I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His “memos” are self serving and FAKE!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
1. "Wild Bill" — is that a new nickname? I don't remember seeing that one before.
2. I see he's now spelling "slimeball" as one word. I assume he did not read my post commenting on his 2-word spelling the other day: "I'm utterly certain the correct spelling is 'slimeball,' although forevermore I will pause before writing 'slimeball' and think of Trump and feel that it would be an allusion to Trump to write 'slime ball.'"
3. "... Comey... how come he..." How Comey. How Comey of Comey, how come he...?
4. I love the rhetorical technique — so Twitter — of inserting a second, more cynical voice in paretheses: "how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail)...." Trump keeps it simple but also trusts the reader to understand the extreme compression. We get that "(jail)" is a second, more devilish Trump, heckling. It's like he's his own Silk.
5. These tweets are well-timed to force the Sunday shows to take notice and to make it hard for them to keep up (especially since so much of the time that would have been devoted to Comey had to be reapportioned to the Syria story).
Posts
332 comments:
1 – 200 of 332 Newer› Newest»"It's like he's his own Silk."
Yeah-huh .... that's right ...
Wild Bill is new. The first Wild Bill was Bill Donovan; first head of the CIA.
At my high school we called the very mild mannered Fr. Bill O’Leary Wild Bill.
Trump gets better at Twitter every day. The fools at CNN are finally learning not to read every one on-air.
And Ann, Scott Adams would call Trump’s dual spelling of slime-ball as thinking past the sale.
Tweet taunts are so effective—-not.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the President reads the Althouse blog given his new Wolfe-Althouse writing style. All the smart people and those in the know read the Althouse blog and shop using the AMZN portal.
He fights!
Slime ball is more overtly sexual. Like "You sucker" vs. "You suck."
Wild Bill is not new. Trump used it at least as far back as October 2016 to refer to Bill Clinton: "A country that Crooked Hillary says has funded ISIS also gave Wild Bill $1 million for his birthday? SO CORRUPT!"
Trump's got a very powerful personal story to tell; his side of these important events.
I think he should tell it, to Robert Mueller and a grand jury.
P.S.: I was reading the New Yorker online, and the idiotic foot-in-mouth piece on the opening of the new Chick-fil-a locations in Manhattan (search the conservative commentary; it's a pretty great takedown of the New Yorker's cultural extrremism), and came across a new phrase. "End-stage Trump."
Feels like 9:30 PM election night.
Glad to be alive.
"I assume he did not read my post commenting on his 2-word spelling the other day: "I'm utterly certain the correct spelling is 'slimeball,'"
I think it would be fun to pretend he did, and to guess his tweet nickname for you.
OT:
McCabe is a liar. Even CNN must admit it. oh boy.
Good game. What nickname would Trump would give Althouse on Twitter?
Cruelly Neutral Althouse.
Chuck is pure fopdoodle partisanship. He cannot stop fopdoodling in order to admit talking to law enforcement is always a bad idea. But only always. For everybody. But only everybody. Even FBI guys like McCabe!!
R/V is reduced to whinging.
Goodness gracious but Trump is a master persuader!
Chuck: "End-stage Trump."
So that's what they're calling the ailment you've been diagnosed with.
On the "master persuader" front; how brilliant has Comey's book and interview been, in trolling Trump? What are the chances that Trump will eventually say something stupid -- something "interview-with-Lester-Holt-stupid" -- in response?
Think about the work that went behind to make the tweets this good. A+ copy writing.
Chuck, fopdoodle extraordinaire, wonders how great Comey has been? Comey the leaker? Comey, the guy who said partisan politics and keeping his job were all that motivated his decision to withhold information about Hillary for five weeks before releasing that information - finally - eleven days before the election?
Is there any doubt Chuck would have happily joined the "small group" that tried to overthrow an election by using the intelligence apparatus of the United States against a duly elected president?
Whinging fopdoodles are my favorite kind.
Slimeball aside I like how Comey's Trump Name is just 'Comey'. Sad!
In his book, Crazy Comey describes an early meeting with Trump and asserts that Trump's ties were too long.
In his next phase of life, Crazy Comey will transition to Fashion Consultant Comey.
Trump is upping his game, and his game was already pretty impressive.
Nice timing on the Libby pardon, too. Cohen must feel a bit more confident now.
So are we to presume that Trump is reading the Comey book? What was the last book that Trump read?
Maybe Trump is reading a book about how racist Chuck is.
@David Begley:
I don’t think Donovan was really the first Wild Bill.
I don’t think Donovan was really the first Wild Bill.
Wild Bill Hickok?
Chuck
Zein und Zeit if you have to know.
I'm not sure if this has been a Comey Tweet yet, but it would be a good one:
Donald J. Trump better hope there are no "tapes" of his conversations with Michael Cohen before he goes whining to the press!
William the Conqueror
William of Orange
Will Scarlet
The NeverTrumpers are getting desperate.
Even Ricochet, which was NeverTrump central, is down to only one or two.
Chuck, you are going to be the last one, I think. You and Williamson.
What was the last book that Trump read?
“How to Be a Frustrated Whiny Loser”, by Chuck Michigan, JD.
The Director of Admissions of my college back in the 70s was a Quaker and a conscientious objector in WWII. His first name was William, so of course we referred to him as Wild Bill.
Well.....he's not wrong!
For someone who has lived in Wisconsin as long as Ann has and taught at a university with such a large Ag program (CALS), she should be udderly certain.
In these tweets, I'll take Trump over Comey.
The one thing that seems particularly undisputed is that he leaked memos to his professor friend, who would then leak the to the NYT, at least one containing classified info. Is he being investigated for that? If not, why not?
To me, "Wild Bill" will always be the overprotective father of three very beautiful teenaged daughters whom I met 47 years ago. Visited his 96 year old widow, and his oldest daughter, two weeks ago. We are still close. Back then, the girls had up a "Wild Bill is watching you" poster, with what looked like some bullet holes through it. We showed proper fear of him, or at least proper respect. Decades later, learned from his wife that he actually liked us, as contrasted to other groups of boys nosing around. It took me decades to address him by his first name, but we did become reasonably close over the years. One of my fondest memories of him is that he would have his housekeeper put mugs in the freezer for root beer floats for the two of us whenever I would come to visit. Born poor, flew the "Hump" as a pilot during WW II, made a fortune the hard way, and had retired by the time I met him, to manage it. My partner thought him a stately gentleman, and fell in love immediately. Fond memories.
What was the last book you read, Chuck?
What books are you reading this week,chuck?
President Trump has already told us he doesn't read books because his whole life he's been working 12 hour days getting stuff done. He has been pretty successful at whatever he's tried. He's gotten more done in a year than any other modern president.
I
That's his reason for not reading. What's yours, Chuck?
John Henry
Interesting that more stuff is coming out about McCabe. From CTH
McCabe’s wife, accepted a role where Mrs. McCabe ran for a Virginia’s State Senate seat.
McAuliffe contributed $467,500 to McCabe’s campaign through his PAC.
Also contributing were a group of Clinton enablers:
a) Fredrick D. Schaufeld, an investment banker contributed $65,332 to McCabe’s campaign. Schaufeld and his wife sit on Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Committee.
b) Karen Schaufeld, his wife, contributed $10,849 to Jill McCabe in October.
c) Sonjia Smith, who also sits on Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Committee along with her husband. Sonja donated $45,000 to McCabe’s campaign.
d) Smith’s husband, Michael Bills, donated $15,000 to McCabe in August 2015.
There were workers who “prepared” Obama’s PDB. Each one of them is technically an accessory.
Jill McCabe and her freely donating funders are not professional spooks. It is likely the Obama team preparing the daily briefing are simply administrative staff, not professional spooks.
So, McCabe and his wife have been dirty from the start.
More to come.
I'm sure that Obama must have gotten in at least a book a week as he was letting Syria burn, Russia invade and leaving ISIS to enslave and kill all those Christians, rape all those women and willfully destroy all those historical artifacts.
Is Obama's literacy during that time supposed to be a recommendation?
But hey, that golf ball wouldn't chase itself!
I was resisting getting the Comey book but POTUS promos are breaking down my resistance.
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
Chuck: "End-stage Trump."
So that's what they're calling the ailment you've been diagnosed with."
Perfect.
Look, according to objective reality, McCabe is a huge perjurer and Comey isn't far from that either.
And they are talking a lot of smack about Trump.
Considering how Comey self admittedly twisted HIMSELF into knots to get Hillary off (in a non sexual way), how am I supposed to take any of his statements about Trump as anything except as biased?
Frankly, the actions of McCabe and Comey with that dossier means that a large portion of the 'proof' about Trump is...questionable.
