The Secrets of Every Heart

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

demo memoI haven’t talked about this before, because it’s hard to type when you’re stunned.

I love all the people who say that it doesn’t matter, that we all already knew this, that …

Guys, no.  We didn’t all already do this.  And if the dems all already knew this, they should make a pilgrimage, barefoot and in sack cloth to Nixon’s grave and beg his pardon, because what he did in bugging the opponent’s political offices didn’t include (Adding some stuff we’ve found the last year and a half):

-collusion and help from a sitting president.

-the concoction of a foreign attachment to the opponent to smear him and undermine his presidency.

-the use of our law enforcement agencies to spy on someone’s campaign.

-the leaking of entirely made up “salacious information” to the media, using people whose position should prevent their stooping that low.

-the use of the DOJ to exonerate someone who plainly and clearly broke the law, in a way that any American with security clearance would be in Levenworth for.

I can’t claim I didn’t know the Dems were dirty, and way dirtier than the Republicans.  I knew they were because it stands to reason.  Part of the reason I’ve always (but once) voted Republican, even for candidates that were in fact democrats like McCain was this precisely: the press will cover for dems but not for republicans.  So even if you assume at some point in the distant past they both got up to the same exact sheneningans, the republicans being constantly caught, or even accused of crazy stuff at random, means they’d watch themselves all the time and limit corruption, because they’d be afraid of getting caught.

The Dems on the other hand, could lead dissolute public and private lives with no fear.  And therefore they did.

But this…

Look, I’m not a political innocent.  Never had a chance to be.  As early as I started thinking about politics, it was during a revolution and … well… you see things very clearly then.

And coming here, I saw that the dems were using exact speeches I’d heard communists deliver the week before.  Note I’m not saying same talking points.  I’m saying same speeches, in another language.  Maybe that’s why Comey said that Trump gets his speeches from Russia.  Maybe they have, for years.  After all the left ALWAYS projects.

So this shouldn’t be a shock.

Except it is.  America means nothing if it doesn’t mean the rule of law applies equally to both sides.

Heinlein said — and was right — that when people stop believing in he rule of law, society is broken.

And maybe that’s why the media is pedaling so hard.  They think they can make us believe again and then everything will be fine.

They don’t get that part of what cost Hillary the presidency was that a lot of Americans have or had clearance and know the rules, and know what would happen to them if they did what she did, intent or no intent.  It wasn’t the crime, it was her being allowed to skate on this, that made people mad enough to vote against her.  Millions of people who otherwise would not have voted went to the polls.  But they don’t get that.  They think they can wave everything away because they have for years.

In a way it reminds me of publishing, where if you say something against a darling, they demand you apologize and — as we saw during SP — blare that we’ll never work in this town again.

They don’t seem to get that for most of us our careers aren’t artifacts of “my house pushed and helped me” but rather “I succeeded in the face of their despising me and hating me” and “granted only so far, but now I have indie, so this is my middle finger for you and all your compadres.”

They don’t get, either in the media, in the politics, or in publishing, that the gate is firmly locked, but the wall has fallen.

The wall has fallen — thank G-d almighty, the wall has fallen — and they hold NOTHING in their hands.

They also don’t seem to understand the only way to cleanse the body politico is to come down hard and fast on everyone who openly and clearly breaks the law and has broken the law.  It’s the only way to save any power, any structure, any traditional respect for the law.

This is a critical moment for the republic.  Things have been revealed that even I would think were borderline fever swamp three years ago.  And yet everyone is pretending everything is normal.

I’ve said before the book for our times is Puppet Masters.

They think they can carry on the masquerade forever.

Build under, build over, build around.

The rule of law not only hit the iceberg, but steerage is filling with water.

And yet in the salon of the would-be elite the music plays on and there’s a squabble over what type of fork to use to eat oysters.

 

589 thoughts on “The Secrets of Every Heart”

  1. Well, *I* strongly suspected it– but this is a memo, which the Dems voted to agree on until they realized it was going to be seen by someone besides congress-kritters with a strong need for a nap, that confirms it.

    No wonder the FBI head (who is cleaning house) had grave concerns, this give grounds to challenge for retrial on every other case any of the guys who gave false evidence did evidence for.

    Incidentally, my husband is blowing up over the classification rating- it appears to have been applied to conceal illegal activity, which is really freaking illegal.

      1. Yeah, seriously good news/bad news.

        Hey, good news! The system is working well enough that when multiple members of the FBI are falsifying evidence to enable political attacks, we still find out!

        The bad news is that we found out….

        1. It will only be working if there is either punishment or correction. Right now neither is guaranteed.

            1. My understanding is a voluntary resignation. Yes it means he can’t get pension money for a decade but most things I’ve seen about that said he’ll still get almost all pension since it’s prorated.

              1. Check out all the admirals who “retired” during Obama’s time– AKA, the fall guys.

                We both know that resigning means you get to pick how exactly you fail, rather than being publicly embarrassed.

              1. He “retired” in response to a proposed demotion during an investigation, and the path is now wide open for them to do a real, full investigation and nail his hide to the wall– rather than the other two options, of a loud, public firing which the MSN and Dems would declare was “politically motivated” so that they could dismiss the results of the investigation, OR, he sat there as the deputy director while being investigated.

                So, which one of those is your dream result? Throw the whole chance to fix the problem so that there can be a Bold Statement made to deny the standard “retired” option, or have him supervising the investigation?

                2. Because we could never do something as honest as fire and prosecute the bastard.Your admission that this is not an option in our current body politic is ALL the evidence required to prove a civil war is BOTH necessary and desirable.

                  1. Ah yes, the eternal “it isn’t ideal so let’s destroy it” response.

                    Totally a rational response to difficult human interactions: destroy everything.

                    Then we’ll make the ashes perfect!

                    2. Ah yes, the eternal “Any excuse for inaction will do.”

                      But hey, I’m patient. I’ve been saying this was where we’re headed for 15 years. And so far, I’ve been right.

                    3. You’re quite well aware that “inaction” is not what happened, nor what was described.

                      You still haven’t declared which of the three choices you prefer, nor offered a fourth with justification. Just mocked and mischaracterized the described options.

                  2. Civil War worked so well in Tsarist Russia and Royalist France. Once you pull down the abusers, who will you put in their place? Once you’ve burned down and rebuilt the barn how do you keep mice from returning?

                    Adding “This time we mean it” is likely to prove insufficient.

                    Who do you trust to “fire and prosecute the bastard”?

                    1. What’s the alternative, though?

                      Creeping statism? We’ve tried incremental reforms, but so far, nothing has proven to actually, y’know, work, when it comes to reigning these wannabe statist-lords-over-all. We either continue down this path, which I fear is going to lead to a situation not too far removed from what the Stasi had going in East Germany, or… We do something. And, “something” is going to have to be quite drastic. Look at how many government employees are actually held accountable for wrongdoing or just plain bad decisions: Virtually none. Are any of the Gold King Mine geniuses looking for work in the private sector? Was Lon Horiuchi fired, or did he get a nice, fat pension? How about the FBI officials who wrote the ROE for Ruby Ridge, in the first damn place?

                      Are any of the many and varied agents who lied to a Federal judge during the Bundy case worried about any repercussions? Oh, hell no. What does that tell you about the institutions, and the people we’ve put in them?

                      Consider this: None of this stuff is coming out because the participants suddenly developed consciences. It’s all been dragged out of them, via FOIA or Congressional actions, and we actually have the spectacle of the FBI Counterintelligence head reportedly threatening Congress over their oversight investigation.

                      I fear we’re far past “reform”, and well into “nuke it from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure…” territory, here.

                      I would agree with your position, were there some sign that the low- and mid-grade officials and agents were putting up a fight against this stuff, but as with the BATF, they only “blow the whistle” once one of their own is gored. Would we have ever heard about what was going on with Fast and Furious, had that Border Patrol agent not been shot? I fear not. Were there any agent-level whistle-blowers during the Bundy case?

                      We’ve got a really horrid case of institutional rot going on, across a broad swathe of governmental activities. Fixing it may not be possible, and we may need to do a drastic re-evaluation of what really needs to be done by government, and then re-think how we do it. What’s going on right now, left alone, will result in a nightmare.

                    2. You’ve made a strong argument for tearing things down, but said nothing about the problems of rebuilding. How do you propose ensuring, once we’ve driven out Farmer Jones, that Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer don’t take charge? How will you ensure that Snowball isn’t driven out after the Revolution?

                      I don’t trust myself to run things and I sure as Hell don’t trust you. So we get out of this hole the same way we got into it – incrementally over a long long time. Don’t have the grit for the long haul? Tough. Don’t expect me to support your tantrum.

                    3. In just my lifetime, we’ve gone from “may issue” to “shall issue” being the standard for concealed carry- and there’s been major improvement in other areas of gun rights.
                      We’ve gone from “homeschooling is an underground thing, pray they don’t send the truancy guy after you, hide the kids” to me having a nice big printout that informs anybody coming to “talk” about the kids that they’d better have a warrant, and homeschooling being between five and ten percent of the child population.
                      We’ve gone from Clinton doing screwy stuff with public lands and being praised by basically everybody but Rush as a pretty OK guy to Obama doing round two and vast numbers screaming to heaven, AND BEING HEARD.

