Ruminations – 14apr17 (updated 15apr17)

George Rebane

Judge Andrew Napolitano was right in his report about Obama’s backdoor use of foreign intelligence intercepts of Team Trump’s communications.  An astute reader (cf fish 857pm comment here) alerted us to the now emerging news also confirmed by CNN that the US does indeed trade intelligence, including communications intercepts, in this case to give Obama administraton plausible deniability that they filtered out the Trump commo transcripts from the ‘incidentally’ monitored traffic.  British intelligence just happened to pass that intel to the White House.  The real question I have is that this now represents culpable activity by Obama to thwart Trump’s candidacy, so why are not the media making a federal case of it in banner headlines.  The lamestream I can understand, but the increasingly spineless Fox News (who reinstated Napolitano) continues to be a puzzle and a disappointment to me.  Why the deafening silence?

Another progressive tenet – Admitting poor and unskilled immigrants and illegal aliens into the country does no harm to poor and unskilled Americans in their wallets or job prospects.

Memo to File:  What to do about comment streams that develop widely off-topic threads?  RR is blessed with a readership keenly interested in and aware of the multitude of things happening locally and at the ends of the earth about which they wish to offer their diverse observations, opinions, and to correct other misinformed or wrong-thinking commenters.  The resulting vigorous debates, dismissed and denigrated by the Left and middle roaders, often consume the participants to an extent that it is difficult to follow threads pertinent to the RR post in their comment streams.  My desire here is not to limit the topics of interest, although I am most interested in readers’ opinions about my posts.  But absent that, how to organize these added topics so that subsequent readers and the commenters themselves can find these topic threads and build on previous arguments instead of ‘circling the barn’ – bringing up covered points again and again as if the last commenter keeps hitting the reset button; kinda reminds me of the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ – instead of reaching some point of closure. What to do?

[15apr17 update]  In today's Union cartoonist Bob Crabb claims that the recently organized leftwing mob reception of Congressman Doug LaMalfa at his townhall in Grass Valley was nothing but a 'what goes around comes around' retribution for a similar reception the community's conservatives gave to the Gang of Four supervisors at a NH2020 townhall in 2002.  We moved here in 2002 and quickly started supporting conservative causes, but don't recall any such rowdy or raucous townhall meeting where speakers were shouted down.  Does someone have a recollection of that or can point to a news article (audio snippet?) about such a meeting?

Comments

[fish]

Memo to File: What to do about comment streams that develop widely off-topic threads?

Just a feeling but but your single topic posts seem to attract less of the "free for all" of posts with multiple topics. Of course that was when the "Sandox" was still in play so your mileage may vary.

[Paul Emery]

George

Bush used British intel extensively to justify the war in Iraq without a peep from this crowd when this issue was discussed on RR. Can't have it both ways. I'm referring to the infamous 45 minute claim by Tony Blair which was a summary of British Intel at the time.

[Paul Emery]

Also we have just learned that Trump used information for his campaign against Clinton that was provided to him by what the CIA has termed a "Hostile Intelligence Service".

[Don Bessee]

UH OH! A full blown eruption of BDS and TURDS for the party parrot. So now in po' ol' PE's mind 0 = Bush. Who saw that one coming? ;-)

[Paul Emery]

Just a history lesson Don for those with memory problems.

[Walt]

So "O" and Co. made a deal with the Brits. That makes it OK.. Right Paul?
Never mind that Mz. Rice still misused her power to unmask American intel work.(admittingly)
You forgot that little detail.

[Walt]

A mostly Lefty gripe is that Trump just might BBQ N.Korea,,preemptively. That sawed off little worm has been making all sorts of first strike threats. Would those anti war lemmings be happier if say Seattle or Portland started glowing in the dark first? Maybe Frisco of all places? Let's hope our laser tech is up to the job it was first designed for.

[Paul Emery]

Show me the proof Walt. You are making several leaps in your assumption that Obama (I guess that's who you mean) made a deal. .

[Walt]

You have a search engine Paul, use it. Now here is something for you to chew on.
We have had a truce with N.Korea.(you might need to look that up) since the so-called fighting stopped. Technically we are still "at war" with the North. Question to those smarter than me.. Does Trump legally need to go to Congress to attack?

