“I have a friend and colleague who is retired from the FBI. We talk, and he insists that the FBI basic hardworking field agents and such are concerned and upset about the misconduct of the many miscreants in the leadership of the FBI and the DOJ. For example, he tells me of the perceived problems that were created by FBI decisions to make cases headquarters cases instead of following FBI protocols that made the field agents the drivers of the case. However, I see nothing of any effort by FBI agents to fix the corruption problem at the top. Wanna know why? They are bureaucrats, and they have no taste for the risks of fixing corruption.
So here comes Peter Schweizer, prolific and reliable writer and official with the Government Accountability Institute. Schweizer’s books – Secret Empires, Clinton Cash, Throw Them All Out, Extortion – are all intended to expose the corruption and malignancy of the bureaucratic leftist Deep State.
I am sick to death of government corruption and misconduct, like most Americans. We condemn and abhor the lies and the espionage perpetrated by high officials in the intelligence agencies, with a particular role for the corrupt FBI and DOJ. So here comes the book Compromised: How Money and Politics Drive FBI Corruption by Seamus Bruner, recently promoted by Sean Hannity and also by the venerable Mr. Schweizer, Mr. Bruner’s mentor of sorts, since they both work at the Government Accountability Institute. Mr. Schweizer is actively promoting the Bruner exposé, which focuses on two major considerations: FBI and DOJ projects to promote a Deep State advocacy that would reverse the election of 2016 and a vastly expanded Deep State project to create expansive surveillance of Americans
In Compromised, Bruner explains the scandal of FBI officials’ role clearing the uranium resources acquisition by the enemy that was complicity in espionage and, in another area of consideration, the revolving-door profiting from promoting the surveillance project contracts that were a source of extraordinary income for FBI directors Comey and Mueller, as exposed by Bruner. Comey’s excellent arrangement with Lockheed Martin provided him with income of millions when he left the FBI for a few years. Comey made tens of millions as a major official of Lockheed and facilitator of Lockheed’s surveillance contracts with the federal government, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Mueller’s intimate relationship to another federal contractor, Booz Allen, was also lucrative during his time in the private sector.
Mr. Bruner does not neglect in his book the work of FBI and DOJ officials in the effort to reverse the election of Donald Trump – their “insurance policy” work – and he exposes in depth the commitment to the surveillance state that was part of the effect of FBI and DOJ efforts in the past 15 years, to include a scandalous and dishonest misuse of the powers provided by the Patriot Act and the formation of the rubber-stamp FISA courts that only rarely kept FBI and DOJ officials from initiating surveillance. The point Mr. Bruner makes is that the FISA Court approvals invariably resulted in surveillance of American citizens without probable cause, and that is illegal and unconstitutional. The details of the misuse of powers are some of the most sobering sections of the book.
The problem of FBI official activities and revolving-door antics stinks and makes one consider the FBI to be, as some say about law enforcement, only one step away from illegal and miscreant corruption. I will not accept any argument that the FBI had integrity – Hoover was a political manipulator from the beginning and set the tone. We are seeing the exaggerated corruption that can develop when politics influences law enforcement and law enforcement officials consider themselves above the law for ordinary Americans.
For those with short attention spans or limited time, the Compromised is ideal, running through the scandals at breathtaking speed. I read the book in a few hours. For the plodding reader who wants some verification, Bruner has 90-plus pages of references and sources for his claims. Your efforts to assess his assertions and advocacy will take some time – and it’s because Bruner has a well developed and researched argument. He also has the respected recommendation of Peter Schweizer. “
Yup, this is exactly the way to debunk the notion that you’re unhinged, subject to volcanic temper tantrums, and don’t understand the constitutional limitations of your office. https://t.co/TnvDKy5hbz
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has sent a subpoena to veteran writer Jerome Corsi — the first publicly known effort to compel a journalist’s testimony in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
Corsi, whose work has been showcased for years in conservative outlets such as Human Events, World Net Daily and the InfoWars conspiracy site, says he will not fight the subpoena and plans to appear before the grand jury on Friday.
The subpoena is a not-so-subtle reminder of just how much prosecutors, FBI agents, and the government’s confidential sources who launched and sustained the Russia probe all targeted, courted and leveraged the news media.
Mueller’s team reportedly wants to question Corsi about his contacts with longtime Trump friend Roger Stone and whether Stone ever asked Corsi to try to get WikiLeaks to release damaging emails on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election ended. It’s expected that Corsi will tell prosecutors he did not bite on Stone’s overtures, in part because he suspected Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were monitored by U.S. intelligence after their past publications of classified U.S. secrets.
Stone is a former business partner of now-convicted lobbyist and former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as a longtime outside adviser to Donald Trump. He recently told The Hill’s new morning program, “Rising,” that he fears he might be indicted by Mueller over his interest in WikiLeaks’ Clinton email leaks. Stone has denied any effort to collude with Russia to swing the election to Trump.
Department of Justice (DOJ) officials declined to comment.
From the beginning of this investigation, key figures involved in it have had extensive contacts with or connections to media.
Fired FBI official Peter Strzok and his alleged paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, texted frequently about leaks in the media affecting their cases, and even suggested the FBI was behind some of those.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired for lying about one media leak he authorized.
The FBI secured a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in part by citing a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff that, it turns out, was based on a leak from the FBI’s own informant in the case, former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose dirt on Trump was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The court that approved the surveillance warrant apparently was never told that the article was not independent corroboration but, rather, circular intelligence from the poisoned Steele tree.
DOJ notes recently provided to Congress show one of the media leaks with which Steele was involved was considered by his boss, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, to be a “hail Mary attempt” to swing the election, rather than to inform the FBI and courts. That’s the sort of biased evidence the FBI should eschew, not embrace, of course.