                      A whole lot of the “problem” is that now we know about stuff– just like the folks pissed about how much “conflict” there is don’t seem to recognize that folks always disagreed, it just wasn’t widely known.

                    4. Again, any excuse for inaction will do. The Founders, after all, were certain of getting the result they did, and were obviously demigods.

                    7. No, I’m refusing to concede that burning down the barn is the end, rather than necessary site prep.

            3. If it’s who I’m thinking of, then word is that the firing wasn’t in response to the memo. It was actually in response to Wray reading the DoJ OIG report that the public still hasn’t seen yet.

              Makes you wonder what’s in *that* report…

              1. It’s entirely possible it was both, since supposedly it went “hey, I got this information. You’re going to be demoted while we do an investigation, this is some dire stuff.” “You can’t do that, I’ll retire in two weeks* instead! Muwahahah!”

                Possibly less bad drama villain acting, though. It’s a little late….

                *can’t remember actual number of weeks.

      2. yeah, but like i said in the other comment thread… i can’t make a thorough commentary on it because they roasted Nixon for this kind of thing and J.Edgar was supposed to have been bad for doing it, but its okay when Obama does it because Hillary!

        I just…

        ugh.

        2. Watergate was a misdemeanor, compared to all this. And J. Edgar didn’t go anywhere near this wholesale.

          No wonder these people don’t want kids taking civics or American government classes.

            1. WARNING:
              $HOUSEMATE has instructed me NOT to play this (in presence) again as, “IT’S A {GOSHDARNED} EARWORM!”

              You might wish to take that into consideration before clicking PLAY.

          3. Watergate was no misdemeanor:

            The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down
            “An aging judge about to step down. Aggressive prosecutors friendly with the judge. A disgraced president. A nation that had already made up its mind. The Watergate trials were a legal mess—and now, with the discovery of new documents that reveal shocking misconduct by prosecutors and judges alike, former Nixon staffer Geoff Shepard has a convincing case that the wrongdoing of these history-making trials was actually a bigger scandal than the Watergate scandal itself.”

            Others in pursuit of alternate facts of the history might look into Silent Coup: The Removal of a President by Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

            And, of course, G. Gordon Liddy has long maintained that the break-in was a rogue operation by John Dean:
            In 1992, Dean hired famed attorney Neil Papiano and brought the first in a series of defamation suits against G. Gordon Liddy for claims in Liddy’s book Will, and St. Martin’s Press for its publication of the book Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. Silent Coup alleged that Dean was the mastermind of the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate coverup, and the true target of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and the former Maureen “Mo” Biner (his then-fiancée) in a prostitution ring. After hearing of Colodny’s work, Liddy issued a revised paperback version of Will supporting Colodny’s theory.
            Per Wiki

            Why would I trust the “approved” version of events when those approving them have no credibility other than tautological fallacies?

            1. Don’t forget that Hillary got her real start in public disinformation, smear tactics, and corruption in the Watergate scandal.

            1. That’s actually one of the plot points in the Remo Williams books — he works as a rogue assassin/contractor, for a rogue group with one employee, so that the Constitution isn’t being violated as much as if the military or the CIA were doing illegal stuff.

              Because people used to worry about civics, even in an imaginary pulp universe.

              1. And the one employee has an elaborate traceless suicide/fall-on-his-sword plan already set up in case of discovery. There won’t be *anyone* to disavow.

    2. Sadly this is just another case of the “famous but incompetent” (giving every benefit of doubt) agency screwing up like this. FBI files found in possession of politicos, three rounds that I am aware of of expert witnesses from the bureau providing incorrect information, agents imprisoned for aiding and abetting mob bosses, some reportedly including hits (still with pensions). Add in the reports that 9/11 and Tsarnaevs had been identified to bureau and we’re ignored and you have to start looking askance. One of the big things I’ve been trying to work through for past few years is just how wrong I was.

        1. There is a reason for “one aw shucks erases a thousand attaboys”. When your greatest strength is your reputation it is very detrimental to lose it. Over the last few years I’ve gone from giving LE benefit of doubt to no more trust than I give anywhere else. And not just because of external events but because of abuses of power I have witnessed.

        2. Sorry Foxfier, most of our just do our jobs without getting praised for doing it correctly. It’s called just doing your job. If I mess up though, the shit will hit the fan. That’s how it is for most jobs.

          1. *snort* I’m a mom. Don’t get me started on not getting praised. First poem I memorized was the engineer’s lament.

            I’m pointing out that if they don’t screw up, we don’t know about it at all— MAYBE if you’re a serious security geek, you’ll be able to guess who was involved, but the very fact that they did something and it works means that it really shouldn’t be publicly mentioned.

            Kind of like the whole shtick with figuring out where Osama was; it worked…until that freaking moron had to go and explain how they’d managed it.

          2. Yes, but if you’re trying to determine the effectiveness of something you can’t just look at the failures. If two agencies fail 10 times, but one agency has 20 cases while the second has 10,000, the second agency isn’t just as bad as the first.

      2. I’ve had friends in law enforcement. They had no use for the FBI, who they regarded as a bunch of poseurs eager to sweep in and take credit for the hard work of local law enforcement.

        1. I was surprised by the almost total across-the-board dislike for the FBI (and BATFE to a slightly lesser degree) among working street law enforcement, when I first came across it amongst cop friends.

          Boy, that wasn’t just a little bit tortured? Blame influenza A; it screws with your head, and you just don’t care.

    3. I agree with your husband. Frankly, I think some 1800-style justice needs to be employed (i.e. a short rope and a tall tree; or pour melted tar all over them, roll them in feathers and put them out on the North Slope of Alaska) for most of the offenders, but I’d settle for prison at hard labor for life.

      1. If nothing happens, I guarantee in ten years there will be gallows down one side of the mall, guillotines up the other. Because the ball just keeps rolling and getting bigger, and they can’t tamp it down anymore.

        1. I can understand why Trump went easy on Hillary after the election; insufficient evidence at the time to get a decent charge, much less a conviction. Now we know the investigation was biased, corrupt, tainted, and predetermined. We have enough to properly investigate, charge, try, and convict not just HRC, but numerous other lawbreakers; assuming the Trump Administration has the courage and inclination to do so. But we also know that such legal action will precipitate rioting that will make Watts, Ferguson, and Charlottesville look like a church picnic. I’ve heard and read that some folks think that the problem is neither side is willing to listen to the other. I think they’re wrong. I hear their arguments, I think I understand how they feel, I think they’re wrong, but I’m willing to live and let live. They don’t hear our arguments, don’t care how we feel, know we’re wrong, and aren’t interesting in living and let live.

          1. I have heard chatter abut a second IC to investigate the FBI/DOJ corrupt action scandal, and wonder whether a better option isn’t to establish such an Independent Counsel and roll the Mueller investigation into it. Any questions of collusion would seem to involve the FBI using an opposition research dossier relying on Russian sources as basis for opening an investigation and gaining license to bug from a FISA court.

            The trick is to find somebody to reliably conduct such an IC investigation; the possibility exists that expanding Michael E. Horowitz’s DOJ investigation with enhanced authority (including direct oversight of Mueller’s probe) might be the route to take.

          2. I just don’t see a conviction for Hillary. If the jury has any Democrats on it there’s too high a chance that at least one of them will vote not guilty just out of partisanship. If there aren’t any Democrats on it, everyone will know that there was political interference.

            1. Might be better (and more entertaining) just to leave her alone. It’s becoming increasingly clear that she’s ignoring strong hints from her own party to just go away. I suspect that she could cause lots of havoc for the Dems in 2019-2020 if she’s still not wearing an orange jumpsuit.

              1. Machiavelli would leave her a free agent, while rounding up all her co-conspirators… And, say he’s not prosecuting her out of respect for her “diminished condition”.

                1. Oh ho! Wouldn’t Hillary have a cow if it got out the DoJ (assuming it’s cleaned up) started referring to her as a “honey pot”?

                    1. All y’all need to stop this line of “reasoning” unless you want to provide the class with copious amounts of brain bleach.

                      If you insist, my preference in brain bleach runs to single malts.

                    2. Inquiry: “Honey Bucket” locally is a company providing portable chemical “smelly rest stop station”, is that the image being alluded to? If so, concur, need brain bleach.

                    3. It started with “honey trap” which is an allusion, at least in spy fiction, to a female used to ensnare the target of a covert op.

                      Might have said “honey pot” but my brain interpreted it this fashion; and that’s the last way I want to see Hillary Clinton.

                2. If Machiavelli were on her side, he’d arrange for her martyrdom. I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened.

              1. Just have to make sure that anyone who would vote based on partisanship rather than evidence, is excluded from the jury.

                1. Do let us know when you’ve finished building the Lamp of Diogenes, in order to ascertain the true hearts of the jurors. Real “true believers” in Her Shrillness and leftism in general won’t hesitate to lie about their objectivity and belief in the primacy of law.