[George Rebane]

PaulE 1226pm - You seem to be very confused on this issue. Bush2 was President using the intel sharing mechanisms set up for legitimate uses between countries such as determining our post 9/11 vulnerability and whether Saddam had WMDs. Obama used the same shared intel system in the attempt to get dirt on the other party's candidate before the election, and then in the attempt to torpedo Trump's administration after the election. And to you, these two uses are equivalent and consist of "having it both ways" - simply amazing!! These kinds of wildass different worldview go to show why Bob Crabb's recent cartoon is a hopeful sojurn in la-la land.

[George Rebane]

fish 1225pm - You're right of course. Not everyone is interested in every topic I present, even though I am interested in readers' thoughts on my post. That's why I invented the Sandbox that was successful beyond my wildest expectations. But the damn thing was also a high maintenance feature of RR. I'm still trying things after all this time, like adding my two cents on important topics readers bring up to the current Ruminations post (e.g. your giving us heads up on Napolitano's rehabilitation, the importance of which seems to have been totally missed by our media). Your thoughts are important.

[Paul Emery]

George

Whatever conspiracy you ascribe to Obama in this chat is nothing but speculation . You write of Obamas's

" attempt to get dirt on the other party's candidate before the election, and then in the attempt to torpedo Trump's administration after the election. "

There is absolutely no evidence of this George. Can you point me to one credible source to support this? Good Grief it was Flynn who was caught in an outright lie and was forced to resign because of it and Obama had nothing to do with his lies. Also it was Trump that used information to assist his campaign that his own CIA has characterized as coming from a "hostile inelegance service". Obama had nothing to do with that.

Time for cards on the table George to support your puffery.

[Todd Juvinall]

But Paul Emery you appear to not be a registered voter so why would anyone care what you think?

And you think Trump colluded with the Rooskies and not a shred of evidence. So once ahgain you show your colors, a liberal.

[Paul emery]

The truth about Trump and the Russians is currently being investigated by the CIA the FBI and American intelligence services They have yet to arrive at a conclusion There's so much information coming up every day about former campaign members and officials that it's too hard to keep track of it We do know that he took advantage of information provided by A hostile intelligence service That much is fact

[Walt]

Who's this "we" Paul? All this time, and nothing. But plenty on "O"'s minions.
More dirt exists on Hillary and her pay to play. Bill and Loretta talking out of school on a airplane. (Talking about Grandstands and just shooting the sh*t.. Yup, you would believe that)
Your the one always demanding proof,, so where in hell is yours? Reputable links Paul,,
So Going to vote for Maxine "shallow" Waters?

[Bill Tozer]

Three thoughts:

1) . "We do know that he took advantage of information provided by A hostile intelligence service That much is fact." (@ 4:49)
As well as Trump should have, to avoid committing political malpractice. Hmmm, Wikileaks again. So the Wikileaks files contained embarrassing facts about the DNC and Podesta's team calling Mexican-American Democrats "taco bowls".....so what? Damaging to Bernie, not Hillary. Debbie Blabbermouth Shultz got axed, big deal.

2) To avoid the comment stream turning into nothing up but off topic sidebars, the solution is to ignore the comment, be it written by me or anyone else of low esteem....no matter how many times he veers off track. Don't take the bait. Easier said than done.

3). About British Intel and Susan Rice and Obama. Yep, get a Trump associate working on Wall Street taking to a business contact who happens to be an associate of a business owned partly or mostly by Russia or a business person who has contacts with the Russia government....another BFD. So what?
But, use that surveillance on the person (Carter Page) as an opening to the Trump campaign and Trump himself and report directly to Obama and make sure it is leaked to Clinton News Network, The WA Compost, Huff-N-Puff Post and dream up with a good narrative complete with 24/7 hyperventilation and calls for impeachment before Inauguration Day, lol. What a perfect opening to spy on the opponent's campaign.
Then get Sessions to recuse himself from any campaign investigation, get Nunnes thrown out of there with trumped up ethics charges, and control the whole enchilada. That was the master plan.

Hmm, did surveillance pick up any contacts from the Clinton Campaign with Russian businessmen who had connections to the Russian gov't, or was it just the a short term Trump advisor during the campaign they showed interest in? Interesting with all those Podesta family contacts to Russian companies (some almost completely owned by Moscow), yet no surveillance?. Very interesting....not a peep.

Well, Fox gave Judge Nap a big spanking for proclaiming with his 3 his confirmed sources (as any good reporter would do) that British Intelligence supplied our government with the Russian Connection and other sources like Yellow Shower from the Redcoat limey outfit and we paid for it!!!, lol. Sweet. Now Da Judge is sticking to his guns. Geez, when he said "British Intelligence" the first time, you would have thought he said the N word or compared Assad to Hilter or something off the charts like that....judging by the wailing and gnashing of teeth...

