Liberal Logic 101- How the Left Thinks and Why They Will Lose Elections

Liberal Logic 101- How the Left Thinks and Why They Will Lose Elections

In the fifth century B.C., Sun Tzu, general, military strategist and philosopher, wrote The Art of War, a study on how to fight and win wars. The book would go on to have major influence on military, business, legal and political strategy- entities where competition is a major factor- and even up to our present day. In it, Sun Tzu cautions the reader to “know thyself, and know thy enemy.” He explains that doing so almost guarantees victory in any conflict, and that failure to do so can almost guarantee defeat.

“Know thyself, and know thy enemy.”

It isn’t hard to ascertain one’s political leanings- especially in an age where we are becoming increasingly polarized between left and right. Listening carefully to the words being used, it becomes pretty clear where an individual’s politics are, even when the individual wants these inklings to remain private, and this is even true for both Democrats and Republicans. For instance, if someone uses the term “progressive” in the place of the word “liberal,” you can bet your bottom dollar that this person is a liberal.

Liberals, by and large, hate the word “liberal,” because they are smart enough to know that the American people have an innate disdain for anything so named. That’s sad because, traditionally, the word “liberal” was once evocative of open-mindedness and free-thinking, with a willingness to try new ideas and challenge the status quo. In the past seventy years, or so, the word has taken on the trappings of socialism, communism and globalism- three philosophies repugnant to conservatives, who instead believe in entrepreneurship, capitalism and nationalism. In almost every contemporary political issue, the struggle comes down to these two competing philosophies, which explains why President Donald Trump is so reviled by socialists, like much of today’s Democrat Party, communists (yes, they still exist, particularly among Antifa and other radicals) and globalists, including much of the mainstream media and all of the living past presidents- Carter, both Bushes, Clinton and Obama. Show me an anti-Trump or NeverTrump Republican in either the House or Senate, and I will show you a closet liberal who pretends to be a conservative but, in fact, is a believer in big government, wealth re-distribution, internationalism and, inevitably, a one-world government.

Republicans who truly want to remain in office will have to start coming around to embrace the president they once reviled, because the presidency of Donald Trump is going to be the central issue of the 2018 mid-term elections and, inevitably, the 2020 presidential election. Failure to do so will ensure that the days of a Republican legislator are numbered, and this is largely due to the corners in which Democrats have painted themselves.

Rather than rallying around substantive issues, like healthcare, the budget, immigration and, essentially, the proper role of government, Democrats and anti-Trump, NeverTrump Republicans have a singular purpose- depose, impeach and otherwise destroy the presidency of Donald Trump, by any and all means. With help from the collusive mainstream media, messaging this over-arching philosophy is easy enough, but not so easy as to sway the thinking of true, philosophical conservatives and the legions of Trump supporters across the land…and therein lies the secret as to why Trump will win re-election in 2020.

All of those forces set against Trump have made a tactical error which renders their dreams of bringing down the president, and/or defeating him in 2020, unlikely to the point of certainty. In their hatred of Trump, they have allowed their disdain to extend towards hating those who voted for, and continue to support, Donald Trump. This hatred, as most evidenced by the Hollywood elites and other notable celebrities, who regularly and consistently show their disdain for America, patriotism, family and even religion, values which they condescendingly mock and deride- suggests that believing in God, standing for the national anthem, saying the Pledge of Allegiance is indicative of low intelligence. Telling large swaths of American voters that they are of low intellect is not going to attract their votes, any more than basing an entire political platform on ending the presidency of Donald Trump. In attacking God, or belief in God, in attacking America, patriotism, and the desire to put America first, liberals alienate enough voters, right out of the gate, to prevent any liberal from ever again prevailing in national elections. Additionally, continued blind allegiance to Barack Obama, and even to Hillary Clinton, whose criminal behavior is just now starting to come to light for many who were previously oblivious to this behavior, will push many even further away from the Democrat party- despite claims that their base is so “energized” in the wake of Trump’s presidency.

With every day, and with every instance of media bias against the president, it becomes more and more evident that the media has lost the trust of the American people, who will vote for President Trump and his legislative supporters. They will do so, even if for no other reason, than to roundly reject the notion that it is they who are “politically incorrect,” and therefore unworthy of the respect due to any American standing up for his or her belief. Liberals who oppose border security, a more robust international stance, tax reduction and regulatory relief do so at their own peril, because most Americans feel otherwise, and this only reinforces the president’s position in the next election(s).

As those opposed to Donald Trump’s presidency grow ever louder and ever angrier, with every passing day, they also ignore another crucial teaching from Sun Tzu, twenty-five centuries ago, and they do so at their own peril:

“It is the angry warrior who will lose the war.”

-Drew Nickell, 28 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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The News Today- Quid Est Veritas ? (What is Truth ?)

The News Today- Quid Est Veritas ? (What is Truth ? )

Since the advent of 24/7 cable news, the great irony of constant news coverage is that public trust in that coverage continues to decline. Countless studies show that television audience trust in news coverage is half of what it used to be, prior to thirty years ago, which was half again what it had been in the 1960s. In essence, the public’s trust in the news media has fallen four-fold in the last fifty years and most of this decline has occurred since the advent of cable news television.

