Looks like some of them ARE getting right back to business as usual.

For a good long while, many Republicans believed Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham would produce a slew of indictments for the bad actors of the Russia probe. A bushel of bad news always sat just around the corner for James Comey, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and many others.

Judgement day, however, kept getting postponed. The trove of sealed indictments always seemed to slide just beyond arm’s reach. In the meantime, the Republican Party went P. T. Barnum on Bill Barr, fundraising on the promise of revenge against a whole host of ne’er-do-wells.

But after a year-and-a-half of imminent indictments, and a lot of fundraising, it became more than evident that the Barr-Dunham probe which provided so much chum for right-wing waters was pure grift. The “deep state” goon squad would never see the inside of a prison cell. 

Not because they were exonerated, or blameless. Nor was it because a good case against them wasn’t made, or makeable. It was because the fix was in. That hardly serves as an affirmation of the integrity of the system. Quite the opposite, actually.

Then another investigation came along. One that sparked the hopes of millions of Trump supporters still reeling from an election night gone wrong, one that started off just as promising as the Barr-Durham probe.

Amid a series of irregularities and apparent voter fraud, Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor and a member of Trump’s legal team for the election, leaped onto the scene, guns blazing. Just like Barr.

Bear with me just a bit further, gang; he’s about to go way wrong, you’ll see.

The issue with Powell was never that fraud didn’t occur or that she was making it up out of whole cloth, but that her claims are so extraordinary that they would threaten to discredit the case for real fraud if they turned out to be exaggerated or in any way untrue. There are many compelling examples of irregularities involving mail-in ballots, ejected poll observers, and more that are worthy of serious investigating.

But Powell has set the bar so incredibly high above those things now. This is not to say that there is not or could not be some basic truth to some of her claims, but that it is dangerous to build the case for fraud entirely on one person’s shoulders. As a result, “belief” in Powell has become a kind of purity test for some Trump supporters, creating internecine conflicts at the drop of a hat. It’s also preventing the Trump movement from performing any kind of introspection on what might have been some of the campaign’s mistakes.

Codswallop. If fraud was committed—and it couldn’t be more apparent that it was, with an abundance of credible evidence confirming it—then “introspection” and “mistakes” aren’t relevant.

If Powell’s claims are all true, then there would be no need to consider that perhaps it was a mistake to court rather than tackle the corporate and tech forces now garroting Trump’s last-ditch efforts. If Powell is right, there is no reason to criticize the Trump campaign’s racial-spoils pandering, its failure to keep signature platform promises, or its critical personnel problems. Because the only problem will have been, according to her, that as many as 10 million fraudulent votes and up to 7 million votes were switched from Trump to Biden. The unexpected side effect of all this is an unremittingly uncritical movement that will circle the wagons to defend the most poisonous pills in the White House and viciously attack those who are otherwise allies. Powell’s moment in the limelight is reminding us of the dangers of personality cults.

“Personality cults”? Well, okay then.

Now, as the recent spate of Powell skeptics or debunkers go, the above is actually mild stuff. This guy is more even-handed and polite about it than many others have been, let’s just concede that right up front. Even so, it still gripes me, although possibly not for the reasons you might assume. Let’s start with this.

I don’t have that evidence, but the fact that Sidney Powell claims she does is enough to convince me. This is a woman who gave up years of income she could have earned in her profitable practice to write, print, and promote a book no publisher would touch. Its charges were too explosive, I imagine.

Its targets, like Andrew Weissman (the protege of FBI director Christopher Wray) wield too much power. Tellingly, none of the people Powell exposed in Licensed to Lie have dared to sue her for defamation or libel. She put herself out there as a target for such a suit by writing the book—with no publishing house’s attorneys on board to defend her. But no one did, I’m sure because her charges were absolutely truthful.

Non-partisan legal expert Jonathan Turley is one of the few reliable commentators left out there. He observed after watching the press conference that Powell and the rest of the president’s team took a similar risk today. They accused a massive corporation, Dominion, with links to friendly billionaires like Soros and many foreign governments, of felonies. Of colluding with corrupt election officials to steal the White House.

Given the death threats to election officials in Michigan, and the doxing of their children, for refusing to certify a corrupt election, I’d say Ms. Powell is risking a lot more than money.

