Why Entrap Flynn?

Andrew C. McCarthy has been one of the invaluable voices on understanding the whole bogus Trump-as-Russian-asset smokescreen thrown up by Obama-era holdovers. His work normally appears at National Review.

Today he has a long, thorough column detailing his deconstruction of the motive for the FBI entrapment of Michael Flynn. Check out his reasoning.

How could the FBI sustain an investigation targeting the president when the president would have the power to shut the investigation down?

The only way the bureau could pull that off would be to conceal from the president the fullness of the Russia investigation — in particular, the fact that Trump was the target. That is why Flynn had to go.

President Trump was a political phenomenon but a novice when it came to governance. (snip) The staff he brought into the government consisted mainly of loyalists. There were some skilled advisers, too, but their experience was not in the national-security realm.

The exception was Flynn. The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency knew how the spy agencies worked. He knew where and how they kept secrets.

The FBI did not start out with that perjury-trap plan. They ended up with the perjury-trap plan because there was no practical alternative if the bureau was to achieve its objective — the withholding of information about Russia from the incoming Trump team, in order to keep the Trump–Russia investigation alive.

The goal was to get Flynn to lie. Not to lie so they’d have leverage to threaten a prosecution and thus pressure Flynn to reveal vital evidence he’d been concealing. They wanted him to lie for the sake of lying — so they could get rid of him.

It is probably best to view McCarthy’s argument as a reasonable hypothesis, rather than as proven fact for the moment at least. Perhaps subsequent prosecution will show it to be fact.

Motives of evildoers are not always discernible, and the Obama administration was well-supplied with evildoers: Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Rice, and Jarrett were all-stars of the Obama coven. Slo Joe Biden was more of a mascot.

Update

As far as I knew yesterday, it was true nobody was speculating about the role of Obama in spying on the Trump campaign. Today, I reach a different conclusion.

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit has Fox News video of Kellyanne Conway being interviewed about the new revelations in the Michael Flynn case. She says:

I will remind everybody that President Obama told President-elect Donald Trump he had two things to worry about, North Korea and Michael Flynn! Folks that’s just weird on its face! You gotta worry about a nuclear capable dictator in North Korea and you gotta worry about a general of 37 years who served in the Obama administration.

Other sources suggest Obama's beef with Flynn was that the general didn't share Obama's optimistic view of Iran, but viewed them as what we know them to be - an implacable enemy of the U.S. If that was Obama's view of Flynn, doing what's necessary to get him fired or worse would make sense to Obama.

Hoft adds:

Earlier this week the DOJ released hidden documents that prove the Obama White House was running the operation to spy on and set up the Trump campaign and administration.

So far, Barack Obama has remained silent about his role in this historic crime. Eventually, he will have to try to explain why he was spying on the opposition party from the Oval Office.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for the media to question the ethics of "St. Obama," the light-bringer. However, it is possible certain Republican Senators might have sufficient courage to face down the inevitable cries of "racism" that would follow doing so.

A Constitutional scholar would know if former presidents have some sort of immunity from prosecution when no longer in office. It is my hope they do not.

Addendum

An additional thought concerning FBI harassment of the Trump campaign. The wiretapping, apparent intentional entrapment of Michael Flynn, and lying to the FISA court all happened during the lame duck days of the Obama administration, overseen by Obama appointees at Justice, CIA and especially the FBI.

Concerning this wrongdoing, a question exactly nobody is asking is what did Obama know and when did he know it? I've recently read no reporter has asked Obama about his involvement and knowledge. 

Those questions should be asked to put him on the record, at the very least. Who knows, maybe he will perjure himself.

Dirty Hands

The Federalist reports that documents from the FBI show their hands are dirty in the Michael Flynn case. Inappropriate political motivation appears evident.

Handwritten notes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that had been inappropriately withheld from Flynn’s defense team for years show that a key goal of the agents investigating Flynn was “to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”

In early 2017, FBI agents planned to question Flynn under false pretenses and without his attorneys present regarding his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The note-taker, whose identity was not made clear in the document production, wrote that an alternate goal is to “get [Flynn] to admit breaking the Logan Act,” a reference to a 1799 law restricting communications between private citizens and foreign governments. The law is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used to successfully prosecute a single American citizen.