                  I’m afraid that the only way Hillary sees justice is either in the afterlife, or via some extrajudicial means like a lynch mob.

                  2. “I’m afraid that the only way Hillary sees justice is either in the afterlife, or via some extrajudicial means like a lynch mob.”

                    Ya never know. Maybe a tornado will drop a farmhouse on her.

                  1. I was pointing out to Mike that the odds of there being an honest Democrat who’d tell the truth about their objectivity is just about nil. I’m sure that there are many Hillary! partisans who’d outright lie and say they were “lifelong Republicans…”.

              2. Normally voir dire will include asking about strong political affiliations; I bet in Hill’s case those questions will be off the table.

            3. Trump could annoy everybody by pardoning Hillary Clinton. The one side would be annoyed that she got away with it, and the other would be annoyed that he thought she did something needing a pardon.

            4. And again, Exhibit B for civil war leading to Leftist removal. You cannot live in a civil society with them.

        2. Look at the up side. I can start Mike’s Guillotine Rentals. “A Basket for Every Budget.” Pre-tied noose sales, too.

          2. During her later years, my grandmother would often spend time in her easy chair tying and retying clothesline nooses, 13 turns and all. She never said why.

    4. I suspected as well… because little things would drip into the media and then would suddenly disappear. I’ve been waiting for a shoe to drop for a decade (and much longer). 🙂 But then I do have a suspicious mind.

      1. Worse, we have a mind for stories!

        And my gosh, did the Obamites keep ripping off airport conspiracy thrillers. (Fast and Furious. Great good googlie eyes.)

          2. I’ve heard better cover-ups and plots on Coast-to-Coast radio at 0300. [Yes, certain aircraft radios can be set to AM stations. No, I have never done this, nor have I ever homed in on WNAX because it was the strongest signal south of the aurora borealis. And I wasn’t there.]

  2. Is that memo (at the top of this page) your creation or did some idiot create that (and not as a joke)? 😦

          1. “limits”?

            Every time I think Dems have “reached a limit” the Dems out do themselves. 😈

              1. The limit there is zero.

                And thank goodness for that. Can you imagine the clamor if they managed to get it into the negative numbers? Time-traveling interruptions!

          2. Come now, you should know that people in general tend to view limits as challenges.

            People (myself included) may joke about “hold my beer and watch this!” or “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED”, but the idea of doing stuff that’s potentially fatal and often stupid simply because someone else said it couldn’t/shouldn’t be done has plenty of supporting evidence throughout history.

    3. If they say it was driven by a little old lady, then it was probably a car repossessed from a ricer fast and furious wannabe.

        1. I had a lingual understanding with a girlfriend. Fortunately, we got them untied and went home.
          Have to agree with you about puns. Good puns require a depth of humor and language skill many do not have.

          1. *sighing chuckle* My husband and the housemate are regular punters. (heh) Hubby told me once about how he and a coworker once had an entire afternoon’s conversation in pun. Their boss couldn’t yell at them because they were getting their work done and there was no rules about talking while working. Apparently he was a rather interesting shade of purple when he finally slammed the office door shut.

            He’ll also drop them on the Housemate while having serious conversations.
            Housemate: ;¬_¬

            1. For linguistic goofery, I still like the coworkers I had on the helpdesk who had the “word of the day” contest, where they would pick a word at the beginning of their shift, and each one was supposed to work that word into a support call before the end of the day. I seem to remember one of these words being something rather explicit-sounding that had to do with obstetrics, but don’t remember what it was. It was quite the challenge, though.

              1. I once worked at store where the manager and assistant manager loved punning as much as I. Something was said about porcupines in the break room on day and the three of us went through two rounds of puns. The inventory manager slammed his chair, actually yelled, ” I can’t take anymore of this, ” and ran out of the room. We, of course, started up right where we had stopped.

                You two should read my favorite book, ” I Don’t Care If The Rain Never Stops ” by An Wi.

                2. Awww. Too bad your inventory manager didn’t get the point. Probably a stickler for maintaining proper office decorum.

                    1. It’s hilarious about that. The girl friend has imposed a “Five Pun Limit” on her father when she visits. “It’s a sickness” she says about her dad. It didn’t help one time I was visiting with her and was shown some of his work and pointed out one or two opportunities he missed. The look of horror on the GF’s face in my direction was wonderful. 🙂

      1. Point. “You cannot hope to bribe or twist—thank God!—the English journalist.
        But seeing what the man will do unbribed, there is no reason to.”
        H. Belloc

  6. Dear Lord, thank you for Your unfailing care in protecting fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Please continue to have mercy on us, and keep sparing us from the worst of Hillary and her criminal crew.

    And if You could possibly help send some of these yahoos to prison for the rest of their natural-born citizen lives, we would greatly appreciate it. Amen.

    4. Hillary will never sit in the Oval Office as President of the United States of America; unless it’s in a different universe even worse than ours.

            1. I learned long ago to never challenge HR by declaring the company couldn’t hire somebody worse for $JOB. No matter how bad the offending worker they always managed to replace the employee with somebody more incompetent.

                1. The thing that makes most all of Willis’s works work is that tethered-to-reality twist that she throws in.

              2. “Dilbert is a documentary.”
                I recall someone claiming it wasn’t funny (and he didn’t even work in marketing). And, sure, not “funny ha ha” but rather, “Yup, been there.”

        2. Seen on FB: “What 4 words represent Hell?” Ans: “Hillary won Presidential Election”, “Oprah is the President”, “Obama is still President”, YMMV

    6. I had a (rather strange even for tenured faculty) prof fuss at us for not griping about the “God Bless America” and “God Bless the USA” ribbons on cars (2003). I kept my mouth shut, because I’d always assumed that the rest of the phrase was, “…because we need all the help we can get.”

  7. it doesn’t matter, that we all already knew this, that …

    You’re right, we didn’t *know,* but many people *suspected.* Having things like this confirmed is pretty horrifying. I admit that I read through the six pages (memo + cover letter) and had the same reaction, but then I went back and read it again, and more things sunk in. For example, the memo specifies that the warrants were NOT sought under Title VII (evidently, Title I = foreign spy).

    Additionally, this memo isn’t for those of us who are fairly well informed about the perfidies of the State — this is for the people who still depend on MSM (“normies”). People who run 4/8chan have known this for months or years (I expect they’re digging up the FISA warrants now), but how many people — even those who are moderately informed — have the patience or time to wade through the chans?

    Much of the memo-related info has been investigated/analyzed at CTH/Last Refuge, but again, how many people have the patience to wade through all of the data and settle for skimming summaries?

    I do agree that the memo isn’t the end, but rather the beginning (or, end of the beginning, if you prefer) … there’s much more to come. The Dems are acting particularly dim … “the memo isn’t supported by underlying documentation”, so the next logical step is release the underlying documentation! And, per the Dems, the problem isn’t what was done so much as the fact that we’ve found out (no need to look at the man behind the curtain).

    My trust and faith in various government institutions was already teetering, but now? There may in fact be honest and trustworthy people at both FBI and DOJ (aside from the janitor who started last Tuesday), but they’re all tainted by association.

    1. There may in fact be honest and trustworthy people at both FBI and DOJ (aside from the janitor who started last Tuesday), but they’re all tainted by association.

      That is EXACTLY what these bastards want people to do– it’s why they go about invading decent groups, so they can hide behind the rest.

      Don’t let them.

      Demand that the individuals be held guilty– not groups, not organizations. When individuals falsify evidence, it doesn’t mean the system is bad– it means they cheated, and must be nailed.

      It’s the same system they use everywhere– get into some power in a group, make sure you’ve got some decent sacrificial individuals who are decently high but not TOO high, and then be so outrageous that you can get people to attack the whole group. If the group manages to be brought down, fine– you just invade the next one.

        1. Yep.

          Here we’ve got a wounded institution that successfully fought them off– or that evidence would not have survived.

          And we’re supposed to finish it off for them?!?

          1. Incidentally, I’ve read some epic mocking of these supposed awesome FBI guys who couldn’t even figure out how to delete the messages they managed to block legally required backup of. ^.^

            1. Thankfully, deleting things in the modern world is HARD. Many, many copies/backups tend to exist in the $!@# places. I frequently tell folks that once they send an email, they should assume it is out there for discovery purposes for forever.

              1. Supposedly, they got it directly off the phone’s memory.

                You know, the whole “delete, write over, delete again” thing that they teach in basic “don’t sell your computer until you do this”? Where there’s programs for data security that does it for you?

                They didn’t know to do that. And nobody who did helped them.

                2. Solid state non-volatile memory, like USB drives, use wear leveling to lengthen life span. This means that even if deleted with a security program, fragments can exist in other, unused, places. That can be a problem with hard drives as well, but due to how OS work and not wear leveling (temp files and fragment files and virtual memory and the like).

                  This is why, when I had to decommission hand-held meter reading machines, which had customer information and not just one but two solid state memories and possibly three, I did the deed with a club axe. We also go in for destructive decommission of hard drives with such information, even though you can do a descent wipe.

