The FBI Is Garbage – Yet Again

 

The latest Twitter file was released, and again, a former FBI special agent was at the heart of it. The former agent was a man named Clint Watts, who ran a dashboard to track “Russian Influence.” The dashboard was called “Hamilton 68.” It was created by the “Alliance for Securing Democracy,” which includes Bill Kristol, Michael McFaul, and John Podesta.

It really is DC vs. the rest of us. Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist?” How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

Newest #TwitterFiles thread exposes FBI and media efforts to push ‘Digital McCarthyism’ and just WOW

We need to break the federal bureaucracy. VDH states we need to get it out of DC and spread it around the country (e.g., the Department of Agriculture should be somewhere in the farm belt in the midwest).

Just watch — corporate media will back the bureaucracy.

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  1. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    GlennAmurgis: Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist”? How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

    Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “conservative”? Hah. Well, if you believe that, I have some land in Florida you might be interested in.

    To think that [REDACTED] was ever promoted by Ricochet is to this website’s great shame.

    • #1
  2. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    huh. We have someone here at Ricochet who also “label[s people as] Russian stooges without evidence or recourse”

    I wonder if he works for Kristol?

    • #2
  3. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis: Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist”? How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

    Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “conservative”? Hah. Well, if you believe that, I have some land in Florida you might be interested in.

    To think that [REDACTED] was ever promoted by Ricochet is to this website’s great shame.

    Kristol is a great grifter – he fooled a lot of people for a long time. 

     

    • #3
  4. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    Kristol is a great grifter – he fooled a lot of people for a long time.

    So did (does) Charlie Sykes.

    • #4
  5. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    I called Kristol getting his leash pulled by the Establishment years ago:  https://ricochet.com/333363/kristol-springs/

    Which makes this newest revelation fascinating.  I don’t mean to go off the rails here, but HOW BIG IS THIS?

    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we-just-saw-the-docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him a literal crony of the two-party money cult, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    Back when I wrote that other thing, I thought it was just him and his friends getting their lofted noses out of joint at the Trump phenomenon.  Is it really as sordid as it now sounds?

    “Bill, you’re going to have to get your yokels to dump Trump.”

    “I can do that.”  Phone call to NR.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to spike the candidate in the general.”

    “I can do that!”  Phone call to David French.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to push this Russia thing from inside your party.  Get Pence ready to roll in February 2019”

    “I CAN DO THAT!”

    “Bill, we’d like you to clear out your desk.”

    • #5
  6. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    BDB (View Comment):
    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we just saw the docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him just a crony, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    I was about to imply the same thing: that there’s possibly more to him that just simple grifting. “Deep State Mole” comes close, but is perhaps too innocent-sounding for what I’m thinking.

    • #6
  7. Barfly Member
    Barfly
    @Barfly

    GlennAmurgis:

    It really is DC vs the rest of us. Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist”? How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

    In other news, Romney-McDenial will continue to chair the RNC. It is DC vs. US overall, but we needed to win the Inner Party v. Outer Party match first. We just lost – now what?

    • #7
  8. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    Barfly (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis:

    It really is DC vs the rest of us. Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist”? How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

    In other news, Romney-McDenial will continue to chair the RNC. It is DC vs. US overall, but we needed to win the Inner Party v. Outer Party match first. We just lost – now what?

    Heard that on the local news station this afternoon. 

    Another take: The GOP tackles one of the worst midterm election performance in decades by voting to change nothing at the RNC (msn.com)

    • #8
  9. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Most of these “GOP” references should probably be “GOPe.”

    • #9
  10. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):
    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we just saw the docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him just a crony, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    I was about to imply the same thing: that there’s possibly more to him that just simple grifting. “Deep State Mole” comes close, but is perhaps too innocent-sounding for what I’m thinking.

    Think of Kristol as someone who loves the idea of a gargantuan, all-powerful government…as long as it is run by him and his friends. (All that money! All that power! And status!) He tossed occasional remarks about limited government to the hoi polloi, but it was all just marketing.

    • #10
  11. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Paul Stinchfield (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):
    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we just saw the docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him just a crony, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    I was about to imply the same thing: that there’s possibly more to him that just simple grifting. “Deep State Mole” comes close, but is perhaps too innocent-sounding for what I’m thinking.

    Think of Kristol as someone who loves the idea of a gargantuan, all-powerful government…as long as it is run by him and his friends. (All that money! All that power! And status!) He tossed occasional remarks about limited government to the hoi polloi, but it was all just marketing.

    Yes, he believes in limited government:  limited to HIS control!