And Strzok’s own FBI communications show the FBI — after firing Steele — continued to receive versions of his now-infamous but still-unverified dossier on alleged Trump collusion with Russia. One of those was delivered to the bureau by Mother Jones magazine writer David Corn, who openly has opposed Trump’s presidency.
I’m a lifelong journalist who believes in the power of the profession and its ability to serve the public with accurate reporting. But it is deeply troubling that the FBI and a federal prosecutor with unlimited resources have relied so much on the Fourth Estate’s secondhand reporting to build its Russia case, when getting firsthand intelligence from original sources would far better serve the public.
Journalism, no matter how grand, remains an imperfect first record of history. Anonymous sources have motives that sometimes only a journalist knows and can’t talk about. (Take, for example, Steele, whose dossier work ultimately was being funded by Democrats.)”
“The media world is dedicated to taking all kinds of “rare steps” so long as they are detrimental to Trump.
Wednesday, the New York Times took the “rare step” of publishing an anonymous opinion piece by someone claiming to be a senior White House official.
John Doe claims he’s part of an active “resistance” within the White House working to thwart Trump’s agenda.
All reads like a trite, concern trolling Never Trump screed. Like some kind of psychological operation meant to unnerve Trump whose had difficulties with staff allegiance from the get-go and to shift the conversation back to the Trump Is Unfit to be President™ mantra, one progressives won’t give up.
I’m sure it’s purely coincidence that the op-ed was published after it was clear attempts to #BlockBrett were squashed quickly and embarrassingly so, but I digress.
That said, it doesn’t mean the assertions in the op-ed are false, but the manner and timing of the release are certainly worth scrutinizing. We don’t have an opportunity to dig into the source or the veracity of the source’s claims, thanks to the NYT.
We don’t know how many are part of this alleged insurrection. Could be 2 or 3 or 15. All of these things are relevant facts, none of them are included.
Half the internet is in full-on freak-out mode, claiming the contents of the op-ed are evidence of a “Constitutional Crisis.” Given that these are the same people who’ve moved from one Constitutional Crisis to the next since Trump was elected.”
“Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.
If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.
On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:
Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.
But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.
What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.
He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.
And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this article. They will be worse because of this article.
The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. The high official who thought the president so addled that he would not remember the paper he snatched off his desk? Those who thought the president stupid, ignorant, beholden to Russia—and then exited the administration to return to their comfortable, lucrative occupations? Who substituted deep-background gripe sessions with a reporter for offering detailed proof of presidential unfitness, or worse, before the House or Senate? Yes, better than the robotic servility of the public record. But only slightly.
What would be better?
Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.”
——————-
This is pretty good. The Trump Cult is now asking us to ignore all of the voices from within Trump’s Administration who say he is deranged, uninformed, infantile and completely unfit for office. Instead The Cult wants us to focus on the investigation that is trying to determine if Trump engaged in a conspiracy with Russia and then obstructed justice. Tomorrow, we may be asked to focus on the porn star and the Playboy bunny and the payments they received from Trump. Pence is going to be a very boring replacement, but we may all be ready for “boring”.
Acts of sabotage against the president are perilous to the American system of government. They’re also self-serving.”
—————-
“The op-ed is so bizarre that it is tempting to dismiss it as fantasy—akin to the obviously bogus Twitter accounts that flourished early in the administration claiming to be by saboteurs inside the White House. (While the Times has likely done its homework, expect the president to question the veracity of the source.) Yet what the anonymous official says lines up closely with the accounts in Woodward’s book, in which officials steal documents, act on their own, and simply disregard orders from the president.
If you believe that Trump does not have the judgment and temperament for office—not a difficult conclusion to draw—this is a win of a sort. Yet the actions described in the book and in the op-ed are extremely worrying, and amount to a soft coup against the president. Given that one of Trump’s great flaws is that he has little regard for rule of law, it’s hard to cheer on Cabinet members and others openly thwarting Trump’s directives, giving unelected officials effective veto power over the elected president. Like Vietnam War–era generals, they are destroying the village in order to save it. As is so often the case in the Trump administration, both alternatives are awful to consider.
————
“Say what you will about the wisdom of voters, but it is the bedrock of the nation, and Trump is the duly elected president, as Sanders says. Cabinet members are at least confirmed by the Senate, but they’re still unelected. Officials like Cohn and Porter are subject to even less scrutiny, as they are appointed directly to their posts. If protecting the rules requires tearing down the rules, what is there to be gained?
Recognizing the bind that top officials serving an unfit president could face, the nation in 1967 amended the Constitution to provide for the removal of a president who “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The Twenty-Fifth Amendment creates a lawful path for a top government official who believes the president cannot serve: Work to remove him, rather than disobey legal orders.
According to the anonymous senior official in the Times, the idea has been discussed:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
This is astonishingly shortsighted. The writer, and anyone else who thinks this way, overlooks a major flaw: Any situation in which unelected officials are sabotaging the president through a soft coup is already a constitutional crisis, as my colleague David Frum has written.
Not only are these acts of sabotage legally perilous; the leaks about them are self-serving. Woodward does not reveal his sources, either in general or in specific instances, but a read of the book strongly suggests that Porter and Cohn are among those who spoke to him. By spreading word that they stood up to the president behind closed doors, these figures hope to burnish their reputations and distance themselves from the stain the Trump presidency leaves on nearly everyone it touches. In doing so, they’ve fingered themselves in another questionable pursuit. If the price of defending democracy and rule of law is to destroy both, the price is too high.”
“The Trump Cult is now asking us to ignore all of the voices from within Trump’s Administration who say he is deranged, uninformed, infantile and completely unfit for office.”
The only voice I hear is Woodward’s. No one else is speaking up about anything. Woodward is making these allegations. Until some of the cowards speak up and own it, your statement is wrong, as usual.
