“Don’t you know, little fool
You never can win
Use your mentality
Wake up to reality…”
– Lyrics sung by Frank Sinatra, per Lyric Find.
Certain habits and illicit attractions – no matter how appealing – can be prevent needed or healthy changes. What keeps someone from ‘waking up to reality’ by ‘using your mentality’ can thus be professionally dangerous or deadly. That might be a woman or a man, as millennia of human history confirms what Sinatra’s song melodically showed. But Sinatra’s insight can by analogy be applied to the trust or attraction in some institutional, personal, or professional habit(s) that has little or nothing to do with sex. Note Sinatra was tagging – himself. His lyrics were a reality check.
Select quotes from Democratic Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer (NY-D) and former President Barack H. Obama (D) ironically prove Americans for Limited Government (ALG) Vice President Robert Romano’s key point in his contention cited further below.
A traditional role of media is supposedly to hold those with or in power to accountability. That has certainly been true at various times and in specific circumstances. But it is also true that media puts their finger on the scales of public opinion, just as “intelligence,” law enforcement, or other public officials do. This was arguably evidenced yesterday in manufactured housing in a semi public forum, as will be noted further below. But first, to balance out several recent reports from the political left in media is this report from the political right shown below and used with permission.
Put differently for clarity and emphasis, the following from the right-of-center Daily Torch will balance out and make a point that publishers on the political left have made. Two examples from the left deployed as “News Through the Lens of Manufactured Homes and Factory-Built Housing” (c) are – in alphabetical order – Glenn Greenwald and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Following this will be additional information, MHProNews Analysis, and Commentary.
The MHProNews commentary and analysis that follows Romano will aim to connect the dots on how purported corruption of public institutions are harming the interests of independent businesses and tens of millions of manufactured homeowners and would be affordable housing consumers.
Here is the news-analysis by Robert Romano of the Daily Torch. The cartoon was provided by Romano’s ALG/Daily Torch in his original report. Note the date: 2017. Compare that to the date of Senator Schumer’s quote above.
Intelligence agencies simply will not stop interfering in U.S. presidential politics
Intelligence agencies clearly have their fingers on the scales, and now there is a consistent pattern that, depending on which party is in power, tilts these intelligence assessments to be negative to the opposition party when they’re out of power.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has once again issued a politically tainted intelligence assessment on March 16, this time once again alleging that Russia tried to help former President Donald Trump win the election, this time in 2020.
According to the report: “We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.”
This was reminiscent of a similar assessment issued last August telling the American people who our foreign adversaries prefer to win the election, while former President Trump was still in office. Except in August it stated that China was trying to hurt Trump’s reelection, “We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection…”
But in the most recent assessment, China’s opposition to Trump was then walked back, stating contradictorily that “We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election… China sought stability in its relationship with the United States, did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling… The NIO for Cyber assesses, however, that China did take some steps to try to undermine former President Trump’s reelection.”
So, which is it? When Trump was in office, the Director for National Intelligence found that China opposed Trump’s reelection bid. But after President Joe Biden is sworn into office, suddenly, China no longer prefers Trump lose.
The assessment on Russia, however, was not altered from the version in August, which stated then: “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.’… Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”
So the assessment that was negative to Trump remained, and the assessment that was negative to Biden was modified significantly. See a pattern?
This never ends. Once again, depending on which party is in power, U.S. intelligence agencies are getting involved with American presidential electoral politics, this time walking back an assessment that China wanted Biden to win, while doubling down claims Russia wanted Trump to win.
Now, both of these assessments were in turn reminiscent of the Jan. 2017 assessment issued by DNI prior to President Trump’s inauguration finding Russia had sought to help him defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “We assess Putin, his advisers, and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump over Secretary Clinton… [and] the influence campaign aspired to help President-elect Trump’s chances of victory when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to the President-elect.”
The 2017 statement for DNI was designed to knee-cap President Trump on his way into office, and to legitimize the FBI’s ongoing counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and then the White House on false allegations that Trump and his campaign were Russian agents who had helped Moscow hack the Democratic National Committee and put its emails onto Wikileaks.
It was only more than two years later that Special Counsel Robert Mueller debunked that conspiracy theory, writing in his March 2019 report, “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
In testimony before House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on July 24, 2019, Mueller put a fine point on it, stating, “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities. We did not address collusion, which is not a legal term; rather we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy, and there was not.”