So pronounced is this lack of trust in what is being broadcast as news coverage, the ground has become fertile for conspiracy theories attached to practically every event reported- be it a school shooting, as happened in Parkland, Florida, a train colliding with a garbage truck, as happened in Crozet, Virginia, or an upset political victory that flew in the face of conventional wisdom, and called into question the expertise of pundit and pollster, alike.

We’ve seen examples of manufactured news, like when Dan Rather purported to find what became known as the Killian documents, alleging that former President George W. Bush had once been declared unfit for duty in the Texas Air National Guard and suspended from that service. This was in 2004, when Bush was in the midst of his re-election campaign against John Kerry. The story was a complete fabrication on the part of Rather, whose reputation as a viable journalist had already been on the downward slide since his coverage of the Reagan administration. At that time, bumper stickers which said, “Rather Biased” began to appear as an outward expression of skepticism on the part of the general public. “Rather-gate, “as it came to be known, was the first documented example of false news manufacturing by a major television network, although there had been significant instances of such similar suspicions reaching back into the early days of television broadcasting.

Belief in news coverage or, rather, in the declining lack thereof, hasn’t been helped by the constant drone of news coverage in the wake of cable news, and can be traced to a single event on which saturated news coverage overdosed on the evening of June 17th, 1994.

After his attorneys convinced O. J. Simpson to turn himself in to Los Angeles authorities, following their issuing of a warrant for his arrest in the double homicide of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and a waiter named Ronald Goldman, and in an attempt to flee from these charges, Simpson was riding in his own white Ford Bronco, driven by his friend, A.J. Cowlings, heading north on Interstate 405, with police cruisers following in pursuit. Overhead, at first, was a single news helicopter, but before the agonizing low speed chase ended, no fewer than nine helicopters had joined in to cover the “event.” 24/7 news coverage of the trial soon followed, and at one point, there was not a time when one could turn on the television and not find coverage of the murder, which lasted for months.

It is said that quantity does not mean quality, and so constant and jaundiced has news coverage become since the Simpson trial, that its watching public has grown skeptical of practically every story covered. Even with the news following the school shooting in Parkland, the slow drip-drip of revelations, like the number of sheriff’s deputies refusing to enter the school building and intercept the shooter, lends credence to this skepticism. Scripted interviews with “students,” some of whom are suspected of being planted by news media for desired effect and messaging, don’t do anything to encourage confidence on the part of television audience, and we have arrived upon a time where all news has become something to be taken with a grain of salt.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 18, verse 38, Pontius Pilate, having heard the accused Jesus of Nazareth’s claim to be a “witness to the truth,” posed the following question to Christ, “Quid est veritas?” (what is truth?), prior to proclaiming to the crowd of onlookers that he believed Jesus to be innocent of having committed any crime. Yet, it was Barabbas for whom the crowd demanded commutation of a death sentence.

Sad that we must all ask ourselves the same question, “What is the truth?” when seeing the news of the day. An uniformed, or mis-informed, public is the greatest threat to representative democracy, and in the end, may prove to be the very reason for the deception that is the mainstream media, as it exists, today.

-Drew Nickell, 24 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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School Daze- Putting First Things, First, in the Wake of School Shootings

School Daze- Putting First Things, First, in the Wake of School Shootings

Once the hurt has passed- passed, at least, to the point where we can review what took place in Parkland without knee-jerk reactions clouding the issue of school shootings, the nation will have to focus its attention on the immediate problem, first.

It is not the guns, nor even the availability of guns that is at issue. It’s not the failure of an FBI, having lost the focus of its primary mission to connect the dots and take preemptive action to prevent crime, as in this case, they well could have. It’s not mental illness, per se, and how local authorities gather and share information when it comes to troubled youth. All of these things are important, and there is ample need for all of these issues to be addressed.

The primary and immediate problem, however, is that our schools are not safe, and distracted focus on the peripheral issues already enumerated will not make our schools any safer tomorrow, than they were on February 14th. Since guns of all types won’t be off the streets anytime soon, and there is no shortage of social misfits and evil “sickos” who are capable of exacting such wretched carnage, we have to take steps now to ensure that our schools are safe…

…and if we cannot take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of our schools, then we need to face the eventuality that the time has come to consider closing our schools, permanently.

When a school shooting begins, whether it is from Columbine nineteen years ago, all the way up through Parkland last week, there is about a ten-minute gap in the time alerts go out and the time that police response is on site. In that amount of time, an armed assailant with enough ammunition can kill a lot of unarmed children and adults, as well. Time after time, the dastardly deed is all done by the time police arrive, so any amount of self-defense the school can provide has to come from within the school’s staff. Hence, the call to consider arming our teachers, or at very least, some of our teachers (though, the thought of some of our own teachers “carrying,” admittedly, causes us to laugh and wander off track), comes to the fore.

Any adult school staff member- administrator, counselor, nurse, custodian and teacher, too, could be trained in firearm safety and trained how to shoot. For that matter, it needn’t even be a member of the school’s staff. There are plenty of trained adults- retired police and arson investigators, armed services veterans and retired military, who have been trained in the proper use of firearms, and many of these men and women could use a paying job, for sure. Just as sure, many would volunteer to be hallway proctors equipped to fight back against an armed assailant, bent on mass murder. That’s one thing that could be done very soon.