                  Just saying …

                  1. Both of us, as civilians, know that the FBI can ghost through stuff that’s been deleted, written over and deleted again. (Wasn’t that the plot point in a scifi con book from the early 90s? The one where the guy who wrote totally-not-Conan got murdered.)

                    And these agents didn’t even know they could recover deleted files.

                    Heck, they could’ve done a version of yours by the phones in question being, respectively, dropped in the toilet and falling off of the belt-clip and getting run over.

                    3. Gee, it seems like only yesterday that Linda Tripp got raked over the coals with “recovered” files from a supposedly wiped hard drive.

                      I cannot quite recall which political faction produced those recovered files …

                    4. Drop it in the snow while snowblowing your driveway, then run over it with the snowblower on the next pass. My aircraft commander did this with his alert beeper (not intentionally). The second one he dropped didn’t get run over – but it wasn’t found until spring.

                  2. Back in the 1980s the IBM office in Atlanta used to decommission old hard drives at a shooting range near Stone Mountain. A friend used to work there part time, and said the Suits would come in on their lunch breaks with boxes full of hard drives, rent pistols, and proceed with the decommissioning.

                    This lasted most of a year, until one of the higher-ups caught wind of it. It sounded like Fun, and Fun was not permitted at IBM…

                    5. I decommission them with screwdriver. the bodies are aluminium and can go to the recycler, the platters are pretty and shiney and you can make things with them.

                    6. A friend used to work at SRI, and had to safely destroy some hard drives containing classified data. She called up the responsible agency and asked for the approved method.

                      He said, “no problem, just take them outside, wait for a tank to come by, and place them in front of the treads”. When she answered that there weren’t any tanks at her facility, he coldly asked what she was doing with that sort of data, and had to be reminded what sort of contracts SRI dealt with.

                      He discussed the possibility of using Very Strong Magnets, and granted permission after she asked, “we have a cyclotron, will that do?”

                      -j

                    7. Guy I used to know said when he was decommissioning hard drives for a tech refresh at the IRS, they ran (IIRC) a 7-pass wipe-and-write files shredder, then smacked the drive with a hammer while it was still turning. Supposedly that would shatter the platters inside. I don’t know if that would work, since HDD platters are aluminum, but I guess it might (note that this was in 1997).

                    8. Glass platter hard drives were a thing at one time, and you could shatter those easily. The rest of the time you have metal platters. That’s why I would mangle the platters. Once, on a particularly tough drive, I scrapped them against the gritty concrete pavement, essentially sanding away the magnetic media.

                      I don’t trust bulk magnetic erasure. We tried that with floppy disks and audio tape, with spotty results. 5.25″ floppies I fed through the shredder. The 3.5″ I crushed the case in my hand, popped out the hub, and dropped the disk into the shredder. Tapes were a pain until I started using bolt cutters to make confetti out of them.

                    9. That’s what we did with a bunch of my Dad’s old Hard drives.

                      He shot one right through the magnet in the center of the disks.

                4. Maybe, just maybe, the underlings in charge of Deleting Shit did a halfassed deletion job on purpose. Maybe (given per what I’ve heard, the underlings are close to open revolt) they knew it might be worth holding onto, and this halfassed deletion certainly served to protect it until it was needed.

                  1. That’s my bet– my original guess was creative “misfiling” or “gosh, oops! Look, I duplicated the files, this one is under “backups monthdayyear, and this one is under montdayyear backups! Gosh, how silly.”

                    1. Likely some of that too… easy way to make surreptitious copies, and I’d bet there’s some of that in the mix as well, given that some folks probably felt a need to cover their asses in the event.

                    2. I know one reserve unit started doing a complete data backup to something innocuous because one of the Reserve officers would come in and delete all the “extra” files, after “re-sorting” everything.

                      Thank God, the first time she did that, there was some way that they were able to recover everything– can’t remember what it was, but it was crazy stupid luck that she didn’t single-highhandedly destroy all the training files they’d just finished fixing.

              2. Apparently viable backups don’t exist if you’re the NSA and the courts are asking you for the data they ordered you to maintain as a result of pending lawsuits. Then data for entire years just disappears.

                1. Ironic, isn’t it, considering that a big chunk of YEARLY training for federal employees involves document security–including how to preserve relevant documents that are involved in things like lawsuits…

                  (Having just sat through it–again–for the umpteenth time. I had to do this training even when I was just a lowly contractor. And had to go through the headache of boxing up papers that had to be kept in perpetuity. And these weren’t even interesting or vital papers–they were just a bunch of applications to use herbicide on federal lands, with associated herbicide labels and so on. Hardly, y’know, law enforcement documents or anything actually important!)

                  1. I wonder how long until some individual or corporate entity argues that the federal government cannot hold it to a higher standard than any governmental agency and that therefore any files, emails or documents it fails to produce cannot be a basis for punishment.

          2. But, honestly, there’s plenty of corruption within the FBI at the lower levels. The FBI has always been problematic, and more so as more and more has been pushed to the national level.

            I wouldn’t mind it being totally dismantled, and a new, smaller organization in its place. Or, I wouldn’t mind gutting it of all the perfidy and then filling it back in. But tossing just a few guys at the top? No, that’s inadequate.

              1. At this point, the problem is systemic. Someone hired, trained, indoctrinated, and oversaw these guys coming up the ranks. You can bet there are more of them, ones that haven’t unmasked themselves.

                How do you fix that?

                The FBI has always been corrupt at its core, I’m afraid–Go back to how it was founded, against direct Congressional opposition. The story behind the founding, J. Edgar Hoover’s later work taking over, and the rest of the Hoover period of office…? The institution is, I am afraid, inherently corrupt. The FBI has been meddling in politics since day one, and I don’t know how the hell you fix that–Remember, Deep Throat was Mark Felt, who was a senior FBI agent pissed off at Nixon for nominating an outsider to run the agency, and who was tied in intimately with the whole COINTELPRO scandal that was going on at the same time. You look at the history of it all, and I don’t think you can argue that the FBI has ever had “clean hands”, nor that it is in any way reformable short of dissolution and starting over with entirely new people. The whole thing started out as an out-of-control agency, and from the looks of things, it has finally come to a head as a threat to the Republic.

                Read between the lines of this History Channel encomium to the FBI, and think about it:

                https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fbi-founded

                This was an agency founded in direct contravention to Congressional will, and almost immediately turned political under the Wilson Administration. Hoover was part of the politicization from the beginning, during the so-called first “Red Scare” in 1919. Note that by 1921, Hoover had over 450,000 files on “…every radical leader, organization, and publication in the United States…”, and contemplate the “coincidental” choice of Hoover as head of the FBI later on.

                The agency is probably beyond reform, at this point, and I fully expect it to be involved in the forefront of armed radical action against the will of the people. That’s what it has been doing, since its founding. Lon Horiuchi, anyone? The rules of engagement at Ruby Ridge? That’s the real FBI, and the reality of what you’re dealing with in this agency. Not one person has ever been brought to book for what happened at Ruby Ridge, or the ROE that enabled Mr. Horiuchi to commit murder under color of law.

                It is an unfortunate set of facts, but it is the truth, and leads to no other conclusion than that this agency is out of control, and has long deserved an institutional death penalty.

                1. At this point, the problem is systemic.

                  Based on what?

                  I laid out why I don’t agree with that claim, you just keep asserting it must be so. (And no, “it’s always been systematically corrupt” doesn’t work, either.)

                  Because…what, a non-corrupt system wouldn’t have had Obama and the Dems in charge of the leadership, or that leadership would’ve magically been unable to get some henchmen in?

                  Oh, gosh! We found out about corruption! Destroy the whole thing!
                  Because that won’t have the obvious effect of making sure that absolutely anybody who thinks that there’s a problem, but that it can still be fixed, will work like hell to hide the problem.

                  1. Look at the history, Fox. The FBI has been political since the beginning, when it was Wilson’s secret police. You think they’ve somehow developed virtue, since then?

                    When the FBI refuses to record official interviews, and instead relies on after-the-fact agent memos? LOL… There is a reason. Ask Mike Flynn, or Martha Stewart, both of whom are probably wondering what the hell they actually said. I once had a conversation with a former FBI agent about this very subject, and his response was basically “Well, if the only records show what we want them to, well… We can make them say anything…”.

                    You couple that with all the chicanery around the labs, and everything else? The institution is inherently corrupt, or we’d see a lot more whistleblowers. The fact we don’t, and that the corruption/incompetence is so egregious?

                    It’s way past time to put this agency to sleep, permanently, and ban anyone contaminated by its demonstrated ethos and mindset from further government service, at any level. I’d go so far as to zero out the budget for their pensions, as well, because these clowns working at the FBI didn’t just materialize out of thin air–They were recruited, trained, and acculturated such that they think it’s just peachy-keen to threaten Congressional oversight investigations with retaliation. That, right there, is enough for me to say that every one of the bastards needs to be starving in the streets as an object lesson to the rest of the bureaucracy.