Beside Chuck, Inga, Voltaire and others for whom proof beyond a reasonable doubt is irrelevant, at least with regards to Trump...what exactly is Mueller wasting his time on at this point?
Hasn't this already unraveled? Are we going to waste 3 more years with increasingly desperate accusations?
It seems so. And when it happens to the next Democratic president, Inga, Chuck and Voltaire (and TTR et al) can blame themselves for this new cultural norm.
We know they won't, but we will have to remind them and help them remember, poor dears.
Perhaps Comey came down with the dreaded ‘John Kerry disease’. Many out of touch, well-placed gentleman can adopt some radical bit of logic (anti-war, Civil rights activism) along the way. The first outbreak was thought to be localized to wealthy Puritan-run hotels around the Kennedy compound in Boston. Was it the obligatory copy of the New Yorker in the lobby?
Was it ‘The Jefferson Airplane?’ playing in the halls? The search broadened: Did they all attend the same prep-school? How were these ideas being transmitted? What’s the incubation period? Fatherless, ambitious boys one can understand, but these men?
As the disease progresses, its sufferers become more irritable, self-righteous and attracted to bad policy. Their speeches become larded with idealism, appeasement and sentimentality. They talk about solidarity. They apologize frequently.
Eventually, one awakens to find them much as hamsters trapped beneath the wheels in their very own cages.
Give today. Help find a cure.
I have to hand it to trump on this one, this is a good carpet bombing right before the sunday shows where instead of them talking about St.Comey, they how have to respond to trump's many inconvenient assertions and truths.
The first I.G. Report blasts McCabe out of the water. No need to indict him, as he and his reputation are toast. Bon voyage!
The next I.G. Report hopefully dissects the bullshit FISA application based on the bullshit Steele Dossier. This one will be more elaborate. Agent Strzok - now in the HR Department - will be singing for his job and career. Better not be lacking candor, Petey- Boy, your two patron enablers Comey and McCabe are both gone. And Priestap has been cooperating from the beginning.
Fun times
Every future president will use twitter. Trump has given the 5th estate its credentials against the 4th estate.
Dickin'Bimbos@Home wrote:
"McCabe is a liar. Even CNN must admit it. oh boy."
The leadership at CNN had to choose between Comey and McCabe- it really is that simple.
“Look, according to objective reality, McCabe is a huge perjurer...”
Yet the IG didn’t refer him to the DOJ for prosecution.
Perjury is a crime, Lack of Candor is an ethical violation.
Trump must be getting a cut of Comey's book sales some how. Maybe that's what they find at Cohen's raid.
Another from the ever clueless Inga:
"Yet the IG didn’t refer him to the DOJ for prosecution."
The report issued to Congress by the IG would not include a criminal referral as a matter of practice. The matter most likely has already been referred by the FBI director himself before the report was filed and after McCabe was fired, but since the IG system is really a Congressional oversight arm, even if the IG hasn't already referred the matter, Congress can do so. If I had guess, there is almost no doubt McCabe will be indicted- the IG report makes is explicit that McCabe lied under oath- that is perjury by every definition I have seen, which makes your characterization just another example of your idiocy.
Like I wrote yesterday- the main issue with McCabe and the WSJ story is that McCabe is claiming that he had the power to give the story to the WSJ, and that he got, at the very least, implicit approval to do so from his direct supervisor, James Comey. In addition, McCabe has claimed that the e-mails support his story in this regard. Now, either they do, or they don't, but we haven't seen all the information the IG collected. I would assume that the IG has seen and read all of the e-mails between the two men, but that is an assumption. If I had to guess, given the tone of the WSJ story in question, and the fact that McCabe has admitted lying about sourcing it in the past, I believe Comey, not McCabe, but it isn't implausible that Comey approved the leak, which also made him look good.
Trump's tweets force the media to confront things they'd like to bury and have us forget about: Bill Clinton's meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in June 2016, Comey's leaking of classified information to journalists who did not have a security clearance much less a "need to know" (as it is defined within the government), as well as Comey's admission that he went public with information about Clinton Emails winding up on Anthony Weiner's computer only because she was comfortably ahead in the polls.
About that meeting of Lynch and "Wild Bill" Clinton -- is anyone besides me aware of how damned hot it gets on the tarmac at Sky Harbor? On the afternoon of the day Bill Clinton moseyed on over to where Lynch had her plane sitting on the tarmac it was 108 degree Farenheit. Perfect temperature for moseying around on hot asphalt, yup. And for staying on your plane while they keep the engines turning to maintain air conditioning. Uh huh.
Trump's getting good at this; his adversaries are getting worse.
“Blogger roesch/voltaire said...
Tweet taunts are so effective—-not.”
He just made you bark like a trained seal.
Good God, if I was Trump I’d be doing this twelve times a day. Or, better yet, hire Iowahawk to do it for me.
Perjury is a crime, Lack of Candor is an ethical violation.
Either way, he fucking lied.
"Lack of candor" is a phrase you use when you are the investigator and not the prosecutor. The problem for McCabe is that he told two contradictory stories- one of them has to be a lie. When and if this actually goes to trial, I expect the prosecutor to use "lied".
Or, better yet, hire Iowahawk to do it for me.
@Cracker, you are brilliant at times.
Is Althouse going to read the Comey book so that we don"t need to?
Bay Area Guy said...
The next I.G. Report hopefully dissects the bullshit FISA application based on the bullshit Steele Dossier. This one will be more elaborate. Agent Strzok - now in the HR Department - will be singing for his job and career. Better not be lacking candor, Petey- Boy, your two patron enablers Comey and McCabe are both gone. And Priestap has been cooperating from the beginning.
The next IG report will deal with the FBI's handling of Hillary's emails -- Page and Strzok will feature prominently.
Is Althouse going to read the Comey book so that we don"t need to?
Unlikely. She gave up on Hillary's book and tried to turn it over to Meade. I'm guessing it wasn't his cup of tea, either.
Higher Loyalty = lying for a greatly cause.
“The next I.G. Report hopefully dissects the bullshit FISA application based on the bullshit Steele Dossier. This one will be more elaborate. Agent Strzok - now in the HR Department - will be singing for his job and career. Better not be lacking candor, Petey- Boy, your two patron enablers Comey and McCabe are both gone. And Priestap has been cooperating from the beginning.”
The IG report seemed to find the text messages by Strzok’s partner, Lisa Page (“Special Counsel”) credible, and the primary evidence against McCade. And it was after being confronted by their back and forth text messages that McCabe switched his story. Plus, the OIG interviewed her multiple times under oath, and her story stayed consistent. My guess is that if we dig deeper into that report, we will see that Strzok is mentioned by title, as she was.
As the CTH has pointed out on several occasions, there are two classes of people involved in they scandal - th3 cooperators, and their targets. You can tell them apart because the cooperators still work for the DoJ or FBI, but mostly in positions where they can’t do any more damage. The rest have been fired, or forced to quit/retire early. Someone asked here why Strzok still had his security clearance, and the reason is that termination from the FBI is mandatory, when an employee’s security clearance is lost. And, Comey illustrated why the cooperators are still employed, when Congress asked him to testify before them, after having been fired, and he told them to shove it.
The way that they explained it was that potential cooperators are called into a room, given a letter, advised not to say anything else, until they have an attorney present, then told how fucked they are. They are given the choice of: (a) admitting to the crime and fully cooperating with the investigators and prosecutors, in return for liency; or (b) to fight it. Lying means loss of the liency, which means prison time (and likely disbarment, for those, like Page, with law licenses). Plus, lying to the FBI/purjury tacked onto the sentence. Both Strzok and Page very evidently chose option (a), since they are both in the still employed category.
Damn, Kathryn51!
I wouldn't wish this Comey whinging on people I actively dislike. The thought of somebody who has given so much pleasure to thw world through interesting conversation... Althouse deserves better than punishment by Comey.
Things better than reading Comey's book:
1) pulling pinky toenails off the toe with rusty pliers,
2) getting yelled at by Trigglypuff for the exact same length of time it would take to read Comey's book,
3) non-poisonous snake bites,
4) stepping on a child's jacks or legos, unexpectedly...
5) et cetera
An interesting take on the likelihood of McCabe getting indicted for perjury, from Jonathan Turley.
“Ultimately, Inspector General Michael Horowitz has the authority to refer a matter to criminal investigators investigators in cases of false statements or other crimes. He can also refer matters to state bars in cases of professional misconduct by lawyers. He could do either in the matter of McCabe if investigators conclude that McCabe intentionally misled them. However, if history is any guide, McCabe is unlikely to find himself facing a charge.
