Are There Any Safe Spaces for Trump?
The View from the Middle
It’s not very often that I have a news scoop for my readers, but I have it on good authority that Donald Trump just came out in support of puppies, apple pie, and moms all across this land. You would think that these positions would be relatively safe, but as you might expect, Democrats and the lame stream media were quick to criticize.
Chuck Schumer was the first to attack the President’s endorsement of puppies. He reminded the President, “don’t you know that puppies do tremendous damage to homes all across America. They chew up shoes and furniture and they often leave little fecal reminders of their presence everywhere.” He also suggested that “cat people” should be outraged. “This is a clear bias for dogs and against cats”, he said. When will the cat people stand up against this clear prejudice?”
Nancy Pelosi was quick to question the apple pie affirmation. “Does he have any idea how much sugar is in those things”, she posed. “Besides”, she added, “ why now? Pies have been around since before our founding. Why would the President come out in favor of apple pie now? This should make us all suspicious.” She also suggested that cherry and blue berry growers should be in a furor. “This kind of favoritism cuts against our fundamental values.”
You would think that advocating for mothers would be a pretty safe position, but CNN was quick to produce a two-hour special entitled “It Takes a Village”. They wondered, “what about fathers, neighbors, uncles, aunts, coaches, siblings and even politicians. Are mothers overrated? Isn’t 'mother’s day’ an outdated concept? Even women should be outraged since some women aren’t even mothers and all women should stand together.”
I guess I now understand the “resist, persist, insist, enlist, dismiss, blacklist and throw hissy-fits” strategy that has been laid out by Hillary Clinton. I hope Trump doesn’t try to do anything good for the country. That could get awkward.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Friday, May 5, 2017
Comey - Incompetent, Simpleton or Clairvoyant?
Comey, Incompetent, Simpleton or Clairvoyant?
The View from the Middle
There’s nothing like watching our government in action to make you want to ask for a refund on your tax bill. Yesterday the incompetence, corruption and entangled confusion of our government were on full display. Yah, it doesn’t get any better for your viewing pleasure than to watch one branch of our government interview another.
First, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of this oversight committee, may not have gotten a single question answered. Why, because James Comey, the Director of the FBI, refused to answer them in the public forum in which these questions were asked. Did Grassley forget that Comey couldn’t discuss classified information in a public setting? Shouldn’t the cameras have tipped him off? Of course, he’s only been in Washington for 36 years. The only thing that Chuck made clear yesterday was the need for term limits in the Senate and the House.
Next, we had Director Comey to remind us of his bumbled handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. I don’t believe he made a single correct decision during this train wreck of a probe. On July 5th of 2016 he decided he needed to make a public statement about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling of her e-mails. This, of course, is not even his job, but he threw Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus for her meeting with Bill Clinton just a week before that decision was to be made.
He should have rejected Lynch’s request for him to make the indictment decision and presented his findings to the Justice Department for them to handle. Even after that, he could have simply announced his decision with a brief explanation and moved on. Instead, he went in front of cameras and prosecuted Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes before announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would indict her. This was followed by an army of lawyers and previous Attorneys General who disagreed with him.
The big defense of his decision was that he couldn’t prove “intent”, even though Hillary used “bleach bit” to destroy 33,000 emails after she had received a subpoena for all of them and destroyed her communication devices with hammers. Forgive me, but if that were you or I, we would be in jail today.
To compound this horrendous decision, he reopened the investigation publicly just 11 days before the election because he found 6,000 Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. This had implications for both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin. Then two days before the election, he announced that he was closing this investigation because there was nothing new in these e-mails. He didn’t explain, however, why Miss Abedin shouldn’t be indicted herself for sharing classified material with her husband, Anthony Weiner, who was himself under FBI investigation.
He later replayed his “intent” card and suggested that he couldn’t prove that Huma “intended” to break the law, although she actually did. Personally, it’s hard for me to believe that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, both very intelligent women, didn’t understand that they were breaking the law by destroying 33,000 emails under subpoena and sharing classified information with people, the likes of Anthony Weiner, who didn’t have the clearance to view it.
Yet this same James Comey, who couldn’t understand Hillary and Huma’s intent despite their wanton disregard for the law, turned clairvoyant yesterday and was glad to read Vladimir Putin’s mind in the DNC hacking incident last year. With confidence he posed that Putin favored Trump as President because he hated Hillary and thought he could deal more favorably with Donald Trump. This, of course, is ludicrous and implies that Vladimir Putin knew something that virtually no one else in the world knew. And that was that Donald Trump was actually going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of The United States.