While none of us can board an airplane, attend a major league sporting event, or enter an arena or concert hall, without passing through metal detectors and bag checks, thousands enter and leave school property each day without having to do so…not at all schools, but at enough schools with no such provisions, that the means to conduct such searches should be provided with funding and mandate. What’s good for the county courthouse and magistrate’s office should also be good for the schools within their jurisdictions. Within a year or two, all public schools across the entire country could be so equipped.

It is obvious that these measures will cost, one way or another, a tremendous amount of money and resources, which might easily beg the question, “Is the safety of our children while attending school worth it?”

As obvious as the answer to that question might be, we must also consider the school- that is, to say, the school building, as a continued venue for elementary and secondary education. It takes a tremendous amount of taxpayer money to finance the overall operation of the school building(s)- staff salaries, equipment, school cafeterias and lunch programs, maintenance and physical plant operating costs, not to mention the costs of transporting students, to and from school. Added together, it is small wonder that public education takes a big slice, perhaps the biggest slice, of state and municipal operating budgets.

Add these costs to the problems associated with school shootings and other forms of violence taking place in our schools, perpetrated from within and without, not to mention instances of sexual misconduct that steal away the innocence of our precious children, and one has to ask, “Is this all worth it?”

We live in an age where information, most all of the known information, is available on the internet. We could provision every home in America with broadband internet service, provide every household with an interactive home-based computer, and provide quality education to every child, for a fraction of what it costs to operate school facilities. As any telecommuter who has participated in on-line meetings and virtual training seminars knows, the classroom can be brought to the home as easily as the corporate conference room can be brought to the home.

Granted, what would be lost in the wholesale conversion to home-based schooling, would be the social interaction between kids (already a problem with a generation of children who prefer computer games to outdoor physical activity), and a severe impact on extra-curricular and athletic participation, too. Then again, if the purpose of education is to learn, learning can be accomplished at home, and the issue of school safety becomes moot.

Simply stated, if we cannot as a nation make our schools safe, then we must consider the eventuality of closing the schools as we know them, and keeping our kids safe at home, with an on-line teacher, instead.

-Drew Nickell, 22 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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The Second Amendment- Weep Not for the Children, but for their Children

The Second Amendment- Weep Not for the Children, but for their Children

Having ratified the United States Constitution on June, 21, 1788, the Congress realized that it was in immediate need of amendment, hence the passage of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, within fourteen months on September 25, 1789. The amendments were approved in order of their relative importance, according to what the framers determined to be most crucial, and were thus prioritized in order from one to ten.

In between the freedoms of religion, press, speech, assembly and petition (as outlined in the first amendment), and subsequent freedoms from forced quartering of soldiers, search and seizure without warrants of probable cause, unfair trials without juries, cruel and unusual punishments, and abrogation of delegated powers and those not specifically enumerated to the federal government (found in amendments three through ten), the same men who ratified the Constitution found it necessary to prioritize the second amendment:

“A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Of all the amendments to the Constitution (save the eighteenth which outlawed alcoholic beverages), the second amendment has proved to be the most fragile, most mis-interpreted, and most controversial. Over the years, its very meaning has been bandied about. Opponents to the right of citizens to own firearms have often claimed that the purpose of the second amendment is to provision well-regulated state militias, and nothing more. They claim that individual gun ownership is not what the second amendment is all about.

This mis-interpretation escalated to the point where the United States Supreme Court, in District of Columbia vs Heller (2008), ruled that the second amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm, unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

So, it seems certain that the intent of the second amendment does, indeed, guarantee the right of individuals to possess firearms, and that government lacks the power to infringe upon these rights. Yet, of all the amendments to the Constitution, the second amendment’s rights are the ones upon which such freedoms have been most infringed.

For instance, since the 1930’s, automatic weapons are proscribed from private ownership. In essence, one cannot own an operational machine gun. Background checks, gun registration and licensing permits are all infringements on these rights, but have been deemed to be largely acceptable in the service of public safety. Mentally deranged people, quite rightly, are also proscribed from possessing guns of any kind- again, an infringement in the greater interest of public safety. Few would argue that these specific restrictions are not necessary and yet, every time there is a heinous mass shooting, the voice of those who would rather see the end to private gun ownership take advantage of these shootings, to call for ever-stricter gun control and systematic erosion of second amendment rights.

Before we are so quick to cede away our constitutional rights in the momentary hyperbole of outrage, in the wake of the latest mass shooting in Florida, perhaps we should consider the following from none other than Thomas Jefferson, citing Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1764),  on precisely why the second amendment is so very important to the success and survival of liberty:

“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature (that) they disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Jefferson’s view precisely describes the ill-wisdom that is the essence of gun-free zones, and precisely why the passage of more and more gun control laws only makes our streets and our schools, our churches and our homes, more dangerous.