It is a perceived luxury enjoyed by federal prosecutors that routinely charge others with even borderline false statements but rarely face such charges themselves. While most prosecutors adhere to the highest ethical standards, a minority of Justice Department lawyers have been accused of false or misleading statements in federal cases. However, they are virtually never charged with false statements by their colleagues. There is no such reluctance in using this easily charged crime against targets outside of the department.
Despite the recent criticism by President Trump, Horowitz is a respected, nonpartisan professional. Moreover, there are strong arguments against the broad use of the false statements statute. It is common for people to omit or color facts in interviews on events that may have occurred weeks or months or even years earlier. Most people assume that they have a right to deny wrongdoing. Indeed, there was once an “exculpatory no” doctrine that maintained that a person could deny a crime with an investigator and not be subject to a charge under laws like Section 1001. This was viewed as an extension of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.”
We all know where this trail is going to wind up: They will be dragging Obama's ass in front of Congress for an explanation of his manipulating Justice, spying on Trump, intimidating the electorate, and playing very lightly with the Federal System.
It's like watching a big fisherman reeling in that Marlin a crank at a time.
“We all know where this trail is going to wind up: They will be dragging Obama's ass in front of Congress for an explanation of his manipulating Justice, spying on Trump, intimidating the electorate, and playing very lightly with the Federal System.”
I think you folks will be facing some serious disillusionment and dissapointment.
“The next IG report will deal with the FBI's handling of Hillary's emails -- Page and Strzok will feature prominently.”
Is that next, or the FISA abuses? OIG has promised to deliver one of them next month (but we were expecting a report last month). I don’t think that this last one counts - it was just to bolster the case for firing McCade. I am frankly much more interested in learning about the FISA abuses. There are two, possibly interrelated, aspects there. Obviously, we need to know more about the Title I Wiretap application for Carter Page, utilizing the Clinton funded Fusion GPS/Steele Dossier information. But maybe more important are the Title VII abuses by the FBI uncovered by NSA Dir Adm Rogers. The possible interrelationship is that the FBI had given contractors access to the Title VII databases, one of the likely contractors was Fusion GPS, and accessing that information is the only plausible way that Steele had the wrong Michael Cohen going to Prague. The only plausible way for that to have happened was for someone to search Customs information with the name of Trump’s Attorney, which would have been the case if someone had performed an “about” search of the FISA Title VII databases for “Michael Cohen”, and then relayed that information to Steele.
Compared to that, the Crooked Hillary email and Clinton Foundation investigations are fairly straight forward. Obama and Lynch said that she wasn’t guilty, which translates to that she was not to be prosecuted. Added to that, everyone expected her to be elected, and no one wanted to be remembered by her, given her vindictive reputation, for grilling her. Thus the kid gloves.
Obama is not going to get called in before anyone.
He was always just a false front, not a player.
Other people decided for him.
Thats who you want really. The people holding the money.
And he would continue to be a valuable symbol for the powers that be in furtherance of their propaganda lines if he were hauled up before Congress.
Inga, you all are screwed, there is no way, short of a miracle, out of this. Your own existence is a symptom. Not wanting to put it so personally, but it is so.
I cannot be disappointed. I have seen you in your greatness, and can compare it to today. My only emotion is sadness.
I see decline and degeneration every day, hidden by draw-downs on accumulated social capital. But your social capital is running low.
Althouse,
"Dee" over at the urban dictionary disagrees:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slime%20ball
The sad part, and what I'm pretty sure of, is the fact that you believe him. You seem to find it impossible to criticize this criminal mobster and forever obsess on how tries to exercise what you consider to be consummate showmanship about it. And why? Is propaganda and hard-core denial and truth-warping in its service such a new thing?
It's not. It's just that America's lacked a propaganda ministry for its 240+ years and instead had to witness how such charlatans operate from abroad. Just because Orange Goebbels figured out that the American secret sauce to totalitarianism involved the self-made myths of a privileged kid becoming a paper billionaire after reading termination scripts to other actors on a competition-based show and propelling white nationalist resentment against the first black president and an equally unpopular opponent - that doesn't mean he's good for anything. It just proves what everyone said when predicting the arrival of fascism in America: That it will come behind a yellow smiley face emoticon and projections of the self-made millionaire myths. We just didn't predict that the white nationalist identity politics would be a part of the toxic brew.
But the fact remains that this dude's inner circle is collapsing amidst some serious and unprecedented constitutional crises that he seemed uniquely "qualified" to foment. The fact that a law professor (emerita or not) can abstain from any and all effort to look at that much bigger picture, and what it spells out for the integrity and longevity of our country - all for the tradeoff of obsessing over outrageous, innumerable short-term spectacles and other meaningless dramas - shows just how easily manipulable our country is.
When are you going to start getting serious about this fraudulent Caligula/Nero-in-waiting? The republic seethes and burns while you dance around playing a fiddle asking us how much we're enjoying the tune. It's nauseating and horrifying.
I think you folks will be facing some serious disillusionment and disapointment.
Inga admits that there is one set of laws for Them and another for Us.
Buwaya, serving up thunderclaps, stormy skies and the demise of the US again, meh, what else is new?
"the republic seethes and burns while you dance around playing a fiddle asking us how much we're enjoying the tune."
Good characterization of 2 terms of Obama
"I see decline and degeneration every day"
I do, too. We might have to lose a war to clean the Augean Stables but we hope Trump can do enough of it to save off the Gods of the Copybook Headings for another generation.
I'm sure everyone over 60 looks back at youth with pleasant reminiscence but we really were in a golden age until Lyndon Johnson got us into Vietnam and the social contract fell apart. I think the leftist academy got going with student deferment draft dodgers. They stayed in grad school to keep out of the draft. We are dealing with the consequences.
250 years is not a bad record.
Stave off....
The problem with what Turley is suggesting is first that McCabe was not a prosecutor, but rather an FBI agent. But more importantly, I think, is that the FBI depends on their reputation for honesty. In a great number of the cases they are involved in, it comes down to the credibility of witnesses, and fact finders typically pick the testifying FBI agents over those put on by the defense, to a great extent because of the agency’s reputation. Making things worse, of course, is the fact that the FBI often doesn’t record interviews, but rather depends on the testimony of the interviewing agents. Here we have an IG report showing that the #2 in the FBI both lied to FBI agents, and lied under oath. Not prosecuting him would strongly imply that lying by FBI agents is tolerated by the FBI, and, as a result, there is no reason to trust the testifying FBI agents over other witnesses. No doubt defense attorneys will attempt to use the IG report to discredit FBI agents in normal cases, but it gets worse when the same sort of lying that McCabe did is prosecuted in the cases of non-FBI/DoJ employees, but not for people like him. Then, the prosecution starts to look not just hypocritical, but also either political or personal.
Jonathan Turley writes that there are two sets of laws that apply differently to those with power and those without? And I should believe that is a good thing? Why in the ever loving hell would I want a law professor like Turley to tell me I am a second class citizen ruled from on high?
I still have faith in the rule of law and the goodness of this country. These things will trump all else in the end. If not, I’ll concede Buwaya’s points about the decline of this nation.
I do, too. We might have to lose a war to clean the Augean Stables but we hope Trump can do enough of it to save off the Gods of the Copybook Headings for another generation.
Hitler was out to save Germany.
America has Twitler.
This is fucked up. It's an FDR that's needed, not some right-wing American fascist applying the same fraudulent tricks set to an American tune.
I reiterate that no one cares what Birkel believes or wants.
No one.
But America's right-wing Cliff Clavin demands consideration and the chance to speak.
It's not clear he could lead chickens to a henhouse even with a rooster.
People like Birkel are necessary for America to be led by America's very own Caligula-Nero: Donald Twitler Trump.
Bruce Hayden said...
Is that next, or the FISA abuses? OIG has promised to deliver one of them next month (but we were expecting a report last month).
Bruce, if you go back to the original authorization (Jan, '17), there are 5-6 "allegations" to be investigated by the OIG. Two of them involved McCabe - recusal and unauthorized leak.
One involved "Allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations;"
It was the email investigation that led the OIG to the Page/Strzok texts - and I find it fascinating that there have been zero releases of their text messages during the email investigation.
Here is url to OIG authorization (forgive me but I broke my arm a couple days ago and html is beyond me today): https://oig.justice.gov/press/2017/2017-01-12.pdf
Nations don't "decline". They get misled.
Although the Trump never-enders do share mightily in the blame.
You can be forgiven for throwing him a hail Mary pass. But not for letting him pelt the audience with it over and over again.
As it happens, I grew up in not one but two countries with "propaganda ministries", one of these being active well into my adulthood. I knew people on the inside of the system, and who coexisted with the system, working for regime TV and radio. I know exactly how propaganda of this sort is done. And how its coverage is subverted, and leaks.
