behavior in office. There is nothing about his statist economic policies, his trashing of the Constitution by illegally suspending Habeas Corpus and mass arresting thousands of Northern political dissenters, his intentionally waging war on Southern civilians in violation of all moral and legal codes regarding warfare, his lifelong obsession with deporting all black people, free or slave, from America, etc. In addition, it is apparently so full of historical errors that it has been banned from the bookstore at Ford’s Theater, the famous site of the assassination.

If you want to understand The Idea of America, read foundational books on American republican virtues (not least the title linked). Begin with the book The Power in The People by Felix Morley, and you’ll be able to watch or read Bill O’Reilly’s folderol, and such stuff, and assess it for the shallow nothingness that it is.

Truth is not about the penny plan, or the red line in Syria, or whether to beat up on Russia or not. It’s about grasping the foundational principles of liberty and the limits of government—the principles Jefferson, Madison, Mason, John Roanoke, John Calhoun held dear; grasping those core issues and applying them to the issues of the day.

The other exquisite text by Morley is Freedom and Federalism.

For starters, let’s see these texts on your coffee tables.