The situation in the White House: The President is very angry and has many aides searching for “leakers” and the “traitor”. Fortunately, he has Ivanka and other aides who are attempting to “quell his distress”.
Logic, which is often taught in the 11th grade along with economics, teaches that certain things are mutually exclusive. Don’t be ignorant. Learn the concept. You won’t have to leave The Cult. However, you will know when you are being illogical in order to remain a Cultist in good standing.
I made straight A’s in all of my college logic classes. Ricky’s comment at 8:15 is good example of the false dilemma fallacy in which something is falsely claimed to be an either/or situation. Logical fallacy’s are commonly used when 1)someone doesn’t know how to make a logical argument or 2) someone doesn’t have a logical argument or 3) someone is manipulating the situation. This is not an exclusive list of course. ;–)
Own it Ricky, don’t be a coward. You’ve supported any and all efforts to undermine and if possible, remove Trump.
You weren’t even this hard on Obama, who is the anti- of everything you say you hold dear. You seem to hate the man and everything he does and says. It’s not normal behavior for a president from the party you say you support. You keep siding with the enemy of all you say you support. Odd it is. Not logical either.
“The number of Americans filing applications for new unemployment benefits fell at the end of August to a nearly five-decade low.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs across the U.S., declined to a seasonally adjusted 203,000 in the last week of August, the Labor Department said Thursday. This is the lowest level of unemployment benefit applications since the end of 1969. “
“Generous Americans give more than $2.5 billion a year to some 40,000 charities with missions designed to help veterans.
Lately, however, this crowded field has been inundated by fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC launched Operation Donate with Honor in July to spotlight the problem of fraudulent and deceptive fundraising on behalf of military and veterans’ causes.
“It’s war profiteering,” Joshua Starks, commander of the 300,000-strong Oklahoma Veterans of Foreign Wars told Fox News. “They’re stealing from people who raised their hand and took an oath to serve our country and then went overseas to protect the rights of all of us–including the people who are stealing from them.”
As part of Operation Donate with Honor, the FTC distributed a list of 102 law enforcement actions 34 states have lodged against bogus veterans’ charities. Some are recent. Others are newly filed. The FTC is a partner in two of the new cases.
The list laid bare the many ways these groups solicit donations—online, on the phone, by mail, door-to-door and at stores and supermarkets.
Officials said these legal actions share a common theme: the false promise to help needy and disabled vets, to provide veterans with employment counseling, mental health counseling or other assistance and to send care packages to deployed service members.”
I see where the top officials say they didn’t leak.
I believe them. For this reason.
I learned early in my career, not because I did it, but I have seen it, and the effects.
Always remember this. Never bad mouth your boss!
It hurts your career, even among other people in position.
If you don’t like it there, move on. But don’t say bad things, even after your leave, about your boss.
As I said. I don’t believe “Anonymous” exists. It would be a stupid thing to do. .
“While we were obsessing over who wrote that New York Times op-ed, there was actually progress being made on the denuclearization of North Korea with Kim Jong Un telling South Korea’s national security adviser that he ready to “revive stalled nuclear talks”:”
——————
Kim Jong Un is “unequivocally committed to denuclearization," says S. Korea's national security advisor, who met with him on Wednesday. The problem is that Kim feels constrained by international doubts about his motives. @dasl_yoonhttps://t.co/ediXsvgHeD
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reconfirms commitment to complete denuclearization of Korean Peninsula. Third Moon-Kim summit to be held in Pyongyang on Sept. 18-20 https://t.co/iI9exAjKJWpic.twitter.com/Wb0qG7YEDW
Cory Booker is a moron. His staged attempt at releasing secret docs, which was already approved for release anyway, has blown up in his face. It will probably still work to fool his voter base though…
Cory Booker: By releasing these emails, I AM SPARTACUS! Documents: Kavanaugh's not a racist, and properly understands the role of precedent in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Booker: YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT I AM SPARTACUS
Senate Judiciary Committee staffers tell our @GriffJenkins that the documents SenBooker released today were already agreed to and cleared late LAST NIGHT. Not clear exactly which senators knew that before Booker publicly announced he was willing to violate policy and release.
So, now we're being told (by Committee staffers) that SenBooker knew BEFORE he made these statements – that the documents in question had already been cleared for release. That's a significant claim to make, so I've asked his office directly. Will update if/when I get response. https://t.co/lNxx3wEVCZ
It's about time Dems refuse to play by corrupt, dishonest classification rules. R thought they'd get away with it. Now they'll all dribble out and be more damaging when they confront Kavanaugh with them
— Jennifer Truth Over Phony Balance Rubin 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@JRubinBlogger) September 6, 2018
Current CNN tally of Trump officials denying they are anonymous NYT writer… Pence, Pompeo, Mattis, Mnuchin, Haley, Coats, Sessions, Azar, Alex Acosta, Wheeler, Nielsen, Haspel, Wilkie, Perdue, Perry, Mulvaney have all released statements personally or through their offices.
And what better source is there than a Republican lobbyist?
BREAKING: A Republican lobbyist just told me that “@realDonaldTrump intends to use lie detector tests on his own cabinet and staff members,” in an effort to try and uncover who was behind the scathing New York Times op-ed. They also said “he wants them to be arrested when found.”
And the one above breaks the rules, so it’s coming down. You can post a link to it that doesn’t include the toon. Folks can check the link if they choose.
Neither SenBooker nor his staff will directly answer our Q about WHEN he knew the documents he released around 11am this morning were cleared for public release (Committee staff says 4am). Instead, claims GOP was shamed into expediting release. (1/2)
For anyone interested, the editorial cartoonist is Bill Bramhall who draws for The New York Daily News. You can follow him on Twitter.
AJ is right about Booker. I watched some of the hearings today while babysitting. Booker is as dumb as Trump and only slightly better behaved. 2020 may be really ugly.