Simply stated, lawful citizens obey gun laws and criminals do not. So, all of the efforts to rid the nation of firearms- regardless of how passionate and how precious the screams of our youth are deemed to be genuine and worthy of consideration- the streets of Chicago and Baltimore, and a hundred other cities and suburbs also tell us that the preponderance of gun statutes are directly correlated to the escalation of gun violence, and not its extinction.

As the young generation arises, a generation which does not know their country’s history and does not have high regard for our constitutional rights, nor the reasons for its protections against potential governmental overreach, the freedoms we enjoy today may well be numbered, in both time and circumstance.

Weep not for the children, but for their children, who will know not the blessings of freedom and liberty, but rather the chains of subjugation and slavery.

-Drew Nickell, 21 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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See Something, Say Something…but, then, Nothing

See Something, Say Something…but, then, Nothing

In an all-too-frequent occurrence, we once again hear that a mass murderer was on the “radar screen” of the Federal Bureau of Investigation before the dastardly deed was done. San Bernardino, Garland, Texas, Las Vegas and, now, Parkland, Florida. The continuing saga of FBI knowledge before the fact, then nothing is done to stop the brutal murder of innocents in the wake of such knowledge. Even the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the Boston marathon attack were not without prior knowledge on the part of the FBI.

We keep hearing the same mantra, “See something, say something,” but, then…nothing.

Most recently, the FBI knew that Nikolas Cruz was in possession of firearms. They knew he had a sick penchant for killing animals. They knew he had several occurrences where police had been called to his home, where he had been expelled from his high school following violent acts perpetrated on his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, all after having been prohibited from entering the school with a backpack for fear of deadly devices he might bring to school. His pathos was well known by student and teacher alike, and the FBI even knew about his disturbing posts on Facebook, and that he had declared in a video that his goal in life was to become a professional school shooter, thanks to a tip they received from a concerned citizen in Louisiana. All of this knowledge, and yet…nothing…no co-ordination with the FBI office in Miami, no alerts to local and state police.

Seventeen lay dead, fourteen students and three school staffers, all because nothing was done to stop a sick and twisted individual from planning and executing the deadliest school shooting in Florida history, one that rivaled Sandy Hook and Columbine in its infamy.

We keep hearing about how great and how dedicated the rank and file of FBI agents are in the execution of their jobs, and yet corruption and mismanagement from above is what keeps them from doing their jobs. Several years ago, citizen complaint and advisory calls phoned into local FBI field offices, were re-routed to a central call center located in West Virginia in an effort to co-ordinate such calls to one data center and track such calls on a national basis. The only problem with that strategy is the failure for forwarding these alerts to local FBI offices and law enforcement- assets which, if informed and deployed, might well have prevented these heinous acts from happening.

Yesterday, Friday the 16th of February, we heard from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that thirteen Russian nationals, and three firms with which they have been associated, were indicted on charges related to interference with political campaigns going back to 2014. In the indictment, Rosenstein stressed that no American citizen actively or inactively took conscious part in this interference, and that any involvement by Trump campaign associates was the result of deceptive tactics used by the Russians who, hiding behind fake social media profiles appearing to be American citizens, attempted to disrupt the election process by concurrently staging pro-Trump rallies and anti-Trump protests, sometimes even on the same day. Repeatedly, Rosenstein stressed that nothing in the indictment suggested any willful collusion on the part of any American citizen, which also suggests that alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign remains nothing more that a pipe-dream by Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans and the mainstream media to bring down Donald Trump. The fact is that these efforts on the part of Russians reach back well before Trump’s candidacy and ascertain no connection with Trump or his campaign. It also reveals an Obama administration, which knew about this tampering, did nothing to stop it in the self-assurance that Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency. Had Mrs. Clinton won the presidency, none of this would have been known and no Mueller probe would have taken place.

So, while the FBI has so busied itself, illegally pursuing FISA warrants against Trump campaign associates, all based on a fake dossier purchased by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, they have failed to adequately do their primary job of investigating real domestic violent crime and preventing its occurrence. Essentially, the FBI at its highest levels has become a political investigative body rather than a criminal investigative body- an American version of a Soviet era politburo, rather than a crime-fighting force as it had once been known.

Florida’s Governor Rick Scott has demanded the resignation of Trump’s FBI Director, Christopher Wray, as the result of the inaction taken by the FBI prior to the school shooting in that state. While Wray might have the potential of becoming the FBI’s “fall guy,” as the result of this latest failure to connect the dots with regard to the killer Cruz, the problems associated with the lack of communications and inter-agency cooperation go back to the years leading up to 9/11, begging the question, “Why do we have an FBI in the first place?”

This much is true. Changes- fundamental, organizational and actual- must take place in both the Justice Department and in the FBI. If neither Attorney General Jeff Sessions nor FBI Director Christopher Wray can effect such changes, then both should go, sooner rather than later.

-Drew Nickell, 17 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

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Gun-Free Zones- an Invitation to Kill

Gun-Free Zones- an Invitation to Kill

The news from Parkland, Florida, of a crazed shooter entering a high school and killing at least 17, was the latest in a string of mass shootings occurring where people are at their most vulnerable. Whether in schools, like Columbine and Sandy Hook, or in churches like the ones in Charleston and Sutherland Springs, the single common denominator is the fact that these mass killings took place in buildings presumed to be devoid of firearms- in essence, gun-free zones.

