Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   10/24/2017

           Phony outrage; real scandal

After a month back from summer traveling and camping—including a welcome respite from news media firestorms and hysterical derangement over President Trump and everything-he-does-or-says—it becomes obvious that nothing has changed. The themes are becoming solidified and etched in stone; the group-think has become tribal; many who would in the past dismiss the noise and intrigue now reluctantly embrace it.

Another week’s events becomes another week calling for pushback and perspective in this column; similarly, the years from 2005 on required weekly correcting of the (President) Bush-hating lies in the news and opinions found on these pages. You will not find a similar column in other nearby newspapers, by a local writer standing for truth about Trump and his presidency—the candidate overwhelmingly voted for last November in our region.

The Democrat left has latched onto more fake controversies that they think will produce political advantage for them among the nation’s electorate. Representative Frederica Wilson (Dem.-Fl.) virtually spat on the sacred moment where a commander-in-chief consoled a war widow of a fallen warrior, Sergeant La David Johnson, slain by Islamic fighters in combat in Niger. It was a private call with heart-wrenching overtones that have burdened every president who’s presided over combat fatalities of those placed in harm’s way by their nation. In this case, ISIS fighters ruthlessly ambushed American Special Forces, sent to Niger by then-President Obama and reinforced with troops sent by President Trump.

Johnson’s widow has every right to speak out if she felt Trump’s words were inappropriate; Wilson’s cheap hijacking of that phone call to spew her vile sentiments of hatred for Trump is almost beneath dignifying. That the media Democrats-with-bylines have chosen to elevate Wilson’s partisan mud-slinging, as well as their despicable piling onto General and Chief-of-Staff John Kelly for his righteous criticism of Wilson, reveals much about why the political atmosphere is so toxic. Shame on them.

Having just read the July 11 issue of the Daily News, I was chagrined to read my perceptive and predictive words: “Trump is finding the revelations over the lack of any impact of Russian meddling on our election to be a potent weapon against the media obsession…Trump is pointing to the real Russian influence peddling and corruption: Hillary Clinton’s uranium deals and her campaign head ‘John Podesta’s Russia Connection.’”

Even former President Jimmy Carter has affirmed what has been obvious to all objective analysts: Russian meddling in last year’s election changed no votes, no state’s winner, and did nothing to hurt Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump. Every “latest revelation” falls apart upon scrutiny. The reported $100,000 worth of ads on Facebook by Russians were, 1) a pittance in a $2 billion contest and, 2) spent to advance several disparate issues in their known strategy of sowing disruption and dissension, which Democrats have endlessly practiced.

“Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads—the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015—before Donald Trump entered the race—was more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering. The Clinton’s own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering (You read that right: 65 hundred dollars.)

“By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multi-million-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former president and his wife, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton. At the time, Russia was plotting—successfully—to secure U.S. government approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves.

“Here’s the kicker: The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal.” (Andrew C. McCarthy, “The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal; Not only the Clintons are implicated in a uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national security interests.”) Look it up before criticizing.

To return to The Vietnam War, now a Ken Burn’s/Lynn Novick/Geoffrey Ward documentary, I must preface my comments with the admission that I changed my mind over the last 20+ years as I became aware of facts I hadn’t previously known. While I then had no time outside of work for the history of that war, once a narrative came to my attention—which fell outside the one preferred by the media and historians, and was factually supportable—I reexamined what I believed. Anyone who differs with what I write and now believe (you know who you are), owes it to their intellectual integrity to read scholarly (not ideologically) based histories of that war and must be willing to change their thinking with new facts.

Carving out time to inform yourself will be well repaid: look up “PBS’ The Vietnam War Miseducates America,” by Francis P. Sempa; “A Warped Mirror—Omissions and distortions mar Ken Burns’ Vietnam War, a missed opportunity to provide an historically honest look at the conflict,” by Mark Moyar; “The Bad War—Vietnam gets the Ken Burns treatment,” by Stephen J. Morris; and “Be skeptical of Ken Burns’ documentary The Vietnam War,” by Terry Garlock.

Finally, 6 pieces are posted at “powerlineblog.com/archives/category/history.” Be informed; the slanted history of Vietnam echoes to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bush, Obama and Trump.