Kari Lake's Bribery Tape Is Much More Than Arizona's GOP Death Star Exploding

 

 As you can hear, above, the murky world of political gangsterism that Oliver Stone portrayed in the movie JFK, and that's always been alluded to, but deflected from the fiasco we now call Watergate, finally made another real-life, but softer debut, through a recording made by Kari Lake, former MAGA candidate for Governor of Arizona, and now Senate candidate. 

In the recording, Jeff Dewit, the MAGA-loving, just-resigned, former Arizona Treasurer and GOP Chairman, is heard trying to bribe Lake, on behalf of some "very powerful people" from "back East," and sometimes using Tony Soprano-like tones. 

    

 Though Lake has spoken about this attempt many times before - without naming names - Arizona Republicans are finding it odd that a recording made almost a year ago, exposing DeWit, would only now be leaked to the Daily Mail. They find it so odd that Kari Lake - who was recently leading in the polls - is now accused of blackmail by DeWit, and being publicly booed by her own party. Which honestly makes the whole episode even odder: Donald Trump was supposed to stop by Arizona for one of his GOP fundraisers/pep rallies, but declined, making some wonder if it was Trump's team that tried to pay Kari Lake to get lost? That would instantly catapult it all from odd to just plain weird.

   

 Having seen a lot of reporting on this, except for asking why Kari Lake records her interactions (which TMR kinda likes, in the same way we keep police officers fake-but-honest by doing it) that seems to be about as deep as most news outlets are going. But there's still information, and unanswered questions, radiating from this, that TMR doesn't understand. For instance, it opens with Kari Lake saying "I'm assuming this is our friend." Remember: Lake knew she was being recorded - DeWit didn't. Who is this mysterious unnamed "friend," she and Jeff Dewit share, who she would think a message, so weighty it had to be personally delivered to her home, would be coming from? Was it Donald Trump? TMR has seen no one ask Lake (since she knew she was being recorded) why she didn't just say a name, nor has anyone asked Dewit who she was referencing - because everyone's blown away by the obvious bribe later in the recording.

Next, Kari Lake, without knowing specifically who they were discussing, says (whoever these "very powerful" GOP members are) they're "corrupt." DeWit's answer? "Well, maybe you're right." Excuse me - "Maybe you're right"? Let that sink in. The GOP Chairman doesn't argue the point. He doesn't flinch, either: He knows he's an emissary for the Dark Side, or whatever the Republican Party thinks of as it's Dark Side, and, without knowing he was doing so, he's confirmed it exists to the rest of the world, too. Well done, Sir. Well done.

So don't let the Right's Jesus talk fool you. While totally sounding like a child sex abuser (repeatedly telling Lake not to tell anyone) DeWit starts telling Lake those people, who he just confessed are "corrupt," care about her "being on the team." Which brings us to the point of this post. The creepy fucking way that creepy fucking man mentioned that creepy fucking team he's on. He mentioned cartels are in all 50 states (!) like he's warning her there's nowhere to run. Both he and Lake mention the likelihood of being killed for defiance. He says she won't be able to raise money, or function in Washington, D.C., without somebody behind her. Basically, American politics, but with a similar dynamic to surviving in prison. That shit's too creepy for any good anti-cultist to let pass.

Harvard's Claudine Gay affair has given many Americans a glimpse into one of the hazards of corporate-speak in society. But, more to the point, many more Americans have had the experience of working for a business that insists everyone's "family," or on a "team," until of course they're not. Then, the corporation just as unceremoniously dispenses with that employee, making the point crystal clear that they were never close, until the former "team member" grows so cynical, not only won't they ever fall for that one again, but now they're on the lookout for it as a red flag for deceit in business. There's a reason for this phenomena. Some say there's a reason for everything.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post thinks the media's worst lapse is refusing to identify Trump as a cult leader. Federally-recognized cult expert Rick Alan Ross begs to differ: 

"Donald Trump is not an absolute authoritarian “cult” leader like a Jim Jones, Charles Manson or David Koresh. He was democratically elected and is subject to congressional oversight, judicial review by the courts and must run to be reelected. The President of the United States is also constitutionally limited by law to no more than two terms (eight years) as president. None of this matches the history or narrative of cult leaders,..." 

Fair enough. We also know this because Lake kept saying these are people out to get Trump (Plus, Trump's been a known quantity since the '80s. He hasn't had time to build a cult). So, if not Trump, then whose team are we talking about? TMR thinks Jennifer Rubin needs to look closer to home. TMR thinks this is the capitalist right, working with the so-called "atheist" left. 