And, indeed, that is what is happening in the US. The expensive-to-run and high-coverage mass media system that a true "propaganda ministry" would control, shows every sign of being controlled. Anything other than that, including the Presidential loophole of tweets, is just that, a leak in the system, a guerilla media.
In my day, in my propagandized society, similar leaks were in the form of Catholic radio, which the regime could not mess with, or tabloids with similar protections. In the US your remaining venues of samizdat (because thats what it is) are protected by similar circumstances, such as the office of your President. But thats what this whole system is, a guerilla media.
Its quite amazing that sucj an obvious point is missed, but then my perspective is privileged by experience.
Vaclav Havel is a great source. He noticed a great deal that, after having read him, one cannot help but notice in your own mass media.
Many of you saw this morning this comment in the paper:
The historian Roger Griffin once described the core vision of fascism as “the national community rising Phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it.”
It's almost as if Michael K and his cohort are deliberately intending to reinforce that for Ann's readers.
And Ann take the opportunity to remind people of how subtle and funny the President is, really, such a good writer, how hilarious she thought it was when Pres yelled grab her by the pussy. Come on Ann.
TTR: "I reiterate that no one... "
Don't be so hard on yourself. You are someone.
“As it happens, I grew up in not one but two countries with "propaganda ministries", one of these being active well into my adulthood. I knew people on the inside of the system, and who coexisted with the system, working for regime TV and radio. I know exactly how propaganda of this sort is done. And how its coverage is subverted, and leaks.”
Yes, and you do it everyday here on these threads. Your anti America propaganda is getting old and worn out.
“Obama is not going to get called in before anyone.”
I don’t see Obama called in, deposed, or even seriously investigated. For one thing, it would be exceedingly hard to make any charges stick, since, at the time, all executive power was delegated from him. He could legally say “Don’t prosecute Crooked Hillary”, even if she were caught committing federal felonies in plain sight of the public. That is prosecutorial discretion, and it was delegated from him to the DoJ. But it was still well within his Article II powers to have done so himself. Similarly with release of classified documents - he was the ultimate classifier and declassified, again pursuant to his Article II Powers. Pretty much anything that you could plausibly accuse him of doing was well within his plenary Article II Powers to have done. And, as importantly, maybe, it would be horrible precedent.
Western Europe figured out very quickly after WWII how to avoid these fates. But our right-wing loons are more determined than anything to not become like Western Europe. Or as they call it: Venezuela.
As it happens, I grew up in not one but two countries with "propaganda ministries", one of these being active well into my adulthood. I knew people on the inside of the system, and who coexisted with the system, working for regime TV and radio.
buwaya puti, everybody. The blog's very own Buck Rogers. He travels through time and saves history at all the right points through his high-level connections. At every point throughout history there was a buwaya puti to save us from it. Let us welcome our prophet-messiah and wish him godspeed as he saves America from itself.
“It was the email investigation that led the OIG to the Page/Strzok texts - and I find it fascinating that there have been zero releases of their text messages during the email investigation.”
Are you including the text messages between the two of them right before Strzok interviewed Clinton? My memory is that Page suggested that he go easy on her, because she was likely to be the next President, and they didn’t want her remembering them. Also, there were text messages between them that involved preparing the Comey memo, and tweaking it to not impute criminality (by changing “gross negligence” to extreme carelessness).
Eventually all this will lead to Obama. Then it's going to get real interesting.
Eventually all this will lead to Obama. Then it's going to get real interesting.
Uh, your emperor's wearing no clothes, dude. And it's appalling. Amazing how many ways you can find to distract yourself from him, though. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Republicans could wait in the eye of a hurricane till it rips through them while ridiculing the hapless fellow bystanders that just suffered the same fate they're soon about to share.
"'Eventually all this will lead to Obama. Then it's going to get real interesting.'
"Uh, your emperor's wearing no clothes, dude. And it's appalling. Amazing how many ways you can find to distract yourself from him, though. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Republicans could wait in the eye of a hurricane till it rips through them while ridiculing the hapless fellow bystanders that just suffered the same fate they're soon about to share."
wanna bet?
People are getting self-righteous. Comey could/should(?) have revealed both investigations, commented on neither, and who knows how differently (more "fairly?" - if that's even a possibility) things would have looked. Hindsight 20/20, it's impossible to know and therefore he did the best he could with the info he had. He thought this looked like a bigger public interest "story" and was unfortunately put in the inappropriate position of commenting on one of them publicly. If that job had gone to the AG or Obama however then we never would have heard the end of it - with the way the wingers go on. In the end it's hardly the point, though. Information has to get out but an abdication of/breakdown of the system led Comey to take the public lead in this way, which he shouldn't have done or felt he had to do. It's all water under the bridge now that we have a psychopathic president imploding before our very eyes as his consigliere gets hauled off through the blessedly autonomous sections of our federalist justice and courts system that Twitler can't control. Mueller's a smart guy and knows that he's dealing with a caged and rabid beast just before he reverts to feral state.
"Information has to get out but an abdication of/breakdown of the system led Comey to take the public lead in this way, which he shouldn't have done or felt he had to do. It's all water under the bridge now"
That's awesome "boot licking", to borrow from your insult hose stream.
"Uh, your emperor's wearing no clothes, dude. And it's appalling. Amazing how many ways you can find to distract yourself from him, though. I'm pretty convinced at this point that Republicans could wait in the eye of a hurricane till it rips through them while ridiculing the hapless fellow bystanders that just suffered the same fate they're soon about to share."
wanna bet?
Trump's destructive and has an "etat? C'est moi" philosophy. In a nation ruled by laws, not men, - or in any nation, for that matter - avoiding the fall-out from tyranny grabs like that is impossible. And he's very grabby and has small hands so they're just about everywhere - like an octopus' tentacles. Continuing to squirm and grip even as they're amputated.
“Obama is not going to get called in before anyone.”
I don’t see Obama called in, deposed, or even seriously investigated.
He is pretty much racially immune. Nobody is going to invite BLM to invade their neighborhood, no matter what he did.
“Comey could/should(?) have revealed both investigations, commented on neither, and who knows how differently (more "fairly?" - if that's even a possibility) things would have looked. Hindsight 20/20, it's impossible to know and therefore he did the best he could with the info he had.”
Hear hear!
“Mueller's a smart guy and knows that he's dealing with a caged and rabid beast just before he reverts to feral state.”
We’ll see the meltdown via twitter ( maybe even via press conference, if we’re lucky) when the time comes and it is coming. No doubt about it.
" Your anti America propaganda is getting old and worn out."
Inga has forgotten Harry Truman. Once, a supporter told him, "Give them hell Harry !"
Truman replied, "I give them truth and they call it hell."
That's awesome "boot licking", to borrow from your insult hose stream.
No, it's just a simple analysis of reality. No need for you to read any kind of hierarchy issues into it, cuckster. Trump will go after whomever he wants for whatever reason that suits him at the moment so I don't have to pretend that this latest complaint Trump has against him is any more meaningful a focus than any of the other thousand-and-one from his infinite festival of grievances that he could invent and pluck from tomorrow.
It's almost as if Michael K and his cohort are deliberately intending to reinforce that for Ann's readers.
The leftist can read even if he lacks understanding.
The sun is over the yardarm, and it's off the to races.
"But more importantly, I think, is that the FBI depends on their reputation for honesty"
I think that is almost completely lost.
Read about the Bundy case.
I'm certainly not going to save you.
If we are all unfortunate and I outlive your country, I intend to be one of its mourners.
Bruce Hayden said...
"Are you including the text messages between the two of them right before Strzok interviewed Clinton? My memory is that Page suggested that he go easy on her, because she was likely to be the next President, and they didn’t want her remembering them. Also, there were text messages between them that involved preparing the Comey memo, and tweaking it to not impute criminality (by changing “gross negligence” to extreme carelessness). "
Okay you are correct - some (perhaps all) of the P/S texts are released. Is there one location where we can view all of the texts released thus far ?? I've tried to find one but all I find are bits and pieces scattered around the web.
"Your anti America propaganda is getting old and worn out."
Old, yes. But this sort of thing never wears out. The inevitable does not expire, it is ignored, until it happens. Then it is even more carefully ignored.
It is amusing to see Inga's antipathy toward Philippine immigrants while she loves the illiterate peasants from Mexico.
