Scott Adams: 50 of our top "inteligence" officials either liars or traitors.

The day everything became clear in the United States of China. https://t.co/Nnl0ymyA5I

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 14, 2020

It’s Time for a Thoroughgoing Revamping of the Intelligence Community.

Via Instapundit.

Among the urgent tasks we must quickly undertake, few are so urgent as a thoroughgoing revamping of the intelligence community. At the moment, it isn’t very impressive in either of the two main activities with which it’s entrusted: spying on our enemies and supporting our friends. You can see this easily enough. The Israelis, not the CIA et al., made off with the Iranians’ secret nuclear plans. So much for effective espionage. And there are two very closely linked enemies, Iran and Venezuela, that should be prime targets for subversion, but we don’t seem to be making good progress.

On the other hand, the intelligence community seems to do well, or at least try harder, at subverting our own political order, as we’ve learned over the recent past.

Or maybe not. Although the attempted subversion of Trump and associates produced the downfall of Lt. General Michael Flynn, the centerpiece of the intel operation—the Mueller show investigation—came up empty-handed, and the top levels of the FBI and CIA now face inquiries from Attorney General Barr, Justice Department Inspector General Horowitz, and the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Some of our top spooks have been fired.

Rather like Iran and Venezuela, isn’t it?

Here's a link to the original article.

Coulter: remember when the media and the Democrats criticized the intelligence agencies. That ws SOP until Trump did it.

They [the media and Democrats] also spent decades defending Russian dictators.

Abandoning every position they've ever held to attack Trump is standard operating procedure these days.

In addition to Trump's not challenging Putin to a fistfight in Helsinki, the media have gone bananas over the fact that he cited the findings of our intelligence agencies -- but then added that Putin denied the charges.

HE'S BELIEVING PUTIN OVER OUR OWN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES? Moral equivalence! Treason! High crimes and misdemeanors! Kristallnacht! Trump might as well have trampled on a portrait of George Washington. (Or, since we're talking about liberals, Stalin.)

But the way I remember it, elected Democrats -- even Democratic candidates for president -- have criticized our intelligence agencies pretty ferociously, particularly regarding the Iraq War.

The media turned that clown Joe Wilson into a national hero for ridiculing the findings of our intelligence agencies.

At the inception of the war, U.S. intelligence, British intelligence and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Saddam Hussein had been seeking massive quantities of uranium from Niger.

But Joe Wilson was sent by his wife, a non-covert, paper-pushing CIA agent, on a trip to Niger, where he looked government officials directly in the eye and asked them: Did Saddam send envoys to this godforsaken country that has nothing to sell but uranium in order to buy uranium? Be honest! I have absolutely no way of knowing if you are lying, and powerful, nuclear-armed nations will be really mad at you if you say "yes."

It was on the basis of this conversation that Wilson concluded, as he wrote in The New York Times: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Far from condemning this unpatriotic lout for crapping on our intelligence agencies, the media made him a star! Only a fool like George W. Bush would believe our inept intelligence agencies over the word of a government official from Niger.

So doing an about-face on a previous, long-held position is no problem for liberals, provided it serves the larger purpose of getting Trump.

This is a good time to remind us of the Ace of Spades comment on the Ruling Class:

This kind of blatant double-standard on the part of the left is a feature, I think, not a bug.

The inconsistency may reveal that the left inflicts "rules" on its enemies that it feels free to ignore itself. But that itself is a demonstration of the left's power-- I think they get off on openly announcing that they are free to make up rules to impose on others and completely violate those same rules with impunity.

It's a demonstration of how much power they have, and maybe more importantly, how much power you don't have.

They want you to know who's in charge, and who you must bow to, and this sort of blatant, not-even-hiding-it demonstration of their power to unilaterally print up entire tomes of new rules and also unilaterally suspend operation of those rules when they choose is nothing if not a reminder of who is the ruler, and who is the ruled.

If Trump has been under investigation how was that investigation done? Pat Buchanan asks the questions that the MFM will not.

These are the questions I have been asking for some time.

How could DNI Director Clapper and CIA Director Morell say that no connection had been established between Trump’s campaign and the Russians, without there having been an investigation? And how could such an investigation be conclusive in exonerating Trump’s associates – without some use of electronic surveillance?