All it takes is for some malcontent, armed with weapon(s) and bent on mass murder, to enter a school or a church, where he knows that there is little chance of being shot, and then bodies start piling up.

Predictably, legislators and politicos, will stand up and demand more and more gun control legislation, even though such legislation would fail to prevent these mass killings from taking place. Just as Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals and the intellectual inspiration to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama once said, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” liberals always take these shootings to push for more and more gun control legislation. These political opportunists would have us believe that some lunatic would be dissuaded from perpetrating mass murder, on the basis that said lunatic sees a sign prohibiting guns at any given location.

Horse feathers!

Gun control laws have about as much to do with preventing mass shootings as warning labels on packs of cigarettes have to do with preventing lung disease. Consider Chicago, for instance, which has the strictest gun control laws in the entire nation. That city also has the highest number of shooting deaths in the entire nation, year after year. Despite very strict gun control laws having been put in place, shooting deaths have escalated in Baltimore, as well. The same could be said for many other large cities around the country.

Putting up a sign that an area is a gun-free zone, be it in a school, church, synagogue, or restaurant, is tantamount to saying that the people inside are completely defenseless, and therefore act as an unintended invitation for a would-be mass killer to perpetrate the most carnage possible.

Arming teachers and administrators, in the same way that commercial airline pilots are now permitted to carry firearms, might provide defense capabilities aimed at taking down mass shooters, but there is something else that should be attendant to any effort to prevent gun violence…and that is teaching children right from wrong, beginning in elementary school.

There was a time when schools drilled into students’ heads that taking a human life, or perpetrating any act of violence, or committing any crime, is wrong, period. Then, beginning in the early 1970s, the concept of moral relativism came creeping into the classroom. It started when teachers began assigning essays to their students, asking whether or not it is wrong for a homeless mother or father to steal a loaf of bread from a convenience store. The notion of “justifiable crime,” thus entering the lexicon in school curriculum, took off from there, aided and abetted with the frequent use of mental illness as a defense to exonerate those committing homicide. Nowadays, it seems that the only “right” and “wrong” being taught is that it is always “right” to challenge authority and that it is always “wrong” to question the dogma of man-made global warming. In the absence of the pledge of allegiance and school prayer, political correctness has taken the place of God and country. Criminologists are notorious for rationalizing and excusing any street crime, including rape or homicide, while being the first to condemn white-collar crime on a wholesale basis.

Another idea might be the imposition of mandatory capital punishment in the cases of all mass shootings, perpetrated by anyone 14 years of age, and older. While there are many studies which claim that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent in preventing homicide, such studies are usually proffered by university professors and lawyers opposed to capital punishment in the first place. However draconian or unenlightened it might otherwise seem, bringing back public executions might well deter many a miscreant from even thinking about perpetrating mass murder.

The first thing that should be done, regardless, is to take down all of the signs which say, “Gun-Free Zone.” The only thing that putting up such signs accomplishes, in the end, is to encourage the sick and twisted to commit mass murder like that which took place on Saint Valentine’s Day, in a quiet suburb of Fort Lauderdale, and in far too many other places across America.

-Drew Nickell, 15 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

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Obama’s Designated Liar- the Chronicles of Susan Rice

Obama’s Designated Liar- the Chronicles of Susan Rice

Former National Security Advisor and one-time Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, author of a “disturbing e-mail,” sent to herself some fifteen minutes after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, has had much to say on behalf of her boss, Barack Obama, the bulk of which has been outright lies designed to cover the mistakes and misdeeds of her former boss.

Having cut her teeth in the Clinton Administration as part of the National Security Council, Rice first covered the tracks for President Clinton’s lack of response for Rwandan genocide in 1994. Her primary concern was how Clinton’s “lack of response would affect Democrats running in that year’s mid-term election”, according to an article in The Atlantic, authored by Samantha Power, who would go on to serve as U.N. Ambassador replacing Rice, when Rice became National Security Advisor.

While serving as U.N. Ambassador, it was Susan Rice who, on September 16, 2012, appeared on five Sunday talk shows, claiming that the preceding week’s September 11th raid on the Benghazi Consulate was “a spontaneous reaction to an internet video which ‘insulted’ the Islamic prophet, Muhammed.” In doing so, Rice repeatedly dismissed the notion that the attack was actually pre-planned in observance of the 9-11 attacks, eleven years before. As events unfolded during the weeks which followed, Rice was proved to be a liar who, in fact, was attempting to provide political cover for Obama’s re-election, as it had been his claim that Al-Qaeda in Libya was under control. The truth about the raid on Benghazi came out, but not in time for Obama’s re-election to be thus affected. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice all knew at the time that the “spontaneous reaction to an online-video” was a lie, but that didn’t dissuade them from trotting out Rice to be the designated liar on that Sunday, the 16th.

In a June 2nd, 2014 interview with former Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos on his ABC morning show, it was Susan Rice who claimed that deserter Bowe Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction.” She also added, “Sergeant Bergdahl wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield.” As the truth about Bergdahl’s desertion surfaced in the coming weeks and months, it became known that Rice had been sent in on another mission- this time to rationalize Obama’s decision to trade five high-level Guantanamo detainees in exchange for Bergdahl’s release by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Once again, a lie proffered for political prevarication and deception.

