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Wrong signature:
Please boycott and do NOT use the $1.00, $20.00, $50.00 and $100.00 bills, as they depict slave owners on them (yes Franklin too).
Please send them to me, and I will see to it that they are disposed of properly. Thank you very much!
My Good Deed
Please boycott and do NOT use the $1.00, $20.00, $50.00 and $100.00 bills, as they depict slave owners on them (yes Franklin too).
Please send them to me, and I will see to it that they are disposed of properly. Thank you very much!
My Good Deed
Please boycott and do NOT use the $1.00, $20.00, $50.00 and $100.00 bills, as they depict slave owners on them (yes Franklin too).
Please send them to me, and I will see to it that they are disposed of properly. Thank you very much!
Best to know what they have to say to know how to plan one's own future. They aren't going to give away needed paint for your parents basement. Time to know what they are doing so one can determine where one improve one's situation. If one is interested, one might an opportunity to improve one's situation, take an avenue one is interested in. I personally like it for the information. The government isn't here to provide handouts. I want to know how they are protecting me from a nuclear tipped rocket from North Korea. That's for the people. I want to know how they are going to stop people who blow themselves from exercising that sick option. We could have more cameras on all streets like in London or have the freedom from 24/7 surveillance most have today. Personally, I like the fact that they are protecting the homeland so I don't have to worry about going out to eat or to the movies. I like to know what foreign officials are willing to say and take their measure. If they are hostile, it's good to know. If they are willing to trade and avoid conflict with our country and 'THE PEOPLE', great. If not, watch out.
What's in it for the people? Information of the world we live in and then it's up to us to determine what we want to do to insure our own success. Success isn't handed out, it's earned and it's best to know what roads are available. Opportunity is: for the people. When it comes down to it, it's one vs the rest of the world and we are only a blink in history. One doesn't have to pay any attention to anyone but hmmm, here we are in a chat room bloviating and living in a community, town, city, state, country and world. All are competing for their piece but basically, it's up to the individual. Might be best to know the rules and what those that are making them are thinking.
Always one thing to remember, listen to what one's 'enemies' have to say. Aspen has mostly conservative speakers and top policy makers who are on the R team and in the Trump Administration. There will be leftists invited so they can give their opinions. There will be representatives from other countries and national organizations with their opinions. Notice how Jane Harman was complementary with the military operations in Syria as were the others? The advantage is to know what the left is thinking and how to counter their arguments. If it was only one side, then the information is less effective in the public arena. The great advantage is to hear from our current officials in the Trump Administration and there were many. What they can say is important. General Dunford was good as always but we have heard him at the Marines Memorial in SF in the George Shultz talks theater where he gave a lot more information. The guy is amazing. Tom Bossert was great. John Kelly.
Lou can be a jerk to make himself look good even when on the right track. He wants the attention, he gets paid for provocative talk.
Joke from a friend. Here's the matching post.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=132924196
Thanks. It's our annual Aspen trip, already signed up for next year, our eighth year. Catherine Herridge was there again, had scheduled dinner with her but she got the FOX call to work. She actually took an extra day to meet with us but works calls.... you go. We'll be getting together in DC in the fall when we go there for our political club trip. She told us it's on her. We'll see about that. Pretty good at getting the check prepaid here.... She and my wife email each other. Two total political junkies.
Aspen Security Conference:
http://aspensecurityforum.org/media/live-video/
Was there for the 7th year, awesome. Enjoy.
Aspen Security Conference:
http://aspensecurityforum.org/media/live-video/
Was there for the 7th year, awesome. Enjoy.
Absolutely, has been very obvious. Good financial management took more time to get here but guaranteed the three Bs will be ready for the first partnership contract that will finance all of B applications and more. P is a bonus coming soon adding to the partnership contract monies . K is further back but it's easy to see their entire portfolio and know the company is real. K, can get special treatment, early interest since it's cancer.
NDA BP companies got first look at the data and now the competition opens. Looking forward to the coming days, weeks, months, years. As one said, 100x down the road. Works for me. REGN model, wonder what new drugs will be introduced after the first partnership. Wonder when the Autism drug will be introduced?