But there Sidney stood fearlessly on television, her voice quavering a little at the enormity of the evil she has helped to uncover. Meanwhile the Vichy-conservatives over at National Review and other “squish” venues sniped at her, and at Rudolph Giuliani, who faced down the hitmen of the New York Mafia, then broke its back. One called the Trump team “unhinged,” and sniffed at its lack of “dignity.”

If you think your country’s elections are being stolen, and your main concern is for keeping your “dignity,” then I don’t want you next to me in a foxhole. You’ll switch sides if the enemy offers a chocolate bar, and a chance to save your skin.

Getting closer, but still not quite there yet. More, and closer still:

Imagine that fairly high-ranking government officials, former mayors and prosecutors, hold a press conference accusing the Joint Chiefs of Staff of planning to shoot down an American airliner. They say the plan is to blame China, Russia, or Cuba.

Immediately they are depicted as nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake. Legacy media paints them as fabulists looking for book deals. Psychologists speculate on their sanity. Social media doubles down on purges. It’s almost like there was a Zoom call to coordinate it all.

Undaunted, the self-described whistleblowers offer even bolder claims in interviews. They say the Joint Chiefs will set off bombs in Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities. Canada and U.S. bases abroad will be attacked. It’s described as a “very well-funded” operation with CIA involvement.

There are mentions of original documents and check stubs proving payoffs. We’re told to expect more details by the end of this week.

Americans split into factions. The conspiratorial say this is only the beginning and Jeff Bezos and the Post Office and Bill Gates are in on it. MSNBC veers between ignoring the claims and screeching about Nazis. The rival political party starts muttering about criminal charges for treason. Fans of Enemy of the State, Wag the Dog, or Three Days of the Condor keep an open mind. Wasn’t Burt Lancaster that Joint Chiefs guy in Seven Days in May who tried a coup?

This is a little like the situation we find ourselves in when evaluating claims of a massive operation to steal the election for Joe Biden.

If we were told that boxes of ballots for Biden were carted into Philadelphia inner-city precincts at 3 a.m., that would be easy to believe. Or if we were told that Republican observers were prevented from observing and that windows are boarded up in Detroit. We’ve seen the videos despite our increasingly irate Silicon Valley overseers threatening us with the lash.

But attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood are not stopping there. They say perhaps 10 million fake votes were generated. They argue that the rot is global. In an interview two days ago, Powell said there was “foreign interference in our election” including from “China, Iran, Serbia, Lichtenstein.” Powell said “the CIA, I’m sure, has a hand in it.” She said to expect a lawsuit by the end of this week.

These allegations raise the stakes. They transform suspicions of Chicago-style fraud into an existential national crisis. If their claims about national-scale computerized fraud are true, democracy in the republic is over. The fix is in. Elections are a sham. Our ruling elite select the winner, and complainers get the camps.

Yep, almost there now. JJ brings us onto the porch and rings the bell:

If anyone doubts that there is not a Globalist plot to take America down, especially in light of what we and this President have experienced these past four to 20 years and really since the end of the Second World War, then please describe the bumps on your sigmoid as you have your head up your ass. If Sidney Powell is guilty of anything, it’s perhaps fighting the right battle but at the wrong time. That is unless she really does have the Kraken of all evidence ready to be released. I hope she does. In any case, my anger is not at her, nor at Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis or anyone else on the Trump Team. My incandescent rage that can never be slaked is at the traitors and the Enemy for snuffing out the last vestige of this republic and for those allegedly on our side who are their willing accomplices. Worst of the bunch are the state legislators and other GOP politicians in the six states that know firsthand that the Enemy stole their elections and should be convening right now to assign their electors to Trump. There is no excuse for that, threats of violence or not. This is a war now, and we are this close to an open shooting war, and considering the firebombing of several dozen cities over the past six months, arguably we’re at that stage already.

Whatever happens with Sidney Powell’s case, she is the very last person I am ever going to attack. For me, her motivations, if not perhaps (as remains to be seen) her strategy, are beyond reproach. Until you (the royal you) show me the proof – as you have demanded of her – that she is anything but a great patriot, I’m with her all the way. Because we are going to need an army of Sidney Powell’s should worse come to worse.


