Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- October 27, 2016

At National Review, our neutron bomb election.

I was sent the link to this review by several readers.

Many, many comments.

1. The writer of this editorial a) either did not know any of this before she wrote the editorial; or, b) she did know this.

Either she did or she didn't.

If she did not know of any of this before WikiLeaks, she is, hands-down, no question, the winner of the Geico Rock Award for 2016. I can think of only one other past winner who has said something more incomprehensible: "We cannot simply drill our way to low gasoline prices."

If she did know this before WikiLeaks, one has to ask why she waited until the week or two before the election to write it. (Not that it would have made any difference.) But did it require WikiLeaks for this writer of this editorial to learn about the following four items cited in this editorial?

• CNN vice president Virginia Moseley is married to Hillary Clinton’s former deputy secretary at the State Department Tom Nides (now of Morgan Stanley) — suggesting “The Clinton News Network” is not really a right-wing joke.
• Former ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, a — pre-Benghazi — regular on the Sunday talk shows.
• CBS president David Rhodes is the sibling of aspiring novelist Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for “strategic communications and Speechwriting,” whatever that fictive title means.
• ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman married former White House press secretary Jay Carney (now senior vice president for “worldwide corporate affairs” at Amazon: not just “corporate affairs” or “worldwide affairs” but “worldwide corporate affairs”).

You and I may not have known all of those (or many others), but that's not our job. It's the job of the media to bring that to our attention, not WikiLeaks.

2. Ninety-nine percent of Americans will never read the editorial at The National Review. Shoot, I'm not sure even nine percent of Americans have even heard of The National Review. The one percent who do read The National Review editorial should already know the facts that were in it, even if the writer did not.

3. What bothers me most: anyone who actually read this editorial (one percent of Americans) and who found this material new or shocking; they, too, are nominees for the Geico Rock Award for 2016.

4. But this is the biggest problem: the analogy to the neutron bomb. From the lede, the first three sentences in full:

• The shells of our institutions maybe survive the 2016 campaign, but they will be mere husks.
• The infamous neutron bomb was designed to melt human flesh without damaging infrastructure. 
• Something like it has blown up lots of people in the 2016 election and left behind empty institutions.

The writer is correct about only one thing, which was expressed in the second sentence: what a neutron bomb was designed to do. Everything else is wrong, dead wrong.

Does anyone really believe:

• that the shells of our institutions will be mere husks after the 2016 election?
• that something like a neutron bomb has blown up lots of people in the 2016 election and left behind empty institutions?

In fact, after the 2016 election, the federal institutions will still be there, and they will be stronger than ever: including but not limited to the EPA, the IRS, DOJ, DOE, HHS, Congress, the Supreme Court, and POTUS (especially if a felon by any other name is elected).

Does anyone seriously doubt that?

After this election, our federal institutions will certainly not be "mere husks."

With regard to the second wrong point, WikiLeaks (which this editorial is all about) did not "blow up" a single individual. If anything, every individual "exposed" by WikiLeaks is stronger than ever (by definition: "that which does not kill us, makes us stronger"). If anything, every individual mentioned in the editorial, starting with the network news anchors, are stronger than ever. (Megyn is asking for a $20 million salary, isn't she? That's more than POTUS will likely earn.)

If I'm wrong, name one individual "exposed" by WikiLeaks whose career has been destroyed and whom we will never hear of again or who might actually go to prison. Nope, not one. Okay, maybe the wiener.

In fact, if Hillary is elected, it will simply be "revolving doors" writ large as deputy directors of federal agencies move to become directors of other federal agencies. In fact, if there are not enough agencies to go around to reward everyone named in WikiLeaks, existing departments will spin off new departments. EPA will spin off a new agency: the Federal Agency of Global Warming. Treasury will spin off a Federal Agency of Debt, thereby moving $19 trillion in debt to a new federal agency, and simply mandate that the US Treasury start over with a clean slate, with a zero balance. The Treasury Department will take in revenue; the Federal Agency of Debt will simply keep a separate set of books, classified ultra-top secret, to be seen only by George Soros. The Federal Reserve will spin off a Federal Reserve Agency for Journalism to post minutes that cannot be interpreted by anyone.

If Trump is elected, the bureaucracy is such he might be able to appoint/move/fire/affect 200 individuals but that leaves about 150,000 entrenched bureaucrats who have learned to survive by showing up to work generally on time, keeping their heads down, and simply waiting out any president. Does anyone really think the Senate will approve any Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump? We've survived the past year with eight justices; we can survive four more (years) without Sarah Palin on the bench.

For me, all WikiLeaks did was start to level the playing field. Prior to WikiLeaks only one or two percent of Americans were in on the joke. Ninety-eight percent of Americans had no clue; some may have had suspicions but nothing "concrete" on which to hang their pitchforks. Now maybe six percent of Americans are in on the joke.

By the way, speaking of jokes, the cruelest joke (and there have been many) in this administration was this which was "revealed" just this past week: $25,000 in 2017 in the US is considered a "modest" income by the folks who brought us ObamaCare. That's why Megyn needs $20 million.

I don't watch network news so I don't know if WikiLeaks has been reported to any extent on ABC, NCB, CBS, CNN, HLN, MSNBC, FOX, etc, etc., but I assume not. Nor do I suspect we will ever see anything from WikiLeaks mentioned on Sixty Minutes.

So, back to the writer of this editorial. If she really was unaware of Caligula's Circus or Nero's Nepotism in Washington, DC, she is the winner of the 2016 Geico Rock Award.

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Updates

October 28, 2016: grifters-in-chief, from The Wall Street Journal; again, it took WikiLeaks to open this reporter's eyes. Wow.

October 28, 2016: most Americans think media is biased. 

Overall, 56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it's biased in his favor and 37 percent say coverage is mostly balanced.

Eighty-seven percent of Trump's supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton's supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favor, 30 percent to 8 percent. Sixty percent of Clinton's supporters see no bias in either direction.

Supports my thesis above. At least 54% of Americans are not paying attention. And among Clinton supporters, at least 60% of them, are just like Clinton herself. Delusional.