Yep, Da Judge is holding court. More will be revealed. The Swamp stinks to high heaven.

[Don Bessee]

Would our fakenewsman give us his thoughts on the latest Presidential appointee as the head of the civil rights division at HHS? ;-)

[Don Bessee]

"Hollywood would love Trump if he bombed North Korea over lack of trans bathrooms" - Jackie Mason ;-)

[Walt]

An easy question for Paul.(we'll see about that.) Where should the first smoldering creator
be? Some city on our West coast or Alaska, GOD forbid Hawaii, or Downtown N.Korea?
There is a lunatic who has nuclear play toys, and is just stupid enough to use one.

So what's your answer? Us or them?

[Russ]

Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction. Now it’s being rowed back because the talk of “transcripts” supports the spying-on-Trump storyline.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/258942/

[Todd Juvinall]

This is how a liberal debates on the Union under a post from yesterday's. Is this a threat to me?

"The Gummi Hitchhiker
Todd Juvinall - Forgot to ask, bro - What do you pack? I got a Glock 42 for concealed carry. Not a rocket launcher, I hear you, but damn, dude - too much recoil can tear my effin' gummi arm off. I do love my Remy 870Tactical 12 gauge pumper though - it's an open carry wet dream. And bro. that day'll come and I will see you at Flour Garden walking hella TALL!
Like · Reply · "

[Gregory]

Regarding what those NH2020 "Town Hall" meetings were like, well, my first wife had celebrated her last birthday a month before this piece in Sacramento's free rag:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/rural-revolt/content?oid=4203

Please note the NH2020 supporter being the source of the claim that the wretchedly misnamed "Sierra Business Council" was paying for two thirds of the cost of NH2020. That was also in The Union:

County supervisors launched NH 2020 in May 2000 when they signed a memorandum of understanding with the nonprofit Sierra Business Council. The council, hired to facilitate public meetings, agreed to pay two-thirds of the cost of the program, with the county paying the remainder.
http://www.theunion.com/news/local-news/committee-to-hear-reports-by-nh-2020-groups/

Here's also a link to a discussion on Crabb's blogsite about the NH2020 efforts and those meetings, including a number of the usual suspects:
http://www.rlcrabb.com/general/goodbye-jeff-ackerman/

To summarize, I think the Village Idiot in today's 'toon was exaggerating for effect the disruptions at NH2020 "town halls" and, more egregiously, ignoring the huge difference between a town hall held by a sitting congresscritter as a constituent outreach essentially hijacked by the local and not so local left, and a "town hall" meeting run by Steven Frisch and his 501c3 on behalf of a project his SBC was paying for and ramrodding through local opposition at the behest of the short termer majority (Izzy Martin & Co.) the local left had on the Board of Supes.

[Bill Tozer]

They will not divide us. :)

[Steve Frisch]

Nice to see that Greg's one man jihad against something that happened almost 20 years ago is still fresh in his mind.

To actually answer George's question, yes many of the meetings were very much in lime the current slough of Congressional Town Hall meetings, which is why I don't attend Congressional Town Hall meetings. Nothing productive can actually get done while people are yelling at each other.

I personally attended meeting where I witnessed people being trained in the parking lots before the meetings to disrupt the meeting. I was a facilitator in a portion of two meetings where people stood right next to me shouting in my ears, no more than 2 feet from my face, while I was standing in front of the group who were sitting in chairs, trying to facilitate a discussion amongst a break out group of about 20 of their fellow citizens. The disrupters shouted over their fellow citizens and tried to incite a reaction.

I was personally at two meetings that were disrupted by bomb threats.

It was interesting to read through the 6 year old thread over at Crabb's because I was reminded of just how egregiously Greg Goodknight lies on these threads. I was not in charge of SBC in 2002...I was a staff member.. I did not run the NH 2020 program, Nevada County staff did, and SBC was a contractor to the county. I never 'ran a meeting" I was staff, the County ran the meetings, and I was never a lead at any meeting hosted by the County.

I was the staff lead on the Placer Legacy program in Placer County while NH 2020 was going on.

The Nevada County Board of Supervisors at the time happened to have a different make up, but of course at the time no one could have know that any of them were "short trermers" which is what Greg called them to attempt to imply they were not perfectly within their rights as our elected representatives to run a public process. They were the elected representatives of the people of the County.