What if the stable genius side of our President actually has a plan to re-establish the Law in DC. Watching him in action reminds me of the time the Government of England turned back to enforcing the law on the high seas after 50 years of looking the other way at English Piracy, because the big Aristocrats were investors in wealth shares of the stolen prizes taken by Privateers set loose on the Spanish Empire. But like our Deep State CIA , these raiders had turned on the home team (starting with JFK ) and now has stolen too much. The modern Privateers are now being rounded up for Piracy by Trump's version of the British Navy and its Marines. And like those old Pirates, the Caribbean is where they will be tried and sentenced. (See, the case of Captain Kidd.)
“Read about the Bundy case.”
I was going to mention it. The funny thing there is that here, in MT, most everyone is somewhat disposed to disbelieve the feds. But that was in heavily unionized, fairly Democratic Clark County, NV (even if they had a State wide jury pool, most of the population in NV is fairly urban these days). The Boundy case was in my mind, when I was thinking that the feds really do need to prosecute McCade in order to tell the public that the FBI really is serious about integrity in its agents and employees.
BTW - what is your daughter’s take on this, from the inside?
"it's just a simple analysis of reality"
We agree.
What if the stable genius side of our President...
Lol!
...our President actually has a plan...
ROFLMAO.
“Okay you are correct - some (perhaps all) of the P/S texts are released. Is there one location where we can view all of the texts released thus far ?? I've tried to find one but all I find are bits and pieces scattered around the web.”
I will look. Saw those over at the CTH awhile back. They had a bunch of them, but only a fraction of the reputed 50k or so that the OIG has.
What is interesting to me is that the OIG appears to have leaked the ones referenced in their report, as well as the ones involving the the email, in maybe July or August, when I suspect UT USA Huber got involved (to offer them the deals required for their cooperation). The texts involving the McCabe authorized leaks was strategic to their report. Expect that the email related ones will turn out the same. We shall see.
"The historian Roger Griffin once described the core vision of fascism as “the national community rising Phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it.”"
This is one of the (many) problems with modern intellectuals. They are very poorly educated.
The idea of a restoration of ancient virtues, as a rhetorical or ideological ideal, is ...ancient. My latest favorite is the career of the Gracchi, the whole point of their program being to restore Rome - its ancient society of smallholding yeomen - to the condition which "encroaching modernity" had all but destroyed. The Gracchi were historical models for all sorts of left-wing movements - that is, until the destruction of public education made the reference useless.
This has been an argument of both left and right over time, in revolutionary situations of all sorts.
It was, for instance, an essential part of the American Revolution, seen as a restoration of rights previously enjoyed by the colonists, usurped by an intruding British government.
If one wants to examine the uses of a restoration around the world and across history, you will always find it, even in unexpected places.
It was the whole program of of the Catholic Royalists of the Vendee, fighting the Revolution to restore THEIR idea of France.
The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (Lenin's brother belonged to a predecessor of the SR) had a vision of a restoration -or rather, a liberation- of ancient Slavic village communalism. A lot of this survived into the Bolshevik regime in fact, the hatred of "kulaks" came out of those origins.
The Sinhalese Socialists cited the powers of the ancient ethnic Kingdom of Kandy. Their own power, ethnically based, was seen as a return to a natural state of affairs.
The only revolutionary movement in which I took part, that of the Philippines 1983-86, had as its goal the restoration of the status quo ante 1972, the return of the old political system and the old constitution, for all its faults.
None of these things can usefully be called fascist. The argument by that "historian" is obtuse.
Video of a Republican feeling conflicted in a number of languages.
"The inevitable does not expire, it is ignored, until it happens. Then it is even more carefully ignored."
Priceless. buwaya, while I don't share your cynicism in full you sure can be succinct. I, for one, always look forward to your comments.
@Bruce Hayden and Kathryn51 I think we got an ealy look at some of the Page/Strzok e-mails because they were released by the IG to one or another of the Congressional Committees that were investigating Russian "collusion". Where you go after that to find them I don't know.
I appreciate your intelligent exchange unlke some of the garbage that a few individuals post.
re languages -
The modern US educational system, directed as it is now by concerns about "social justice", does not bother to teach languages. They are de trop.
These are too difficult for their most important charges, who are either microaggressed against, or oppressed by the implied privilege of those who can learn. And the gender issues in foreign societies, and embedded in their languages, are simply not to be borne.
Educators are regularly attacked for requiring languages in High Schools and even colleges.
We date the collapse of education and civilization from the year we left school. Plato did it, too.
Be careful of everyone. (AGs, Dems, Republicans, the country, the world). Only through Trump can you achieve a power greater than any Republican!
@Inga I have come to the conclusion that so much has been revealed about the misbehavior of various law enforcement and intelligence individuals during the time of Mueller's extensive "investigation" that if he in any way tries to prosecute Trump he will guarantee Trump's re-election in 2020. The list you referred to the other day will never withstand the wrath of Trump's supporters , even if it were a realistic prosecutorial list in the first place.
I think that IG reports are going to be particularly damning and are going to very much weaken the foundation of Mueller's investigation making it clear that those his accusations/indictments so far have been based on his people "gaming" the system.
"The modern US educational system, directed as it is now by - " LACK OF FUNDING AND DIVERTING THE MONIES TO military contractors and tax breaks for billionaires.
Fixed that for you, buwhineya.
Are you in Promised Pilipino land right now or the U.S.? Because you'd have to be oblivious beyond repair to have not noticed the teacher strikes occurring nationwide even in states as red as Oklahoma. Their pay's been stagnant for decades, texts are so out of date that the last president they mention is Clinton, kids have to share texts, teachers pay their own supplies, they have no access to the arts (creativity being too subversive for the mind control of Trump-state), and either attrition out to higher paying jobs or work additional to supplement.
And on top of that Trump's NRA goons say they should become law enforcement officers/bodyguards to shoot at the nutcases they proliferate weapons to on top of that. Quite a list of responsibilities for such low pay.
I've never heard someone so damn ignorant consistently present themselves as the auricle of wisdom. I think self-discovery for you began in a Greek temple 3,000 years ago - or so you've convinced yourself. For most people that would take several pounds of peyote but you seem to get there through self-conviction alone.
Usually right-wingers at least know when to shut up, if nothing else.
“Inga I have come to the conclusion that so much has been revealed about the misbehavior of various law enforcement and intelligence individuals during the time of Mueller's extensive "investigation" that if he in any way tries to prosecute Trump he will guarantee Trump's re-election in 2020.”
How do you think this will happen if he is impeached before then? It’s accepted pretty broadly ( from the right and the left) now that the House will go Democratic and the Senate has a very good chance too in 2018. The conclusions of the Mueller investigation will mean far more to the left and independents than the conclusions of Trumpists and their conspiracy theories. The IG did not refer McCabe for prosecution for perjury and it looks like he won’t be doing so. The rest of the IG reports most likely won’t deliver the goods you folks are looking for either. As I said, you folks are facing disillusionment and dissapointment. Your conspiracy theories aren’t going to pan out the way you folks hoped. The rule of law will prevail.
US K-12 education is the best funded and least efficient on earth.
US higher ed is even worse. Only its leading edge STEM institutions still lead.
Those are the facts.
K-12 budgets are eaten by bureaucracy, special ed (which is absurdly bloated), idiotic mandates like inclusion and no tracking, dumb curriculum, amazing corruption in textbook acquisition, and etc. and etc.
It's a mess in every way.
I have been on the ground in all these things.
If one wants to examine the uses of a restoration around the world and across history, you will always find it, even in unexpected places.
I'm currently reading "The Sleepwalkers" a history of the origin of the First World War.
The Serbs had a similar fantasy of the great Serbian Empire that was defeated at Kosovo in about 1389, by the Turks.
This fantasy was not harmless, especially as a hero of that fantasy was an assassin who was alleged to have killed the Sultan the day before the battle.
Assassinations in Serbian folklore were very powerful. The Serbian king and queen were murdered by army officers in 1903 and the regicides became a powerful secret society that was responsible for the assassination of the Archduke.
The intelligence agencies of the US seem to have formed a similar, if less murderous, secret society we are only just learning about.
The rule of law will prevail.
Which law, Inga ? There are two sets, apparently.
STEM education is now being infiltrated by the SJWs as seen in Google and Facebook but also in the new Dean of Engineering Education, who is a lefty SJW.
a new Purdue course.
This course integrates an understanding of multiculturalism with principles of democratic education. Historical, sociological, cultural, political, philosophical, and pedagogical foundations of multiculturalism are explored and related to issues of pedagogy in a pluralistic society. Typically offered Fall Spring Summer.
“Which law, Inga ?”
The same one that let Sessions off the hook for his “lack of candor” during his confirmation hearings regarding meeting with Russians during the campaign.
So you admit that there's a different law for the privileged. After all, "lack of candor" is only an ethical lapse, right?
US K-12 education is the best funded and least efficient on earth.