Ricky, I think R’s will keep the Senate, but Tennessee is in danger. Bredesen is a former governor so he is a known quantity here, and he was up double digits in the polls last time I checked. He seems to be a serious person, not bombastic, but also not a Trump hater. He says he’ll work with him whrre je can. The pragmatic approach is appealing to many.
Debra
“Burt Reynolds, the charismatic star of such films as Deliverance, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit who set out to have as much fun as possible on and off the screen — and wildly succeeded — has died. He was 82.
Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination when he portrayed porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and was the No. 1 box-office attraction for a five-year stretch starting in the late 1970s, died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, his manager, Erik Kritzer, told The Hollywood Reporter.
My mother and my wife says they have seen lots of Beto signs in very affluent areas. I do not know what that is about. I asked by son. His response had the terms “hip” and “cool” in it, but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying.
Chas, I like Shannon Bream as well and Bret Baier has really grown on me. At one time, I questioned if Baier could fill Brit Hume’s shoes. He has done very well.
I agree with Frum….the enablers in the White House need to proceed with any lawful measures if they believe Trump is incapable of the presidency.
In addition, the NYT should not have published the anonymous op ed. Anonymous op eds have a place but this distracted the focus from Woodward. The latter is a far greater threat to Trump’s limited credibility. If the NYT was a leftist “Resistance” rag, they would not have interrupted the Woodward news cycle. As a corporation, however, the NYT saw an opportunity to make money. The triumph of capitalism over money.
Trump’s response to this demonstrates is inability to understand the office he holds and its limits. He can’t arrest someone just bc they ratted on him. He’s not Louis XVI.
Many on the left think Booker is an opportunist more inclined to be a Clinton style Democrat rather than a Sanders/Warren. His grandstanding did have a purpose—demonstrating the frivolous use of “national interest” to hold documents back. I sense the Republicans saw this coming and prempted Booker’s show and he unfortunately continued the show anyway creating a distraction from a far more interesting exchange today. https://youtu.be/HR8qhuur9OY
Beto’s and other Democrats popular with even whose taxes they will raise is as your son alludes to a generational thing. Almost anyone under 40 esp in an urban area won’t vote Republican for both social and economic reasons. Most of social deal breakers….gay marriage, abortion, etc…see these two groups on opposite sides. And economically, the under 40 crowd has lived under a neoliberal economic structure and they think it no longer works hence the appeal of the DSA.
In addition, there’s the Republican capitulation to Trump. It’s his party now. And for a generation raised on reality television, they know where he belongs and its not the White House. And the groups who hitch themselves to Trump, Republican careerists and social conservatives, will age out as a political force as demographics and mortality continue their pace.
Finally, I hear Trump will lecture Iran at the UN on their interference and destabilizing effect on the Middle East. The pot is not calling the kettle black here, its the kitchen cooking set calling a tin cup black. The only reason Iran can interfere in Iraq is due to American interference ie the invasion. And while Iran arms one side in Yemen, American drones provide coordinates for the Saudis to bomb Yemen rebels. The Saudi-American alliance, no matter who is president, has interfered in Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Syria etc…
Besides using Trump logic; Russia meddles in US elections and the US meddles in Russia’s elections. Its what countries do. Iran meddles in Yemen, the US meddles in Yemen. Its what countries do.
HRW, I agree with much of what you said @ 8:39. There is something else going on with Beto. He looks and is being treated like a Kennedy. For some rich women, I think voting for him is like voting for Robert Redford.
I visit regularly with three friends of my son who I coached in basketball 15 years ago. You are correct that they view Trump as a moron. However, they are becoming more economically conservative, really more libertarian, every time I see them. All three are making good money and paying quite a bit of taxes now and they don’t like where many of those tax dollars are going. Right now they see Democrats (including Beto) and Trump as people representing two different constituencies who want to get in their pockets. They actually like Cruz’ position on most issues, but they can not respect him and may not vote for him because of the way he sucked up to Trump.
Immigration is another issue that is important to the thirty-somethings I talk to, but it is not because they are bleeding hearts. Those young men went to good colleges with many very bright immigrant students and even more bright children of immigrants. They respect the intelligence and the work ethic of those immigrant students and their many immigrant professors. They view the immigrants as people likely to be able to support themselves and others. They want more of such people as their fellow citizens.
This may be a preview of what we can expect in 2019-2020, but I really don’t think so. I expect Mueller to issue a report around the end of this year. At that time:
1. The Dems will squeal that Mueller was too easy on Trump even as the Rs whined that Comey was too easy on Hillary.
2. The Cult will believe none of the report because Dear Leader will call it fake news.
3. The report and what to do with it will be placed in the lap of the new Congress.
Trump’s legal team never had any intention of allowing him to be interviewed, knowing he is incapable of telling the truth. It’s past time to subpoena the President. No one is above the law. https://t.co/6jAusTHFEo
Wandering Views 
LikeLike
A kindred soul in his hour of need. Perhaps the North Korean Intelligence Agency can help Trumpy find the “traitor” in his own Administration.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Unlike Woodward’s book, this one will actually show evidence, rather than unfounded, whisper down the alley allegations.
And further proof that Comey and Mueller are dirty.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/new_schweizerrecommended_book_exposes_extent_of_corruption_at_fbi_and_doj.html
“I have a friend and colleague who is retired from the FBI. We talk, and he insists that the FBI basic hardworking field agents and such are concerned and upset about the misconduct of the many miscreants in the leadership of the FBI and the DOJ. For example, he tells me of the perceived problems that were created by FBI decisions to make cases headquarters cases instead of following FBI protocols that made the field agents the drivers of the case. However, I see nothing of any effort by FBI agents to fix the corruption problem at the top. Wanna know why? They are bureaucrats, and they have no taste for the risks of fixing corruption.