Did the FBI fly to Moscow and question Putin’s cyberwarfare team?

More questions arise. If, in its investigation of the Russian hacking and a Trump connection, the FBI did receive the fruits of some electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign, were Attorney General Loretta Lynch, White House aides or President Obama made aware of any such surveillance? Did any give a go-ahead to surveil the Trump associates? Comey would neither confirm nor deny that they did.

So, if Obama were aware of an investigation into the Trump campaign, using intel sources and methods, Trump would not be entirely wrong in his claims, and Obama would have some ‘splainin’ to do.

Is the FBI investigating the intelligence sources who committed felonies by illegally disclosing information about the Trump campaign?

Comey would not commit to investigate these leaks, though this could involve criminal misconduct within his own FBI.

Again, the only known crimes committed by Americans during and after the campaign are the leaks of security secrets by agents of the intel community, colluding with the Fourth Estate, which uses the First Amendment to provide cover for criminal sources, whom they hail as “whistleblowers.”

Indeed, if there was no surveillance of Trump of any kind, where did all these stories come from, which their reporters attributed to “intelligence sources”?

Have the NY Times or the Washington Post denied that they leaked information gained from intelligence sources?  Where did these intelligence sources get their information?  Has the NSA been busy Hoovering up Trump Team electronic communications?

Coup and Counter-coup

4Chan Claims To Have Fabricated Anti-Trump Report As A Hoax

Good Lord, if this is true, the CIA and FBI have no credibility left.

>/pol/acks mailed fanfiction to anti-trump pundit Rick Wilson about trump making people piss on a bed obama slept in
>he thought it was real and gave it to the CIA
>the central intelligence agency of the united states of america put this in their official classified intelligence report on russian involvement in the election
>donald trump and obama have both read this pol/acks fanfiction
>the cia has concluded that the russian plans to blackmail trump with this story we made up
just let that sink in what we have become.

 


PUTIN DENIES LEAK 

Russia slams ‘nonsense’ claims it has ‘compromising’ info about Donald Trump’s ‘perverted hooker romp’ in Moscow hotel room’ – and warns it will damage relations

On Dysgenetics

... for purposes of public policy, most European peoples would implicitly support a concept from whose name they are obliged to recoil. So since all things eugenic must be eschewed, that leaves society only one available course. And France has apparently taken it enthusiastically.

The linked article is from a French language piece in Le Monde showing (from what I can discern) research that indicates the country’s aggregate national IQ has declined four points from 1999 to 2009.

Even though such results belong in the pantheon of inevitability given their multicultural madness, the magnitude of what they are reporting is just stunning. Four points over a large population in one decade? I guess the future really does always arrive early.

It hardly requires discussion how dramatically such cognitive deterioration effects a country’s capabilities and living standards. Millions of people make billions of instant decisions throughout the course of daily life. As the quality of these decisions declines on an aggregate basis, the resulting friction reduces every aspect of civilizational fitness.

Theft over purchase, violence over negotiation, neglect over attention, slipshod over craftsmanship, filth over cleanliness, apathy over maintenance, spending over saving, gratification over investment, vandalism over art, appetite over restraint, and helplessness over self-reliance. Every precious tick down the bell curve’s left slope trends all of these decisions toward the former. The cumulative effects are so obvious that liberals had to conjure the imperative of Good Schools just to politely avoid them. But there’s only so high you can climb up a dropping anchor.

There is no pins-head upon which a society can primly perch. The effects of its policies and dogma always incentivize trends toward refinement or entropy. And as the most profound victims of feminism–intelligent white women–sell their fleeting fertility to soulless corporate cube farms, their dull brown counterparts say gracias! by filling the maternity wards. The dumb produce children, while the intelligent produce HR harassment guidelines.

When Don Imus asked the question we all should have asked.

via Glenn Reynolds Instapundit:

Historian Michael Beschloss: Yeah. Even aside from the fact of electing the first African American President and whatever one’s partisan views this is a guy whose IQ is off the charts — I mean you cannot say that he is anything but a very serious and capable leader and — you know — you and I have talked about this for years…

Imus: Well. What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: …our system doesn’t allow those people to become President, those people meaning people THAT smart and THAT capable

Imus: What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: Pardon?