                    The other option? Let them continue as they are, and witness the creeping return as the “norms” reassert themselves. Mark Felt is obviously not an anomaly, or we wouldn’t have this crap happening again. Although, I must say that Felt’s tradecraft was better… I doubt he’d have been dumb enough to leave a breadcrumb trail of text messages.

                    1. Kirk, I hate repeating myself, but the problem isn’t that I didn’t read your assertion the first time, it’s that you didn’t SUPPORT your conclusion.

                      I’m no more persuaded by you, on the strength of roughly ‘the FBI always should have been disbanded as corrupt,’ than I am of Random Malthusian on the strength of ‘the only solution is population control.’

                      I have no problem understanding that you already have the conclusion. But yelling at me that if I “understood” then I’d agree with all prior conclusions and this one is not going to work.

                      “Agrees with Kirk” is not an antonym for “ignorant.”

                    2. What do you want for evidence, Fox? Isn’t the ongoing nature of this enough for you?

                      Face the facts: These are the people who lied about what was going on with the Bundy’s in Utah, again in Oregon, and who have been part and parcel of the whole spectrum of abuse over the last few decades.

                      Where, pray tell, were the internal whistleblowers on the Bundy case? Did any of these jackbooted thugs look at what they were doing, and decide “Oh, this is egregious…”, and do something about it? Nope; that took a Federal judge who quit buying the bullshit he was being sold by a “law enforcement agency”.

                      Likewise, with the BATF and “Operation Fast and Furious”: Where, pray tell, were the whistleblowers while it was just the dealers who were getting screwed, and innocent Mexican citizens being killed? Oh, no: None of those fine Federal agents chose to say a goddamn word until one of their fellows was killed with one of those “walked weapons”, a US Border Patrol agent.

                      How much more evidence do you need, I have to ask? We have Federal courts rejecting FBI and BLM “evidence” that they submitted, and you have to wonder just what the hell has gone on before this, that these vaunted “public servants” thought they could get away with that crap in the first damn place, because there is no damn way this just got started with the Bundys.

                      They don’t “self-police”, they don’t have professional standards, and they are very obviously on a path to where they think they have primacy over the electorate’s will. Hell, judging from the appearance of this whole affair with Strzok, they already do.

                      Strzok still has a job, is still drawing a paycheck that your tax dollars are funding. Same with the rest of them, and I dare say it will take a miracle before they ever even get charged, let alone found guilty of any form of malfeasance. That’s your FBI, Fox. These guys and girls didn’t step fully-formed out of an institutional vacuum–They were recruited, selected, trained, and breathed in the air of that institution, and they thought they had the right to do what they did….

                      Read the FBI oath, and tell me where it says they have the duty and right to determine who runs this country. I’ll tell you right now, it doesn’t, but apparently McCabe and the rest of them think it does. How many others in the FBI agree with these criminals-with-badges?

              2. That’s a LOT of guys. Though there are techniques, tactics and procedures for getting some folks to come forward and rat them out.

                1. Possibly a lot- really depends, and would take serious investigation. There are records of who was doing what, after all, and I already know that the prior admin wasn’t even shy about making their scapegoats someone who didn’t have the ability to change what they were fired for changing/not changing.

                  So start with investigating the folks who were terminated, to figure out if they should have been, and see if you can find out what they were doing.

                  This, incidentally, would ideally be done government-wide– which would be a hell of a lot of guys.

                  But I’d be shocked if they aren’t already working on it.

                  1. Not to mention, most of those “unsuitable hacks” were already working for those agencies when he took office.

                    At some point, you have to start asking how it is that so many Federal employees thought nothing of their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution. FBI, BATF, EPA, all of them. They have developed the idea that they’re above the law, above Congressional oversight, and can do as they damn well please. And, we the electorate? Apparently, there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.

                    If Trump fails, or is taken out, I look for a shooting war to erupt shortly after that fact becomes apparent to those who’ve put their last hope in his success. I don’t know where I’m going to fall, in terms of taking sides or saying “Screw it… All y’all are beyond help…”, but I fear we’re all going to have to make a decision.

                    1. FBI, BATF, EPA, all of them

                      No, not all of them, and other than repeatedly claiming basically “history teaches” you have yet to give any support for that claim.

                      I get that you don’t like them, don’t trust them, and figure bad behavior by one totally justifies destroying the whole group.

                      That flat out doesn’t persuade me. Repeating it over and over won’t change that. It won’t change the minds of anyone who doesn’t already agree with your conclusion.

                    2. This issue with FBI/DOJ corruption does raise the question about why exactly we need a national police force. What is the FBI expected to do that cannot be done at the state or regional level?

                      Corruption is part and parcel of just about any organization, so (to me) the best long-term solution is to reduce these organizations to a more manageable size.

                  2. No, there’s just that whole “oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic” thing.

                    Besides, the whole point is that when the justice system is corrupted, LAWS WON’T FIX IT.

                    1. You missed the loopholes.

                      “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

                      It is unclear which definition of execute applies:

                      1. carry out or put into effect
                      2. carry out a sentence of death on

                      The evidence indicates Obama applied the second meaning.

                      That bit about “to the best of my Ability” leaves an opening you could drive an M1 Abrams through.

                    2. Oh yes. Let’s go charging people on a generic “didn’t defend the constitution” grounds, rather than specific violations.
                      There’s no way that will bite us, especially when dealing with the issue of a sizable chunk of the other side having weaponized corruption.

                      Come on, Nelson! No fair flipping the roles, I am supposed to be the rabid idealist and YOU are supposed to be ruthlessly pragmatic!

                    4. Thank you, oh lord mind-reader and controller of all thoughts, for so ably explaining how cutting down the laws of England while going after the Devil is such a great idea.

                    6. As opposed to supporting those who are willing to sacrifice their livelihood for your far distant judgement on proper principles.

            2. I agree. The FBI was conducting illegal surveillance over 50 years ago. I’d disestablish, spread the tasks among other Federal LE agencies, reassign the field agents in small groups. Can the top leadership, even if you have to simply award premature retirements by Presidential fiat.

            3. Tucson holds a tribute to the efficiency of the FBI every year. At the end of January we hold Dillinger Days, commemorating that the Tucson Police Department could accomplish something beyond the capability of the FBI: capturing John Dillinger alive.

      2. The Russians goal is exactly that: sowing distrust of every institution of American government. In this regard the Dems and Hillary are carrying the Russians’s water, delegitimizing all of our institutions.

        1. Why should the Russians bother? After all, the institutions themselves are doing a wonderful job of discrediting themselves, all on their own…

          Think about it: Can you name one institution here in the US that is worthy of granting unquestioning trust to? Any of them? Say, maybe those folks over at the Olympic Committee… No, wait a minute: They treated reports of little girls being molested by the “official team doctor” as not worth doing anything about, until well after several hundred were molested by him… And, we only got action out of the bastards once the evidence was irrefutable.

          So, y’know… More power to the “Russians”, if that’s who you want to blame for all this stuff. Apparently, we won’t actually do anything until it becomes impossible to ignore the facts, and if that takes the “Russians” publicizing it? So be it.

          You want a plot to discredit the institutions of the nation? LOL… If there were such a thing necessary, I’d feel comforted. I repeat–As it is, the “Russians” just need to publicize what is actually going on.

          1. Methinks thou missed the point, Kirk. The Dems and Hillary screaming about “The Russians!” is achieving exactly what they claim the Russians are trying to do.

            Sorta like warning of the danger of fire while splashing kerosene all over and tossing lit matches about.

            1. You missed the quotation marks around “Russians”. What I’m getting at is that it doesn’t matter who or what is “behind” pulling the curtains back, the fact remains that there is serious wrongdoing to see, once the curtains are out of the way. Were these agencies and people even minimally virtuous, there would be nothing to fear.

              As it is, so long as the truth is revealed? Who cares about the source or the motivation? The raw facts are still there, that there is wrongdoing going on.

      3. ^^^ What Foxfier said. I know (as do several others here) very decent, hardworking people in related related areas who are incandescently furious over this.

        There are plenty of government institutions I would like to get rid of, but because they are institutions that the government has no business being involved in, not because there are some bad actors there.

        The old joke about lawyers is, “95% of lawyers give the other 5% a bad name”. But don’t let it work that way. Find the individuals who are the bad actors and root them out, then try to find decent people to fill in with, but don’t tar the entire group with the broad brush of assumption.

        Social (group) justice is the Left’s schtick. I believe in individual responsibility for an individual’s decisions.

        1. I know at least two decent FBI agents, one of whom is a regular reader here.
          The ATF…. well… it SHOULD be a convenience store. Also everyone I’ve met from there was… uh… not nice. But of course, I haven’t met EVERYONE.

          1. I’ve had to deal with two different ATF investigators for audits on the explosives and firearms licenses at work. Both of them were helpful and courteous. Doesn’t make the process that much less stressful or keep me from believing that ATF shouldn’t be a convenience store.