So here comes Peter Schweizer, prolific and reliable writer and official with the Government Accountability Institute. Schweizer’s books – Secret Empires, Clinton Cash, Throw Them All Out, Extortion – are all intended to expose the corruption and malignancy of the bureaucratic leftist Deep State.
I am sick to death of government corruption and misconduct, like most Americans. We condemn and abhor the lies and the espionage perpetrated by high officials in the intelligence agencies, with a particular role for the corrupt FBI and DOJ. So here comes the book Compromised: How Money and Politics Drive FBI Corruption by Seamus Bruner, recently promoted by Sean Hannity and also by the venerable Mr. Schweizer, Mr. Bruner’s mentor of sorts, since they both work at the Government Accountability Institute. Mr. Schweizer is actively promoting the Bruner exposé, which focuses on two major considerations: FBI and DOJ projects to promote a Deep State advocacy that would reverse the election of 2016 and a vastly expanded Deep State project to create expansive surveillance of Americans
In Compromised, Bruner explains the scandal of FBI officials’ role clearing the uranium resources acquisition by the enemy that was complicity in espionage and, in another area of consideration, the revolving-door profiting from promoting the surveillance project contracts that were a source of extraordinary income for FBI directors Comey and Mueller, as exposed by Bruner. Comey’s excellent arrangement with Lockheed Martin provided him with income of millions when he left the FBI for a few years. Comey made tens of millions as a major official of Lockheed and facilitator of Lockheed’s surveillance contracts with the federal government, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Mueller’s intimate relationship to another federal contractor, Booz Allen, was also lucrative during his time in the private sector.
Mr. Bruner does not neglect in his book the work of FBI and DOJ officials in the effort to reverse the election of Donald Trump – their “insurance policy” work – and he exposes in depth the commitment to the surveillance state that was part of the effect of FBI and DOJ efforts in the past 15 years, to include a scandalous and dishonest misuse of the powers provided by the Patriot Act and the formation of the rubber-stamp FISA courts that only rarely kept FBI and DOJ officials from initiating surveillance. The point Mr. Bruner makes is that the FISA Court approvals invariably resulted in surveillance of American citizens without probable cause, and that is illegal and unconstitutional. The details of the misuse of powers are some of the most sobering sections of the book.
The problem of FBI official activities and revolving-door antics stinks and makes one consider the FBI to be, as some say about law enforcement, only one step away from illegal and miscreant corruption. I will not accept any argument that the FBI had integrity – Hoover was a political manipulator from the beginning and set the tone. We are seeing the exaggerated corruption that can develop when politics influences law enforcement and law enforcement officials consider themselves above the law for ordinary Americans.
For those with short attention spans or limited time, the Compromised is ideal, running through the scandals at breathtaking speed. I read the book in a few hours. For the plodding reader who wants some verification, Bruner has 90-plus pages of references and sources for his claims. Your efforts to assess his assertions and advocacy will take some time – and it’s because Bruner has a well developed and researched argument. He also has the respected recommendation of Peter Schweizer. “
LikeLiked by 1 person
Anonymous Senior Official saying bad things about Trump.
I have never taken much stock in things Anonymous has to say.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ignore the distractions, and focus on the real issues.
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/405242-the-mueller-probes-troubling-reliance-on-journalists-as-sources
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has sent a subpoena to veteran writer Jerome Corsi — the first publicly known effort to compel a journalist’s testimony in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
Corsi, whose work has been showcased for years in conservative outlets such as Human Events, World Net Daily and the InfoWars conspiracy site, says he will not fight the subpoena and plans to appear before the grand jury on Friday.
The subpoena is a not-so-subtle reminder of just how much prosecutors, FBI agents, and the government’s confidential sources who launched and sustained the Russia probe all targeted, courted and leveraged the news media.
Mueller’s team reportedly wants to question Corsi about his contacts with longtime Trump friend Roger Stone and whether Stone ever asked Corsi to try to get WikiLeaks to release damaging emails on Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election ended. It’s expected that Corsi will tell prosecutors he did not bite on Stone’s overtures, in part because he suspected Julian Assange and WikiLeaks were monitored by U.S. intelligence after their past publications of classified U.S. secrets.
Stone is a former business partner of now-convicted lobbyist and former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as a longtime outside adviser to Donald Trump. He recently told The Hill’s new morning program, “Rising,” that he fears he might be indicted by Mueller over his interest in WikiLeaks’ Clinton email leaks. Stone has denied any effort to collude with Russia to swing the election to Trump.
Department of Justice (DOJ) officials declined to comment.
From the beginning of this investigation, key figures involved in it have had extensive contacts with or connections to media.
Fired FBI official Peter Strzok and his alleged paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, texted frequently about leaks in the media affecting their cases, and even suggested the FBI was behind some of those.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired for lying about one media leak he authorized.
The FBI secured a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in part by citing a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff that, it turns out, was based on a leak from the FBI’s own informant in the case, former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose dirt on Trump was bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The court that approved the surveillance warrant apparently was never told that the article was not independent corroboration but, rather, circular intelligence from the poisoned Steele tree.
DOJ notes recently provided to Congress show one of the media leaks with which Steele was involved was considered by his boss, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, to be a “hail Mary attempt” to swing the election, rather than to inform the FBI and courts. That’s the sort of biased evidence the FBI should eschew, not embrace, of course.
And Strzok’s own FBI communications show the FBI — after firing Steele — continued to receive versions of his now-infamous but still-unverified dossier on alleged Trump collusion with Russia. One of those was delivered to the bureau by Mother Jones magazine writer David Corn, who openly has opposed Trump’s presidency.
I’m a lifelong journalist who believes in the power of the profession and its ability to serve the public with accurate reporting. But it is deeply troubling that the FBI and a federal prosecutor with unlimited resources have relied so much on the Fourth Estate’s secondhand reporting to build its Russia case, when getting firsthand intelligence from original sources would far better serve the public.