Looking forward to the open tomorrow.
She's ready......
A State Trooper pulled an 87-year-old woman over for speeding.
As he looked at her driver's license he was surprised to notice that attached to it was a conceal weapon permit.
Taken aback, he couldn't help but ask, “Do you have a gun in your possession?”
She replied in her crackly voice, “Indeed, I do. Why I have a 45 automatic in the glove box.”
The trooper then asked if she had any other weapons.
She replied, “I have a 9 mm Glock in the center console.”
The shocked trooper asked, “Is that all the weapons you are transporting?”
The little old lady held up her purse and replied, "Well, I do keep a 38 special in my purse.”
Finally, the astonished trooper asked, "What are you afraid of?”
And the little old lady smiled and replied: "Not a Fucking Thing."
She's ready......
A State Trooper pulled an 87-year-old woman over for speeding.
As he looked at her driver's license he was surprised to notice that attached to it was a conceal weapon permit.
Taken aback, he couldn't help but ask, “Do you have a gun in your possession?”
She replied in her crackly voice, “Indeed, I do. Why I have a 45 automatic in the glove box.”
The trooper then asked if she had any other weapons.
She replied, “I have a 9 mm Glock in the center console.”
The shocked trooper asked, “Is that all the weapons you are transporting?”
The little old lady held up her purse and replied, "Well, I do keep a 38 special in my purse.”
Finally, the astonished trooper asked, "What are you afraid of?”
And the little old lady smiled and replied: "Not a Fucking Thing."
The Clintons were cut off the gravy train but you can anyone imagine the old con man hick from Arkansas giving money back?...... That would be something to see.
Went to Hot Springs to see the old (closed) casino his mother used to 'work' in. Went to Hope and saw the old house they lived in next to the railroad tracks. I mean, really close to the tracks. In Hope, went to a 'large' hotel/motel where they served for all day. The deal was, $2.99, all you can eat, all day. But to get that price, you couldn't leave the building. If you did, you had to pay $2.99 again. Funny thing was, there were people in there that stayed all day. Waitress was so 'undereducated' that she had to use a calculator to add up the bill for the two of us. Remember when BC was the governor and one of his main claims, the education Governor. All depends on one's standards.
Was there to observe the Whitewater trial and fishing and took in the interesting sites.
Right on the money. I remember it very well. The 60's and 70's was my time to be 'radical' except I just had long hair, chased women and played a lot of sports. Going to college and having a job too made for a busy schedule.....
Growing up in a suburb of Sacramento, CA., got to see interesting things. Good friend's brother was in CAL when the SLA came around kidnapping Patricia Hearst and freaking everyone out. That's when the first whacko's began to show their faces. These days, living 5 - 10 minutes from CAL, it's outside groups that come in and cause trouble, not the students. They are mostly very into studying and the school was recently rated 6th in the world. We go there to listen to conservative speakers frequently. Know many conservative faculty. Very few long hairs or grubby kids running around.
http://www.dailycal.org/2017/06/18/uc-berkeley-ranks-no-6-international-ranking-among-harvard-mit/
Ratings, advertising pricing goes up and they have an opportunity to trash Republicans, something they LIVE FOR.......
FROM RUSSIA WITH MONEY
Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism
https://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Report-Skolkvovo-08012016.pdf
FROM RUSSIA WITH MONEY
Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism
https://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Report-Skolkvovo-08012016.pdf
Here is another one. Huge Russian uranium deal made, massive amount of 'donations' to the Clinton Foundation. Trump didn't realize he needed a 'Foundation' laundry mat when in politics. Those with government experience learn that fix for them.
Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
By JO BECKER and MIKE McINTIREAPRIL 23, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html
Difficult to cut and paste, click and read. Classic Clintons. Love the fact the Clinton 'donations' have dramatically reduced. Sounds like money saving opportunity for those foreign and domestic that are used to the shake down to get government contracts.