            1. There’s a couple in Washington State that agree it should be a convenience store– when they saw my husband’s shirt, they immediately wanted to know where we got it, and ordered it then and there.

              I get the idea that they figure that if the job is done by someone who doesn’t wish it was a store, it’ll be much nastier.

        2. This does not preclude, however, dismantling the entire apparatus.
          IMO, the structure, itself, is termite-riddled. Because of that, it’s least dangerous to dismantle, and rebuild from scratch – after putting down a foundation much less prone to the eaters. You might re-use some of the timbers in the new construction, but only after an extreme vetting to ensure none of the rot touched them.

        3. So, how nice: They’re “incandescently furious” about what is going on.

          What the hell are they doing about it?

          I more-or-less fragged my military career by making a nuisance of myself over the IED issue, and being “that guy” who never went with the flow so far as acquiescing to the many and varied stupidities I saw going on around me. I also had the signal experience of finding out that I’d been excluded from involvement in some seriously heinous malfeasance, because the perpetrators flat-out knew I’d turn their asses in, were I to find out or get evidence of what was going on.

          Lower pay-scale minion-class types in government agencies often can’t affect much about what goes on, but they can at least make the attempt. My experience, however, is that most of those who are “incandescent” about this crap don’t do anything tangible about what they see going on, and mostly just talk about it around the coffee maker and water cooler.

          I really refuse to accept that absolutely everyone around this current FBI/DOJ issue with Trump was fully “on-board” with the whole thing, and yet… We’ve seen one guy who stepped up to the plate, ADM Rogers. Where are the rest of these “incandescent” types hiding? Are they waiting for “just the right moment” to do the right thing?

          One thing I can guarantee you: More people knew of all this than anyone wants to admit. You don’t pull off these things without the folks on the left and right flanks knowing full well what the hell you’ve got going. In order for all of this to have happened, there had to be a bunch of people who were willfully, deliberately blind to what people like Strzok were up to.

          It’s just like that crapola the City of Seattle PD tried putting out, about how there were “no racists” on the force, only to have numerous incidents follow where people on the department for years had “suddenly” started demonstrating “racist behavior and unprofessional conduct”. News flash: That didn’t happen because those individuals suddenly flipped a switch marked “Act like a racist ass…”. The guys on their left and right at shift change and in the locker rooms knew full well; they did nothing about it. You ask one of those folks about “why”, and they suddenly get this pursed-mouth look, shy away from your eyes, and don’t want to talk about it, anymore.

          The problem with these institutions, and I include the military, is that we’ve lost (or, arguably, never had… I don’t know; wasn’t around back in “the old days”…) the capacity to self-police across much of our public lives. Teachers knew about Mary Kay LeTourneau; they didn’t do or say anything, until outsiders caught her with her underage victim. Like as not, Larry Nasser’s fellow doctors had some inkling of what he was up to, and studiously looked the other way instead of doing something. Look at the BS surrounding Jerry Sandusky, and then tell me that we don’t have a significant problem. The average modern American apparently lacks the will to do a damn thing about anything wrong they see being done around them–We can’t effectively even protect children from pedophiles in sports, and we somehow think that virtue is going to magically appear when the same population is recruited into law enforcement and intelligence work?

          We’ve got a deep-seated problem, across a broad swathe of our so-called “civilization”, and I’ll be damned if I know how to fix it through some incremental means. The more I see, the more I think we need to burn the whole thing down and start over, one institution at a time.

          On the other hand, as I’ve often said about the military, you don’t get moral improvements on your on-duty behavior, when so much of your recruiting base is effectively morally corrupt. Maybe the general dysfunction of our society is a reflection of who and what we’ve allowed ourselves to become, and what we really need, instead of institutional reform, is societal reform.

          The scary thing is contemplating just how much of the corruption and venality appears to be second nature or default to these people we’ve placed such high trust in. Maybe the answer is not to trust anyone with that sort of power, in the first place…

    2. My eyes were opened to the complete corruption of the FBI when we found out the Boston office of the FBI had been covering up John Connolly’s involvement with the murder and conspiracy to commit murder of wife’s uncle. They should have convicted the entire office of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. When you toss in instances like the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents, where decisions were so bad that it practically requires a corrupt bureaucracy and management to screw up so thoroughly by the numbers; then it’s pretty plain to conclude the entire organization is bad.

      1. Peter Grant’s column today:
        https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2018/02/so-much-for-fbis-oath-of-office.html

        He’s quoting about the Malheur occupation from the Oregonian. This is the Portland paper lovingly called the Fishwrap. They’re as pro-establishment as they come, but the FBI lost them. I had serious doubts about the Finicum shooting, but nothing says “It’s not going to be a clean takedown” quite like telling the State SWAT officers to remove the body cameras. The no-recording, and interview-in-group also gives that wonderful aroma of obstruction.

        Hell, I’ve had low opinions of the BLM people (Land Management here), but I’m starting to get nervous about dealing of Forest Service people…

            1. It’s a term used to describe those folks who…well, their other choice would probably be a mall cop, but forest service has better benefits and you’re more likely to have a real gun.

          2. A while ago, I was on the local volunteer fire department. Southern Oregon has the Or Dept of Forestry handling a bunch of the national forests here, but there’s a good chunk of Forest Service administered land around. So, I had a fair amount of dealings with ODF and USFS. Actually got along with both groups, but I seldom had to talk to someone above crew-boss.

            Never had to deal with the Squirrel Cops, and plan to keep it that way. ODF handles enforcement (usually burn violations) around here, and they’re local. That’s a big plus.

        2. The BLM (original meaning) has never been on my warm and fuzzy list. Some individuals, and some activities, yes, but as a whole? Nope, especially not after the crazy rich guy with the cow-phobia* got them to do a lot of shady stuff in Nevada and parts of UT and ID.

          *Seriously. They guy really had/has an irrational fear and hatred of domestic cattle. He wants sheep off public land, but he absolutely roared/roars about cattle.

          1. Knew some of the people directly affected.
            Can vouch.

            Heck, the BLM was bad back when Bush I was president. (And well before.). I recall having to get the horses loaded up and out to the range at a moment’s notice. (There was an environmental “activist” who liked to open gates between grazing allotments, and call the BLM to alert them that cattle were being illegally grazed on the wrong allotments. If we weren’t actively out there fixing it by the time BLM got out there, we were looking at thousands of dollars in fines, plus loss of grazing rights. And that’s one of the nicer stories I have to share about the BLM. Or the environmentalist, for that matter. She don’t get me started about Clinton’s damned wolves.)

              1. At a guess, because they had ample reason to believe that BLM would be blind to such evidence and all trials would occur in BLM courts.

                Remember, BLM, like EPA, often worked in collusion with environmental activists under the assumption that all activists’ motives were noble and all corporations/landowners’ motives were corrupt.

              2. That’s a fire hazard– although recognizing that became a lot less common when Clinton ordered a ton of old logging roads trenched across– and there are frequently easements for other folks to travel along the path.

                It got bad enough in some places that you put a chain on the gate, and then anybody who had a right to go through it would cut a link and put their lock on it.

                1. I’ve been told that, in such situations, it’s amusing to apply a bolt cutter and replace with an identically looking lock. Not that I would recommend doing such …

                  2. Maybe I’ll pass on the suggestion that they buy the same brand the FS is using, and cut a link on the opposite side– so you can position it so they can’t see the second lock…..

                2. We do that for the house. Our own padlock, one for Utility Company A, and another for Utility Company B. B mislocked the thing last time, but I had the combination and didn’t raise hell. No guarantees if there’s a next time. I had to raise hell when A screwed up (locked several links up). I made a supervisor come out and unscrew it. Somebody got in trouble…

                  1. It’s surprising easy to mislock a string of padlocks. That’s why our preferred method is a short length of chain between each padlock. When we do accidentally lock someone out, if at all possible the person responsible has to go back to correct it.

                    1. Good idea! We keep it tight for the winter, so we can wrap the three locks in waterproof locks (thawing a rainsoaked/frozen lock is high on the “You have to fix this, NOW!” list.) I’ll have to cut come links to set that up, after I’m back in the shop. (Timeout to get the other eye polished and buffed.).

              3. iirc from some racing reports from back when, it is because you were not allowed to lock them.
                I know during desert racing you had to open and close the gates or be penalized, and it got annoying when you were following right behind a guy, about to pass and you came to a gate.Both had to stop, someone get out, pull through, close it and continue. The one behind went from knocking on the rear bumper to quite a distance behind. Especially if it was a single seater chasing someone with a co-driver/navigator.
                The BLM on the other hand would lock them and killed a few small races (hare scrambles by local clubs, etc) by just locking the gates to deny access even if they had open access rules for the area and the clubs had grandfathered permits. The BLM feels it is Their Land, and the rest of us can just sod off.

                1. One fire, we were working structure protection on a tableland; the slope below was lots of juniper and brush, and we were trying to keep a house. One outbuilding burned, but at the end, we saved the house, using all our water. Somebody was monitoring BLM (who were a quarter mile back, doing nothing useful), and heard the comment “Well, the rurals are bugging out”.

