A BRIEF RUN-THROUGH OF THE IMPORTANT
NEWS OF THE DAY

18 March 2018

Dear Friends and Patriots,

OH, THE TIMES WE LIVE IN! - If you can’t say anything else you can certainly proclaim our most recent times to be incredibly interesting. There is an historical parallel. If you examine the administration of President Jimmy Carter and consider the magnitude of changes that occurred once President Ronald Reagan took office, you should see the similarities and be able to compare them. In truth we should understand the policies and actions of the administration of President Obama were in most ways much more extreme than those of President Carter. Carter’s greatest failings were due to his general micro-managing style and overall ineptitude. Reagan’s successes were partly due to the positive enthusiasm evident in their intent and the obvious belief in America’s unique role in the world.

Obama’s entire regime was dedicated to the achievement of all the unmet promises of the progressive agenda. Instead of general ineptitude Obama’s failings were mostly due to his and his coterie’s intent to force their extreme progressive ideology onto the American people whether we wanted it or not. His tactic was to feed us all feces sandwiches and keep telling us how good tasting and nutritious they were. Every day with Obama was filled with various examples of “big lie” operations.

It’s easy to sustain the claim that Obama was a far worse and incredibly more dangerous President than Jimmy “Who” Carter. Enough Americans finally woke up, then turned and went another direction. If not, we’d have President Hillary Clinton today and the Obama train wreck would be continuing. Instead, we have President Donald Trump, who has done a fascinating thing rare in politics – he’s been working overtime in keeping campaign promises.   He’s accomplished more in his first 14 months than any other President before him.   If he continues the way he has up to now he’ll eclipse the great Ronaldus Magnus in the success of his administration and may go down in history as the greatest US President since Our Father, George Washington.   Just keep in mind, though, he still has a way to go, and the forces that sustained Obama in office are solidly arrayed in opposition.

The slow coup continues.

THE FBI – A LION WITH THE HEAD OF A SNAKE - A great synopsis of the entire situation involving the corruption at the top of the FBI is found in the Feb. edition of Imprimis, the thought-provoking newsletter published by Hillsdale College. The article was written by Joseph diGenova, a former US Attorney, former Special Counsel, former Independent Counsel, and all around really smart guy on these topics.   Look it up. I found it in my mail box, but anyone who cares to learn can also find it on line by Googling “Imprimis FBI.”

          As much as I highly regard Imprimis and the article by Mr. diGenova, there is one discussion of the FBI scandal that’s even better.   Find the video of Mark Levin’s comments on Hannity, broadcast on 14 March. It’s a peerless and succinct recitation of the timeline of events and the most pertinent aspects of the scandal to bear in mind. It was an amazing thing to watch and listen to as Levin did the entire bit off the top of his head. There were a couple of times when Sean Hannity tried to interject into the stream of dialog, but Levin ignored him and plowed on. After the second attempt Hannity seemed to grasp that something truly special was occurring and he sat back and waited Levin out. It was worth every second. The transcript is on the Fox News Broadcasting site, on Hannity’s page, and I’m told there’s a good YouTube of it. If you have any doubt at all about what’s going on and the incredible level of bias and corruption evidenced by this rapidly unfolding saga, check out Mark Levin’s commentary. If you do, you’re sure to be as amazed as I – and Hannity as well.

          In the past couple of days we’ve witnessed the firing of Andrew McCabe from his FBI directorship. He’s out there now, all puffed up with self-righteousness. It’s all Donald Trump’s fault, you know? McCabe was unfairly targeted and railroaded. Only, he wasn’t. He grossly abused his office and his position as a civil servant.   Civil servant – that means he was a servant of the people, right? But, he forgot that. He came to regard himself as someone above it all, and someone who had a right to pick and choose his leaders. As a material part of the slow coup attempt in progress he deserves everything he’ll get. Now, we just have to wait a bit to see if he’s going to stay self-righteous or if he’s going to turn and rat out all his former colleagues, to cut himself a deal. My bet is after a short time the Department of Justice is going to lean hard on him and he’ll spill his guts. Then, we’ll see the entire FBI mess unravel in short order.

          No, I didn’t forget about Peter Strzok and his erstwhile paramour, Lisa Page. Their turn in the chute is coming sooner, rather than later. I only hope when it does Strzok is honest to questioners about how he engineered the set-up that led to Gen. Michael Flynn’s downfall. If they’re quick enough about it, perhaps some actual justice can be done there and we’ll see Gen. Flynn exonerated.