The Clintons and BO had major league dollars from the Russians.
Interesting how the Demons and their media were ok with it. Maybe the Russians thought Trump was a cheaper deal and went with him as a money saving operation plus they'll get some real estate that they love.
Oops: The New York Times Accidentally Exposed 'The Hillary Clinton-Russia Nexus'!
Below is the incredible New York Times editorial* published on Thursday that lays out the case for how the Hillary Clinton campaign was colluding with the Russian government, and then tried to cover it up by blaming her election loss on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Hillary Clinton-Russia Nexus
The acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, told Congress on Thursday that President Trump's firing of James Comey has not derailed the agency's investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Which is good news. Despite Mrs. Clinton's assertion that the idea of collusion is "a total hoax," and despite many unknowns, the links continue to pile up. Here is a partial accounting of the connections we do know something about.
THE CLINTON FAMILY BUSINESS There may be no Clinton Foundation office in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it is not for lack of trying. Bill Clinton received half a million dollars in 2010 for a speech he gave in Moscow, paid by a Russian firm, Renaissance Capital, that has ties to Russian intelligence. The Clinton Foundation took money from Russian officials and oligarchs, including Victor Kekselberg, a Putin confidant. The Foundation also received millions of dollars from Uranium One, which was sold to the Russian government in 2010, giving Russia control of 20% of the uranium deposits in the U.S. — the sale required approval from Hillary Clinton's State Department. What's more, at least some of these donations weren't disclosed. "Ian Telfer, the head of the Russian government's uranium company, Uranium One, made four foreign donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all such donors," the Times has reported.
JOHN PODESTA In March — that is, long after the election was over — it was revealed that Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman had failed to disclose the receipt of 75,000 shares of stock from a Kremlin-financed company — Joule Unlimited — for which he served as director from 2010 to 2014, when he joined the Obama White House in 2014. Podesta apparently had a large chunk of the shares transferred to "Leonidio Holdings, a brand-new entity he incorporated only on Dec. 20, 2013, about 10 days before he entered the White House," according to a news account.
TONY PODESTA Mr. Podesta's brother, who has close personal and business relations with Mrs. Clinton, was "key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics," a March news story reported. The bank was "seeking to end one of the Obama administration's economic sanctions against that country." The report goes on to note that "Podesta's efforts were a key part of under-the-radar lobbying during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign led mainly by veteran Democratic strategists to remove sanctions against Sberbank and VTB Capital, Russia's second largest bank." Mr. Obama imposed the sanctions following the Russian seizure of the Crimean region of Ukraine in 2014.
JOHN BREAUX Forbes magazine reports that Mr. Breaux, a former Senator from Louisiana who cut radio ads for Mrs. Clinton's 2008 campaign, represents Gazprombank GPB, a subsidiary of Russia's third largest bank, on "banking laws and regulations, including applicable sanctions."
THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN In March, Mr. Putin's spokesman said that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met with members of Mrs. Clinton's campaign several times while she was running for president in 2016. Further, the campaign never disclosed the number or nature of these secret meetings.
Mrs. Clinton and her associates can cry themselves hoarse that there is neither smoke nor fire here, and that Putin was behind her election loss. But all in all, the known facts suggest an unusually extensive network of relationships with a major foreign power. Anyone who cares about the credibility of the American electoral process should want a thorough investigation.
* OK, this is not really what The New York Times wrote in its editorial (the actual editorial can be found here). But it does closely track what the Times' editorial accuses Trump of doing, and the Times' accusations about a Trump "nexus" with Russia are just about as flimsy.
Top Democrats, as indicated above, also have a long history of business and political ties with Russia, for the simple reason that there is money to be made by people who can peddle their political connections. And sometimes these Democrats don't disclose their Russia ties. If this is all the Times needs to accuse Trump and his associates of having "an unusually extensive network of relationships with a major foreign power," then Clinton is equally guilty. (The one difference is that Hillary actually has a record of being soft on Russia.)
