THE WAY I SEE IT
by Don Polson Red
Bluff Daily News 10/31/2017
Manafort, Tea Party, fires and sex
As of Monday morning, the news informing this column
casts no guilt on President Donald J. Trump and no aspersions on his campaign;
nor does the reported indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort—even if proven true—shed any light on evidence of collusion between
Trump, his campaign and Russia. Reportedly, Manafort (who had a temporary,
limited role during the 2016 Trump campaign and, frankly, never impressed this
writer as a good face or voice for Trump) faces charges stemming from financial
and advocacy activities years ago involving foreign governments.
At the time he was brought into the Trump campaign
last year, he had no prior convictions or indictments, so Trump is free of any
taint associated therewith. Assuming that Manafort has no previously unknown
information—the surfacing of which would be surprising, even shocking, given
the lack of secrecy in the phony Trump/Russia scandal—it will be nothing less
than an exoneration of Trump and his campaign.
Let’s be clear about one thing: The indictments
announced Monday are irrelevant to the task given the special prosecutor, Bob
Mueller, of discovering actual collusion (not a crime) or conspiracy (a crime
if what was being conspired amounted to a federal criminal act). A case can be
made regarding the disclosure of the surreptitious and blatantly illegal
deception over the funding of the so-called “Russian dossier” and its numerous
fabrications, by the Democratic National Committee, based on stated Russian
sources by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.
That case would be that the money paid by Democrats
and their contracted lawyer/law firm—Mark Elias and Perkins Coie—to opposition
research firm Fusion GPS, were not for “legal services,” but were payments to
foreigners for salacious fabrications whose use was intended to remove Trump
from the presidency of our nation. That is vile Russian/Democrat “collusion.”
Let’s note several other news items. “US to pay tea
party groups in lawsuits over IRS scrutiny,” by Sadie Gurman of the AP,
provides a fitting closure to one of the most despicable, outrageous and,
frankly, defining cases of corruption under Obama’s presidency. President Richard
Nixon was impeached, in part, over merely attempting to use the IRS to
persecute his political opponents; Barack Obama succeeded beyond Nixon’s
wildest dreams.
It was a conspiracy in plain sight between Obama, IRS
head Lois Lerner and their minions at the agency’s tax exempt division, to slow
down and harass the Tea Party movement into ineffectiveness in the elections
following the passage of Obamacare (ACA), rammed through Congress with 100
percent Democrat votes. Some of those responsible should face fines and jail.
In “GOP
targets environmental rules after wildfires,” the AP’s Matthew Daly reported on
reasonable and much overdue measures proposed by Republicans in Congress to
expedite cutting and thinning of our national forests, recently in the news for
deadly, massive wildfires that destroyed many thousands of homes and
businesses. Fires in America’s forests are not entirely preventable; indeed,
about a hundred years ago, fires in the upper Midwest that killed hundreds were
accelerated by logging. The clearing of forests was good but the wood debris
littered the forest floor and had the predictable effect of precipitating
conflagrations, overtaking towns.
It is beyond dispute that if forests are cleared and
heavily thinned in the areas surrounding towns and cities, the fires that start
by nature or human carelessness (even intention) have vastly less fuel as they
approach population centers. Why else would forestry departments go to such
lengths to urge clearing fuel from around rural, foothill and mountain homes?
It’s an idea so full of common sense that no one could credibly deny that
seeing less forest around towns and cities would be a fair trade-off.
No one but Democrat environmental slaves to the
so-called global warming religion, as revealed in Daly’s piece, drives
opposition to Republican proposals. “Democrats also complain that Republican
proposals don’t acknowledge or address root causes for increasingly severe
wildfire seasons, such as climate change or increased development near forest lands.”
First, when people develop and move into subdivided parcels, simply provide
schools with additional money from clearing of nearby forests by logging—it’s a
win-win. Second, they can’t have it both ways by saying forests are dying from
global warming but overgrown tracts must be left alone to fuel conflagrations.
Go see “Only the brave” playing locally for the meaning of “fuel.”
“California lawmaker apologizes for 2009 harassment
incident,” by AP’s Kathleen Ronayne; Instapundit.com’s Glenn Reynolds asks,
“Why are Democrat-run institutions such cesspools of sex assault (or violence,
drugs, corruption, etc.).” She inadvertently illustrates the oversight in many
news stories—or the “Name that party” game—of neglecting to identify Democrats
caught in scandal as, well, Democrats. “Oversight” would be sloppy; intentional
obfuscation would be professional malpractice. It’s hard not to lean toward
intentionally misleading readers when, in a later baseless charge by the
Women’s Caucus, Ronayne immediately identifies Assemblyman Devon Mathis as a
“Republican-Visalia,” for his “alleged actions.” Years ago, a media critic
assembled over a dozen reported sex scandals, often involving minors, that
rarely ID’d the perpetrator’s political party; yes, they were mostly Democrats.
A brief correction to an accepted narrative from the
Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh was, first and always, a communist adherent of Lenin,
Stalin and Mao. His fanatical pursuit of a “unified Vietnam” was solely to
implement international Communism. Not red-baiting, “domino” theorizing or
commie-hunting; just pure, brutal, totalitarian devotion to Russia and China.