Up until five o’clock on November 8th the political experts in this country were giving Hillary up to a 98% probability of winning. I have suggested that Putin did what he did (assuming he actually sponsored the hacking) for two reasons. First, John Podesta was stupid enough to use the word “password” as his email password. This made the DNC easier to hack than the RNC, which I’m sure he was trying to hack also. Second, he expected Hillary Clinton to win, but he intended to injure her in the process so that he could deal with a weakened American President.
I have presented this explanation before but offered it as speculation, since we will never actually know what Putin was thinking. James Comey should have either not speculated on what Putin thought or stated his theory as a hypothesis, not fact. This was just one more example of Comey’s poor judgment. Comey may be a very knowledgeable person, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom. In my opinion, he should resign tomorrow and save the country from any additional heartburn.
The View from the Middle
There’s nothing like watching our government in action to make you want to ask for a refund on your tax bill. Yesterday the incompetence, corruption and entangled confusion of our government were on full display. Yah, it doesn’t get any better for your viewing pleasure than to watch one branch of our government interview another.
First, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of this oversight committee, may not have gotten a single question answered. Why, because James Comey, the Director of the FBI, refused to answer them in the public forum in which these questions were asked. Did Grassley forget that Comey couldn’t discuss classified information in a public setting? Shouldn’t the cameras have tipped him off? Of course, he’s only been in Washington for 36 years. The only thing that Chuck made clear yesterday was the need for term limits in the Senate and the House.
Next, we had Director Comey to remind us of his bumbled handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. I don’t believe he made a single correct decision during this train wreck of a probe. On July 5th of 2016 he decided he needed to make a public statement about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling of her e-mails. This, of course, is not even his job, but he threw Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus for her meeting with Bill Clinton just a week before that decision was to be made.
He should have rejected Lynch’s request for him to make the indictment decision and presented his findings to the Justice Department for them to handle. Even after that, he could have simply announced his decision with a brief explanation and moved on. Instead, he went in front of cameras and prosecuted Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes before announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would indict her. This was followed by an army of lawyers and previous Attorneys General who disagreed with him.
The big defense of his decision was that he couldn’t prove “intent”, even though Hillary used “bleach bit” to destroy 33,000 emails after she had received a subpoena for all of them and destroyed her communication devices with hammers. Forgive me, but if that were you or I, we would be in jail today.
To compound this horrendous decision, he reopened the investigation publicly just 11 days before the election because he found 6,000 Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. This had implications for both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin. Then two days before the election, he announced that he was closing this investigation because there was nothing new in these e-mails. He didn’t explain, however, why Miss Abedin shouldn’t be indicted herself for sharing classified material with her husband, Anthony Weiner, who was himself under FBI investigation.
He later replayed his “intent” card and suggested that he couldn’t prove that Huma “intended” to break the law, although she actually did. Personally, it’s hard for me to believe that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, both very intelligent women, didn’t understand that they were breaking the law by destroying 33,000 emails under subpoena and sharing classified information with people, the likes of Anthony Weiner, who didn’t have the clearance to view it.
Yet this same James Comey, who couldn’t understand Hillary and Huma’s intent despite their wanton disregard for the law, turned clairvoyant yesterday and was glad to read Vladimir Putin’s mind in the DNC hacking incident last year. With confidence he posed that Putin favored Trump as President because he hated Hillary and thought he could deal more favorably with Donald Trump. This, of course, is ludicrous and implies that Vladimir Putin knew something that virtually no one else in the world knew. And that was that Donald Trump was actually going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of The United States.
Up until five o’clock on November 8th the political experts in this country were giving Hillary up to a 98% probability of winning. I have suggested that Putin did what he did (assuming he actually sponsored the hacking) for two reasons. First, John Podesta was stupid enough to use the word “password” as his email password. This made the DNC easier to hack than the RNC, which I’m sure he was trying to hack also. Second, he expected Hillary Clinton to win, but he intended to injure her in the process so that he could deal with a weakened American President.
I have presented this explanation before but offered it as speculation, since we will never actually know what Putin was thinking. James Comey should have either not speculated on what Putin thought or stated his theory as a hypothesis, not fact. This was just one more example of Comey’s poor judgment. Comey may be a very knowledgeable person, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom. In my opinion, he should resign tomorrow and save the country from any additional heartburn.
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