Of course, Clinton isn't president, so who cares? Still, even if she had won the presidency, would The New York Times, or anyone else for that matter, have cared one whit about her "extensive" ties with Russia? Somehow, that seems unlikely.
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/check-it-out-the-new-york-times-just-exposed-the-hillary-clinton-russia-nexus/
Prager on "Fake News', featuring Andrew Kalvan
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/what-fake-news
Prager on "Fake News', featuring Andrew Kalvan
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/what-fake-news
All depends on one's point of view.
See you in September..........
Could be two partners by then.
The Left's DOJ 'Slush Fund' Gets Buried
By Jordan Candler
Jun. 8, 2017
An egregious Department of Justice operation got a welcome overhaul this week courtesy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The DOJ, particularly under Barack Obama and his criminal co-conspirator1, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, made a practice out of robbing corporate settlement funds to fill a plethora of leftist coffers. In short, The Wall Street Journal explains, “After the GOP took the House and tried to cut spending for liberal interest groups, the Obama Justice Department began to force corporate defendants to allocate a chunk of their financial penalties to those same groups.”
In other words, Obama exploited another channel through which the government was picking winners and losers and propping up pet projects — a blatantly unconstitutional scheme, as Congress (which has monetary authority) was essentially shunned. And we all know which political party benefits when it comes to government subsidies. Hint: Some of the beneficiaries include groups like La Raza and the National Urban League2. But no more.
In a memorandum3 dated June 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “The goals of any settlement are, first and foremost, to compensate victims, redress harm, or punish and deter unlawful conduct. It has come to my attention that previous certain settlement agreements involving the Department included payments to various non-governmental, third-party organizations as a condition of settlement with the United States. These third-party organizations were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits.”
As such, Sessions issued a new directive: “Effective immediately, Department attorneys may not enter into any agreement on behalf of the United States in settlement of federal claims or charges … that directs or provides for a payment or loan to any non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute.” Sessions should be commended for this initiative. The only problem is that this memorandum is guaranteed only until the next presidential election. Republicans in Congress should follow through on their endeavor to permanently outlaw this leftist “slush fund.”
https://patriotpost.us/posts/49531
The Left's DOJ 'Slush Fund' Gets Buried
By Jordan Candler
Jun. 8, 2017
An egregious Department of Justice operation got a welcome overhaul this week courtesy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The DOJ, particularly under Barack Obama and his criminal co-conspirator1, then-Attorney General Eric Holder, made a practice out of robbing corporate settlement funds to fill a plethora of leftist coffers. In short, The Wall Street Journal explains, “After the GOP took the House and tried to cut spending for liberal interest groups, the Obama Justice Department began to force corporate defendants to allocate a chunk of their financial penalties to those same groups.”
In other words, Obama exploited another channel through which the government was picking winners and losers and propping up pet projects — a blatantly unconstitutional scheme, as Congress (which has monetary authority) was essentially shunned. And we all know which political party benefits when it comes to government subsidies. Hint: Some of the beneficiaries include groups like La Raza and the National Urban League2. But no more.
In a memorandum3 dated June 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, “The goals of any settlement are, first and foremost, to compensate victims, redress harm, or punish and deter unlawful conduct. It has come to my attention that previous certain settlement agreements involving the Department included payments to various non-governmental, third-party organizations as a condition of settlement with the United States. These third-party organizations were neither victims nor parties to the lawsuits.”
As such, Sessions issued a new directive: “Effective immediately, Department attorneys may not enter into any agreement on behalf of the United States in settlement of federal claims or charges … that directs or provides for a payment or loan to any non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute.” Sessions should be commended for this initiative. The only problem is that this memorandum is guaranteed only until the next presidential election. Republicans in Congress should follow through on their endeavor to permanently outlaw this leftist “slush fund.”
https://patriotpost.us/posts/49531
and........
Agree. That could make legal shorts who hold very uncomfortable too.
The naked shorts are going to have an issue.
Going to need to use rubber gloves herding them out. Gonna be a mess.
Prager U very short film.
Build the wall:
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/build-wall
Prager U very short film.