          THE MEULLER INVESTIGATION PLODS ON – I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of the Mueller investigation. Now they’ve gone off with a subpoena for years-worth of Trump business records. It’s easy to suppose they asked for them under the guise of investigating the potential of long-standing relationships between President Trump and some Russian or another. Any Russian will do. The problem with the subpoena is it asks for a dump-truck load of information, and Mueller can do what he wants with it once he gets it.   I foresee him and his team looking for any sign of any legal irregularity. By any, I mean any. They took down Paul Manifort on supposed business irregularities from years ago. Why should we think the Mueller team won’t try to do the same exact thing to Donald Trump? Yeah, that’s what we should expect. Keep in mind some of my previous writings where I describe laws on the books that are there for the convenience of prosecutors – laws intended only to assess additional charges to anyone who crosses swords with those with legal powers.   If the Mueller team finds hints of irregularities, stand by – they know how to rack up the charges. They can convert an accounting irregularity into a 27 count federal grand jury indictment in the space of a couple of weeks.

          I am not a fan!

          HILLARY CONTINUES TO PROMOTE VICTIMHOOD – Did you see the outtakes of Hillary Clinton’s presentation to the India Today Conclave 2018? It does make one wonder if the woman is hooked on some kind of psychoactive drug. If she’s to be taken seriously she blames her 2016 Presidential election loss on everyone alive except herself.   She’s still shilling her book What Happened without realizing the only way the title makes any sense is if it has a question mark at the end. We can all figure out by listening to her that she hasn’t got a clue as to why she lost. She still thinks it was a conspiracy of all Bible and gun-clinging white xenophobic zealots, not that she ran a truly dumb campaign and paid for it. Now, her ire at white women voters for not lining up 100% behind her is evident. She portrays them as weak and victimized by their husbands, male bosses, and even their sons. She portrays herself as the victim of all those same people, once removed. Just think, a woman whose entire career is built off promoting the strength and independence of American women is running around the entire world declaring how weak and subjugated they are. I have only one question to ask:   Does Bill know?

          VLAD IS ON A ROLL! – Imagine how happy Vladimir Putin must be today after his stunning upset at the polls. With the weak Russian economy, all the sanctions against Russia by western powers, and what seems to be another stupid military quagmire in a Muslim country (shades of Afghanistan!), one might think he’d be easy to topple from office. But NO!   Exhibiting amazing political savoir faire and resilience old Vlad managed to pull his election campaign out of the fire and squeaked out a narrow victory by beating his nearest competitor by almost 50%.   By Russian standards, that was uncomfortably close.

Now, if I was one of the people who ran against him in this race I’d be moving somewhere else (other than Britain) and would change my name, hair color, and if I could, my race and sex. Vlad may not have anything to do with attempts on the lives of his chosen enemies and outright murder of some, but one should in all ways be careful. My advice is for every one of them to seek asylum in the US, move to Little Rock, and change their names to “Bill Clinton.” Even the woman who ran, Ksenia Sobchak. She’s much safer if known as Bill Clinton, even though conventional wisdom has it that she was put into the race by Putin’s faction just to stir up interest in voting. She was interesting, too. Did you catch that video where she tossed water on her rival, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, then laughed in his face while he sputtered in anger. It’s too bad Ksenia couldn’t win. She’s a firecracker!

Now, back to Vlad . . . .

OVERHEARD ON CNN – Remember the huge financial market crisis just before President Bush left office? No? What, are you kidding me? It was THE big news of 2008. Or, maybe it wasn’t. But, it should have been. That was when the Federal Reserve and other nations’ central banks stepped in and “rescued” the financial markets, which were in extremis due to the collapse of the derivatives market. Remember it now? No? Well, trust me, it happened.

At the time there was a guy who headed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a guy named Timothy “Little Timmy” Geithner. Little Timmy gained fame as President Obama’s first Secretary of the Treasury. Hardly anyone outside financial circles knew much about him before that, and much of what they thought they knew or understood was actually wrong. It’s not that he was a mystery, he was just in the background. Even fewer knew that Little Timmy’s dad had been a very close friend and advisor to President Obama’s mother when both families were operating in Indonesia. Little Timmy and Little Barry knew each other in those days, and ever since. Yes, all that is true, which should give you a few hints about Little Timmy’s politics.

Today on CNN there was a retrospective to the days when the out-going Bush administration and the incoming Obama people saved the planet’s financial markets. The piece featured statements about events of those days from Little Timmy’s perspectives. What was most striking about his commentary were how he kept using two terms in his dialog. He kept referring to different aspects of “justice” and “fairness.” It was a bit unnerving to listen to. Maybe it’s just me, but I think the guy talks like a commie. I can’t put it any other way.