Monday’s release of an email written by Rice, fifteen days following a January 5, 2017 meeting between Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Sally Yates and Rice, suggests that she was attempting to cover Obama’s tracks, once again.

“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book,’” Rice wrote. “The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”

The issue to which Rice was referring was the Obama-led investigation into alleged collusion by the Trump campaign, all based on evidence gathered in the FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates. We learned last week that the FISA warrants were granted based on supposed “evidence,” obtained from the Christopher Steele dossier, which was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

So, while Barack Obama, Joe Biden, James Comey, Sally Yates and Susan Rice all knew that the FISA court had been “had” by the FBI, who failed to disclose to the FISA court who it was that funded the false dossier, it was Rice who then indicated in her January 20th e-mail, Obama’s insistence that the investigation should be done “by the book,” all in an attempt to cover for her boss one last time, and clean up the sordid mess before it became property of the National Archives.

A “by the book” investigation, borne of treachery and deceit, all aimed to bring down the presidency of a duly-elected successor to Barack Hussein Obama…

…aided and abetted by his “designated liar.”

-Drew Nickell, 13 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
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Lincoln at age 209- Time Traveling and Ironic Coincidence

Lincoln at age 209- Time Traveling and Ironic Coincidence

Abraham Lincoln was born two hundred nine years ago today, in a log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His father and mother were part of the hardscrabble “great American unwashed,” as the 16th president would often refer, decidedly different than the trappings of wealth that attended the birth of his 29th successor, Donald J. Trump. Lincoln, almost universally considered to be America’s greatest president, was primarily self-educated, while Trump was afforded top-notch education- first, at the prestigious Kew-Forest School and New York Military Academy, and then at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, earning high marks in economics. On its surface, nothing would suggest any degree of commonality between Lincoln and Trump, and yet exchanging these two men in the respective times in which each served as president, a strange irony of coincidence emerges upon considered study.

When Lincoln was elected in 1860, the United States was a bitterly divided country on the very precipice of the deadliest war in American history. Having  barely received 39% of the popular vote in a four-way race, his election was the spark that touched off secession and, ultimately, war against the eleven Confederate States of America. At the time, Lincoln was arguably the most hated of presidents in the seventy-one years since the election of George Washington. Roundly lampooned in the newspapers of his day, Lincoln faced opposition from both major parties, Democrat and Republican, and even from within his own cabinet. At a time when national unity should have been the order of the day, given the fact that the country was at war with itself, Lincoln’s presidency was a bitter and lonely struggle against treachery, both from within and without. He was regularly thought to be a dolt of little intelligence and poor manners, and his common man’s parlance of verbal communication was routinely scorned by the elite of establishment politicos in the nation’s capital, who scoffed at his penchant for bawdy stories and backwoods humor. His own re-election in 1864 was far from certain, as the embattled president ran against an army general whom he had twice fired from command, one George B. McClellan. McClellan’s platform was based on making peace with the rebellious south, a very popular sentiment following three bloody years of conflict, and yet it was Lincoln who ultimately prevailed against all of the political forces conspiring against him.

Excise the fact of civil war during Lincoln’s presidency, and one can obviously draw parallels between Lincoln and Trump.

Like Lincoln, Donald Trump was very much an outsider to establishment Washington at the time he was elected. Like Lincoln, Trump was and is hated by members of both political parties, and is roundly lampooned in the newspapers of today, as well as with a broadcast and cable media that did not exist when Lincoln was alive. Faced with treachery from within his own cabinet who, in Trump’s first year of office, has routinely leaked information to the media, just like Lincoln’s own cabinet regularly did, all in a seemingly-concerted effort to bring down a sitting president. Often assailed as something of a dunce, with poor manners and coarse speech, as well as a tendency towards less-than-diplomatic tweets and intemperate language, Trump’s “style” is frequently at odds with establishment politicians in Washington, D.C., who consider themselves to be of a higher class than their tawdry president. Like Lincoln, Trump was elected with less than a majority of the popular vote. Like Lincoln, Trump has had to face strong opposition from the legislature while trying to piece together some semblance of coalition government, just as his opponents in the House and the Senate from both parties, attempt to parlay partisan division into legislative dysfunction.

It is often said that history has a way of repeating itself- and in ways not fully realized until after the fact, when we can look back retrospectively of all that’s occurred. Leadership, true leadership, can only be achieved in the face of adversity and in the midst of opposition. While it is too early just yet in his administration, to determine whether or not the test of time will find favor with the presidency of Donald J. Trump, it is certain that the sentiments of adversity and opposition to his presidency have adjoined in an atmosphere ripe with both the need and opportunity of great leadership on the part of the president. Given all that he has achieved in his first year of office, under the less-than-ideal circumstances in which he finds himself, the new president seems poised to harness the reins of history in a way which will find favor, once his own time in office has passed…

…and all in the irony of coincidence he shares with Abraham Lincoln, no less.

