Comey Is No Hero
One of the most frustrating things this past week has been watching James Comey make the rounds of Stephanopoulos, Maddow, The View, along with other outlets and be lauded as some paragon of moral rectitude and virtue.
Jim Comey is a lifelong Republican who willingly and enthusiastically signed off on Torture (a War Crime in case you've forgotten) and who, immediately after his oh so so brave and principled stand at the bedside of John Ashcroft, personally approved a barely modified program of blanket electronic surveillance on United States Citizens THAT PERSISTS TO THIS DAY!
Thanks for nothing Barack.
Oh, and because of his "credibility" he's as responsible as any single person except Hillary Clinton and her pathetic team of overpaid and ineffectual crony campaign consultants for Donald John Trump's unexpected victory.
Yep, more than Vladimir Putin.
He is, unfortunately, a Deep State piece of slime, just as Donald Trump describes him which does not make Donald Trump any less loathsome or guilty either.
Of all the hagiographic interviews the one that came closest to holding Comey's feet to the fire as they deserve to be is Stephen Colbert who at least made him aware that Stephen knew about his record and wasn't buying everything Comey was peddling.
Want to be loved by the Left? Get fired by Trump
By Michael Graham, CBS News
April 2, 2018
How do you go from being a government hack to a progressive hero? It's easy: Get fired by Donald Trump.
From FBI Director James Comey to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Veteran's Affairs chief David Shulkin, it turns out there's no surer route to redemption among liberals than a "You're fired!" from President Trump. Even better if it comes via tweet.
...
But perhaps the most shocking example is the curious case of James Comey.In November of 2016, then-FBI-Director Comey was political enemy #1 of the Democratic Party. Before the election, Democrats like Senator Harry Reid were denouncing his handling of the Clinton email case, going so far as to suggest he had broken the law. Nancy Pelosi compared his last-minute letter to Congress on the matter to a political "Molotov cocktail."
After Hillary's loss, it was even worse. "Donald Trump owes him a big thank you" said Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. Democrats far and wide blamed Hillary Clinton's election debacle on Comey.
Today, Comey's book— A Higher Loyalty— Truth, Lies, and Leadership - is on the best-seller list before it's even been released; He's scheduled to be feted on the Left's favorite cable news shows; and enthusiastic partisans are paying up to $850 a ticket to see him on his book tour.
It's as if Newt Gingrich suddenly became the golden boy of MSNBC. How did it happen? He's the ultimate EOT: He was fired by Trump in the midst of the RussiaGate scandal and then leaked information to wage war on the White House. The anti-Trump trifecta.
There are more examples. Notorious "neocon" Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, once hated for promoting the Bush Doctrine in Afghanistan and Iraq, is now a liberal darling for leading the #NeverTrump movement. Mitt Romney, once smeared by Democrats as a misogynist with "binders full of women," is now the responsible GOP good guy they can respect, etc. etc.
What it all points to is the political gravitational pull of the Trump presidency. Every policy and (especially) every person is measured by their relationship to Donald Trump. Simply being Trump's enemy can suddenly make you every Democrats' best friend.
These are resistance heroes? Democrats now exalt the guys who abused government power
By Matt Welch, Los Angeles Times
April 19, 2018
During his half-century spent defending Americans’ civil liberties, here’s what has changed, according to lawyer Alan Dershowitz: “Now conservatives have become civil libertarians, and liberals have become strong supporters of law enforcement, the Justice Department and the FBI,” the professor and pundit said after dining with President Donald Trump last week.
That snorting sound you hear? That’s a thousand libertarians shooting coffee through their noses at the notion that the GOP is newly sympathetic to issues of law enforcement overreach and intrusive investigative tools.
Republicans had an opportunity as recently as three months ago to rein in warrantless snooping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. What did they do? They voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize the practice for another six years: 191-45 among GOP members in the House, 43-7 in the Senate.
It’s unfortunate how wrong Dershowitz is about the Republican Party. But what’s also depressing is that he may be right about the Democrats. In their efforts to oust a potentially lawless president, they are exalting a rogue’s gallery of surveillance-state officials who have abused their power.