Build the wall:
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/build-wall
Actually, one more trip, cruise stopped for dinner to watch the cliff divers then headed down through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean for diving and visiting the different islands. Stayed at the Ocean Club. Got some old brain cells reactivated.....
Have been away for awhile again. Living in CA, not surprised by the story. Last time we were in Mexico was around 30 years ago. No reason to go back. In the old days, we used to go for lobster dinners at a restaurant that one found along the highway by recognizing the old rusting 7up sign and turning down the dirt road next to it. Always packed.
Mexico Second Deadliest in 2016 — Build the Wall!
By Political Editors
May 11, 2017
Unsurprisingly, Syria is once again the number one global hotspot for armed conflict, the International Institute for Strategic Studies reveals. But the second worst hotspot is located nowhere close to the Middle East, where one would normally expect it. In fact, it couldn’t be closer to home. The IISS says that 23,000 Mexicans were victims of mostly drug-related guerrilla warfare last year, which is just under half of the 50,000 lives taken in Syria.
IISS director general John Chipman points out that “Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation,” which only adds shock value to the alarming toll. In Syria, the opposite is true. The report also proves just how effective Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown has been. According to The Washington Times, “Illegal immigration across the southwestern border is down a stunning 76 percent since President Trump was elected, with the flow of children and families dropping even faster as analysts say the administration’s commitment to enforcing the law has changed the reality along the border.”
That’s a remarkable drop, yet it’s nary enough, given the threat.
The degree to which violence is devastating Mexico is more evidence of our need for a border wall. Gangs and drug runners have found numerous ways to exploit border security (or lack thereof), and the statistics demonstrate both how serious the threat truly is and what they are capable of. Meanwhile, here’s a question for “compassionate” Democrats that will leave them looking like a deer staring in the headlights: Why do leftists support open borders to the world’s second most deadly country?
https://patriotpost.us/posts/49036
Mexico Second Deadliest in 2016 — Build the Wall!
By Political Editors
May 11, 2017
Unsurprisingly, Syria is once again the number one global hotspot for armed conflict, the International Institute for Strategic Studies reveals. But the second worst hotspot is located nowhere close to the Middle East, where one would normally expect it. In fact, it couldn’t be closer to home. The IISS says that 23,000 Mexicans were victims of mostly drug-related guerrilla warfare last year, which is just under half of the 50,000 lives taken in Syria.
IISS director general John Chipman points out that “Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation,” which only adds shock value to the alarming toll. In Syria, the opposite is true. The report also proves just how effective Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown has been. According to The Washington Times, “Illegal immigration across the southwestern border is down a stunning 76 percent since President Trump was elected, with the flow of children and families dropping even faster as analysts say the administration’s commitment to enforcing the law has changed the reality along the border.”
That’s a remarkable drop, yet it’s nary enough, given the threat.
The degree to which violence is devastating Mexico is more evidence of our need for a border wall. Gangs and drug runners have found numerous ways to exploit border security (or lack thereof), and the statistics demonstrate both how serious the threat truly is and what they are capable of. Meanwhile, here’s a question for “compassionate” Democrats that will leave them looking like a deer staring in the headlights: Why do leftists support open borders to the world’s second most deadly country?
https://patriotpost.us/posts/49036
It's increasing, intensity of the investigation. The dims protest is obsessive and fits the definition that they will do ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING to get rid of Trump. Wonder if Schumer will give back the donation from Trump for his re-election...... Chaos... Dogs and cats living together.... total anarchy.
Comey’s Overdue Departure
By Victor Davis Hanson — May 10, 2017
If a FBI director is doing his job, we probably should neither see nor hear of him much on television.
The FBI director by his very office holds enormous power. And like the IRS director, by definition he or she must show restraint given the vast resources at his discretion and thus the potential for abuse. In other words, we want a FBI director to exude coolness, stay dispassionate, and remain professional. I don’t think that has ever been a description that fit Director James Comey.