Journalism, no matter how grand, remains an imperfect first record of history. Anonymous sources have motives that sometimes only a journalist knows and can’t talk about. (Take, for example, Steele, whose dossier work ultimately was being funded by Democrats.)”
LikeLike
The NYT is a joke.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/09/anti-trumpers-anonymous-nyt-op-ed-proof-of-yet-another-constitutional-crisis/
“The media world is dedicated to taking all kinds of “rare steps” so long as they are detrimental to Trump.
Wednesday, the New York Times took the “rare step” of publishing an anonymous opinion piece by someone claiming to be a senior White House official.
John Doe claims he’s part of an active “resistance” within the White House working to thwart Trump’s agenda.
All reads like a trite, concern trolling Never Trump screed. Like some kind of psychological operation meant to unnerve Trump whose had difficulties with staff allegiance from the get-go and to shift the conversation back to the Trump Is Unfit to be President™ mantra, one progressives won’t give up.
I’m sure it’s purely coincidence that the op-ed was published after it was clear attempts to #BlockBrett were squashed quickly and embarrassingly so, but I digress.
That said, it doesn’t mean the assertions in the op-ed are false, but the manner and timing of the release are certainly worth scrutinizing. We don’t have an opportunity to dig into the source or the veracity of the source’s claims, thanks to the NYT.
We don’t know how many are part of this alleged insurrection. Could be 2 or 3 or 15. All of these things are relevant facts, none of them are included.
Half the internet is in full-on freak-out mode, claiming the contents of the op-ed are evidence of a “Constitutional Crisis.” Given that these are the same people who’ve moved from one Constitutional Crisis to the next since Trump was elected.”
LikeLike
But in reality, it’s them and their attempted coup causing a constitutional crisis.
David Frum agrees, and he’s no Trump fan
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/569443/
“Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.
If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.
On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:
Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.
But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.
What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.
He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.
And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this article. They will be worse because of this article.
The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. The high official who thought the president so addled that he would not remember the paper he snatched off his desk? Those who thought the president stupid, ignorant, beholden to Russia—and then exited the administration to return to their comfortable, lucrative occupations? Who substituted deep-background gripe sessions with a reporter for offering detailed proof of presidential unfitness, or worse, before the House or Senate? Yes, better than the robotic servility of the public record. But only slightly.
What would be better?
Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.”
——————-
Own it cowards. Or shut up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is pretty good. The Trump Cult is now asking us to ignore all of the voices from within Trump’s Administration who say he is deranged, uninformed, infantile and completely unfit for office. Instead The Cult wants us to focus on the investigation that is trying to determine if Trump engaged in a conspiracy with Russia and then obstructed justice. Tomorrow, we may be asked to focus on the porn star and the Playboy bunny and the payments they received from Trump. Pence is going to be a very boring replacement, but we may all be ready for “boring”.
LikeLike
The
revolutionanti-democratic coup WILL be televised……..https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/trump-mattis-kelly-new-york-times/569416/
“We’re Watching an Antidemocratic Coup Unfold
Acts of sabotage against the president are perilous to the American system of government. They’re also self-serving.”
—————-
“The op-ed is so bizarre that it is tempting to dismiss it as fantasy—akin to the obviously bogus Twitter accounts that flourished early in the administration claiming to be by saboteurs inside the White House. (While the Times has likely done its homework, expect the president to question the veracity of the source.) Yet what the anonymous official says lines up closely with the accounts in Woodward’s book, in which officials steal documents, act on their own, and simply disregard orders from the president.
If you believe that Trump does not have the judgment and temperament for office—not a difficult conclusion to draw—this is a win of a sort. Yet the actions described in the book and in the op-ed are extremely worrying, and amount to a soft coup against the president. Given that one of Trump’s great flaws is that he has little regard for rule of law, it’s hard to cheer on Cabinet members and others openly thwarting Trump’s directives, giving unelected officials effective veto power over the elected president. Like Vietnam War–era generals, they are destroying the village in order to save it. As is so often the case in the Trump administration, both alternatives are awful to consider.
————
“Say what you will about the wisdom of voters, but it is the bedrock of the nation, and Trump is the duly elected president, as Sanders says. Cabinet members are at least confirmed by the Senate, but they’re still unelected. Officials like Cohn and Porter are subject to even less scrutiny, as they are appointed directly to their posts. If protecting the rules requires tearing down the rules, what is there to be gained?
Recognizing the bind that top officials serving an unfit president could face, the nation in 1967 amended the Constitution to provide for the removal of a president who “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The Twenty-Fifth Amendment creates a lawful path for a top government official who believes the president cannot serve: Work to remove him, rather than disobey legal orders.
According to the anonymous senior official in the Times, the idea has been discussed:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
This is astonishingly shortsighted. The writer, and anyone else who thinks this way, overlooks a major flaw: Any situation in which unelected officials are sabotaging the president through a soft coup is already a constitutional crisis, as my colleague David Frum has written.
Not only are these acts of sabotage legally perilous; the leaks about them are self-serving. Woodward does not reveal his sources, either in general or in specific instances, but a read of the book strongly suggests that Porter and Cohn are among those who spoke to him. By spreading word that they stood up to the president behind closed doors, these figures hope to burnish their reputations and distance themselves from the stain the Trump presidency leaves on nearly everyone it touches. In doing so, they’ve fingered themselves in another questionable pursuit. If the price of defending democracy and rule of law is to destroy both, the price is too high.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“The Trump Cult is now asking us to ignore all of the voices from within Trump’s Administration who say he is deranged, uninformed, infantile and completely unfit for office.”
The only voice I hear is Woodward’s. No one else is speaking up about anything. Woodward is making these allegations. Until some of the cowards speak up and own it, your statement is wrong, as usual.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The situation in the White House: The President is very angry and has many aides searching for “leakers” and the “traitor”. Fortunately, he has Ivanka and other aides who are attempting to “quell his distress”.