    • #11
  12. Django Member
    Django
    @Django

    Paul Stinchfield (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):
    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we just saw the docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him just a crony, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    I was about to imply the same thing: that there’s possibly more to him that just simple grifting. “Deep State Mole” comes close, but is perhaps too innocent-sounding for what I’m thinking.

    Think of Kristol as someone who loves the idea of a gargantuan, all-powerful government…as long as it is run by him and his friends. (All that money! All that power! And status!) He tossed occasional remarks about limited government to the hoi polloi, but it was all just marketing.

    Similar to a comment made years ago about McConnell. He and the rest of the GOPe think the only thing wrong with government is that they don’t control it completely. 

    • #12
  13. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Django (View Comment):

    Paul Stinchfield (View Comment):

    DrewInWisconsin, Oik (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):
    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we just saw the docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him just a crony, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    I was about to imply the same thing: that there’s possibly more to him that just simple grifting. “Deep State Mole” comes close, but is perhaps too innocent-sounding for what I’m thinking.

    Think of Kristol as someone who loves the idea of a gargantuan, all-powerful government…as long as it is run by him and his friends. (All that money! All that power! And status!) He tossed occasional remarks about limited government to the hoi polloi, but it was all just marketing.

    Similar to a comment made years ago about McConnell. He and the rest of the GOPe think the only thing wrong with government is that they don’t control it completely.

    “His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.”
    –attributed to Mark Twain

    • #13
  14. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    The DC beltway is 64 miles in length. I have a fantasy that 168,960 people show up and lock arms for the entire length of the beltway and demonstrate to the people inside that we are not their servants.

    • #14
  15. Nanocelt TheContrarian Member
    Nanocelt TheContrarian
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    It isn’t a question of getting the bureaucracy out of DC. Most of the bureaucracy needs to be eliminated altogether–including the Agriculture Department, Education Department, Commerce Department, Interior Department, the EPA, DOE, FDA, NIH, HHS, CDC, and many others (and of course the IRS, but that will require a Constitutional Amendment, or rather, the removal of now). 

    But the most urgent agencies to be eliminated are the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI. These have all turned from protecting us from foreign threats to undermining our government, and pose a clear and present danger to domestic tranquility and general welfare, civil rights, and American liberty and self governance. We don’t need a Church Committee. We need a Congress that will withdraw funding from and legislate thees agencies out of existence. 

    Looks like Bill Kristol has sought to destroyed the legacy of both his father and mother, and the notable Jewish intellectuals (Neocons) that were significant contributors to the preservation of American liberty, such as Norm Podhoretz and Midge Decter. 

    • #15
  16. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Rodin (View Comment):

    The DC beltway is 64 miles in length. I have a fantasy that 168,960 people show up and lock arms for the entire length of the beltway and demonstrate to the people inside that we are not their servants.

    It wouldn’t be so difficult for them to bury 168,960 bodies, but it would be difficult for them to do it secretly. It depends on exactly how things go, though. At the Novocherkassk massacre in 1962, a lot of the wounded were taken to local hospitals. The KGB men came, dragged the wounded out, and shot them, too, as part of a program to keep the episode hushed up.  It succeeded well enough.  We in the west knew that something had happened there, but it was difficult to know just what.  Our own media are at least as good as theirs at hushing up stories that the administrative state wants to have hushed up. 

    • #16
  17. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Nanocelt TheContrarian (View Comment):
    We don’t need a Church Committee. We need a Congress that will withdraw funding from and legislate thees agencies out of existence.

    We will never get the latter without the former.

    • #17
  18. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    BDB (View Comment):

    I called Kristol getting his leash pulled by the Establishment years ago: https://ricochet.com/333363/kristol-springs/

    Which makes this newest revelation fascinating. I don’t mean to go off the rails here, but HOW BIG IS THIS?

    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we-just-saw-the-docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him a literal crony of the two-party money cult, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    Back when I wrote that other thing, I thought it was just him and his friends getting their lofted noses out of joint at the Trump phenomenon. Is it really as sordid as it now sounds?

    “Bill, you’re going to have to get your yokels to dump Trump.”

    “I can do that.” Phone call to NR.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to spike the candidate in the general.”

    “I can do that!” Phone call to David French.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to push this Russia thing from inside your party. Get Pence ready to roll in February 2019”

    “I CAN DO THAT!”

    “Bill, we’d like you to clear out your desk.”

    It’s probably accurate that he’s a paid influencer, but that’s probably true of everyone who collects a paycheck at any significant political thinking magazine or website.  Meaning the articles they write are edited and approved by management.  So if they don’t align to what management wants, articles are spiked or changed, or already written in a way to comport with the guidance.  Or you don’t get paid and your work doesn’t get published.