 

-Drew Nickell, 12 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

Drew Nickell is back on the Radio, today, February 8 at 1:00 pm, EST

Drew Nickell is back on the Radio, today, February 8 at 1:00 pm, EST

I will be back on the radio once again today, Thursday, February 8th, at 1:00 pm EST, and filling in for Nora Wahl Firestone on her show at WKQA-AM, Freedom 1110 AM in Hampton Roads, VA. During the broadcast, I will be discussing recent revelations, in the FBI and Justice Department, which show high-level corruption within our government regarding the 2016 election, as well as  dysfunction in Congress over spending and other such items. If you live outside Hampton Roads, and would like to tune in on the internet, here is a link to that live broadcast :

http://lightningstream.surfernetwork.com/Media/player/view/WKQA-AM_gsl.asp?StreamingServerName=nick11&OnDemandServerName=nick10&targetWidth=1000&targetHeight=800&call=WKQA-AM&od=0

Please note, I will also be pod-casting this broadcast on Facebook and hope you can tune in, one way or another.

Appreciatively,

-Drew Nickell
8 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

Here is the link to replay this broadcast:

https://www.facebook.com/drew.nickell.7/videos/10208811525805482/

The Text that Hit the Fan: “potus wants to know everything that we’re doing”

The Text that Hit the Fan: “potus wants to know everything we’re doing”

Among the thousands of text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Attorney Lisa Page, messages that the FBI claimed to have lost but were nevertheless found, was this text from Page to Strzok on September 2, 2016:

“potus wants to know everything we’re doing.”

It is not an overstatement that this text may well prove to be the smoking gun that President Barack Obama was part of the effort to meddle in that year’s presidential election, using the power of government to both protect Hillary Clinton and attack Donald Trump, all in an effort to rig the election in Clinton’s favor.

Strzok, having successfully engineered FBI Director James Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton on July 5th of that year, received this text from his paramour, Lisa Page. The text was part of an ongoing dialog between the two, concerning a meeting that Comey was to have with Obama, to discuss talking points about the probe into the former secretary of state.

If the president of the United States (“potus”) wanted to know everything that Strzok and Page, specifically, were doing (regarding the Clinton investigation and everything they were doing to help obtain a FISA warrant against Trump), then that means President Obama was well aware of such efforts and sought to be updated on these same efforts…

…and it doesn’t get higher than this.

There would be more text messages to come in the days and weeks which followed. One in particular, written by Page on Election Day, 2016 referenced buying “all of the president’s men” and the need to “brush up on Watergate,” indicating that she fully understood the implications of what was going on. A week later, on November 14th, Page referenced in another text to Strzok “OUR task ahead of us,” and, while the meaning of this cannot be precisely ascertained, it fits nicely into a determination to either overturn the results of the election or put into place a plan to destroy the new president.

In the coming days and weeks, we will be learning about what all was taking place at Obama’s State Department, before and after the election, while that department was headed by John Kerry, following Clinton’s tenure. It will show that senior-level officials both attempted to conceal subpoenaed documents in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, and it will show a concerted effort to sabotage Trump’s campaign and presidency. This level of corruption, as with the Justice Department and FBI, which used a Clinton-funded dossier to spy on Trump’s campaign associates, may even spread to the Treasury Department and the IRS, before all is said and done. Regardless, this is a scandal without equal in the history of the United States…

…the trans-departmental attempt to cover up the crimes of a Secretary of State, one Hillary Clinton, and disrupt a presidential election and sabotage its victor, all under the aegis of a corrupt president of the United States, one Barack Obama.

 

-Drew Nickell, 7 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

The Mueller Probe- Desperately Avoiding the Inevitable

The Mueller Probe- Desperately Avoiding the Inevitable

In the nine months since former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, tasked specifically with finding evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to tamper with the 2016 presidential election, no evidence has been brought forth that any such collusion ever took place. In fact, it has become apparent that Mueller, Deputy FBI Director Rod Rosenstein (who appointed Mueller), as well as James Comey and Andrew McCabe, all knew that the FISA warrants granted to the Obama Justice Department and the Comey-led FBI, were principally based upon opposition research, paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC.

The fact that the GPS/Fusion dossier was merely mentioned as “possibly being of political origin” in the requests for multiple FISA warrants, is a far cry from full disclosure to the Obama-appointed FISC judge, that the dossier was paid for by the political opponent of the candidate targeted in the FISA warrant. Had this been disclosed to the judge, the judge would have violated federal law granting the FISA warrants based upon such questionable evidence. Such omissions are also, in fact, violations of law which are punishable by imprisonment. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified in closed session, that “no such warrants would have ever been requested without the dossier”. Hence, those who submitted these requests to the FISC criminally violated the law, all in their zeal to first, prevent the election of Donald Trump, and then sabotage his presidency from the start. Democrat-authored memos cannot, and will not, dispute any of these facts as we have come to know them, despite vehement attempts on their part to do so.

Unable to substantiate collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, Mueller’s team has since re-focused its investigation into whether or not President Donald Trump obstructed justice in his firing of FBI Director James Comey on May 9th of 2017. Although Comey’s firing was not the designated focus of the appointment of Mueller by Rosenstein, the real reason for his appointment was apparently to retrieve anything possible to bring a criminal indictment against Trump, leading to his impeachment.