                  We weren’t happy. Fortunately for all concerned, our chief didn’t hear the radio call. Not quite sure what he’d do with a pulaski (axe/mattock combination; handy for digging line in grass).

                  We don’t have much BLM land nearby, but there’s more than I’d like.

                  1. “insert Pulaski here” I’d pay to see that.
                    I deal with firefighting chemnicals daily. We actually sold a few pulaskis with a job we did when I was still in Texas.
                    And any BLM land is too much.

            2. Yeah, one of the twits up in Washington state was the BLM.

              I can’t remember which agency the guy planting lynx hair from the preserved skin in headquarters was….

              1. That wasn’t just “a twit”, singular: It was seven different individuals from three separate agencies, Federal and state:

                http://citizenreviewonline.org/Dec_2001/rare_lynx_hairs.htm

                “The previously unreported Forest Service investigation found that the science of the habitat study had been skewed by seven government officials: three Forest Service employees, two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials and two employees of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
                The officials planted three separate samples of Canadian lynx hair on rubbing posts used to identify existence of the creatures in the two national forests.”

                Do note the “punishments” meted out to these fine exemplars of public service:

                “The employees have been counseled for their actions and banned from participating in the three-year survey of the lynx, listed as a threatened animal under the Endangered Species Act. Federal officials would not name the offending employees, citing privacy concerns.”

                I know people involved in the Spotted Owl BS who could tell you of very similar governmental misconduct in all three agencies, plus a few others. I don’t have their permission to give details of that, however, and I don’t have exact open-source information to back up what I was told. However, suffice it to say that the lynx thing wasn’t the first time this sort of thing has been done…

                1. Now I remember, they declared it had too many agencies with access so they couldn’t be “sure” who had done it.

                  I am pleased and impressed that they actually did an investigation, and found people– noting the date, I guess they got scared.
                  That’s about the time they started leaning really heavy on the Tribal Fishing bs. (Same fraud, too.)

                  I wish it was hard to find similar fraud in “environmental” stuff.

                  1. The people who did it are still hard at work, in those agencies. They were, significantly, not fired.

                    But, accountability is not for government employees, unless you’re the wrong sort of employee, like a Republican conservative who falls foul of the department SJW.

                    Keep an eye on whether or not the EPA assclowns behind the Gold King Mine disaster get so much as their bonuses cut. Which, if I remember where I saw it, I can show you that they got for FY2015.

                    1. They’re in the Endangered Species group.

                      That’s like looking at the Marines for “what armed Federal employees look like.”

                      There’s a very heavy, and open–heck, proud!– POV.

              1. the DNR in Michigan re-introed wolves up here and lied about it for years.
                got whistleblown and still tried to deny it.
                Was shocked when a wolf got a calf south of here in Peshtigo, WI, and the WI DNR said “Yep, definitely a wolf”, but they might be blaming the critters on the Michigan DNR packs expanding.

                1. There’s something weird going on where wolves are concerned. Absolutely no restocking here (knew some DNR people), and yet I know a fellow who swears that he saw two take down a calf. We do have coyotes, but the description he gave sounded like red wolves. Nor was he the only one to claim to have seen something like them.

                  It could be possible that there was some sort of coyote-red wolf mix that accidentally bread back to red wolf, but we wondered if it was just a case of some wolves who always survived down in the swamp and were never really wiped out.

                  There’s all sorts of critters that aren’t supposed to be here down in the swamp and sloughs. Such was the case with catamounts and bears, which the experts said weren’t here, but while we saw and heard catamounts and bears, we never saw the first expert.

                  1. Don’t know where you are, but…

                    First, an essay by a wildlife biologist that’s alarming reading:

                    Click to access Geist-when-do-wolves-become-dangerous-to-humans-pt-1.pdf

                    There’s no such thing as a “red wolf” — DNA tests found it was just a wolf/coyote mix (and IMO calling wolves and coyotes separate species is like calling Labs and Beagles separate species). Most southern coyotes have tan leg markings (northern coyotes often don’t) and if you mix that tanpoint gene with the light base coat common in wolves, you get red-legged wolves. It’s no different from the tanpoint gene in dogs; in fact it may have originated from a domestic dog cross, as did the black color now found in wolves. (A large population of coyotes in… I think it was Texas …were DNA’d and 26% were found to have domestic dog DNA — from crosses about 2000 years ago. They should check ’em around Los Angeles, they’ll find a lot more dog DNA, and recent.)

                    The “reintroduced” wolves are McKenzie grays — they’re twice the size of the lower-48-native timber wolf, and have pretty much killed those off, along with most of the coyotes (at the time there was still a healthy population of timber wolves in Montana, but they were so shy they were almost never seen, other than by wildlife cams. The new wolves are bold enough to stalk humans. One left footprints on my neighbor’s porch, and we’re just a mile from town.) They’ve been sighted as far from Yellowstone as Colorado and Nebraska. The “new” Michigan wolves have colonized Minnesota and have taken several hundred head of livestock, so are not exactly a minor nuisance.

                    Further south there are “Mexican gray wolves” (which look to me like they have a lot of coyote in them, and probably some domestic dog) and I’d be very surprised if their true range isn’t much larger than the official maps. So, wolves in bayou country? Probably so, but very shy of humans, to the point of being presumed absent.

                    1. Interesting. We had a problem for a while with dog/coyote mix and just plain feral dogs. Those have no fear of humans. OTOH, we’d have the occasional bear track in the back yard when I was growing up.

                    2. There were timber wolves in Idaho, too.
                      But they stayed away from humans and livestock, and didn’t devastate the deer and elk populations.
                      So they didn’t really count.
                      (Also, the BLM and FS couldn’t see them from inside their trucks.)

                    3. The ones they introduced to western Washington walked up to my parents’ back door the week before last Christmas.

                      Same one that was walking down the middle of the road shortly before dusk, in a minor snow-storm, a few hours earlier. I wear a size eight shoe, and his print was wider across than any point on my shoe. Have the picture somewhere.

                      About three miles by the road from town, but a house an 8th of a mile up the hill, a quarter mile down the hill, and pretty regularly every quarter mile all along that road.

                      Yeah, just waiting for some SOB to ask why I stopped taking long walks, and why the kids weren’t allowed to play outside anytime near dusk, and run inside the second they see a “dog” that isn’t one of my dad’s.

                  2. Everyone I know, including me, has seen wolves in my area of CNY. NYDEC says there aren’t any here. Wolves and coyote and dogs are different, though they can all apparently interbreed.

                    Idiot environmentalists also insist that rattlesnakes should be reintroduced and not eliminated. And NYDEC agrees. There are a lot of non-poisonous snakes that can, and do, fill the ecological niche. There are reasons people hunted rattlesnakes to extinction locally.

                    2. That would mean introducing the eastern diamondback, right?

                      AKA, the thing that is the size of a big summer sausage, and about five foot long for a normal one? (only snake I’ve ever seen that LOOKS fat)

                      *shudder*

                      Yeah, they’ll do just like Washington state– where they’ve finally admitted there are wolves in eastern Washington, but only so they can start shipping them to western!

                  3. To quote the great poet Baxter Black, they’re just hard to see from the road.

                    Also, if you officially recognize them, it triggers the endangered species junk.

                    While if it was a “strangely large coyote,” or “a dog coyote cross,” it’s a normal pest which can be killed without any paperwork if you and yours are under attack.

                  4. I doubt it was some cross, but you never know. Coyotes will avoid wolves because wolves will normally kill coyotes on sight.
                    There have been lots of things they say were gone and find they never left.

                    We have big cats up here as well, and they denied those existed (an uncle saw one in the late 70’s) but as now everyone seems to have a camera, and game cams are big with the hunters, they had to finally admit the beasts were up here. Those were not brought in, they were always here, but denying it kept them from having to police them or admit you lost a cow/pig/goat/pet to the things. but even with the “explosion in numbers” seeing one is a rare thing.
                    One is at my uncle’s camp, but he has only glimpsed it once, but he sees the wolves often. He does come across cat sign all the time though.

                  1. do your farmers et al shoot those with collars every chance they get?
                    After finally admitting them, the DNR then got in a huff as those wearing radio collars were ending up dead with the collars cut off and tossed into the rivers.
                    MN was receiving a few of our problem wolves (and a few time we got theirs). Those with collars tend to be moved from state to state to state, as they find killing livestock and pets easier than wildlife.

          2. Oh, the perpetual overgrazing myth. And the desert tortoise myth. Yeah, lot of koolaid there, and ulterior motives. (Turns out there was a solar power company expecting to get use of the Bundy lease. Never mind that solar facilities as done today are scorched-earth environmental disasters.)

            On the desert tortoise:
            https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/10776/10049
            TL;DR: tortoises feed on dung, not plants. The more cattle, the more tortoises, and v.v.

            Further, there used to be ~120M bison; there are now ~85M cattle on the same range. Bison eat about double what cattle do, which should tell you something about that range’s real carrying capacity, and how the hooves-and-dung economy is being starved out. See also a Youtube presentation: “How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory ” — I’ve personally seen how this works when I lived in the desert. So long as the sheep came through regularly, we had grass and wildflowers. Once the sheep stopped coming, it soon degraded down to weeds.