Whoever it is, "They're pushing a globalist agenda." Which brings us to a familiar quote,...

New Age is establishing itself as the ideology of global capitalism.  

- Slavoj Žižek, 2001

Here's another one, just for good measure:

“The more convoluted the explanation, the more unintelligible the practitioners are, the more people may be inclined to believe them. It makes it appear as though it is privileged knowledge, like real medicine and auto tech.”

All these years after Apple got cultism established in business (and killed Steve Jobs) America's still not examining the real role corporations are playing in politics and society, or how they're really doing what they're doing. Are they here just to please stockholders, if they're also being used to shuffle politicians into well-paying make-work "talking head" jobs, just to get them "out of the way" like Bill Clinton tried to do to Monica? And out of whose way, exactly? And for what - else?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

The Ol' In/Out Never Goes Out Of Style

Since I’m on punishment at Facebook (again - Thanks, Dad) I’m putting some links, here, so readers can still “get the picture” without the artist being around.

The New Republic’s got an article called “A Decade Of Liberal Delusion And Failure” that doesn’t try to wrestle with that headline, as it limits itself to the left’s political maneuverings, and not the crazy people behind them. The prison sentence, just handed down to Brazils “John of God” for multiple rapes, after he was “once promoted by Oprah, and carried out treatments on Bill Clinton” is a fine year-ending example of how we discover “the gang’s all here!” - exactly where they shouldn’t be - and also shows how difficult it is to take, and escape their influence. I mean, this is a story about Brazil, for goodness’ sake.

It doesn't matter. Just as we’ve seen, and heard, around a Harvey Weinstein, or a Jeffery Epstein, an Anthony Weiner, or Ed Buck, The Democrat Party is made up of some dark characters doing very dark things - indefensible things - while posing as trying to help. It makes me wonder what their supporters even think they’re fighting for, when the reality’s right there, for anyone to see:

They're a sex cult.

 

TMR's Year In Review: There Wasn't A Single "Scandal"

All year, like arrogant children, Instapundit, Althouse, Ace of Spades Headquarters, Hot Air, Legal Insurrection, and all the rest, cried and screamed Yes We Can! But, now that we can see their work in hindsight, all their readers were doing for the last 365 days was repeatedly committing the same stupid mistake:

They never questioned if their favorite blogger's delusions - regarding themselves or whatever the current political situation - were correct.

But why should they? Right-Wing readers certainly weren't clamoring for conformation this year, just more red meat - they HAD to nail Obama! These are the same types who love to brag how sure they are they couldn't be tricked into a cult, or cultish thinking. 

Suckers.

"Nobody joins a cult,...You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like."

Professor/bloggers, stoking mass hysteria online, can be a funny thing - if fraudsters could be called "funny" - since it's all about connected individuals attempting to get their fellow citizens needlessly worked up for a profit. Deception, dead ends, blind alleys - no behavior was too low to stop Right-Wing bloggers this year - as long as the money kept rolling in. Working those Amazon portals were the only true "successes" they had:

"It must be frustrating to [Obama's] opponents that,…investigators never managed to nail him,…never found the scandal,..."

I doubt it - they're not frustrated at all. As Glenn Reynolds once said, the best thing about being a professor is they don't have to care if what they say is right. Like homeopaths and all the rest, there's no ethical code they're bound to - they just have to keep you coming back for more. So, after leading you to follow Mitt Romney off a cliff, abusing an already-tattered trust was the name of the game this year.

   

 And it will be - as long as you continue to swallow it:

Like the fools you are,…

 

I See Nothing, I Hear Nothing, There Is Nothing (Including Nothing I Don't Know,...)

Very interesting: 

Has anyone else noticed that in Mark Halperin's "Between The Lines" column, currently headlined on DRUDGE, except for mentioning "Mitt Romney can win," Halperin doesn't mention Romney as the reason - or even A reason - for why Obama can lose?

This goes to the heart of what I've said all along - that despite what all the hyperventilating conservative clowns said, Obama was going to lose this election on his own, and it would've happened with or without Romney's "inevitable" nomination. Mitt has made no major policy initiatives, said nothing striking, done nothing to earn our allegiance. He just exists, as much of a phantom haunting the American presidency as Obama did in 2008. And, once again, "we the people" and our country are being made victims of Washington's herd mentality. To Joseph Smith's delight.

Ugh - political cultism. 

When, oh when, is my country EVER going to break itself from these delusional spells?

