Kurt Schlichter (who has been on a roll lately) predicts the outcome of the fabricated Russiagate scandal.

If you’re stressed out about this whole Russian nonsense, relax – Donald Trump didn’t do anything wrong, and he’s not going be impeached, arrested, or ritually disemboweled. When the truth comes out and it explodes in the Democrats’ soft, girlish hands, we’ll all be laughing and toasting their humiliation with Stoli shots.

How do I know this with utter certainty? Because it’s all so glaringly obvious, and it’s the only scenario that fits the facts. As Hugh Hewitt says, this scandal has three silos. The first silo is the question of whether the Russians somehow “hacked our election.” The second silo is whether any Trump people “colluded” with the Russians. The third silo, the one patriots care most about since it’s the one that isn’t a ridiculous fantasy, is whether anyone in Obama’s administration used our intelligence apparatus to spy on his and Hillary’s political opponents. The answers are “No,” “No,” and “Yes.” The end results are going to be a stronger Trump, weaker Democrats, and various Obama minions exploring new career opportunities in the exciting fields of license plate-making, large-to-small rock transformation, and artisanal pruno distilling.

Read the whole thing.

Update: March 6: I learned this morning that the amusing image above was Photoshopped by artist Tim O’Brien.

T.A. Frank, at Vanity Fair, analyses, and sadly dismisses, the Jess Sessions-lied-about-Russian-contacts meme that the MSM has turned into this week’s feeding frenzy. He is actually worried that this kind of crying-Wolf by the establishment media is turning them into laughing-stocks and lowering their credibility to the point of zero.

As things clear up, we may be seeing a collapsing soufflé. And as with so many soufflés served up by the press in recent months, it emerged from the oven to oohs and ahs—this time, with me among the oohers and ahers—only to sink, first slowly, then quickly. Next, it will go into the trash, and we’ll bake another. It’s tiring. It’s boring. And above all it’s supremely damaging to the press. If you want people to believe you, then develop a reputation for believability. Might work better than just blaming your loss of credibility on Trump.

That leaves the question, once more, of whether Russia is a mastermind pulling Trumpian strings. It’s a crazy world, and anything’s possible. But the power of confirmation bias is immense. How many books and articles came out during the Obama years suggesting the president was secretly pushing for Sharia law, violating espionage law, trying to destroy Israel, or surrendering to Russia by whispering about post-election “flexibility” to Dmitri Medvedev (hats off to Breitbart for promoting that last claim)? Lots. If you wanted to believe Obama was a Muslim who was trying to subvert the nation from within, you could find what you needed to find.

So if you’ve determined that Trump is the Siberian candidate, you’ll find what you need to find. And this time high-ranking government officials are trying to help you. As the Post story was breaking, The New York Times reported that Obama White House officials “scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election” and that intelligence officials rushed “to process as much raw intelligence as possible into analyses, and to keep the reports at a relatively low classification level to ensure as wide a readership as possible across the government.” This ensures the leaks keep coming and that the list of suspects remains infinite.

Memeorandum’s lead item at 1:15 PM EST on February 19, 2017. (You can look at a later point in time by filling in the correct time and date.)

“You look at what’s happening. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?”

Trump is obviously alluding to extraordinary and absolutely appalling outbreaks of violent crimes and sexual assaults perpetrated by Third World immigrants and refugees accepted into European countries. But those clever journalists on the left play pretend that Trump has to be referring, not to robberies, rapes, and criminal assaults, but (mistakenly, out of his stupidity, confusion, and general inferiority) to some non-existent, entirely fabricated by Trump case of a mass terrorist attack. And they gleefully get to point out that such a mass terrorist attack has not (so far) occurred in Sweden, and therefore: Gotcha! Ho! ho! ho!

How stupid do they think Americans are?

Trump was obviously referring, not to a single terrorist attack, but to the unfortunate state of Swedish public safety with respect to crimes by Muslims against Swedes.

For example: Muslim Statistics — 5 Nov 2016:

Sweden’s Muslim problem: Half a million women sex attacked in a year

This now puts Sweden in the top position for sex crimes in the world.