    • #18
  19. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    Django (View Comment):

    Barfly (View Comment):

    GlennAmurgis:

    It really is DC vs the rest of us. Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist”? How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

    In other news, Romney-McDenial will continue to chair the RNC. It is DC vs. US overall, but we needed to win the Inner Party v. Outer Party match first. We just lost – now what?

    Heard that on the local news station this afternoon.

    Another take: The GOP tackles one of the worst midterm election performance in decades by voting to change nothing at the RNC (msn.com)

    That article is all over the map, but the headline is accurate.  Ultimately Trump was elected despite the GOPe, not because of it, and for that, everyone everywhere must be punished so they can get back to the normal process of capitulation and perpetuating the rolling financial disaster that is unfunded liabilities that will wreck the nation.

    There’s a reasons why magazines like Commentary just comment on stuff.  Because they’ve never had to do it themselves.  That’s all a commentarian like Kristol does.  Just talks.  Great.  I could throw 50 bucks at any person in the grocery store and they’d talk, too, if asked – but that won’t change anything. 

    Literally, nothing changes.

    • #19
  20. Gazpacho Grande' Coolidge
    Gazpacho Grande'
    @ChrisCampion

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Rodin (View Comment):

    The DC beltway is 64 miles in length. I have a fantasy that 168,960 people show up and lock arms for the entire length of the beltway and demonstrate to the people inside that we are not their servants.

    It wouldn’t be so difficult for them to bury 168,960 bodies, but it would be difficult for them to do it secretly. It depends on exactly how things go, though. At the Novocherkassk massacre in 1962, a lot of the wounded were taken to local hospitals. The KGB men came, dragged the wounded out, and shot them, too, as part of a program to keep the episode hushed up. It succeeded well enough. We in the west knew that something had happened there, but it was difficult to know just what. Our own media are at least as good as theirs at hushing up stories that the administrative state wants to have hushed up.

    I’d never heard of this, thanks for the tip.  Reduce wages, increase price of food, and increase production quotas, and you get a riot that is violently put down.

    2 of those 3 are happening here in the US, right now.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre

    • #20
  21. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Rodin (View Comment):

    The DC beltway is 64 miles in length. I have a fantasy that 168,960 people show up and lock arms for the entire length of the beltway and demonstrate to the people inside that we are not their servants.

    It wouldn’t be so difficult for them to bury 168,960 bodies, but it would be difficult for them to do it secretly. It depends on exactly how things go, though. At the Novocherkassk massacre in 1962, a lot of the wounded were taken to local hospitals. The KGB men came, dragged the wounded out, and shot them, too, as part of a program to keep the episode hushed up. It succeeded well enough. We in the west knew that something had happened there, but it was difficult to know just what. Our own media are at least as good as theirs at hushing up stories that the administrative state wants to have hushed up.

    I’d never heard of this, thanks for the tip. Reduce wages, increase price of food, and increase production quotas, and you get a riot that is violently put down.

    2 of those 3 are happening here in the US, right now.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre

    The Wikipedia page about the event seems to have changed a lot since I last looked at it. I don’t see anything there about dragging the wounded out of their hospital beds, but I’m not sure the older version said anything about it, either. I probably got it from a made-for-TV movie depiction of the event, or else I’m getting mixed up with other incidents when the wounded in the hospitals were rounded up.  

    • #21
  22. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):
    There’s a reasons why magazines like Commentary just comment on stuff.  Because they’ve never had to do it themselves.  That’s all a commentarian like Kristol does.

    Indeed!

    That was one of the refreshing things about the appearance of blogs: Ordinary people writing about what they actually knew about, in contrast to the establishment media’s paid scribblers writing about what they pretended to understand.

    • #22
  23. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Speaking of Bill Kristol, have you seen the vile smear of Roger Scruton which was published at Kristol’s The Bulwark?

    • #23
  24. DrewInWisconsin, Oik Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Oik
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):
    There’s a reasons why magazines like Commentary just comment on stuff.  Because they’ve never had to do it themselves.  That’s all a commentarian like Kristol does.  Just talks.  Great.  I could throw 50 bucks at any person in the grocery store and they’d talk, too, if asked – but that won’t change anything. 

    Kristol is more than just a well-connected commenter.

    He is at the heart of every fake conservative organization that exists through his “Defending Democracy Together” club or whatever variant he calls it. Defending Democracy Together gets cash infusions from several left-wing dark money groups. Follow the money.

    Kristol and George Soros are the same kind.