Take James Clapper. The man who oversaw a vast surveillance apparatus as director of national intelligence under President Obama is now the toast of left-leaning media outlets including Salon, the Guardian and the Huffington Post for questioning Trump’s “fitness to be in office,” saying that Watergate “pales” in comparison to the current crisis, and quipping that Russian President Vladimir Putin treats Trump “like an asset.”
California Democrat Rep. Adam B. Schiff tweeted his Clapper endorsement last year: “James Clapper is a patriot who served his country for 50 years & knows dangerous bluster when he sees it. So yes, he’s an authority on DJT.”
But as Schiff certainly knows through his work on the House intelligence committee, Clapper straight-up lied to Congress and the American people in March 2013 when asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) whether the National Security Agency collects “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. “No sir. Not wittingly,” Clapper replied. Three months later, after the revelations of phone logs and email data collected by the NSA made front pages, Clapper characterized his lame answer as the “least untruthful” way he felt he could respond. If Trump and his B-movie gang of hangers-on are eventually to be tripped up on a series of lying and obstruction-style charges, surely there are better character witnesses for the prosecution than a perjurer.
It’s difficult these days to get the latest #resistance news without encountering some of Clapper’s partners in government malfeasance. One of MSNBC’s latest contributor hires, for example, is former Obama-administration CIA Director John Brennan. Like former FBI director James B. Comey, Brennan is one of the more melodramatic voices on Twitter, delivering stern lectures to a presidential interloper who dares impugn our noble intelligence state.
“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known,” Brennan tweeted at Trump last month in a characteristic effort, “you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America. … America will triumph over you.”
(McCabe, the FBI deputy director who got fired the day before his planned retirement, raised a quarter-million dollars for a legal defense fund within six hours, helped out by retweets from the likes of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.)
Brennan’s moral compass has not always been so prominently displayed. During his tenure as CIA director, the agency got caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computers. When confronted by then-Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) about it, Brennan used the same how-dare-they tone he now reserves for the president: “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said at first. “We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason.”
By uncritically cheering on such flawed actors, the Trump opposition is sending a clear if unwitting message to future abusers of power: To rehabilitate your image, simply oppose the president with enough flowery adjectives. I predict we will hear more such performances — complete with applause from progressives — during the upcoming book tours of Comey and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
To the extent that these former officials have direct knowledge of matters relevant to the Trump/Russia investigation — and Comey, at least, certainly does — we need to hear from them. But if in these fraught political times we’re taking our moral cues from a gang of former intelligence officials, then our problems run deeper than — and will outlast — the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Now I come from an entirely different direction, the Libertarian Left. I'm an Anarcho-Syndicalist and a Populist of the non-racist/nativist type, an inclusive small "d" democrat. But these people aren't wrong.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
(Of course it's cross published at DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette)
Comments
Vent Hole
Always happy to share.
I enjoy your posts
They are spicy.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
@mhagle
I don't try and please everybody, I write for myself.
To your own self be true
We all need that advice.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
I enjoy your posts too.
You make it look so easy.
There is no Democratic Party. We have the batshit crazy wing of the GOP and the not so batshit crazy wing of the GOP.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I practice a lot.
Now the Euchre, that comes natural.
The euchre deck is still waiting for you.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Orwell's Prediction Came True!
For far too many Democrats when the party says "two plus two equals 5," it is so and yesterday's enemy becomes today's "hero" at the snap of a finger.
It was a bright cold day in April & the clocks were striking 13
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
huh?
Why do you say they believe they had seized power unwillingly? Looks to me they very willingly seized power...
sigh.
The object of asking a question is to get an answer.
https://www.euronews.com/live
It's a quote from O'Brien
Admittedly not as famous as 2 + 2 == 5. Here's a quote from Goldstein-
In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.
What is Doublethink?
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
What we now call cognitive dissonance.
1984 is very instructive but I'm sure Eric Blair didn't intend it as a manual.
More reactionary garbage,
More reactionary garbage, which is truly telling for America.
Comey is suddenly a "hero" after he was listed as #2 in the reasons Clinton lost (#1 being bad Vlad).
This is just pathetic.
Thoughtcrime does not entail death, thoughtcrime IS death.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.