We begin to see more clearly why President Trump fired FBI Director Comey. Comey is abnormally tall, I wonder if they make orange jumpsuits in his size?

Reynolds' Higher Ed Apocalypse Looms

Gap Year: " A one-year hiatus from academic studies to allow for nonacademic activities."

Instapundit links to a National Review article about students' college plans for the fall.

The gap year is suddenly a hotter topic, as colleges face the possibility that the fall semester and maybe the entire 2020-21 academic year could be done remotely, or could face serious restrictions on campus educational, extracurricular, and social activities such as sports, science labs, theater, music, clubs, and parties. A McKinsey Consulting report warns that normal campus life may not return until the fall of 2021.

ABC News reported that “Nearly one in six graduating seniors, according to a poll by the Baltimore-based Art & Science Group, now indicate that due to the coronavirus pandemic, they will likely revise their plans of attending a four-year college in the fall and take a gap year."

What happens if the richest students bail out? The entire economic model of campuses could be undermined, especially if nobody at all is paying room and board and there is no revenue to be had from athletic programs, while colleges are still paying for their sprawling real estate and the extensive bureaucratic overhead that supports modern campus life. (snip) Some schools on the margins may go out of business; others may finally face real pressure to trim back layers of administration and delay campus-life building projects.

What if close to half the kids are only there for the good times? In the absence of which, living at home and doing classwork on line may not appeal, and a fair number who don't continue will never finish.

This leaves them with large loans, no degree, and little way to ever repay. That worst-of-all-worlds predicament could elect a Bernie Sanders clone in 2024.

Caution Advised

Lucianne.com links to a Yahoo News article about Hydrochloroquine and Covid-19. The article quotes a group called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons as claiming the following.

To date, the total number of reported patients treated with HCQ, with or without zinc and the widely used antibiotic azithromycin, is 2,333, writes AAPS, in observational data from China, France, South Korea, Algeria, and the U.S. Of these, 2,137 or 91.6 percent improved clinically. There were 63 deaths, all but 11 in a single retrospective report from the Veterans Administration where the patients were severely ill.

I'd really like to believe this is true, and it could in fact be true. However, Wikipedia describes the official-sounding Association of American Physicians and Surgeons in these words.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943. It is opposed to the Affordable Care Act and other forms of universal health insurance.[1][2] The group was reported to have about 4,000 members in 2005, and 5,000 in 2014.

The association is generally recognized as politically conservative or ultra-conservative, and its publication advocates a range of scientifically discredited hypotheses, including the belief that HIV does not cause AIDS, that being gay reduces life expectancy, that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, and that there is a causal relationship between vaccines and autism.

That description suggests not viewing the AAPS as experts. Their beliefs, if accurately described, are bunkum. This group is exactly who you do not want an endorsement from.

Economic Intercourse?

CBS Miami interviewed presumptive Democrat nominee for president Joe Biden, during which he made the following comments, transcript at the Daily Wire.

I would get much more engaged in the world, we can’t step back. If in fact, for example, we solve the problem in the United States of America and you don’t solve it in other parts of the world, you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to have travel bans, you’re going to not be able to do, have economic intercourse around the world.

Biden's use of "economic intercourse" is absolutely correct English and makes perfect sense as used, as a synonym for "foreign trade." It could also accurately, if sarcastically, refer to prostitution.

You'd hope a candidate for president who stands accused of sexual assault by a former employee would avoid this sort of double entendre in laying out (pun intended) his foreign policy. His candidacy will be fun to watch and comment upon ... tres snarkalicious.

Shoes Dropping, and a Quote

If you've been following Tara Reade's #MeToo accusations against presumptive Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, another 2 shoes have fallen. Her next-door neighbor in the mid-1990s, one Lynda LaCasse, says she remembers talking with Tara about the sexual assault, and telling Reade she should report it to the police.