Not by historical standards, evidently.
US higher ed is even worse. Only its leading edge STEM institutions still lead.
Which is nothing to shake a stick at but who even knows how "leadership" in the humanities is measured? (You don't). Suffice it to say that international students from all over still flock to American universities to study other things as well.
Those are the facts.
The rest of what you said was typical, meaningless, sloppy/bitchy boilerplate Republican rhetoric of the same sort we've been getting our ears raped with listening to over the last 35 years. Let me know when you have something new and substantive to say.
Peyote will do nothing for you, if it is similar to mushrooms.
Best to open your mind to the best, early.
I would indeed start 3000 years ago, or perhaps only 2800, depending on how you are counting, with the Iliad. I read this to our kids, at bedtime.
“So you admit that there's a different law for the privileged.”
No I don’t.
“After all, "lack of candor" is only an ethical lapse, right?”
Yes, lack of candor is an ethical violation, not the crime that is perjury.
"The rule of law will prevail."
I wish that had the same faith in that statement you seem to have in it. If Hillary Clinton is not in jail for high treason at the end of this then the rule of law will not have prevailed.
Turley didn’t say there was a different law for the privileged. He went on to explain why it’s a bad idea to overuse the false statements statue.
“Moreover, there are strong arguments against the broad use of the false statements statute. It is common for people to omit or color facts in interviews on events that may have occurred weeks or months or even years earlier. Most people assume that they have a right to deny wrongdoing. Indeed, there was once an “exculpatory no” doctrine that maintained that a person could deny a crime with an investigator and not be subject to a charge under laws like Section 1001. This was viewed as an extension of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.”
"He went on to explain why it’s a bad idea to overuse the false statements statue."
Like with Michael Flynn ?
“If Hillary Clinton is not in jail for high treason at the end of this then the rule of law will not have prevailed.”
Your notion that she committed high treason is flawed. You folks on the right have overreacted to far lesser offenses from Democrats, yet continue to be in denial regarding a Trumps troubles, issues, potential crimes, etc.
Do your own research Ritmo. Education lends itself very well to statistics. I've done this for nearly 30 years (eh, I have odd hobbies).
I recommend it, its educational. Start with OECD figures.
There are deep dives into breakdowns of what is purchased with this.
The US systems are massively corrupt, and the US Educational establishment is also massively parochial. Most of you Americans have been terribly gypped by your betters in this respect, and indeed, betrayed. The people in charge have been sticking ice-picks in your kids minds for decades.
“Like with Michael Flynn ?”
Maybe. I think we’ll all learn more about what Michael Flynn was up to when this Mueller investigation is over.
Peyote will do nothing for you, if it is similar to mushrooms.
Best to open your mind to the best, early.
I would indeed start 3000 years ago, or perhaps only 2800, depending on how you are counting, with the Iliad. I read this to our kids, at bedtime.
Whiny buwaya the lotus eater.
Do your own research Ritmo. Education lends itself very well to statistics. I've done this for nearly 30 years (eh, I have odd hobbies).
Oh, I know. You are a traveler of both time and space. To be where you have been.
You never tire of the Phineas Bogg Voyagers character.
The US systems are massively corrupt, and the US Educational establishment is also massively parochial.
Surely there is more you can find to do to keep teachers living from hand to mouth as a way to fix the problem. Not until they're out begging in the streets will the kids' situation improve!
buwaya prescribes third-world standards as a fix to American educational "affluenza." Hilarious.
Odd that Michael Flynn pleaded guilty, the judge was removed from the case by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and we have not heard a single word about that case since. Not. One. Word.
Nothing from Leaky Britches Mueller or his happy Leftist Lawyers. For. Months.
Nothing from the new judge who was not kompromat by the Obama Justice Department.
And more specifically, we have heard No. New. Reporting. It is as if the press has simultaneously decided to ignore Flynn.
“buwaya prescribes third-world standards as a fix to American educational "affluenza." Hilarious.”
Maybe he should lend his expertise to third world countries and not interject his third world solutions here in our country.
Khesanh 0802 said...
@Bruce Hayden and Kathryn51 I think we got an ealy look at some of the Page/Strzok e-mails because they were released by the IG to one or another of the Congressional Committees that were investigating Russian "collusion". Where you go after that to find them I don't know.
I appreciate your intelligent exchange unlke some of the garbage that a few individuals post.
@4:28 I think that IG reports are going to be particularly damning and are going to very much weaken the foundation of Mueller's investigation making it clear that those his accusations/indictments so far have been based on his people "gaming" the system.,,
Thank you for the compliment; I usually don't have time to converse on Althouse and it's particularly difficult when an Althouse post such as this one spins off into several directions.
Re: the IG report, I'm not sure anything will muddy up Mueller's investigation because he's determined to get a scalp close to Trump. But the next report will show (I believe) how the DOJ and FBI failed to follow procedure/protocol over and over again w/r/t Hillary's emails. It's obvious the fix was in - I think the OIG is holding the proof close to his vest until the report is complete.
My personal ideas for educational reform run to replication of the systems current in Germany and France, a mix of the two probably, as the German apprentice system is a step beyond.
You would get much better results and save a lot of money besides.
Singapore is an interesting option, but to be frank I don't think you have or can get the quality of student to make that viable in mass. Those people have way too much "privilege" as the current fools like to put it. I have a lot of their materials though, especially the Singapore Math textbook and workbook series, which I have used for tutoring (quite a few years ago).
"Your notion that she committed high treason is flawed."
No, it's not. It's clear to anyone that has examined the events with an open mind instead of partisan reflex. While I don't share your, or Chuck's, instinctive dislike of President Trump I do acknowledge the possibility (remote imo) of his "potential crimes". Again, I wish my faith in rule of law was as firm as yours seems to be. It has been battered of late.
Maybe he should lend his expertise to third world countries and not interject his third world solutions here in our country.
Wouldn't work. He gets off on playing the meddling busybody know-it-all and over there they're obviously onto his game.
Or else he'll find some other excuse. As with Trump, as with buwaya, there's always an excuse.
No matter how much his half-baked ideas comprise the salvation of all the world's problems. Arrogance of a level not seen since Oscar Wilde or Gore Vidal. But at least those two rose to justifiable prominence and didn't write their names in the form of obscure, questionably English lower case pseudonyms in comments sections.
buwaya has seen, known, loved, tasted and created more than we or any of his Dayawa animist forebears could know. He is Vishnu, destroyer of worlds. The guy's got all the proposed knowledge and poetry of the Gita in his bones, and transmits it to all of us through the light of his shining, right-wing eminence.
He has fathered a greater percentage of Asians than Genghis Khan.
What a crock.
As for having been there, done that - well, I have. No getting around it, it is simply so.
I'm like the dying Rutger Hauer at the end of Blade Runner.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..."
Teacher salaries by country.
It is clear from the evidence that the FISA Court was betrayed by DOJ/FBI or did actively participate in the scam to betray the 4th Amendment. The same judge who approved the FISA application was removed from the Flynn case. IG Horowitz will show that much and more.
My claim is staked.
Those teacher salaries are not adjusted PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), which you really have to do, if only to adjust for exchange rates. If you do, the US looks much better, around 120-150% better than Germany. Its even more interesting doing this stuff after tax and social security contributions, but thats another can of worms. Needless to say, there is tremendous material out there on this sort of thing. Seek and you shall find the trurh in your Excel spreadsheet.
But so, even in a flat comparison, American teachers make as much as German teachers. And, note, more than British or French teachers. More than any major country in the OECD.
buwaya - why don't you just go out and find a teacher off the street and punch her in the face. It would get your point across much more succinctly than whatever you're babbling on about here.
I will believe that the US is turning the corner when states start shutting down their Schools of Education, part of the transmission system of poison into your kids.
Without even starting on basic things like that, you are doomed.
Blogger Birkel said...
Odd that Michael Flynn pleaded guilty, the judge was removed from the case by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and we have not heard a single word about that case since. Not. One. Word.
I think the pardon talk is premature. I think Flynn's plea and indictment will be reversed for prosectorial misbehavior, sort of like the Bundy and Stevens cases.
It's amusing to see the local fools try to ridicule buwaya who probably could buy all of them and assign it to petty cash.
I interviewed a Nigerian black applicant to the US Army Reserve a week ago. He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Industrial Engineering, both degrees from Nigeria where I suspect the standards are far above most US colleges.
The left spends half its time cheering illegal immigration and the other half attacking legal immigrants.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
I reiterate that no one cares what Birkel believes or wants.
No one.
that is a pretty broad statement obviously made from a pinnacle of stupidity.
You really think you know what 7,000,000,000 people, give or take, care about?
