Natasha Come We Get Moose Now; The New Red Hysteria

Every action hides a sinister motive to usurp the will of the American voter. Russian agents infiltrating the highest levels of our government. A fetish fueled Manchurian candidate whose strings are being pulled by the Kremlin. A race against time to prevent the forces of evil from covering it all up. No this isn’t the plot of a recently found unpublished Tom Clancy novel. No this isn’t the Senate during the height of McCarthyism. Hell this isn’t even Boris saying, “Come Natasha we get moose now.” No this is what is being pedaled by mainstream media as legitimate reporting in 2017. Collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump Campaign to tilt the election towards him is a conspiracy theory and this continued treatment of this as a legitimate news story is irresponsible and dangerous.

I have never been a fan of conspiracy theories. I didn’t buy PizzaGate, Bilderberg’s Group or the Second shooter and I am having a tough time believing that a group of Americans who are now sitting at the highest level of our government actively worked with the Russian government to make their ascension possible. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are assembled by hammering square facts into round story holes and only look like the narrative you are building if you are willing to stand on one leg, tilt your head and squint your eyes. The current case that the media keeps presenting is built on unnamed sources, rumor and innuendo with a sprinkling of facts tossed in to make it somewhat plausible. As rickety as this story is, the media continues to use it to bludgeon the Trump administration and then has the audacity to wonder why their credibility is in the toilet.

The latest New York Times (NYT) article on this subject is a perfect example that illustrates my point. Masquerading as a story on the Obama administration’s efforts to get the facts out, what we really have a piece that is focused on rehashing previously released unverified information that is based upon unnamed sources. They may have dressed the story up in different clothing, but in the end it is simply another Trump administration hit piece and another drumbeat in the NYTs narrative of Russian collusion that have no verifiable facts for the more serious allegations. The NYT article does uncover some behavior that is troubling. The problem is that this troubling behavior came from the Obama administration and Democrats and shows how far they and some in the media are willing to go to destroy a man and his presidency.

The Media is STILL being led around by the nose by the Obama Administration

The media allowed Mr. Obama to leave office claiming his administration was “scandal free”. This is because they essentially choose to ignore any scandals like Fast and Furious, IRS, VA Waiting List, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s email server, Obamacare and the Uranium One Deal. As Fox News reported, Obama adviser Ben Rhodes even brazenly admitted that they administration’s foreign policy team built an “Echo Chamber” of friendly outlets to push the unpopular Iran nuclear deal. This becomes especially troubling that we find that the NYT sources used were “…three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.” This sentence should accurately read three former Obama administration officials who requested anonymity because they were illegally leaking classified information. What should concern everyone is why the Obama administration whose tenure ended on January 20th is still out there driving media narratives.

President Obama has plausible deniability

The NYT article states that a “Former senior Obama administration officials said that none of the efforts were directed by Mr. Obama.” Essentially the article goes into great detail on how officials from several intelligence agencies including the Department of Justice went out of their way to actively process, analyze, discuss in private meetings and distribute this damaging information through as many departments as possible. The goal was to try to get readership of this information to as many people as they could in the closing days of the administration even if it meant making a concerted effort to downgrade the security classification. Of course it is purely “coincidental” that this broad ranging distribution of information would also lead to an increased likelihood of the information leaking to the press as there are demonstrably many holdovers from the Obama administration that are hostile to their new boss. In many cases these employees had access to release information to which they would not have even had access to before the distribution campaign began.

“At intelligence agencies, there was a push to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government — and, in some cases, among European allies. This allowed the upload of as much intelligence as possible to Intellipedia, a secret wiki used by American analysts to share information.”

If this was not proof enough of a concerted effort to trip up the incoming administration The Intercept reported that, “With only days until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security.” The question everyone should be asking is why after 7 years and 355 days in office did the Obama administration feel the need to all of a sudden take a step to change policy that would ensure the broad distribution of all kinds of intelligence data. A suspicious mind might wonder if they were sitting on something that they knew that they could leak at a later time with the express purpose of hurting the next administration.

Stop saying the election was hacked

In this NYT article they state, “What intensified the alarm at the Obama White House was a campaign of cyber-attacks on state electoral systems in September, which led the administration to deliver a public accusation against the Russians in October.” Wait… What? Since when were there attempted breaches on electoral systems that were verifiably originating from the Russians? Where is the evidence that this occurred as is implied by the above statement and declared by the article’s title. As far as everyone else remembers the only official report released to date dealt with Russian hacking of private organization and citizens. (DNC and John Podesta) Of course the Left loves to conflate those two, but there is in fact a great distinction between hacking and releasing private information to influence an election and outright hacking of voting machines. In fact the only evidence that I have seen on attempted breaches of election systems was performed by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security against the State of Georgia’s election machines as reported by the Daily Caller.

General Flynn’s Constitutional Rights were violated

Our intelligence agencies have pretty much carte blanch when it comes to monitoring communications of foreign citizens. This expanded power to listen in and report does not apply the same to an American citizen. In fact when intelligence agencies are monitoring communications between an American citizen and foreign nationals they are supposed to use a process of minimization. This means that while recording the conversation they record when the foreign national is speaking, but that recording is paused when the American is speaking provided that they do not have a warrant or other legal authorization to record the American citizen. This is the foundation of our 4th amendment rights against illegal search and seizure. So now I ask where is the legal documentation that allowed the government to not only record General Flynn, but transcribe and distribute that information. While many have agreed that he did not do anything against the law, this recording was used to destroy his career and force him from the administration.

1980’s called and they want their foreign policy back

In the 2012 Presidential debate Obama mocked Romney for daring to classify Russia as a significant Geopolitical threat that America needed to deal with in the coming years. Apparently four years later the Obama administration was stuck in that same thinking because as NYT points out, “Beyond leaving a trail for investigators, the Obama administration also wanted to help European allies combat a threat that had caught the United States off guard.” How did Russia go from a laughable country to four years later being able to catch us with our pants down? As an aside the answer is John Kerry, but the lack of understanding of the risk that other countries might pose is truly mind boggling. Of course nowadays the Russians are the boogyman. While I think the Russians are a major concern and they may have tried to sway the election I think in the end the reason why Democrats lost is because they ran Hillary Clinton.

Main Image Source: Rocky and Bullwinkle Show – Pottsylvania Creeper