In essence, an outcome in search of a crime.

The only problem in going that route is that a sitting president has unrestricted authority to fire an FBI Director, at any time and for any reason. Comey admitted as much before and after his firing. So, since Comey’s firing won’t suffice, Robert Mueller has now “baked a cake,” loaded with the most trivial of details, gained from his interviews with Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort and George Papadopoulos. In so doing, he is tempting the president to take a bite of this “cake,” and thus open himself to charges of lying to a federal prosecutor- that is, if the president decides to sit down with Mueller and face his questioning. Refusing such a request from Mueller will assuredly cause political fallout and sanctimonious outrage amongst Trump’s bi-partisan opponents, and their fellow travelers in the mainstream media. No doubt, Trump’s refusal to sit down with Mueller would fuel the fires of those set on demanding his impeachment, as predictable as it is undeniable.

Nevertheless, talking to Mueller (something that the president has an absolute right to refuse) would be tantamount to Trump’s effective resignation from the presidency, and therefore NOT something that is ever likely to happen. He knows it, and so does Mueller, despite media reports which suggest that such an interview is certain to take place. It’s not the first time the media has pushed a narrative divorced from reality, and it won’t be the last, either.

In the end, no matter how long all of this drags out- even if God forbid, it lasts throughout Trump’s second term- the investigation of Robert Mueller is faced with inevitable failure in its fevered quest to bring down the presidency of Donald J. Trump. All of the desperate attempts to avoid this inevitability notwithstanding, the time has come for this inquiry to come to a close, if only to avoid splitting the country further apart. Yet, that may well depend on whether or not Mr. Mueller loves his country more than his own reputation.

In the words of the president, himself, an absolute “disgrace,” indeed.

-Drew Nickell, 5 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2

FISA Memo – the Tip of the Iceberg

FISA Memo – the Tip of the Iceberg

Yesterday, February 2nd, a memorandum summarizing more than a year-long investigation into the FBI and the Department of Justice and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election, from the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Devin Nunes (R-CA), was released without objection or redaction from the White House.

Its release was vehemently opposed by senior-level associates of the Justice Department, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, as well as the ranking minority member of the committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), on the grounds that its release would compromise national security, it assets, and the methods and procedures used by our intelligence to gather information on foreign nationals. These objections, and the justification for these objections, were echoed by the mainstream news media- all in supposed fear that the memo’s release would irreparably damage our national security and destroy our federal agencies. Nevertheless, these objections turned out to be completely fallacious and without any merit or substance. The four-page memorandum itself, as well as the cover letter from White House Counsel Don McGahn, contained no such information as was alleged.

The salient question…why the objection to its release?

Simple. Its release exposes a level of corruption and abuse of power that was exacted upon the Trump campaign, before, during and after the election, on the part of Barack Obama’s Justice Department and the FBI, then under the direction of James Comey. The memo exposes the fact that a GPS/Fusion dossier, authored by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, was the principle “evidence” submitted to the FISA court, backed up by media reports that were circularly sourced to Christopher Steele, to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page and others associated with Trump’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 election. In December 2017 closed-door testimony, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe indicated that without this dossier, there would be no such FISA warrants requested from, much less approved by, the FISA Court. Originally requested under James Comey’s signature, and with the imprimatur of Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, these illegal warrants were renewed by, and additional warrants were subsequently obtained by, Deputy Attorney Generals Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein, reaching well into the Trump presidency. This dossier, compiled by Steele and based on tabloid and salacious reports gathered from Russia, was revealed to President Trump in January 2017, by FBI Director James Comey, who assured the president that there was no reliable evidence in the dossier, despite the fact that it was Comey who used this dossier to gain FISA warrants, two months before. In May of 2017, the day following his firing by President Trump, Comey released transcripts of his own notes on his conversations with the new president through a college professor to the New York Times, which ultimately prompted Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, knowing full well that there was no substantive evidence of such collusion in the first place.

So, an opposition research paper paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, was used by the Obama Justice Department and the FBI, to obtain FISA warrants against her opposing candidate, without divulging to the FISA court that this dossier was just that- a false dossier authored by a foreign national, Christopher Steele who “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” The dossier was fed by Nellie Ohr, an employee of GPS/Fusion and the wife of Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and these fabrications were used to obtain subsequent warrants.

Never in the history of the United States has there been so blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution, and never has there been a scandal in such magnitude reaching far into an administration, to interfere with a presidential election, attempt to overturn that election, and destroy the subsequent administration of a duly-elected president.

Yet, the release of this memo only scratches the surface of the deep state corruption that has been unleased on President Trump. In the coming weeks and months, it will be revealed that similar abuses of power and attempts to destroy Trump’s presidency, extend to State Department and the Treasury Department personnel appointed during the last three administrations, all at the behest of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, none of this corruption would have ever come to the surface, and no one would have ever known that her election was only made possible, as the result of collusion with the FBI and the Obama administration, aided and abetted by a news media which has ignored the biggest story in our lifetime…

…a story whose revelation is merely the tip of the iceberg.

-Drew Nickell, 3 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
now available at Amazon

Signed and personalized editions now available at my website:
http://www.drewnickell.com
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2