Put this into perspective to see how horrific these figures truly are: The total Swedish population is only 9.6 million people. In 2009 a US report stated that there are 450,000 to 500,000 Muslims in Sweden, around 5% of the total population. Out of the 500,000 Muslim migrants in Sweden, half or less are men. In other words, there is roughly an equivalent to two sex attacks to every Muslim male in Sweden. These sex attacks are not committed by the natives.

or this example (Daily Wire 16 Jan 2017):

Scores of Swedes took the streets of Malmo, a southern city in Sweden, on Monday to protest an epidemic of violence that has taken the lives of far too many young people. The last victim was 16-year-old Ahmed Obaid. He was killed last Thursday after an unidentified gunman unleashed a salvo of bullets.

“Our kids should sleep well, play at play parks, feel safe,” Housam Abbas, the victim’s cousin, said, according to the Local.

Malmo, this once quiet city, is now overrun with violence. The culture of fear is so palpable that parents are no longer comfortable sending their children out to play.

“You have to look over your shoulder when you go out at night now. I don’t let my little brother go out at night any more,” said one high school student at Monday’s protest in front of city hall. “I hope that the politicians actually view this as a serious problem and start to solve this in Malmö.”

Trump is obviously right, and the MSM is full of weaselly liars cooking up fake news.

Infowars:

A shock example of anti-Trump media censorship was caught on tape when Reuters ordered its cameraman to cut live footage of Trump receiving praise from African-American Bishop Wayne T. Jackson in Detroit.

The incident occurred as Jackson presented Trump with a shawl, a bible, and offered his prayers as the black audience cheered and clapped.

Perhaps aware of the devastating impact the optics of this moment would have on the media’s efforts to demonize Trump as a racist bigot, a voice is heard off-camera saying, “He’s getting a shawl!”

The cameraman then says, “I’m shooting this, I don’t care what they say….I’ll take a demotion for this…. you?”

“Shut it down,” insists the director,” followed by another voice asking, “Shut this down?”

“Yes Michael, do it,” orders the director.

We then hear the word “blackout” and the camera shakes before the live feed is cut.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Kim Rhode

Shooting competitions used to attract mass audiences a bit over a century ago, not today. Today’s urbanized, emasculated, hoplophobic America prefers ball games, and current reporting associates firearms only with terrorism and mass shootings. It is additionally more technically difficult for television to cover the shooting sports, and NBC cannot be bothered to make the effort.

Kimberly Rhode, who shoots skeet, is the first woman to medal in six consecutive Olympic games, but no big corporate sponsor wants anything to do with her.

Bloomberg:

When Team USA’s Kim Rhode won a bronze medal in skeet shooting Friday, she claimed a piece of Olympic history: the 37-year-old Californian became the first woman to take the podium in six straight Olympics.

Landing a big-name sponsor might be the bigger feat. In the year leading up to Rio 2016, Rhode’s agent Patrick Quinn pitched her to around 20 companies that back the Olympics. None were convinced.

“The big mystery is how someone like Kim isn’t part of the Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, and the Olympics sponsor push,’’ Quinn said by phone from Chicago.“It would be nice to have an Olympic sponsor recognize the magnitude of her accomplishment.’’

Coca-Cola Co. didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Procter & Gamble Co.’s spokesperson Damon Jones said in an e-mail the company receives hundreds of sponsorship requests so it must be selective. Rhode and other shooters on Team USA think the reason they’re passed over is obvious. The rise in gun violence and mass shootings in the US have attached a stigma to shooting as a sport, they say. So while companies like Winchester, Beretta and Otis Technology support Rhode, she doesn’t have a single sponsor from outside the firearm industry.

The same is true for USA Shooting, even though the sport has since 2000 been the fifth-highest medal producer for the US team at Summer Olympics. The very first gold medal for any sport awarded in Rio went to 19-year-old Ginny Thrasher, competing in her Olympics debut.

Politics may only tell part of the story. American television audiences don’t tend to watch shooting – or, for that matter, a number of other sports. “The biggest challenge is limited exposure,” said Peter Carlisle, head of the Olympic Sports and Action division at Octagon Worldwide. “If the sport itself doesn’t provide a consistent platform for the athletes to become recognizable and maintain relevance, there’s limited value to a sponsor.”

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile Breitbart reported:

The BBC has unilaterally chosen not to report the Munich attacker’s full name, in what appears to be an attempt to scrub any Muslim or Islamic heritage link to its coverage of the incident.

Most sources at this point suggest that Ali David Sonboly – the Munich attacker who targeted children and killed nine yesterday – is not connected to radical Islam, but the BBC has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep any reference to his heritage out of its coverage, opting to name him only as “David Sonboly”.