LikeLike
And if he is all those things, then remove him by the methods allowed, not a soft coup.
And you call yourself a “rule of law” guy?
Not if you support this, and it’s obvious you do.
I guess that whole Russia thing didn’t pan out so now you’ve moved on to other false nonsense and allegations.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So if The Trump Cult was logical, it would have to make a choice. Either:
1. The Administration is full of Deep Staters and Silent Coupers who are saying all these bad things about Dear Leader and trying to sabotage him; or
2. Woodward is making up all these quotes.
Rational people can’t have it both ways.
However, that is the beauty of being in a cult. Logic and rationality can be ignored. All you have to do is parrot what you hear from Dear Leader.
LikeLike
3. All of the above.
A combination of 1 and 2, as well as a complicit media.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So you’re just gonna ignore the fact that you are cheering on an un-American coup and are spitting on the constitution?
Don’t be a coward too. Own it.
LikeLike
Logic, which is often taught in the 11th grade along with economics, teaches that certain things are mutually exclusive. Don’t be ignorant. Learn the concept. You won’t have to leave The Cult. However, you will know when you are being illogical in order to remain a Cultist in good standing.
LikeLike
I made straight A’s in all of my college logic classes. Ricky’s comment at 8:15 is good example of the false dilemma fallacy in which something is falsely claimed to be an either/or situation. Logical fallacy’s are commonly used when 1)someone doesn’t know how to make a logical argument or 2) someone doesn’t have a logical argument or 3) someone is manipulating the situation. This is not an exclusive list of course. ;–)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Own it Ricky, don’t be a coward. You’ve supported any and all efforts to undermine and if possible, remove Trump.
You weren’t even this hard on Obama, who is the anti- of everything you say you hold dear. You seem to hate the man and everything he does and says. It’s not normal behavior for a president from the party you say you support. You keep siding with the enemy of all you say you support. Odd it is. Not logical either.
LikeLike
Meanwhile, in other news…..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-jobless-claims-fell-to-a-49-year-low-last-week-1536237250
“The number of Americans filing applications for new unemployment benefits fell at the end of August to a nearly five-decade low.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs across the U.S., declined to a seasonally adjusted 203,000 in the last week of August, the Labor Department said Thursday. This is the lowest level of unemployment benefit applications since the end of 1969. “
LikeLike
Hammer ’em.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/09/05/ftc-states-target-bogus-veterans-charities-in-new-crackdown-its-war-profiteering.html
“Generous Americans give more than $2.5 billion a year to some 40,000 charities with missions designed to help veterans.
Lately, however, this crowded field has been inundated by fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC launched Operation Donate with Honor in July to spotlight the problem of fraudulent and deceptive fundraising on behalf of military and veterans’ causes.
“It’s war profiteering,” Joshua Starks, commander of the 300,000-strong Oklahoma Veterans of Foreign Wars told Fox News. “They’re stealing from people who raised their hand and took an oath to serve our country and then went overseas to protect the rights of all of us–including the people who are stealing from them.”
As part of Operation Donate with Honor, the FTC distributed a list of 102 law enforcement actions 34 states have lodged against bogus veterans’ charities. Some are recent. Others are newly filed. The FTC is a partner in two of the new cases.
The list laid bare the many ways these groups solicit donations—online, on the phone, by mail, door-to-door and at stores and supermarkets.
Officials said these legal actions share a common theme: the false promise to help needy and disabled vets, to provide veterans with employment counseling, mental health counseling or other assistance and to send care packages to deployed service members.”
LikeLike
I see where the top officials say they didn’t leak.
I believe them. For this reason.
I learned early in my career, not because I did it, but I have seen it, and the effects.
Always remember this.
Never bad mouth your boss!
It hurts your career, even among other people in position.
If you don’t like it there, move on. But don’t say bad things, even after your leave, about your boss.
As I said. I don’t believe “Anonymous” exists. It would be a stupid thing to do. .
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now as to post 1.
That was a response tweet. You forgot the rest….
Or it didn’t fit your agenda.
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2018/09/06/trump-triggers-the-blue-check-horde-with-tweet-on-kim-jong-un/
“While we were obsessing over who wrote that New York Times op-ed, there was actually progress being made on the denuclearization of North Korea with Kim Jong Un telling South Korea’s national security adviser that he ready to “revive stalled nuclear talks”:”
——————
LikeLike
And this….
—————-
And this….
—————–
The president’s tweet was in response to good news, so of course Ricky left that part out.
LikeLike
I know what I’ll be doing the rest of the afternoon.
Hehehehe! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cory Booker is a moron. His staged attempt at releasing secret docs, which was already approved for release anyway, has blown up in his face. It will probably still work to fool his voter base though…
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2018/09/06/what-an-idiot-cory-booker-just-risked-his-senate-job-for-this-colossal-self-own/
——————-
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1037731687449456640
LikeLike
LikeLike
And the fraud known as Cory Booker knew it too.
LikeLike
Jennifer Rubin, wrong again.
She fell for Spartacus’ fraud.
——————
https://twitter.com/SnarkActual/status/1037738308686802945
————–
Yeah it did. 🙂
LikeLike
Point and laugh. 🙂
LikeLike
The written denials:
LikeLike
And what better source is there than a Republican lobbyist?
LikeLike
Another anonymous source Ricky?
Another coward. It’s becoming a theme with you.
And the one above breaks the rules, so it’s coming down. You can post a link to it that doesn’t include the toon. Folks can check the link if they choose.
LikeLike
Playing dumb…..
But he ain’t playin’……..
LikeLike
Editorial cartoons are banned?
LikeLike
For anyone interested, the editorial cartoonist is Bill Bramhall who draws for The New York Daily News. You can follow him on Twitter.