Imus: What is his IQ?

Historian Michael Beschloss: Uh. I would say it’s probably — he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.

Imus: That’s not what I asked you. I asked you what his IQ was.

Historian Michael Beschloss: You know that I don’t know and I’d have to find someone with more expertise…

Imus: You don’t know.

Motte and Bailey Doctrines

One of the difficulties of getting people to behave better epistemically is that, whilst intellectual dishonesty is wrong, it is difficult to convict people of intellectual wrongs. As David Stove showed in his wonderful paper ‘What is Wrong with Our Thoughts?’ (The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies Chapter 7 ), there are indefinitely many ways of cheating intellectually and for most there is no simple way to put one’s finger on how the cheat is effected. There is just the hard work of describing the species in detail.

Some time ago I wrote a paper entitled The Vacuity of Postmodernist Methodology (here or here or here ) in which I described and named a number of such cheats that I detected in postmodernism. One of these I named the Motte and Bailey Doctrine. There has recently been a flurry of use of this concept to analyse ethical, political and religious positions (e.g. here, here) so I am taking the opportunity to have a look at it again.

A Motte and Bailey castle is a medieval system of defence in which a stone tower on a mound (the Motte) is surrounded by an area of pleasantly habitable land (the Bailey), which in turn is encompassed by some sort of a barrier, such as a ditch. Being dark and dank, the Motte is not a habitation of choice. The only reason for its existence is the desirability of the Bailey, which the combination of the Motte and ditch makes relatively easy to retain despite attack by marauders. When only lightly pressed, the ditch makes small numbers of attackers easy to defeat as they struggle across it: when heavily pressed the ditch is not defensible, and so neither is the Bailey. Rather, one retreats to the insalubrious but defensible, perhaps impregnable, Motte. Eventually the marauders give up, when one is well placed to reoccupy desirable land.

Read the whole thing.

The Devil is very good looking.

 

 

The Devil is very good looking.

A book I read a long time ago made an incredibly important point about the detection of evil men. People who rise to levels of importance but who are fundamentally evil almost always have the ability to disguise their true nature. They can only be detected before they do great harm by noticing the nature of the people around them. These are people who don’t or can’t disguise their true nature. This is why it was incredibly revealing to many people that those around Barack Obama were like people like Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Bill “Bomber” Ayers, Tony “Fraud & Bribery” Rezko, Valerie “Slum Lord” Jarrett. The list goes on but suffice it to say that in addition to the individuals just mentioned Barack Obama is the product of the Chicago political machine, arguably the most – or one of the most – corrupt political machines in the country.

Obama actually brags about his ability to mirror the people he is in contact with. It explains his campaign slogan in 2008: “Hope and Change,” a totally meaningless phrase in terms of content which people who are gullible interpret in such a way that it means whatever the hearer wants to hear.

The gullible are not only those who are classified as “low information” voters but also members of the intelligentsia. Even people like George Will and Charles Krauthammer tried and failed to understand Obama because they expected him to reveal himself by talking to them. Of course they could not perceive the real person because he was holding a mirror up to them and they were seeing themselves.  And they would look at the people around Obama and say that "guilt by association" is not a legitimate way of judging a person.  They could not be more wrong.

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb?

Wes Pruden

Why are intellectuals, sometimes the most intelligent among us, so dumb?

This is the question that confounds everyone; some intellectuals most of all. The late William F. Buckley Jr., a certified egghead, once said he would rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston telephone book than by the professors at Harvard.

Another wit observes that an intellectual is someone who so prefers theory over experience that he would sit down on a red-hot stove, twice. You can be too smart for your own good, and have the blisters on your bottom to prove it.

The intellectual romance with the clever Barack Obama continues. Having invested so much in candy and flowers, they must ignore all the evidence of being dumped.

His cultivated demeanor and carefully applied patina of synthetic sophistication, fraudulent as it may be, is what attracted the adoration of intellectuals from across the political spectrum in 2008, says Charles Murray, the social scientist and an intellectual with impressive books, studies and learned papers. He admits that he’s a dumpee.

“It’s kind of embarrassing to admit it,” he tells an interviewer for the website Daily Caller, “but I responded in part to his rhetoric because he talks just like me.