Comey’s nadir came in the summer of 2016 when, confused over the investigatory role of the FBI and the prosecutorial prerogatives of the Justice Department, he de facto turned the FBI into investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury in presenting damning evidence against Hillary Clinton, then nullifying it, then reopening the case, then re-reopening it and backing off — all in front of television cameras in the midst of a heated presidential campaign.
And then after doing all that, Comey confused the act with its intent, and as a veritable legislator reinvented statutes about communicating classified information by suggesting that even if one likely committed a felony, but did not intend to (not a proven assertion), then it wasn’t really a felony.
Comey’s behavior was never properly addressed. His recent performance in front of Congress likely sealed his fate. We do not expect our FBI director to whine, in teenager fashion, about being treated unfairly, as he alleged when Loretta Lynch dumped the Clinton e-mail scandal in his lap. (A good FBI director, of course, would simply have run the investigation, presented the findings to the Justice Department, and then have let them deal with it (if not Lynch, then someone else). Comey misrepresented the volume of Huma Abedin’s improper e-mails; and in general always fell back on loud assertions of FBI integrity rather than displaying it through his behavior and statements.
Nor did Comey have a reservoir of good will. Long ago, he acted bizarrely in the John Ashcroft hospitalization melodrama; he was responsible for the career of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who miscarried justice in the case of Scooter Libby (not to mention Fitzgerald’s own subsequent Conrad Black prosecution). His legacy is that Hillary Clinton paid no price for illegally setting up an improper e-mail server, destroying evidence, and communicating classified material in an insecure fashion.
Comey seems to think that he could freely discuss the charges of Russian collusion, but not so transparently the far stronger evidence of unlawful unmasking of Americans caught up in (or in fact targeted by) government surveillance — apparently in understandable fear that the Democrats and media posed the greater danger to his career.
Politically, Comey’s thirst for celebrity rankled his own bureau and, finally, achieved the difficult result of alienating both Republicans (who thought he was an Obama operative in service to Hillary) and Democrats (who thought he was a tool of the FBI, freelancing to sink Hillary). Usually being roundly distrusted would be a sign of disinterested non-partisanship. But in Comey’s case, the universal disdain was more likely rare unity that Comey lacked the temperament to run the FBI and had created a climate of fear that at any given moment a Comey press conference would destroy someone’s career without commensurate investigation and evidence.
Democrats, who despised Comey (see Hillary’s latest whine) and blamed him for Trump’s election, are already calling the firing cruel, mean spirited, and proof of a Trump conspiracy (why would Trump fire and set loose on the media the man who supposedly had handed him the election?); Republicans will shrug that long ago Comey should have been fired (the entire Clinton investigations, including the quid pro quo Clinton Foundation matters, were sloppy and amateurish), but the timing and methods of his firing seemed momentarily messy.
The proper analysis is probably twofold: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — roundly praised in bipartisan fashion (please read his detailed memo critiquing Comey’s performance) — wanted to start out with a clean slate and not have a damaged-goods FBI-director albatross around his neck for the next four years — in the contexts of the past recusals of Lynch and then Jeff Sessions.
Second, the surveillance/unmasking scandal remains a potential bombshell and it was probably felt that Comey (who was loquacious about the collusion charge, but suddenly silent about likely felonious unmasking) could not be trusted to conduct a timely, fair, and prompt investigation. (Would he have had another press conference announcing that surveillance statutes had been violated by unmasking, but that “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue such a case, supposedly given its lack of criminal intent?)
The hysteria will subside, because in the end Comey has no supporters left, and lots of critics — he will be missed by very few.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/447471/james-comey-overdue-departure
Comey’s Overdue Departure
By Victor Davis Hanson — May 10, 2017
If a FBI director is doing his job, we probably should neither see nor hear of him much on television.
The FBI director by his very office holds enormous power. And like the IRS director, by definition he or she must show restraint given the vast resources at his discretion and thus the potential for abuse. In other words, we want a FBI director to exude coolness, stay dispassionate, and remain professional. I don’t think that has ever been a description that fit Director James Comey.