The article also reports Lorraine Sanchez, who worked with Reade in CA, remembers hearing Reade's story too. It certainly appears the legacy media believe #MeToo only applies to Republicans.

My choice for quote of the day, Tara Reade about the Joe Biden groping encounter.

I wanted to be a senator, I didn't want to sleep with one.

The Antidote

Have you been experiencing unwarranted optimism about the Covid-19 epidemic? Altogether too cheerful, are you? I just read an 'antidote' to your cheeriness at The Atlantic.

A policy wonk with the unlikely name of Yascha Mounk writes that the pandemic outlook is gloomy. Mounk concludes we are far from herd immunity, have no useful treatments, no vaccine in sight, and our government is not being helpful.

He writes we have next-to-no chance of contact tracing (I agree) unlike smaller, more regimented societies. Like most leftists, he appears to regret our unwillingness to be surveilled, to do what our 'betters' believe we should. If only we had the hive mentality ... for which lack I thank Heavens.

Maybe Not “Policies”

Hospitals are in trouble, too many beds are empty, revenues are therefore down and layoffs of not-busy staff impend. I’ve seen several commenters blaming Covid-19 policies for this state of affairs.

Maybe they are correct, maybe not. I’d like to propose an alternate hypothesis. The same people President Trump and VP Pence keep praising for staying home and following the guidelines are avoiding hospitals which they view as places to catch Covid-19.

I ask myself, would I enter our nearby hospital now unless I felt in imminent danger of dying? I answer that question with a clear “No.”

What would it take to get me through its doors? Answer: a suspected heart attack, stroke, or massive trauma as from a car crash or fire. Something very painful or immediately life-threatening, including suspected CoV.

What would I avoid going there for? Anything even remotely elective, say a new knee or hip replacement, a colonoscopy, any procedure I can reasonably postpone.

What we’re learning is that a surprisingly large proportion of what happens at your local hospital is other-than-acute care, procedures to make people more safe, comfortable or attractive but in some sense “elective” or perhaps a better term is “postponable.”

We’ve been told that governments or hospitals have “banned” such activities. I suspect what’s really happening is that neither elective patients nor their physicians are very willing to go to a place where people are actively sick with, and dying from, the “killer cold.”

I predict a change in “policies” won’t bring ‘em back. We may need to create facilities for plague victims separate from those for “normal” hospital activities which involve less risk of cross-contamination, of shared infection.

The problem may be one of perception, but perceptions people act upon become realities we end up having to work around. Expect also to see empty beds in long-term care facilities, for the same reasons.

Kotkin: Sprawl Beats Density

Writing OpEd for The Los Angeles Times, Joel Kotkin compares the LA and NYC models of how a big city can be configured, as seen through the lens of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For nearly a century, Los Angeles’ urban form has infuriated urbanists who prefer a more concentrated model built around a single central core.

Yet, in the COVID-19 pandemic, our much-maligned dispersed urban pattern has proven a major asset. Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs have had a considerable number of cases, but overall this highly diverse, globally engaged region has managed to keep rates of infection well below that of dense, transit-dependent New York City.

As of April 24, Los Angeles County, with nearly 2 million more residents than the five boroughs, had 850 coronavirus-related deaths compared with 16,646 in New York City.

My back-of-envelope calculation suggests NYC has had 20 times the deaths of LA County, with fewer people. Even the math-challenged can understand those numbers. Urban sprawl is healthier for people, if not for the planet, than is urban density, end of discussion.

Pseudoscience

Chris "Fredo" Cuomo of CNN is a well-known #neverTrump figure of the media. It happens that Cuomo's wife Cristina is a nutcase, check out what Ben Domenech of The Federalist quotes from her far-from-private blog.

“Here is a more affordable way of neutralizing heavy metals: Twice, I took a bath. I added ½ cup ONLY of Clorox to a full bath of warm water to combat the radiation and metals in my system and oxygenate it,” she suggests. “We want to neutralize heavy metals because they slow-up the electromagnetic frequency of our cells, which is our energy field, and we need a good flow of energy.”

