- Jun 6, 2007
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This whole disaster of the impeachment effort against President Donald Trump getting traction lies at the feet of the media if they weren't so bias against him if they weren't so committed to getting him out of the office through impeachment it would have died long ago; and because of this America has lost and will lose so much time it should be spending on trying to make progress on its many major problems. The untruths in the media can pile as high as Mount McKinley but they cannot change the truth that the U.S. Constitution requires that the President have committed a very serious crime for him or her to be impeached and assuming the most incriminating facts alleged by the Democrats are true the very serious crime threshold is not met. The body of delegates that created the Constitution directly essentially addressed the issue of whether abuse of power by a President should be the standard which dictates impeachment and by vote rejected that standard further the language of the Constitution is clear it lists specific crimes and then specifies high crimes or misdemeanors as the standard! Two notable journalistic outlets stand out as really betraying their duty as major news media sources for the American people, CNN and the Washington Post. Both use to be the gold standard for journalistic fairness I don't know what it is whether it is a rogue group of Vice-Presidents, producers or editors from these organizations that have decided to sideline journalistic principles in pursuit of political and policy agendas or it is the official values of and policies of the organizations in any event Jeff Zucker and Jeffrey Bezos because they are the top authority figure in their respective organization they are ultimately culpable for these transgressions against America and need to have a world shattering conversion experience and get their organization back on the path of being a principled and fair journalistic outlet or be permanently removed from any relationship with these entities and good authority needs to be acquired for these news media outlets so they get back to fulfilling their crucial role for our Democracy!
What struck me as a perfect example of these journalistic outlet sources bias and failure to be good journalistic outlets is their reporting on the DOJ Inspector General's report on the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. They hammered on the point that the report said that the FBI did not break the law and was not politically motivated in its work sure they mentioned that the IG report identified a lot of shortcomings in the staff's work and FBI/DOJ policy but did not shine the appropriate spotlight on the shocking revelations of the report. The shocking revelation was that the FBI covertly recorded conversations between their agent and members of a major political party's Presidential campaign, the President Trumps campaign. The alarming revelation is the scant rationale or basis for the FBI's opening up an investigation of the campaign. The FBI's basis was that an Australian diplomat told them that an advisor to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, told him that Russia contacted the Trump campaign and told them that they had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton and could covertly release it to the American public. The Papadopoulos report was not that the Trump campaign was expected to sign on to the plan or that they would receive the information first so they could figure out how to best release It in a manner hurting Ms. Clinton, it was we have this bad information and may use it this is not a crime for a campaign to hear such dirt and heaven help us if it ever becomes so. These media outlets should have been sounding the horn that circuit breakers need to be added to out regulations to stop the FBI from taking the humongous step of investigating a Presidential campaign based on flimsy allegations, at least the regulations should require that the AG sign off on the opening of such an investigation and I think prudence calls for the law to require a leader in each party for each chamber be notified and asked for input so that if our democracy is being undermined by an investigation Congress is on notice of it's need to act to stop the harm!
The other beyond the pale revelation of the IG report was that you know that Steele report where the FBI majorly screwed up by not independently checking Steele's sources where if they did would have found out the Steele report's findings were inaccurate on multiple points. The warrant to surveil Carter Page which the Republicans have acted like it was a crucifixtion of Christ because of the use of significant parts of the Steele's report by the FBI in the affidavit for this warrant was a warrant to surveil Carter Page "after" he left the Trump campaign. The media time and again forgets to mention this critical point; Page left the Trump Campaign at the end of September and the warrant was obtained at the end of October, this is a big, big, big fact it means the FBI did not get a warrant on the Trump campaign. Moreover, if one reads the IG's account of the recordings of Paige conversations with the FBI agent for the two conversation that took place before the warrant was obtained Paige is a shady low life character that deserves a warrant to be issued on him, completely forgetting the Steele dossier. In the Paige conversations he essentially says that he has a blank check from Russians to create a think tank (why would Russian's be so accommodating?), he says that although he wasn't involved in the Republican Convention's change in policy on Russia annexing Crimea by force and the current penalty against Russia over it his "team" was behind it who is his "team" the part of the campaign green lighting Russian interference in our election, he says he emailed Manafort on several occasions but never met Manafort, Manafort the guy that has strong shady connections to Russian Oligarchs close allies of Putin, Page thinks out loud what he would do if he got the hacked emails and asks the agent if that is a good idea, Page says he thinks the hacking and release was good because it adds transparency to the election (How about the concept of Privacy?). The media doesn't focus on the fact that even before the FBI opened up the investigation on the Trump campaign, the U.S. attorney office of New York was investigating Carter page as a Russian agent; Mr. Page is not a good guy he is too supportive of the current Putin Russian government with all its badness; how all these major news media outlets could be siding with Carter Page and playing his tune that he is a persecuted victim is journalistic mal-practice!