 

Yes, Mr. Pinko, We're Toying With Them Now,...

Bush is bad but Obama is good. They do the same thing but Bush, BAD… Obama, GOOD! Obama is a GOOD MAN. BUSH is EVIL...

Bush makes bad war, Obama makes good war… BUSH SPENDING BAD, OBAMA SPENDING NECESSARY – DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!

Hat Tip: iOwnTheWorld

Let's Put A Space Probe In Hugo Chávez's Brain

Hugo Chávez, he of the televised multi-hour conspiracy theory rant - and Noam Chomsky-loving, necrophiliac, socialist cult of personality in Venuzuela - is at it again. Keep in mind, this is the guy who had Sean Penn and Oliver Stone, amongst others, hooked on his every word during the Bush administration. (He famously claimed to smell "sulfur" emanating from George W. Bush, back in 2006, when Chávez spoke after him at the U.N. in New York.) Oliver Stone even went so far as to make a documentary about him, claiming Chávez is "misunderstood". See if you understand this:

Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday.

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.

Got that? Understand it? I do - the man runs a cult - and it's "logic" like this that absolutely proves it. I don't care how high he's risen in politics:

Hugo Chávez is 100% nuts.

WikiLeaks: You Can't Trust The Guy On The Left

Some people really know how to get our attention - emphasis ours:

A tell-all book by a former WikiLeaks insider casts founder Julian Assange as an "emperor" who has become just the kind of public figure he is trying to expose.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the former WikiLeaks spokesman who left the secret-spilling website after a bitter dispute with Assange, writes about his euphoria at the website's spectacular rise as well as his disillusionment with a leader he describes as delusional and power-crazed.

He said one of his motives for writing the book was that he wanted to clarify the events that led to the falling-out.

"We need to set the record straight before Assange turns into a cult, a pop phenomenon," Domscheit-Berg told reporters in Berlin on Thursday at the launch of his book.

Ha! A "cult"? Isn't it funny how Domscheit-Berg would consider that a risk - of all things - with so many smart and intelligent people around?

Or maybe, after his experience with Assange, he's discovered they ain't so smart and intelligent after all,..?

Focus On Fraud (Or Fraud Will Focus On You)

For Now: The Venezuelan Cult Of Hugo Chávez

Really: Is There Anything Better Than Politics?

I've been avoiding South Carolina's whole "Alvin Greene thing" because I've heard his story before somewhere:

A black guy that nobody knows anything about, somehow, gets swept into high office.

Sound familiar?

But, boy, was I missing out on this one! You know how, now, even liberals are saying Obama's stupid? No, no, no, no, no! If Obama's stupid, then this chucklehead's really stupid! No, I mean, really, really, really stupid! This guy's so stupid I'm starting to wonder where the Democrats go shopping for stupid! Wherever it is, even they want to take him back!

But they can't, because (second time being the charm) just like with the p-resident, the Democrats didn't check Greene's credentials (he might be a felon) and the media also didn't vett him (great job, again, guys!) so he ran in the contest, and this retard won - that's two in a row! - and this time with 60% of the vote. Which is great for when we want to, eventually, sit down with the Dems (Dims?) and have one of those "teachable moments" they're always going on about. All that's missing, to make the lesson complete, is finding out who's in this guy's lefty NewAge cult following. Is it Mark Morford? Or maybe Deepak Chopra? I don't know but I do know they're out there somewhere:

After electing "The One", they're probably celebrating a "Number Two" with Oprah.

There's Crackpots And Then There's Crackpots

The Tea Party movement was first seriously called racist after the Lyndon LaRouche cult started showing up to conservative rallies with posters of Barack Obama wearing a Hitler mustache.

This led to the Tea Party movement brilliantly defending itself by declaring it was the Lyndon LaRouche cult - not they - who were racist.

Now the Lyndon LaRouche cult has black guys displaying their signs - without controversy - while the Tea Party movement (as evidenced by Rand Paul) is still caught up in playing the liberal's sorry game of "You're a racist!" "No we're not - you're a racist!"

TMR's take on all this:

The cult of Lyndon LaRouche is smarter than the Tea Party movement.

Ha: No One Has Any Idea Why We Talk Like This

"Maybe Rahm Emanuel is guilty of disloyalty, but he might be the only thing keeping Obama tethered to the reality-based community.

The president is surrounded by acolytes of the Cult of Obama. They consider him to be a 'transformational figure' who need not sully himself with the usual rules of politics. The president agrees, rejecting suggestions that he recalibrate his Olympian ambitions.