Dingdingdingdingding! We’re home, everybody!

See, it’s like this: I don’t give a tinker’s dam whether Powell is exaggerating, or grandstanding, or stoking her own ego, or just dead wrong. I don’t care if she’s stretching the truth a mite, if she has some of her details jumbled, or if she’s being misled in some fashion. Honestly, she could be making the whole thing up for all I give a shit. I’ll still stand shoulder to shoulder with her against our common enemy, be he a rabid Lefty loon, a Democrat-Socialist con artist, or a NeverTrumpTard Vichy Republican. I’m on her side no matter what, and Cadaver Joe Biden, Commie Kamala, and every last Enemedia propagandist can all go piss up a rope. Likewise Bill Kristol, Ewan McMuffin, David French, Mitt Romany, and the whole sorry lot of ’em.

The Enemy closes ranks when attacked, no matter what. We, on the other hand, natter and obssess over trivia, personality conflicts, and general persiflage. We bog ourselves down in niggling “debate” as if our very way of life wasn’t on the line here. We respond to direct frontal assault with over-intellectualizing and parlor pedantry. Then we kill our wounded, apologize for our beastly shortcomings, and slink off the field in ignominious retreat.

No Vichy GOPer ever yet found a hill that was worth dying on. For our side, “living to fight another day” always seems to take precedence over kicking the enemy’s ass up between his fucking shoulder blades. Because we’re “better than they are.” Because we must always “take the high road.” Because “that’s not who we are.”

The Enemy is making war. We’re making tea and crumpets. Bottom line:

What Trump, like Caesar, understands is that he can’t back down from this fight, even should he wish to. During his long campaign in Gaul, Caesar made it a point never to retreat; on one occasion when even the famed 10th Legion temporarily broke ranks during a battle, the chagrined legionaries asked their commander to decimate their ranks for cowardice. (Caesar refused.)

Trump similarly grasps that to stand down now, even in the face of overwhelming opposition—some of it coming from within his own ranks—would spell an ignominious end to his presidency and demoralize his voting legions. To leave an open question of whether our porous and multifarious systems of voting are easily manipulated and therefore untrustworthy would be to do the nation a great disservice.

As we’ve seen throughout the past four years, appeasement doesn’t work. No matter what the duly elected president of the United States did, there was no satisfying the rabid left and its media lackeys, short of Trump’s expulsion from office, however effected.

And so they mounted one of the strangest counter-campaigns in U.S. political history, rigging their nomination process to spit forth a superannuated, lifelong political hack rushing headlong into his embarrassing dotage and installing as his vice president the dangerous woman they really wanted to head their ticket, but who couldn’t garner any support during the primaries. It’s a breathtakingly cynical ploy, and a stain on American political history should it succeed.

So please, Mr. President, fight all the way to the end. Until these cases get to court—the big one, located right behind the Capitol—and your augments can be heard over the talking heads and the chattering classes, go on national television and explain to the American people what the stakes really are: not your political survival, but the survival of the Republic itself under a Constitution the left increasingly and openly despises.

Just so. Oh, and about that whackadoo conspiracy theory Normal American mentioned, wherein the JCOS plotted to down an American airliner for their own nefarious purposes? Silly stuff, I know, and it does kinda put Sydney Powell’s reckless, baseless allegations in a somewhat dimmer light. Right?

RIGHT?!?

Back to our whistleblowers’ claims of false flag attacks on an airliner and Washington, D.C. It might sound like a half-baked conspiracy theory.

But it would have been true. In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed shooting down an American civilian airliner, bombing D.C., and other false flag actions. It was called Operation Northwoods. President Kennedy rejected the proposal. He was assassinated the next year.

Then and now, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The kraken remains elusive.

Perhaps. But for me, proof no longer matters. I know who the enemy is; I know what he is, what he intends, how he will use the power he’s usurped. I care about one thing now, and one thing alone: annihilating him. I won’t hesitate to employ any and every weapon I can get my hands on—large or small, clean or dirty, fair or unfair, honorable or sneaky—that will help to get that job done. If Sydney Powell is such a weapon then I’m all for her, and straight to hell with all other considerations. If not, I’ll look for another.