What struck me as a perfect example of these journalistic outlet sources bias and failure to be good journalistic outlets is their reporting on the DOJ Inspector General's report on the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. They hammered on the point that the report said that the FBI did not break the law and was not politically motivated in its work sure they mentioned that the IG report identified a lot of shortcomings in the staff's work and FBI/DOJ policy but did not shine the appropriate spotlight on the shocking revelations of the report. The shocking revelation was that the FBI covertly recorded conversations between their agent and members of a major political party's Presidential campaign, the President Trumps campaign. The alarming revelation is the scant rationale or basis for the FBI's opening up an investigation of the campaign. The FBI's basis was that an Australian diplomat told them that an advisor to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, told him that Russia contacted the Trump campaign and told them that they had incriminating information about Hillary Clinton and could covertly release it to the American public. The Papadopoulos report was not that the Trump campaign was expected to sign on to the plan or that they would receive the information first so they could figure out how to best release It in a manner hurting Ms. Clinton, it was we have this bad information and may use it this is not a crime for a campaign to hear such dirt and heaven help us if it ever becomes so. These media outlets should have been sounding the horn that circuit breakers need to be added to out regulations to stop the FBI from taking the humongous step of investigating a Presidential campaign based on flimsy allegations, at least the regulations should require that the AG sign off on the opening of such an investigation and I think prudence calls for the law to require a leader in each party for each chamber be notified and asked for input so that if our democracy is being undermined by an investigation Congress is on notice of it's need to act to stop the harm!
The other beyond the pale revelation of the IG report was that you know that Steele report where the FBI majorly screwed up by not independently checking Steele's sources where if they did would have found out the Steele report's findings were inaccurate on multiple points. The warrant to surveil Carter Page which the Republicans have acted like it was a crucifixtion of Christ because of the use of significant parts of the Steele's report by the FBI in the affidavit for this warrant was a warrant to surveil Carter Page "after" he left the Trump campaign. The media time and again forgets to mention this critical point; Page left the Trump Campaign at the end of September and the warrant was obtained at the end of October, this is a big, big, big fact it means the FBI did not get a warrant on the Trump campaign. Moreover, if one reads the IG's account of the recordings of Paige conversations with the FBI agent for the two conversation that took place before the warrant was obtained Paige is a shady low life character that deserves a warrant to be issued on him, completely forgetting the Steele dossier. In the Paige conversations he essentially says that he has a blank check from Russians to create a think tank (why would Russian's be so accommodating?), he says that although he wasn't involved in the Republican Convention's change in policy on Russia annexing Crimea by force and the current penalty against Russia over it his "team" was behind it who is his "team" the part of the campaign green lighting Russian interference in our election, he says he emailed Manafort on several occasions but never met Manafort, Manafort the guy that has strong shady connections to Russian Oligarchs close allies of Putin, Page thinks out loud what he would do if he got the hacked emails and asks the agent if that is a good idea, Page says he thinks the hacking and release was good because it adds transparency to the election (How about the concept of Privacy?). The media doesn't focus on the fact that even before the FBI opened up the investigation on the Trump campaign, the U.S. attorney office of New York was investigating Carter page as a Russian agent; Mr. Page is not a good guy he is too supportive of the current Putin Russian government with all its badness; how all these major news media outlets could be siding with Carter Page and playing his tune that he is a persecuted victim is journalistic mal-practice!