Domenech has a bunch more of this total nonsense, but a sample gives you the flavor without automatically triggering your gag reflex. It's looney tunes time.

Poor Chris, imagine if your children got half their genes from someone this 'original' ... scary. He makes fun of Trump on air and comes home to her.

Later ... This person is also the sister-in-law of Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York who is often mentioned wistfully by those who don't like either Trump or Biden. If Andrew ever becomes president, she will fill the Billy Carter role in his administration. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll at Instapundit for the link.

Circling Torpedoes

Last Wednesday we wrote about #MeToo allegations against presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden by his former staffer, Tara Reade. Biden has denied groping her.

Now video tape has surfaced of Larry King taking a call from Reade's mother on his CNN show 27 years ago. She was asking how her daughter should have dealt with "problems" with her senator boss, short of going to the press.

CNN hates Trump, makes few bones about it, and hopes for a Biden win this November. Now it turns out call-in comments made on one of their shows could help torpedo Biden’s chances of beating Trump. I love the irony, CNN hoist by their own petard.

This pretty much proves Reade didn't just invent whatever problems she had with Biden since he's run for president. Standards have changed, it is easy to believe 27 years ago her mother didn't want to say explicitly her daughter was sexually assaulted. Victimhood wasn't so prized in 1993.

Etymological Note: Shakespeare’s elegant petard metaphor renders literally in modern English as blown up by one’s own bomb, self-damaging, or in modern slang, a self-own.

Later ... Link to the King video repaired, earlier link went dead. The reason: CNN acting like a cat who had an "accident" on a hard surface ... attempting a coverup.

A Tragicomedy of Errors

I support the U.S. military, my father. three uncles and an aunt served. That support doesn't mean I believe they never screw up, we have an unfortunate example before us.

Captain Brett Crozier of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt confronted a Covid-19 outbreak on his ship and believed, correctly or otherwise, that his superior wasn't taking it seriously. His behavior suggests his boss wouldn't let him take steps to ameliorate the situation.

So he wrote a perhaps intemperate email up the chain of command, someone leaked it to the media, and the Acting Secretary of the Navy relieved him from command. After which that Acting Secretary flew out to the ship, told the crew the former captain was "naive and stupid" and reportedly was booed by the crew. He has since resigned, likely under pressure.

Now CNBC reports that the Navy has recommended reinstating Captain Brett Crozier as captain of the ill-fated Theodore Roosevelt. It sits in port at Guam while they try to get the CoV outbreak under control. Social distancing simply isn't possible on a warship; reportedly over 800 of the nearly 4100 crew have tested positive for CoV.

This whole thing is a public relations disaster, start to finish. Nobody ends up looking good, not the Navy, not the Administration, and particularly not Captain Crozier's boss who seemingly told him to tough it out and not be a wimp. Whoever stonewalled Crozier should be thinking about taking retirement more or less yesterday.

Plague Diary

This time of year we live a couple of hours drive north of the CA state capital, Sacramento. We had occasion to go into our nearby small town this early afternoon to pick up a birthday cake and a few groceries.

We weren't quite the only people in the grocery wearing face masks. I saw a few others, but most were unmasked and somewhat half-hearted about social distancing too.

This was the first time the market had available a choice of toilet paper brands. When the lock-down started I believe I wrote that I'd believe it was ending when toilet paper reappeared in the stores. I guess I have to say we've reached that milestone. They were still out of yeast which a relative doesn't have and would like if we can send him some.

I look forward to taking a CoV antibody test sometime in the next few weeks, to see if I have had a mostly symptomless case. Neither result will surprise me; I'm genuinely uncertain if I had a brush with it or merely the spring allergies.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called our nation’s states the “laboratories of democracy.” He wrote in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann that a “state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

President Trump is taking this approach with the Covid-19 crisis, allowing state governors, who are closer to the situation in their individual states, to decide what is right for their constituents. This is both wise, and politically expedient, as the blame for a too-early, insufficiently cautious opening of the economy then falls on the governor, not on the president. Unsurprisingly, governors like this policy and even Democrat governors have praised it and him for choosing to delegate.