“It’s his whole way of presentation of self … of a little self-deprecation in the argument and picking out a nuance here, which is all the ways that we overeducated people have been socialized in the same way. It’s the way we carry on discourse. Along with [seeing] what was a very engaging personality, I kind of ignored things which … a lot of working-class people glommed onto right away.”

 

President Obama's favorite footstool: The famous Resolute desk

Working-class stiffs, the people an earlier generation of political scientists called “Joe Sixpack,” having earned their blisters and calluses by heavy lifting, are too smart to take a seat on the red-hot stove even once.

Having been to some big towns and heard some big talk, they were too smart by miles to be taken in by a smooth-talking butter and egg man from Chicago.

“It’s not that I think he is not a patriot,” says Mr. Murray, “but remember the line, he said, ‘You didn’t build that.’ No American is going to think you can say that, no matter what your political views are, because it’s just disastrous to say that. He is clueless about this country in some profoundly disturbing ways.”

How could he not be clueless about his native land, when he absorbed anti-American venom in his tender and formative years as a child in the Third World? He was deprived of the instincts and cultural intuitions that are the native son’s birthright.

No other American president in anyone’s imagination would instruct the National Park Service to evict veterans of World War II, many arriving in wheelchairs or moving with unsteady gait on walkers and walking canes to see the long-awaited memorial to the celebration and sacrifice of their unselfish generation.

The veterans had run afoul of the instructions to the Park Service rangers to “make life as difficult for people as we can.”

Then, only days later, thousands of illegal aliens were invited to rally for privilege and amnesty on the very soil where the veterans, American citizens all, were forcibly told they were not welcome.

Presidents of all stripes usually think they’re special and should be treated that way. But no president before him has guarded his privacy like President Obama.

He constructed his personal history with a ghost-written autobiography and refused to answer questions. He let speculation about his birthplace fester for months, stretching into years, before producing the evidence that put the questions to rest.

This raised no questions from the intellectual class. Why would he have done that?

Inquiring minds didn’t want to know. Mr. Obama’s obsessive protection of personal privacy, however, does not extend to everyone else.

The government eavesdropping on telephone calls, the collection of Internet correspondence, the probing into everyone’s underwear at the airport is OK.

The private man in the White House says so.

So, too, the intimate and intrusive questions asked by the health care schemers, backed by the weight and authority of the Internal Revenue Service. Inquiring intellectual minds don’t want to know about that, either.

Fortunately for all of us, the working-class stiffs, often untutored and even crude in their impolite and impolitic curiosity, continue to “glom” onto the holes in the story of how he would be “the uniting president” of “hope and change.”

His approval ratings have dropped into the 30 percent range. Obamacare now frightens most of us.

The fraud and misrepresentation recognized years ago by Joe Sixpack and his buddies is writ so large now that even an egghead can see it.

Let me answer Wes Pruden's question.  "Intellectuals" are not  smart, intelligent or wise, they are glib.  They are good with words.  They are paid to manufacture words by the sentence, paragraph and page.  They infest academia, entertainment and the press.  And in my experience they really like "snark," the wise-ass put-down that isn't a reasoned response but instead dismisses an opponent with ridicule.  It's the stable of some of the highest paid entertainers on TV, people like Jon Stewart at Comedy Central who, believe it or not, is the source of much of the "news" that Gen X receives.  It reinforces their bigotry and class hatred.  And that's Obama's strongest suit; when he's not talking meaningless vapor like "HopeNchange" he's a snarkmaster.  Some people see that as being beneath a President,  the chattering classes see them as one of their own. 

Dishonesty reduces applied intelligence: re-wires the brain

From Intelligence, Personality and Genius

Habitual dishonesty (most notable political correctness) is a form of learning; and learning strengthens some brain pathways and brain connections; while allowing other pathways and connections to wither and (perhaps eventually) perish.

Therefore, even on those rare occasions when a typical modern intellectual tries to be honest and to think straight - they cannot do it, because their reasoning processes have been sabotaged by their own repeated habits of dishonesty - their attempts at honest thoughts will be inhibited, and instead channelled down the usual lying pathways...

Could this be the explanation for Team Obama. I don't mean just Obama but all his adherents?