THE FIRST STOLEN KISS SCANDAL – If you like your news sort of salacious, you can’t get more salacious than hearing about someone who comes right out and says at the age of 19 he’s never kissed a girl and is waiting for the right one to have that singular experience, only to have that kiss “stolen” by a major female recording artist who tricked him into it.

The guy is named Benjamin Glaze and he’s just a small-town kid from Oklahoma. He gave a good musical performance and somehow the fact that he’d never had an actual relationship with a girl or ever been kissed was made known. The rest was inevitable, as was the phony media flap afterward. Who can’t say “Katie Perry?”

As real news goes, this wasn’t. As stupid news goes, it doesn’t get much more. Do you really want me to go on? I wish I’d never brought it up.

THE CIA GETS WITH THE TIMES – Rex is out at State and Mike Pompeo is leaving as head of the CIA to take his place. That in itself is causing quite a stir, since Pompeo is well-known for his advocacy of physical power projection. He’s no shrinking violet. Evidently in some respects Rex is.   Rex thought President Trump shouldn’t scrap that dumb and phony Iranian Nuclear Deal. Then he was against the administration’s recent announcement of steel and aluminum tariffs. The real deal-breaker was his continued insistence that the US negotiate with North Korea for the 21^st time (or thereabouts), which we all know would yield us . . . nothing, nada, zip point zero.   Rex is out and, if all goes well, Mike is in. That should shake up the slothful international diplomatic community.

With Mike leaving CIA, who does President Trump turn to as his replacement? Why, his deputy of course, the little-known Gina Haspel. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, really. Ms Haspel has had a long career with the CIA and is evidently quite capable of taking the helm. Oh, that’s right, there’s that torture-thing, isn’t there? Stay tuned to her confirmation hearings. The Democrats and even some Republicans will try to fillet Ms Haspel over her role in the “torture” of terrorist suspects, then over her subsequent role in destroying video tapes of the “torture” sessions.

I wish to clarify a few things, lest anyone feel sympathy for a terrorist. Not that I’ll say a word about the terrorists, really. But, I do wish to state a few facts.

Fact 1. Yes, Ms Haspel was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects and, yes, she was present during some of those sessions. That is materially true.

Fact 2. Waterboarding is not torture. It’s not fun, by a long shot, but if it was torture, how did the CIA waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times without causing him any permanent damage? I understand why we might think smashing fingers with a hammer would be torture. I agree that gouging eyes out is torture of the harshest kind. I personally hold that attaching battery cables to a man’s testicles is torture, even if the cables aren’t connected to a battery. But, waterboarding? I’m not so sure. Anyway, I stand by the first statement of Fact 2.

Fact 3. Only three (3) terror suspects were ever waterboarded. Yes, it’s true. It’s also a fact that seems to be forgotten by all who shill for the cause of those in Guantanamo’s prison camp. It seems the CIA was remarkably restrained in their use of waterboarding. Three is not a high number at all. It’s only one (1) more than two (2), and only two (2) more than one (1), and only three (3) more than zero (0). So, by most measures, that just isn’t a lot. But, when you’re a progressive zealot it just doesn’t take a lot.

Fact 4. Yes, Ms Haspel did order her team to destroy video tapes of their interrogation sessions.

Fact 5. Ms Haspel was directed to destroy the video tapes by her own supervisor, who is on record to that effect.

Fact. 6. The rationale for the destruction of the tapes was not to try to erase evidence of wrongdoing, but to protect the identities of the CIA field operatives and their foreign assistants from disclosure. It seems Democrats understand this concern when applied to non-field agents, like Valerie Plame, but have a hard time dealing with the need to protect actual operatives, such as those clearly depicted on the destroyed videos.

I hope Ms Haspel makes it through the confirmation process and accedes to the job as Director of Central Intelligence. It would make for an interesting change, and maybe one that would calm that agency down. Besides, I hear the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA is in dire need of some new drapes.   She might be able to help with that. (I was just kidding! Don’t taze me, bro!)

If I offended anyone by anything written above, please just - get over it! It’s too late in the Trump Era to be whining about someone’s lack of PC. Get offended by something really offensive, like when your neighbor constantly walks his dog over so he can do his “biz” on your lawn. Yes, my friends and patriots, that’s actually offensive. I suddenly feel inspired! Perhaps I can make money by giving lessons in what should offend and what shouldn’t. Truly, people don’t know anymore. ‘Tis a pity, too.

I’m done! Thanks for paying attention, all ye who did.

In Liberty,
Steve