All it takes is one person to prove you stupid. And wrong. But mainly stupid.
I am that person. I care what Birkel thinks or wants. Doesn't mean that I always agree, just that Birkel is generally interesting and worth thinking about.
I suspect that there are others but even if there aren't, it makes no difference.
John Henry
Why are rich countries like Qatar still sending their kids to be educated in the US, or even importing US university extensions to Qatar?
But so, even in a flat comparison, American teachers make as much as German teachers. And, note, more than British or French teachers. More than any major country in the OECD.
What a bullshit argument. MOST EVERYBODY makes less than Americans. But their quality of life is much higher and they live with much greater social solidarity and economic mobility and less pathology because they have more social services and less political favoritism shifted away from them and on to billionaires and they aren't spending more than the next ten countries combined on a war that no one wants to happen.
But thanks for telling half the story. That's one thing you're really good at doing.
Why are rich countries like Qatar still sending their kids to be educated in the US, or even importing US university extensions to Qatar?
Because they want them to learn to think like free persons, and not like the orders-following little robotic automatons that kids are educated to be in the Philipenes. Or even to some extent in Europe, for that matter.
More things that buwaya - the living reincarnation of Genghis Khan - forgot to mention.
It's amusing to see the local fools here defend someone who so clearly despises this country he’s lived in for over 30 years and hasn’t seen fit to become a citizen of.
They aren't my teachers, they have not harmed us, and we have taught our own well. Our kids have massive "privilege", courtesy of their parents, and, it seems, will outdo us, God willing.
I merely advise. You, Ritmo, have personally been betrayed, shortchanged, miseducated. I didn't do that to you. You can wander about snapping at people who havent harmed you, but that seems a bit pointless.
@Michael K, but does your daughter understand that the bureau’s reputation for honesty really is gone, and quite probably gone for good?
I merely advise. You, Ritmo, have personally been betrayed, shortchanged, miseducated. I didn't do that to you. You can wander about snapping at people who havent harmed you, but that seems a bit pointless.
What nonsense. You are just going after me personally because, as usual, I told the whole story whereas you just wanted to distract everyone with a quarter-to-a-third of the explanation - and a way to divert with those half-truths into converting to your political ideology. That's exactly what you've been doing and always do. Each and every time.
If you're going to play the dishonest dad role you have to do it more bumblingly. The commenters love you for the way you pretend to have four times as many answers as you really do.
TTR
"But their quality of life is much higher and they live with much greater social solidarity and economic mobility and less pathology because they have more social services and less political favoritism shifted away from them and on to billionaires and they aren't spending more than the next ten countries combined on a war that no one wants to happen."
Serious question. If you believe what you wrote why in the world would you not relocate to one of those countries? You are a fee man. Some years ago I thought it would be good to live in California and I picked up and moved to California. Like a free man. I gave it a decade and that was plenty. If I believed what you wrote applied to England or Finland or France I would move to England, Finland or France. But that is just me. And I don't see this as a like it or leave it proposition. I see it as a free choice squandered. If you believe what you write.
Actually, it is true about the economic mobility, and much of that is indeed one of those great crimes of your educational systems. Simply, European kids get a better and more useful education. That is critical.
Among other things, they are far better at identifying and developing talent, their systems tend to be very strongly tracked (anathema in the US except as remnants in some big cities), and this is precisely one of the great ladders of social mobility.
American kids are more likely to be mis-educated, mis-socialized, and talent is left to wither.
Four times as many answers?
Not a bit of it!
I can opine on at least twelve times as many subjects if at all. And will happily do so.
I am simply a generous man.
“I see it as a free choice squandered. If you believe what you write.”
Buwaya has free choice to locate at any time to any number of countries he doesn’t despise, as he does this country.
Inga
But Buwaya did not write what I responded to. I don't think buwaya is far off in most of his criticism of the US. Unlike some commenters he is apolitical and focuses more on the cultural collapse that has been underway for decades exacerbated by a corrupt public educational system and accelerating as we write here on this blog. Anyone who has studied history deeply, the classics in particular, has read of the fall of multiple societies and seen the similarities. Buwaya is good at pointing them out. One of the reasons I hang around here at all is to read him eviscerate. He is an altar boy with a switchblade. Careful.
My problem is not that I despise your country.
We are wealthy. I could certainly retire and move.
My personal preference would be a pied-a-terre in Spain.
My wife doesn't like that idea, at this time, so thats that.
But we live well, in a lovely place that few can afford. We are like Tolkiens Elves of Lorien, living in beauty. But we can, also, see Sauron over there. I am kind, I am happy to inform you about Sauron. I hope you do something about that rascal before its too late. We could go West at any time, the Grey Havens (SFO) is just a half-hour away.
“It is clear from the evidence that the FISA Court was betrayed by DOJ/FBI or did actively participate in the scam to betray the 4th Amendment. The same judge who approved the FISA application was removed from the Flynn case. IG Horowitz will show that much and more.”
Again, with the Page/Strzok text messages, we saw a bit of that. Apparently, the two of them were scheming how to talk to that judge at some function. Apparently, one of them knew him, and they were going to leverage that.
As a note though, I think that he only approved one of the FISA warrant applications, and other FISC judges did the others. Nevertheless, it appears that FISA Wiretap evidence was used to trip up Gen Flynn, and that should have been a red flag for the judge. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if he is really compromised, or was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Michael said...
He is an altar boy
And like altar boys a large fraction of what he believes is superstitious nonsense.
“But we live well, in a lovely place that few can afford. We are like Tolkiens Elves of Lorien, living in beauty. But we can, also, see Sauron over there.”
So quit your America bashing and be grateful to the nation that gave you opportunities.
“Unlike some commenters he is apolitical and focuses more on the cultural collapse that has been underway for decades exacerbated by a corrupt public educational system and accelerating as we write here on this blog.”
He’s not apolitical whatsoever. He and the right have been pushing this notion of “cultural collapse”. What baloney, you simply don’t like that the lily white culture is no longer dominant. We are a multicultural nation, don’t like it? You’re free to relocate also.
Big Mike said...
@Michael K, but does your daughter understand that the bureau’s reputation for honesty really is gone, and quite probably gone for good?
She is defensive and says the bureau will be OK, which might be true, but she is also close to retirement. The FBI has mandatory retirement at 57 so she still has a few years to decide. She will shortly be 51.
She has also avoided anything like politics and has been working on health care fraud, which after Obamacare, should be a growth segment.
Buwaya, my wife and I thought a lot about retiring to the south of France which I love, but we are too old and Tucson will have to do.
Her health does better in this climate. Spain would probably appeal more to you for cultural and language reasons.
I like Spain, too.
Serious question. If you believe what you wrote why in the world would you not relocate to one of those countries? You are a fee man.
Because I'm doing fine nonetheless. Just like you are. But that doesn't mean that I have to hate the vast majority of my country who aren't and agree to perpetuate their problems so as to foment a worse crisis down the road. I realize you look down on so many other Americans but don't you at least like your country enough to realize what a threat mass discontent is to it?
Apparently this world will have countries that are small, close-knit nation states and then a non-ethnic superstate like America to help enforce the global order based on liberal ideals from its founding. I'm fine with that but still don't think we need to spend ten times as much militarily and ten times less socially. There's a balance to be struck and we're getting it wrong.
FDR isn't my only favorite president but he was the best one we had most recently and all of his leadership lessons for the 20th and 21st centuries have been abandoned for the sake of whatever the right resented about him and implemented from the 1980s onward. But I'd rather live in the country that gave the world FDR than in so many others who haven't given anything approaching him for centuries. So I still believe in America enough to prefer it here. I just don't think we have to do as much skewing of society or our military. It's not all-or-nothing but a matter of degree to which we privilege one thing and forsake the other.
I don't think the right wing that gave us post-1980 America owns our country and I will stick it out long enough to see these very unpopular ideas of theirs reversed. I refuse to move for the sake of a false America that they've foisted on us. Trump pretended to moderate away from them but he's out for himself and it is nice to watch Mueller remind him and his minions that we are a nation of laws and not of men. Better things will result.
He and the right have been pushing this notion of “cultural collapse”. What baloney, you simply don’t like that the lily white culture is no longer dominant.
You are amusing, Inga. Especially when you are saying things you don't understand.
Read "Bourgeois Virtues." You might like it. It was written by a transgender economist.