Victor Sharpe and Robert Vincent marvel at how accustomed we have all become to the staggering level of mainstream media bias in favor of democrats.

t seems that most Americans operate on the assumption that the media is making a good-faith, if imperfect, effort at objectively informing its audience. That so few are genuinely aware of the outrageous manipulation of public opinion now taking place is the single greatest threat to the republic, to the extent that we can even say that our republic still exists. A glaring example of this would be the treatment of Nixon 42 years ago over Watergate compared with the treatment of Obama today over any one of several far worse scandals.

It was recently reported in the WSJ that Obama used the NSA to spy on Congress during the deliberations related to the Iran nuclear deal. It was reported on at one time, but this story has now disappeared completely from media coverage. Consider the implications.

In the former case, Nixon apparently directed or sat by and knowingly let his immediate subordinates direct a third-rate burglary of the campaign headquarters of an election opponent. In the latter case, Obama authorized one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering organizations in the world to spy on American legislators, en masse, in pursuit of the most important – and egregiously flawed – international agreement impacting American national security and world stability – namely, with the chief sponsor of international terrorism: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is a thousand times worse than Watergate! Where is the media? Where are today’s equivalents of Woodward and Bernstein? The media doesn’t focus on this outrage at all, so to the overwhelming majority of the public, it is as though this never even happened. And this is only one of several comparable scandals we could name. …

[I]n 2012, during an unintentional “open mic” moment, we overheard Obama making assurances to Russian president Medvedev that once he was able to get past the election, he would have “more flexibility.”

Here we have a sitting U.S. president apparently ready to make some huge concession to America’s most important major power rival on the world stage, a concession so drastic that it apparently couldn’t even be revealed until after the election. And the media did not hound him over this.

Could one imagine a President Nixon, or a President Reagan, making such a statement during arms control negotiations with the USSR and the media simply giving it a pass?. …

How about the qualifications of Bernie Sanders, who did not so much as earn a regular paycheck until he was 40, who ran for Congress while collecting unemployment, who supported himself for a time writing about masturbation and rape fantasies for leftist publications, who has served in Congress for 25 years without having written even one piece of legislation that ever passed?

Read the whole thing.

I still think Trump made a big mistake by chickening out of appearing at last night’s debate, but I suppose I agree with him at least in thinking that Megyn Kelly goes way too far in an adversarial direction at times.

In this episode from last night’s debate, she went after Ted Cruz, armed with a prepared gotcha video, in which she tries to damage Cruz by attacking his record on illegal immigration.

Watching this, I thought that she was much, much too pleased with herself and that she was behaving unfairly as a debate moderator by singling out the front runner present for a specially elaborate attack. The tone of her questioning was too avid. Her appetite for Cruz’s destruction too clear. She was too obviously trying to promote herself professionally by moving beyond the proper level of neutrality to take on, only in one special case, the role of attack dog. I think Cruz handled her perfectly well, and I expect poor little Donald Trump could have managed as well, had he be possessed of sufficient fortitude to show up.

Watch the exchange. The gloating “Yes, it would!” at 0:10 I thought was particularly inappropriate.

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The enthusiasm for Brave, Brave Sir Donald has, astonishingly survived in numerous quarters his cutting and running, his skulking away and buggering off, his funking last night’s debate.

This morning, Trump is winning Matt Drudge’s Poll (63.51%) and The Blaze’s Poll (54% – “by not being there”!). Go figure.

Yesterday, enthusiastic Trumpkins were all over the Internet explaining just how brilliant The Donald’s missing-the-debate strategy really was. It wasn’t about Megyn Kelly and her mean questioning back last August about misogynist remarks, no, no, no. Trump was dignifiedly boycotting the debate because he was righteously offended by being mocked in a press release issued by some of Roger Ailes’ subordinates.

FOX NEWS: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president. A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

Some conservative commentators and their friends on Facebook yesterday were assuring me that I was clueless because I had failed to do the research necessary in order to learn that Fox News had nefariously arranged to invite “a Muslim and an illegal alien” to participate in the debate questioning, thereby ambushing Trump. I watched (most of) the debate last night and never saw either of them. Their appearance must have been cancelled at the last minute when that political genius Trump craftily avoided the ambush, or maybe not, too.