Clearly, for instance, the governor of Wyoming whose state has the lowest population density in the lower 48 (6/sq. mile) deals with a vastly different situation than the governor of, for instance, New Jersey which is highest at 1218 people per square mile. In WY social distancing is how we live normally; in NJ or RI they have to work at it.

Farewell to Drudge Report

Matt Drudge, or at least the Drudge Report site, has gone from pro-Trump to #neverTrump. Various theories exist of why this is so; none has been proven to my satisfaction. In spite of its continued utility, as a supporter of the President I will no longer cite it.

Patronage, or the lack thereof, is the way the market signals a vendor whether or not s/he is on the right track. My non-patronage is my signal to whoever is now running Drudge Report I do not approve of the change.

I found a site - Western Free Press - which describes substitutes for DR one might use. I've checked out several and decided to give the News Ammo page a trial.

Luxury or Necessity

A continuing theme at COTTonLINE is the downside of urbanization; we are frank exponents of low density living. You’re either tired of us harping on the theme or in agreement with it.

If you favor low density living, Jim Geraghty of National Review has a column you’ll like. He thinks it’s possible the CoV scare will cause many urban dwellers to rethink that choice. Especially influential is the adaptation of office workers to working at home, which many including one nephew and another nephew’s wife, are today doing.

At some point the coronavirus crisis will end, but one of the extraordinarily difficult lessons of this ordeal is that the catastrophic scenarios that sound like something out of science fiction can happen in real life, and that the vast majority of us are at the mercy of fate in these scenarios. (snip) Someday, humanity could encounter one (virus) that is even worse

This outbreak is likely to accelerate the trend of seeing urban life as a luxury for the wealthy and young and a necessity for the poor and old.

Now we are learning, once again, that densely packed cities are particularly dangerous places to be during a disease outbreak.

I’d take issue with his judgment of “urban life” being a “necessity” for the old. It’s really only necessary for the old who are poor unless one is so frail one needs to be five minutes from an emergency room. Even then, small city life works.

Contact Tracing

People in positions of authority are talking about getting to a place where we can identify people with Covid-19 symptoms and a positive active virus test result. They then propose "contact tracing" to find out from whom they may have contacted the virus and to whom they may have passed it along. I doubt that will be possible, for two reasons.

First, something like 45% of those who have the disease never are sick, but are nevertheless contagious.  Short of testing everyone every week or two, how will you pick these up? Second, people who ride crowded public transportation - subway cars or buses - have no idea who they're riding beside or in front of; whose hand held the strap they're now hanging onto before they boarded.

Add those two together and contact tracing will only work for those who commute alone in their car and are face-to-face with a limited number throughout the day. Imagine trying to do contact tracing for a barber who takes walk-ins, or a cabbie who's flagged down by cash fares he encounters a single time. Or someone who works the counter at McDonalds or the DMV. Contact tracing is not feasible.

Sunshine

A very interesting presentation this afternoon at the now-daily White House briefing dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. The Director of a Dept. of Homeland Security installation at Fort Detrick located in Frederick, MD, reported on research they've been doing on how long the Covid-19 virus in human saliva or mucus survives on hard surfaces.

It turns out that more heat, higher humidity and direct sunlight (UV rays) drastically reduce the virus' survivability on hard surfaces. Not to zero, unfortunately, but they do shorten the 'lifespan' by a large factor. This was learned via lab tests varying these three factors.

A similar finding was reported earlier by Chinese researchers, but I've been more than cautious about putting much faith in what they're permitted to report. I'm inclined to trust our DHS people.

This finding suggests you are safer outdoors, in direct sunlight, if you must be around people with whom you are not sequestered. I would still try to stay 6' away from them if possible. It also suggests that UV sources may be helpful in reducing viral load indoors. Do not overdose on UV, however, down that road are sunburn and skin cancer.