    • #24
  25. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    The Wikipedia page about the event seems to have changed a lot since I last looked at it. I don’t see anything there about dragging the wounded out of their hospital beds, but I’m not sure the older version said anything about it, either. I probably got it from a made-for-TV movie depiction of the event, or else I’m getting mixed up with other incidents when the wounded in the hospitals were rounded up.

    The massacre is described in The Gulag Archipelago:

    “The wounded all vanished without a trace: not one of them went home. Instead, the families of the wounded and the killed (who of course wanted to know what had become of their kin) were deported to Siberia.”
    –Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Part VII Stalin Is No More, Chapter 3 The Law Today

    • #25
  26. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    The Wikipedia page about the event seems to have changed a lot since I last looked at it. I don’t see anything there about dragging the wounded out of their hospital beds, but I’m not sure the older version said anything about it, either. I probably got it from a made-for-TV movie depiction of the event, or else I’m getting mixed up with other incidents when the wounded in the hospitals were rounded up.

    A hasty internet search turned up this footnote in the book Red Plenty by Francis Spufford (boldface is original, underlines are mine):

    Notes – III.2 The Price of Meat, 1962

    Volodya stood by the parapet at the edge of the flat roof of the city procuracy: although Volodya himself is invented, along with Basov the regional first secretary, and the situation that Volodya finds himself in with his seniors disgraced, the Novocherkassk massacre of 3 June 1962 was all too real.

    My main source was Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk 1962 (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2001).

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 3, 1918–1956, An Experiment in Literary Investigation V–VII, translated by H. T.Willetts (London: Collins/Harvill, 1978), pp. 506– 14, contains a passionate and horrified account of the massacre, but it was compiled in the rumour-chamber of samizdat, and is not reliable in detail.

    For an eye-witness account, drawn on by Baron, see Piotr Siuda, ‘The Novocherkassk Tragedy, June 1–3 1962’, Russian Labour Review 2, 1993.

    Piotr Sunda’s eye-witness account can be found at Michigan State University:

    “Trucks and buses were driven to the site. The corpses were hastily thrown and thrust into them. Not a single body was given to the family to be buried. The hospitals were crowded with wounded. Nobody knows what became of them.

    • #26
  27. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    It is tragic that we must use Solzhenitsyn today, not as a cautionary tale but as a means to prepare our minds for what is coming. I wish it were not so, I pray that events will intervene. But I am not optimistic.

    • #27
  28. Paul Stinchfield Member
    Paul Stinchfield
    @PaulStinchfield

    Rodin (View Comment):

    It is tragic that we must use Solzhenitsyn today, not as a cautionary tale but as a means to prepare our minds for what is coming. I wish it were not so, I pray that events will intervene. But I am not optimistic.

    It’s sickening to realize just how many self-described liberals think like Stalinists.

    • #28
  29. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Gazpacho Grande' (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):

    I called Kristol getting his leash pulled by the Establishment years ago: https://ricochet.com/333363/kristol-springs/

    Which makes this newest revelation fascinating. I don’t mean to go off the rails here, but HOW BIG IS THIS?

    If Kristol is a shill for the no-kidding, very real, we-just-saw-the-docs Establishment, doesn’t that make him a literal crony of the two-party money cult, a deep state mole, a paid influencer working to co-opt the right into singing the government’s tune?

    Back when I wrote that other thing, I thought it was just him and his friends getting their lofted noses out of joint at the Trump phenomenon. Is it really as sordid as it now sounds?

    “Bill, you’re going to have to get your yokels to dump Trump.”

    “I can do that.” Phone call to NR.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to spike the candidate in the general.”

    “I can do that!” Phone call to David French.

    “Bill, you’re going to have to push this Russia thing from inside your party. Get Pence ready to roll in February 2019”

    “I CAN DO THAT!”

    “Bill, we’d like you to clear out your desk.”

    It’s probably accurate that he’s a paid influencer, but that’s probably true of everyone who collects a paycheck at any significant political thinking magazine or website. Meaning the articles they write are edited and approved by management. So if they don’t align to what management wants, articles are spiked or changed, or already written in a way to comport with the guidance. Or you don’t get paid and your work doesn’t get published.

    I’m not talking about his work for magazine editors.

    • #29
  30. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    GlennAmurgis: We need to break the federal bureaucracy. VDH states we need to get it out of DC and spread it around the country (e.g., the Department of Agriculture should be somewhere in the farm belt in the midwest).

    I’ve been saying this exact thing for six years, at least. The Federal government should look like the American people and live where the people live…ALL of the people, EVERYWHERE.  There should not be two Federal departments in any one State. The only thing left in Washington D.C. should be the White House and Congress. I would even move the Supreme Court. One thing we found out during COVID lockdowns was that Zoom works.

    • #30
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