Finally, reading the thread at Crabb's also reminded me of a simple fact, that the program I was running in Placer County, Placer Legacy, was successful. In the Crabb thread I made a prediction, that by making development entitlement processes and permitting abundantly clear, and creating certainty for both development and conservation interests, Placer would out perform Nevada County economically and Nevada County would be increasingly left behind. Unfortunately what I predicted turned out to be true for western Nevada County. Not all of Placer's ability to outperform Nevada County is due to a rational system of development permitting and concomitant conservation strategy to minimize community conflict over development issues, but at least a large portion of their success can be attributed to that.

Fortunately eastern Nevada County where I live did not suffer the same fate; we have prospered. I think that is because Truckee's political culture is much more collaborative, much more civilized, and rejects the politics of personal and interest group destruction.

[Gregory]

As dripping with ignorant and negligent malice as ever, eh, Steve?

No lies on my part, just distinctions without a difference that you're hanging your defamations upon six years later... if your lawyer were to ask you "Why didn't you call him a liar, being specific about your claims at the time?", what would the answer be?

You wrote above "no one could have know that any of them were "short trermers[sic]" which is what Greg called them to attempt to imply they were not perfectly within their rights as our elected representatives to run a public process. They were the elected representatives of the people of the County"

No, Steve, I was calling them "short termers" because their very poor assessments of what the public would put up with led them to hiring the likes of you and the so-called Sierra Business Council to do their dirty work, pushing the agenda you both favored on the rubes.

You end with a real howler:

Not all of Placer's ability to outperform Nevada County is due to a rational system of development permitting and concomitant conservation strategy to minimize community conflict over development issues, but at least a large portion of their success can be attributed to that.

Fortunately eastern Nevada County where I live did not suffer the same fate; we have prospered. I think that is because Truckee's political culture is much more collaborative, much more civilized, and rejects the politics of personal and interest group destruction

If I tried to pat my own back as hard as you did to yours with that, I'd be on my way to the ER. Truckee would be doing just fine without you and your small army of rent-seekers as prosperity has a way of following rail lines and interstate highways, and that's what stretches from Reno, through Truckee and on down to Roseville. Checking, only one business on the Truckee side is on the top ten of Placer County employers and that's a ski area that built out before the wretchedly misnamed Sierra Business Council decided to join and mostly pay for (two-thirds) the NH2020 fiasco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placer_County,_California#Top_employers

What was happening circa 2000 in western Nevada County was the continued shrinkage of the only big commercial employer here, the former Grass Valley Group. It still exists, a shadow of its former self, over 2000 employees when I first came to town, I'd guess maybe 150 now. NH2020 wouldn't have saved it.

[Gregory]

One more....

"I was not in charge of SBC in 2002...I was a staff member.. I did not run the NH 2020 program, Nevada County staff did, and SBC was a contractor to the county. I never 'ran a meeting" I was staff, the County ran the meetings, and I was never a lead at any meeting hosted by the County."

How special.

Yet by accounts both in The Union and the Sacramento free rag, the SBC was paying 2/3rds the cost... begging the question.. just who was contracting whom?

[Todd Juvinall]

Wow, Frisch is trying to rewrite his own personal history! Who would have thought that?

[Gregory]

Still no Steve Frisch, but I did go back and check his claims:
"It was interesting to read through the 6 year old thread over at Crabb's because I was reminded of just how egregiously Greg Goodknight lies on these threads. I was not in charge of SBC in 2002...I was a staff member.. I did not run the NH 2020 program, Nevada County staff did, and SBC was a contractor to the county. I never 'ran a meeting" I was staff, the County ran the meetings, and I was never a lead at any meeting hosted by the County.

I was the staff lead on the Placer Legacy program in Placer County while NH 2020 was going on."

Yes, it was interesting. I went back over it and not a single claim of intentional falsehoods Frisch pinned on me were true. I didn't write them explicitly, I didn't write them implicitly.

Frisch, why did you lie about something so easily checked? Blinded by hate, what intelligence and logic that you have blunted by cheap wine today???

Of the two of us, you're the one with the DUI conviction, a past tax fraud caught by the IRS and an easy BA in Political Science from Cal State 'Frisco... easy if you pass the ideological screening.

[Bill Tozer]

This is a no brainer...unless you read the fake MSM news all day.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/21/shattered-revelation-clinton-campaign-hatched-russian-hacking-narrative-24-hours-after-hillarys-loss/