That’s not me saying that, nor one of my knuckle-dragging, baby-eating right-wing brethren. It’s Dana Milbank, the liberal Washington Post writer widely seen by most conservatives as Maureen Dowd in drag.

Milbank wrote a column on February 21 arguing that all the president’s problems can be attributed to a single factor. 'Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters,' writes Milbank, referring to Rahm Emanuel, apparently the only senior staffer who hasn’t drunk the Obama Kool-Aid."

-- Jonah Goldberg, almost causing me to call The NewAge Language Police - it's a crime when someone rational openly talks like this and no one arrests Oprah - but I decided to let a cooler head prevail, and instead merely filed this report, on behalf of The National Review.

Welcome To "Change" (Can We Stop It Now?)

"Jerry had been a student at the British Institute in Paris but he had travelled to Wiesbaden to attend what he thought would be an anti-Iraq war conference. 'He was an idealistic boy who wanted to change the world,' his mother said. 'He was angry about the upcoming war and wanted to do something about it. But he was also excited because he was beginning to learn about politics.'

The conference was organised by the Schiller Institute, an extremist political think-tank linked to a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche. He is an 87-year-old convicted fraudster who has made eight unsuccessful attempts to run as an independent candidate in the US presidential elections. Some of LaRouche's more unusual claims include that the British monarchy and MI6 are behind the global drugs trade.

In the States, he is largely regarded as an amusing sideshow whose apocalyptic writings attract vulnerable people looking for answers.

The LaRouche Movement: A 'sinister' cult

Former members have accused it of brainwashing members, as well as promoting anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic conspiracy theories."

-- Jerome Taylor, on the mysterious and gruesome death of Jerry Duggan, an English Jew - the newest victim of the "amusing sideshow" of "vulnerable people looking for answers" - and yet another body, cruelly piled up on this blog, and in the pages of The Independent.

Needless to say, TMR is not amused,...but then, I'm not a cynically idealistic journalist.

Spell It Out (Because Few Can Willingly Say It)

I'm not sure, but in all my days of watching and participating in American politics - which started back around 1979 - I don't think I'd ever heard anyone mentioning anything about cult involvement before, had you? I mean, was anybody discussing "The Cult of Nixon" during the feverish days of Watergate? Yet check out today's quote from Gawker's sources about the followers of John Edwards:

"[Andrew] Young's devotion was typical of the 'cultish' fervor Edwards brought out in his staffers. This is why, says our source, who is close to [Rielle] Hunter, major media organizations could not stand up the affair story despite well-intentioned efforts. 'They [staffers] would do anything to stop it coming out — they lied, they bullied, they called reporters' editors and bad-mouthed them, they exchanged access.'"

Even further, take a look at another of today's quotes, this time from James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal:

"One can see why Obama might have been overly impressed with himself. Here's a guy who became president of the United States just four years out of the Illinois Senate, and along the way developed a cultlike following. It sounds as though Obama became a follower as well as figurehead of his own cult of personality."

In the same column, Taranto describes Barack Obama's reaction to a challenge as the same as Edwards' "cultish" staff: "Obama spoils for a 'fight' when self-reflection is in order." Is that knee-jerk behavior the result of cultish thinking? It's exactly the same reaction one gets when they go against the "church" of Scientology,...

Anyone who's been following this blog knows I've got lots of quotes regarding the president and cultism. What I don't have is a lot of quotes from folks attempting to get to the cultural heart of the matter. They're not even interested. Oh, they'll gladly describe all the signifiers of cultism and/or cultish thinking, but they can't be bothered to ask what's going on within our society to produce such large dollops of this phenomena. They'll gladly lay it out there, but there's been absolutely no follow-up - from anybody - as far as I can tell. Let's look at another interesting quote from today, this one from Bret Stephens and also from The Wall Street Journal:

"Stockholm Syndrome: 'A term used to describe the positive bond some kidnap victims develop with their captor.'

Copenhagen Syndrome: The peculiar psychology of Barack Obama's first year in office.

Let's expand on that a bit. In September, Mr. Obama paid a semi-impromptu visit to Copenhagen to make a personal appeal for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. It failed. The nice way to think about it: The president was trying to win one for Team America. Less nice: It was a feckless and unpresidential errand on behalf of the Chicago political machine to which he remains beholden.

And then there's the possibility that Mr. Obama really believed that he alone could pull the rabbit out of the hat. Not Dick Daley, not the First Lady. This one would require the full Barack abracadabra."