Comey’s nadir came in the summer of 2016 when, confused over the investigatory role of the FBI and the prosecutorial prerogatives of the Justice Department, he de facto turned the FBI into investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury in presenting damning evidence against Hillary Clinton, then nullifying it, then reopening the case, then re-reopening it and backing off — all in front of television cameras in the midst of a heated presidential campaign.
And then after doing all that, Comey confused the act with its intent, and as a veritable legislator reinvented statutes about communicating classified information by suggesting that even if one likely committed a felony, but did not intend to (not a proven assertion), then it wasn’t really a felony.
Comey’s behavior was never properly addressed. His recent performance in front of Congress likely sealed his fate. We do not expect our FBI director to whine, in teenager fashion, about being treated unfairly, as he alleged when Loretta Lynch dumped the Clinton e-mail scandal in his lap. (A good FBI director, of course, would simply have run the investigation, presented the findings to the Justice Department, and then have let them deal with it (if not Lynch, then someone else). Comey misrepresented the volume of Huma Abedin’s improper e-mails; and in general always fell back on loud assertions of FBI integrity rather than displaying it through his behavior and statements.
Nor did Comey have a reservoir of good will. Long ago, he acted bizarrely in the John Ashcroft hospitalization melodrama; he was responsible for the career of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who miscarried justice in the case of Scooter Libby (not to mention Fitzgerald’s own subsequent Conrad Black prosecution). His legacy is that Hillary Clinton paid no price for illegally setting up an improper e-mail server, destroying evidence, and communicating classified material in an insecure fashion.
Comey seems to think that he could freely discuss the charges of Russian collusion, but not so transparently the far stronger evidence of unlawful unmasking of Americans caught up in (or in fact targeted by) government surveillance — apparently in understandable fear that the Democrats and media posed the greater danger to his career.
Politically, Comey’s thirst for celebrity rankled his own bureau and, finally, achieved the difficult result of alienating both Republicans (who thought he was an Obama operative in service to Hillary) and Democrats (who thought he was a tool of the FBI, freelancing to sink Hillary). Usually being roundly distrusted would be a sign of disinterested non-partisanship. But in Comey’s case, the universal disdain was more likely rare unity that Comey lacked the temperament to run the FBI and had created a climate of fear that at any given moment a Comey press conference would destroy someone’s career without commensurate investigation and evidence.
Democrats, who despised Comey (see Hillary’s latest whine) and blamed him for Trump’s election, are already calling the firing cruel, mean spirited, and proof of a Trump conspiracy (why would Trump fire and set loose on the media the man who supposedly had handed him the election?); Republicans will shrug that long ago Comey should have been fired (the entire Clinton investigations, including the quid pro quo Clinton Foundation matters, were sloppy and amateurish), but the timing and methods of his firing seemed momentarily messy.
The proper analysis is probably twofold: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — roundly praised in bipartisan fashion (please read his detailed memo critiquing Comey’s performance) — wanted to start out with a clean slate and not have a damaged-goods FBI-director albatross around his neck for the next four years — in the contexts of the past recusals of Lynch and then Jeff Sessions.
Second, the surveillance/unmasking scandal remains a potential bombshell and it was probably felt that Comey (who was loquacious about the collusion charge, but suddenly silent about likely felonious unmasking) could not be trusted to conduct a timely, fair, and prompt investigation. (Would he have had another press conference announcing that surveillance statutes had been violated by unmasking, but that “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue such a case, supposedly given its lack of criminal intent?)
The hysteria will subside, because in the end Comey has no supporters left, and lots of critics — he will be missed by very few.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/447471/james-comey-overdue-departure
2017 Potential Catalysts
1. B-UP: cohort 3 data - Q2
2. P: 6-week interim data - Q2
3. P: Phase 2b top-line data - Q3
4. B-OM: interim data - Q3
5. B-OM: top-line data - Q4
6. K-OC: top-line data - Q4
It is a hand off from a good friend who was the man in charge of setting up the Iraq security/computers, training the police and military. He and his buddies share appropriate jokes and it's how I get them.