And the whole thing could have been averted years sooner. According to the Department of Justice Inspector General report detailing FISA abuses, the FBI hid exculpatory evidence that would have cleared President Trump and his campaign of any wrongdoing from the Justice Department and the FISA report. That included that the primary sub-source used by former British spy Christopher Steele in the DNC and Clinton campaign-paid for dossier that was used by the FBI had contradicted Steele’s findings in a Jan. 2017 interview by the FBI before Trump was even sworn into office.
According to Horowitz, “the Primary Sub-source made statements during his/her January 2017 FBI interview that were inconsistent with multiple sections of the Steele reports, including some that were relied upon in the FISA applications. Among other things, regarding the allegations attributed to Person 1, the Primary Sub-source’s account of these communications, if true, was not consistent with and, in fact, contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’…”
In other words, the Trump-Russia collusion investigation was nothing more than a conspiracy theory, a witch hunt that was fueled greatly in part by highly politicized intelligence assessments.
It never ends.
These agencies clearly have their fingers on the scales, and now there is a consistent pattern that, depending on which party is in power, tilts these intelligence assessments to be negative to the opposition party when they’re out of power.
None of this should be made public. The implication is the that one of the primary roles of the intelligence community is to show that the incumbent party’s political opponents are potentially in bed with foreign powers, further undermining public confidence in U.S. intelligence agencies as they become political actors, and fueling conspiracy theories about our elected leaders being traitors.
In other words, these political intelligence assessments are dividing the country, destabilizing our civil society and thereby endangering national security. Enough is enough.”
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Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
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Chuck Schumer on Trump in 2017: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you” pic.twitter.com/gVUbUKTt0x
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 27, 2019
Additional Information, MHProNews Analysis, and Commentary
As was noted above, Senator Chuck Schumer famously – and arguably accurately – quipped that the “intelligence community” has “six ways from Sunday” to get someone. Schumer made that statement as a type of warning to then President-Elect Donald J. Trump. Messing with national intelligence and law enforcement was playing with proverbial fire. The case can be made that to a significant degree, it was so-called federal law enforcement, “Justice Department, and various federal intelligence services that – working in concert with special interests – “rolled” President Trump and his supporters – said the late Rush Limbaugh – 4 years after Schumer’s comment.
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer, (NY-D) on MSNBC per the Hill, January 3, 2017,
One need not agree with Schumer politically to see the value of that troubling insight. That insight from the left supports the contention of ALG VP Romano on the right. Recall the Greenwald quote below, which likewise points to the nexus between intelligence, corporate media, and “unprecedently powerful consortium of tech monopolies” and corporate “ruling coalition.”
If that sounds suspiciously like the Iron Triangle at work, that instinct could arguably be proven correct. Keen in mind that MHProNews application of the Iron Triangle to our industry does not diminish the application of that principle to other professions, or the federal government at large.
Romano’s thoughts and Schumer’s also supports the parallel claim from the political left by voices such as attorney and CHD nonprofit chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr).
Note that while home ownership is tragically down since 2000,
it was trending up steadily following the election of President Trump.
Or by attorney turned award winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who helped break the story told by Edward Snowden about U.S. Intelligence Services warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
Going Too Far, or Not Far Enough?
The temptation by some numbers would be to throw up their hands in disgust and walk away from American politics entirely. But doing so only plays into the hands of those who have gamed or “rigged the system” in ways that benefits their interests over that of most everyday Americans.
Examples of cases of how this ‘rigged system’ has and is operating in manufactured housing – one from as as recently as yesterday! – are linked above and below.
That said, no one article by Romano, Kennedy, Greenwald, or others are enough to paint a reasonably complete picture. The ways it impacts our profession are shown in reports linked above and below. There are only a few choices.
- Do nothing, and expect more of the same. Head in the sand or ignoring reality are not useful strategies. As Sinatra sang, “Use your mentality. Wake up to reality.”
- Join – if you can – those who have rigged the system. That might work for some, but one must keep in mind what happened in countries where fascists and authoritarians came into ‘total power.’ Often those who were willing to sell out their fellows were among those that those who took power then eliminated because they were not trustworthy.
- Organize and resist. While one might – perhaps arguably should – disagree with much of what President Barack H. Obama said and did, he nevertheless made some potent points. One is that even problematic people can and have done good things.
It should be obvious that this publication and writer are prepared to do what is necessary, moral, and just to expose and end this troubling scenario.
As America approaches “Holy Week” for Christians around the world, it is good to recall the mantra of the Christopher’s. It is better to light one candle that to curse the darkness.
Stay tuned for more of what is ‘behind the curtains’ as well as what is obvious and in your face reports. It is all here, at the runaway largest and most-read source for authentic manufactured home “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) (See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position, and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.