AJ is right about Booker. I watched some of the hearings today while babysitting. Booker is as dumb as Trump and only slightly better behaved. 2020 may be really ugly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Debra, Control of the Senate may come down to Tennessee and Texas.
https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1037813986673270791?s=21
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Editorial cartoons are banned?”
No, but nudity, even cartoon nudity, is.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Ricky, I think R’s will keep the Senate, but Tennessee is in danger. Bredesen is a former governor so he is a known quantity here, and he was up double digits in the polls last time I checked. He seems to be a serious person, not bombastic, but also not a Trump hater. He says he’ll work with him whrre je can. The pragmatic approach is appealing to many.
Debra
LikeLike
I don’t know what this is all about.
But I believe everything Shannon Bream says.
😉
LikeLike
This is a sad, sad day…. 😦
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/burt-reynolds-dead-deliverance-boogie-nights-star-was-82-831093
“Burt Reynolds, the charismatic star of such films as Deliverance, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit who set out to have as much fun as possible on and off the screen — and wildly succeeded — has died. He was 82.
Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination when he portrayed porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and was the No. 1 box-office attraction for a five-year stretch starting in the late 1970s, died Thursday morning at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida, his manager, Erik Kritzer, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest.”
LikeLike
Debra, I also think the Rs will keep the Senate, but there are lots of “toss-ups”. Here is the most recent RCP map.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/senate/2018_elections_senate_map.html
My mother and my wife says they have seen lots of Beto signs in very affluent areas. I do not know what that is about. I asked by son. His response had the terms “hip” and “cool” in it, but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Chas, I like Shannon Bream as well and Bret Baier has really grown on me. At one time, I questioned if Baier could fill Brit Hume’s shoes. He has done very well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with Frum….the enablers in the White House need to proceed with any lawful measures if they believe Trump is incapable of the presidency.
In addition, the NYT should not have published the anonymous op ed. Anonymous op eds have a place but this distracted the focus from Woodward. The latter is a far greater threat to Trump’s limited credibility. If the NYT was a leftist “Resistance” rag, they would not have interrupted the Woodward news cycle. As a corporation, however, the NYT saw an opportunity to make money. The triumph of capitalism over money.
Trump’s response to this demonstrates is inability to understand the office he holds and its limits. He can’t arrest someone just bc they ratted on him. He’s not Louis XVI.
LikeLike
Many on the left think Booker is an opportunist more inclined to be a Clinton style Democrat rather than a Sanders/Warren. His grandstanding did have a purpose—demonstrating the frivolous use of “national interest” to hold documents back. I sense the Republicans saw this coming and prempted Booker’s show and he unfortunately continued the show anyway creating a distraction from a far more interesting exchange today. https://youtu.be/HR8qhuur9OY
LikeLike
Ricky,
Beto’s and other Democrats popular with even whose taxes they will raise is as your son alludes to a generational thing. Almost anyone under 40 esp in an urban area won’t vote Republican for both social and economic reasons. Most of social deal breakers….gay marriage, abortion, etc…see these two groups on opposite sides. And economically, the under 40 crowd has lived under a neoliberal economic structure and they think it no longer works hence the appeal of the DSA.
In addition, there’s the Republican capitulation to Trump. It’s his party now. And for a generation raised on reality television, they know where he belongs and its not the White House. And the groups who hitch themselves to Trump, Republican careerists and social conservatives, will age out as a political force as demographics and mortality continue their pace.
LikeLike
Finally, I hear Trump will lecture Iran at the UN on their interference and destabilizing effect on the Middle East. The pot is not calling the kettle black here, its the kitchen cooking set calling a tin cup black. The only reason Iran can interfere in Iraq is due to American interference ie the invasion. And while Iran arms one side in Yemen, American drones provide coordinates for the Saudis to bomb Yemen rebels. The Saudi-American alliance, no matter who is president, has interfered in Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Syria etc…
Besides using Trump logic; Russia meddles in US elections and the US meddles in Russia’s elections. Its what countries do. Iran meddles in Yemen, the US meddles in Yemen. Its what countries do.
LikeLike
HRW, I agree with much of what you said @ 8:39. There is something else going on with Beto. He looks and is being treated like a Kennedy. For some rich women, I think voting for him is like voting for Robert Redford.
I visit regularly with three friends of my son who I coached in basketball 15 years ago. You are correct that they view Trump as a moron. However, they are becoming more economically conservative, really more libertarian, every time I see them. All three are making good money and paying quite a bit of taxes now and they don’t like where many of those tax dollars are going. Right now they see Democrats (including Beto) and Trump as people representing two different constituencies who want to get in their pockets. They actually like Cruz’ position on most issues, but they can not respect him and may not vote for him because of the way he sucked up to Trump.
LikeLike
Immigration is another issue that is important to the thirty-somethings I talk to, but it is not because they are bleeding hearts. Those young men went to good colleges with many very bright immigrant students and even more bright children of immigrants. They respect the intelligence and the work ethic of those immigrant students and their many immigrant professors. They view the immigrants as people likely to be able to support themselves and others. They want more of such people as their fellow citizens.
LikeLike
This may be a preview of what we can expect in 2019-2020, but I really don’t think so. I expect Mueller to issue a report around the end of this year. At that time:
1. The Dems will squeal that Mueller was too easy on Trump even as the Rs whined that Comey was too easy on Hillary.
2. The Cult will believe none of the report because Dear Leader will call it fake news.
3. The report and what to do with it will be placed in the lap of the new Congress.
LikeLike
He’s making a list and he’s checking it twice.
LikeLike
There’s an economic pragmatic argument for immigration. And for many older people this is disregarded bc of social-ethnic reasons.
Trudeau did well with the same demographic in our last election.
Somalia is the libertarian paradise.
LikeLike