Hmmm. That third suggestion - an even worse one, coming totally out of the blue - clearly says The Wall Street Journal thinks the President of the United States might be engaging in magical thinking ("the full Barack abracadabra") but, still, no alarm bells go off in anyone's mind that magical thinking (or delusional thinking) is a key component of all this cultism everyone's mentioning in passing. They definitely aren't responding like they did when Tom Cruise was discovered on video saying that only a Scientology cultist, like Cruise, could really respond in a crisis. Same thinking as Obama's, totally different response from observers - even though everyone's aware Obama was assisted into office by Oprah Winfrey, a known NewAger, who not only specializes in selling magical thinking, but also famously brought us The Secret, the "spiritual" musings of the mentally disturbed Eckhart Tolle, and, of course, James Arthur Ray, the NewAge leader, now under investigation for multiple murders. Is this all a coincidence? Including the fact no one's talking about what it means, in light of the decline we see happening in our country? Considering what we know of Oprah's beliefs, why was her endorsement of Obama, as "The One", credible?

Last night, as I was driving home, I was listening to a conversation some radio personality was having with Ram Dass, and at one point, while discussing the effects of LSD, Dass started talking about how we're all capable of becoming one with everything - including trees. "Look, I'm a tree" he said, but the announcer he was discussing his drug use with never said that's crazytalk. No, they just went right on talking in this vein, like it's totally normal and logical for two adults to think Ram Dass is a plant that lives by the process of photosynthesis.

Think about how much of this nonsense our society is inundated with. Since the '60's - let's say, starting with The Beatles infatuation with the "teachings" of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which, by the way, has led many to jump around on their behinds declaring they're "flying" - American society has been bombarded with this stuff: is it really that outlandish to think that now - as the Baby Boomers have finally attained power - all that muddled thinking has had an effect? That one of the "mantras" of Werner Erhard's est, "What's So is also So What?" (which was taught to many major corporations and government agencies throughout the western world, to motivate they're workers) could've reduced our current leader's minds to a state that would make their social contributions worthless? I mean, is it just me, or (beyond gobs of government control - with already-indoctrinated Boomers in charge) don't they seem to have run out of practical ideas? And the groupthink (now labeled as partisanship because such lunacy has received a negative reaction) is incredible. Again: is this just an accident - or is it the natural progression of a decades old ideology, known as NewAge, running amok on, and through, American society?

Senator Tom Harkin was led to think bee pollen cured his asthma - and he still can't be talked out of it. So he and Bill Clinton (another Boomer enamoured with NewAge ideas) have since saddled us with the $29 billion (but, based on their results, still almost worthless) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. [Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D., via Wikipedia again:] "The NCCAM continues to fund and promote pseudoscience."

And, in case you don't know it already, pseudoscience plays a very big role in the world of NewAge cultism.

Even more startling than knowing our leaders are keeping this money-sucking House of Malarkey going, even during a recession, is the fact that so few saw anything wrong with it from the beginning. But why should they? Even Yale University has spoken of constructing a "more fluid concept of evidence" for the "magic water" known as Homeopathy. (Sold in fine NewAge-oriented stores, like Whole Foods, nation wide.) The New York Times writes credulously of NewAge "Pet Psychics". The entire culture is saturated with it. TIME Magazine (which has been known to promote more-than-a-bit of NewAge nonsense themselves) wondered if Jim Carrey had lost his mind by the time cultish thinking got him. Now he's acknowledged as one of the leaders - along with Jenny McCarthy, his porn star girlfriend - of the dangerous and wrong-headed movement to stop children from receiving vaccines.

"There was nothing legit,...about [Reille] Hunter’s behavior. It was freaky, wildly inappropriate, and all too visible. She flirted outlandishly with every man she met. She spouted New Age babble, rambled on about astrology and reincarnation, and announced to people she had just met, 'I’m a witch.'"

But for some reason - out of all the women in the world - this is the charmer John Edwards cheated on his wife with, while also sacrificing a first tier political career. The quote, above, is from John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime . [Wikipedia:] "According to the book, Edwards angrily rejected requests by his advisers to distance himself from Hunter." Given the description, above, such devotion between two Boomers begs the question: why - exactly? Considering the many foolish precepts supporting NewAge beliefs, is it really too "out there" to suggest that astrology, reincarnation, and witches are '60's occult affectations that John Edwards - and many, many others - have grown so comfortable with, such foolishness can slip right by the critical faculties, just as easily as Ram Dass' imagining he's a tree?