Interesting note - I had forgotten this, but Michael Cohen apparently sued Fusion GPS for defamation for their claim that he had gone to Prague. Don’t think that he was famous enough at the time for the Actual Malice standard to apply, and no doubt he expects discovery to be interesting. How, indeed, did Fusion discover that some Michael Cohen was in Prague, and then failed to discover that they had the wrong one. In any case, the FBI, in conjunction with the SDNY USA (where Lynch, Comey, and Bahara were US Attorneys, and hired most of the prosecutors), upon a referral from the Mueller investigation, raided Cohen’s office, house, and hotel room, seized attorney/client information, and 5hen promptly started to leak some of it. Connected? Retaliation for the defamation suit? Should be interesting.
“You are amusing, Inga. Especially when you are saying things you don't understand.”
And you Michael K, just cannot stop yourself from being a condescending jerk. I understand far more than you do apparently or you wouldn’t cling to your ridiculous conspiracy theories. You may be well versed in all things medical, but politically, not so much.
No I'm not apolitical, I am a conservative.
More conservative, I think, than most here.
It does not always translate into party political preferences, but I certainly have them. I know who the minions of Sauron are.
But you are collapsing. It is a cultural collapse, it is accelerating, and I don't think it can be stopped. It is completely obvious, blatantly obvious. Everything is simply becoming dumber by the year.
You can avoid this, as individuals, but not as a collective.
I don't think buwaya is far off in most of his criticism of the US. Unlike some commenters he is apolitical and focuses more on the cultural collapse that has been underway for decades exacerbated by a corrupt public educational system and accelerating as we write here on this blog.
If there's any "culture" that matters in America it's one of civic and not personal virtue. That is the most important thing that Americans are miseducated on but that's changing. Hence, the backlash against the very virtuous MSD kids: The miseducators fear the loss of their power.
Other countries can base their "culture" in their mythologies of national ethnogenesis. Not so in the U.S. We were not founded before living memory and can lionize the founders but still have to ground our national life in a document and the rule of law in which it's based.
For decades the right has been bitching about social... and "cultural" change. It's a misnomer. You can't de-invent the pill, you can't de-invent DNA sequencing, you can't force women to be June Cleaver housewives. You have to accept that they're autonomous individuals and if you want them to be more virtuous, then you need to demand more virtue and decency of the greedy, self-interested money/material-obsessed American males they've been told to emulate and that you've been putting on pedestals for the better part of a few centuries.
Strzok-Page texts reveal personal relationship between FBI official and judge recused from Flynn case
“Interesting note - I had forgotten this, but Michael Cohen apparently sued Fusion GPS for defamation for their claim that he had gone to Prague. Don’t think that he was famous enough at the time for the Actual Malice standard to apply, and no doubt he expects discovery to be interesting.”
Interesting that it’s been discovered that was indeed in Prague and no it wasn’t the wrong Michael Cohen.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article208870264.html
“WASHINGTON
The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.”
You can avoid this, as individuals, but not as a collective.
Trump is an individual. His followers form a collective.
A white identitarian identity-politics collective.
Ethnic politics are the alternative once social/economic (class-based) politics fail. It happened in Germany 85 years ago and can happen here. Or anywhere. And the right in America has done all it can to make our class-based politics fail.
But the right will fail because Trump can only achieve his aim of absolute personal power by stifling the law at every turn. Good thing for us in this nation of laws that the lawyer class is so strong.
So we will persevere and once again rise to keep the peace as the non-ethnic superstate in a sea of lesser nations of the sort in which you prefer to claim membership and base your weak sense of personal identity.
But thank you anyway.
The Chinese, Confucian view, which more succinctly expresses the essence of conservatism, makes all virtue personal. This is correct, there is no "civic virtue" independent of personal virtue.
And there is no personal virtue possible, in a statistical sense, after a few generations to purge remnant good habits, without religion, family, and tribe. You are seeing the results of this now.
Technology is a very mixed blessing, the human animal will not adjust to it anywhere near as fast as it changes everything; any change to adjust to technology will itself probably be obsolete and destructive before it can happen. The only way through is conservatism, regardless of technologically facilitated temptation.
Inga dismisses my "conspiracy theories" but why was there no Prague of Czech entry stamp on his passport last time and there seems to be now. Was that one purpose of the raid on his home and office ?
The very mistake that was made before was evidence of 702 searches by name.
Bruce, your link is bad.
National utopia! I like it.
Inga: It's amusing to see the local fools here defend someone who so clearly despises this country he’s lived in for over 30 years and hasn’t seen fit to become a citizen of.
You're not "amused". "Amusement" is what you tell yourself and other people you're feeling when you don't understand what a man far more intelligent and better-educated than yourself writes. What it really is is bafflement and resentment.
“Inga dismisses my "conspiracy theories" but why was there no Prague of Czech entry stamp on his passport last time and there seems to be now. Was that one purpose of the raid on his home and office ?”
He flew into another nearby country, and drove or took a train into Prague, this is what I read. They know he was there.
“What it really is is bafflement and resentment.”
And you seem to think you know how I feel, amusing.
Civic virtue is what matters. Not personal virtue. Respect the law regardless of what you do personally.
Jefferson was a massive slaveowner who even fathered slave-children that I'm not even sure he had the decency to recognize or emancipate and I can't remember whether Washington did either. Franklin was probably something of a bon vivant doing who knows what behind the walls of the 18th c. equivalent of a Playboy mansion. Not much personal virtue but not the point. Wingers just thought that was the point because of the orderliness of the 1950s baby boom that they idealize.
Trump's problem is that he represents the right's need to reconcile with his abominable lack of personal virtue - not much of a problem in politicians generally, but with the added baggage of having absolutely no civic virtue. To an extent, this is appropriate for the right because they by and large lack for any civic virtue altogether as well - having long since given up on electing a political class with priorities and accomplishments that anyone can respect. They seem to in fact want to elect political miscreants as it reinforces their untenable ideas of government.
They're in for a reckoning. We will return to the FDR-liberal order with an update for life in a more tolerant and technologically advanced society and the Jeffersonians can go back under their rocks and revise their own Bircher ideals for a later date when they feel the need to rise up and wreck it all down once again. Or stand athwart history yelling stop or whatever it is they do.
Until then we can blessedly call the right-wing war against America off for another generation.
He flew into another nearby country, and drove or took a train into Prague, this is what I read. They know he was there.
I hope you won't mind if I wait for some evidence.
Meanwhile, they are closing in on Loretta Lynch.
discoveries within the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner laptop that was being blocked by AG Lynch.
Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week.
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said. (Link)
I guess we will all find out who was right.
“They're in for a reckoning.”
Indeed they are, I hope they can handle it.
"Technology is a very mixed blessing, the human animal will not adjust to it anywhere near as fast as it changes everything;"
The singularity is near. Kurzweil predicted it for 2040 (AI). I think sooner if it is not already upon us. GNR is progressing faster than expected.
The Chinese, Confucian view, which more succinctly expresses the essence of conservatism, makes all virtue personal. This is correct, there is no "civic virtue" independent of personal virtue.
And there is no personal virtue possible, in a statistical sense, after a few generations to purge remnant good habits, without religion, family, and tribe. You are seeing the results of this now.
Technology is a very mixed blessing, the human animal will not adjust to it anywhere near as fast as it changes everything; any change to adjust to technology will itself probably be obsolete and destructive before it can happen. The only way through is conservatism, regardless of technologically facilitated temptation.
You can philosophize your muddled ideas however you want, Confucius. The Chinese never gave a political order as important or innovative or enduring as America and they can't invent any tech without ripping it off. How's that for "virtuous?" They also couldn't come the world's salvation in 1942.
But they can talk in circles about things that can't be defined, only demanded at gunpoint by the older generation (representing Communist authority) from the next (representing youthful creation). THere's your piety, in a nutshell. It's a bunch of crap.
We'll take our Western laws and rights and superior standing and they can continue to rip us off while enforcing their silly "piety." Through the barrel of a gun aimed at their own people.
This is correct, there is no "civic virtue" independent of personal virtue.
Perhaps in a society like yours, where respect for the individual's rights and rule of law don't exist.
When are you going to start getting serious about this fraudulent Caligula/Nero-in-waiting?
Why don't you do something about it?.
Push yourself away from your keyboard and act on your seething rage.
Walk the walk, mouth.
Oh, did I say the world's salvation in 1942?
Fuck that. The Chinese couldn't even come to their own salvation.
I guess "might makes right" buwaya would say that that means that the Japanese were better confucians in WWII, while they were raping and pillaging Nanking.
Right, bu? Look at all that reverence they had for their emperor!
China did do a good job turning itself into an opioid den, though - just before that. Superior ideals indeed!
My god are you a mess.
Why don't you do something about it?.
I did.
I posted my comment guaranteed by the host's largess and my rights under the 1st amendment and that's that.
If you're the type who prefers and thinks exclusively of violence however as the way to get things done then, well, you're speaking for yourself, then. Not for me.
The law will get you, though.
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