          3. The BLM was bad in the 70s. I heard stories about how the BLM was moving against ranchers who owned property in the middle of federal land. They refused right of ways to the privately owned property and a lot of other actions that were illegal (or barely legal).

        3. Oh, read in the comments on Dave’s post: apparently Carter Page — the Trump guy who was averred to have had shady dealings with the Russians to the point he was accused of being an actual Russian agent to the FISA court — was actually an under cover EMPLOYEE of the FBI from 2013 until March 2016. He joined the Trump campaign in April and was described as an agent in October 2016.
          https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/05/in-march-2016-carter-page-was-an-fbi-employee-in-october-2016-fbi-told-fisa-court-hes-a-spy/

          Fox and Sarah can play Pollyanna.

  8. Dateline Jericho.

    The authorities have had the gates reinforced and the guards doubled. No real trouble from the rabble outside the wall is expected.

    In other news, there seems to be a surge in the popularity of the trumpet, with many amateur craftsmen producing them at low cost, sometimes even simply giving them away.

    And now the weather…

  9. Can’t say anything that comes out will be a surprise to me. Living in New Orleans did for any of that. Add Chicago to the mix work the Clintons stirring the pot? How could anyone be surprised?

      1. But will there be? It mostly seems awful quiet still. Shouldn’t there be arrests or something already?

        This waiting is frustrating. And scary. If nothing happens again, like other times in recent history (she breaks the law, she not only gets not punished for it but still is allowed to run for president…) – what then?

        I don’t have all that much hope for my own country, or for Europe as a whole (some bright spots, some of the old Iron Curtain countries seem to have some sense) but I DO NOT want to see USA fall too. Please don’t.

        1. You just asked the very important question that we all fear to hear the answer to.

          And what will happen afterwards, if the G-men hold the line?

          1. Doubly frustrating because it’s FBI. FBI which used to be the hero of all those stories. The untouchables, the ones who could not be corrupted but could be called to help when the rot set in locally.

            Too many stories.

            Shame, really. Should have seen it coming, maybe, though. Too big, too powerful an organization. Too tempting, that power, for the ones who like power, they’d flock to it and they often aren’t that trustworthy as individuals, less so in groups.

            But damn, anyway.

            1. Yep. Reason I’m probably tossing story that was 90% done. I can’t suspend my own disbelief to finish editing.

                2. Could go a bit into why there is a new, perhaps smaller one too. And about the tightrope dancing between enough power to achieve things vs the dangers getting that power brings.

            2. Thing was, that was never–quite–the reality of the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover had his own set of weird obsessions, like his refusal to admit that the mafia existed until the 1950s, the files he kept on nearly everyone in Washington and almost certainly used to blackmail people, and his view of the Civil Rights Movement as merely a Communist front while dismissing the Klan as a problem until he was forced to do so.

              1. Yes, it was known, and visible for anybody who cared to look. But it wasn’t all that much in your face so in some way getting this confirmation is disappointing. It’s maybe a bit as if some admired sports hero was finally fully exposed as having always been a wife beater and a bully in his private life – the rumors had always been there, but you had hoped they were just rumors and maybe some temporary lapse now and again. But now it looks like it really was, and had always been, an ongoing pattern.

              2. Not related directly, but another tune comes to mind….

                o/` G-Man Hoover’s getting moody.
                Got his men on double duty.
                Trying to find out… Who’s Yehudi?! o/`

              3. No, but it’s the story told through dozens if not hundreds of movies and TV shows.

                The Feds coming in and solving a case the locals can’t or won’t, using near magical levels of expertise and supreme competence.

              4. But the Mafia doesn’t and never did exist. I knew that as a kid. We all knew that. I mean, alls you had to do do was ask anyone in it if the Mafia existed and they’d tell you “No!”

                Standard joke often used by friends and family. (The “alls” is not a mistype…)

                1. I should mention that I knew people whose fathers worked in NYC. Didn’t have offices or regular hours, or job titles and companies, but had to go to “the City”, sometimes at odd hours, to conduct “business.”.

            3. The leadership got picked by Obama– of course he was able to screw things up.

              The thing is to clean out the rot, not burn down the house.

                1. Given that the infestation that gave us the FBI issues was nation-wide, I am quite obviously not going to go with the “burn it down” idea.

                  1. I figured establishing an armed perimeter with sharpshooters around the Hoover Building, then firing incendiaries into the building, would work well enough. I mean look how well it worked for the FBI at Waco. Besides, an article in the Onion from a few years back mentioned that “Study Finds Controlled Washington, D.C. Wildfires Crucial For Restoring Healthy Political Environment.”

                    1. More and more The Onion appears to be less satire and more real news. Sounds like a reliable study!

            4. Director Hoover was a PR genius. Also a bit of an assh*le. All LEO agencies need to be watched, all the time. Most of them are better than the BATF (+whatever they’ve added this week), and worse than their image.

              2. At this point the only Federal agencies I trust even slightly are the Air Traffic Controllers and maybe the Center for Disease Control.

                1. The CDC recently had to remind its people that using certain words (such as “Climate Change”) made it less likely that they’d get funding. I can’t remember what all they’ve been doing lately, but they’ve been conducting a number of studies that aren’t related to communicable diseases. For instance, the study that determined that about 1.6% of the population has same sex sexual attraction was a CDC study. Was it a useful study? I’ll buy the argument that it was. I’m not averse to knowing the percentage. But why was the CDC the outfit conducting it?

                  1. The study was about sexual behavior and how it relates to sexual attraction, which is important for figuring out how STDs might spread, and which is very much within the CDC’s purview.

                    1. Yes, but I remember when the CDC claimed at AIDS could only be spread by homesexual encounters. That was the Received Wisdom for quite some time, before it unhappened.

                      That’s just one of the several things that cause me to rate “information” from the CDC as equivalent to “internet folklore.”

                      There’s plenty of swamp to be drained at the CDC.

                  2. Same reason that they are still pissed about the restrictions on self defense as a health issue, why they have redefined your BMI as a disease (and have no interest in figuring out something that actually correlates to either health or your actual bodyfat), why they studied bird infidelity…..

                    But they’re actively channeling people with an infectious disease into the places where already sick or injured people are. While screaming about the 1918 flu, and how the really stupid thing they did then was…put the flu patients in with everyone who was sick or injured.

                    1. Older son has a BMI of something like 37. Even his instructor for nutrition said “that’s ridiculous.”
                      Mind you, he gained weight in third year, because he’s grabbing food where he can and it’s often not low carb. BUT I suspect his bmi is never below around 29 or so. Why? BUILT LIKE A BRICK SH*THOUSE.
                      Dan and I used to make book off “guess your weight people.” At 137 lbs, which is my healthy weight, which I’ll probably never see again, the most common guess was 80 lbs. You could count all my bones. BUT I am muscular, and have very dense-strong bones. So does Dan. Robert got that in spades. So he’s now SLIGHTLY overweight, but the BMI (not properly calculated) is through the roof. Because, well, yes, he’s a dwarf. A 6’1″ dwarf, but a dwarf. His BROTHER is the elf.

                    2. I had a friend go in and get his bone density/fat percentage/muscle density tested. He figured out, based on those numbers, that he’d have to have 0% body fat and probably half his muscles gone to have a BMI that wasn’t “overweight.”

                      Question: can your older son float in water? Apparently my dad couldn’t until he hit middle age and actually gained some weight.

                    4. I know that I could float at one time, because the summer camp I attended required proof of that ability before permitting anyone’s swimming in the lake, but as I acquired my adult mass I pretty much lost all ability to float. I was a runner and my feet, legs and hips tended to drop immediately in the water, my torso following almost as fast as there was nearly no body fat there, either. Only my head would float, so draw what conclusions you wish.

                    5. Floating with only your head above water is still floating and IIRC is very common.

                    6. None of my maternal uncles can– I am assuming you mean Sarah’s eldest, though. (I think it hit the wall for replies.)

                      Our eldest boy is four, and the whole “try to float” thing takes a little more concentration on staying calm than he can manage.
                      *picture frantic flailing and howls about “look! WATER!! YAYYAYAYA!”*

                  3. Depends upon when the study was done. Given the strong correlation between sexual orientation and the original spread of a certain immune disorder, knowing the level of same sex attraction would have epidemiological value.

                    1. I remember thinking at the time, “Who would have ever imagined that sharing intravenous needles or having sex with thirty, forty strangers over a weekend, using a waste disposal port, could have deleterious effect?”

                      Oddly obscured in reporting of the era was that eschewing those two categories of behaviour greatly reduced your potential risk.

                    2. Nod, we had all those screams of “Anybody Can Get AIDS” without much info about how people got AIDS.

                      Then people started screaming about “Fear Of People With AIDS”.

                      You have a deadly disease out there and nobody “knows” how it is spread, then of course people will be avoiding sufferers of the disease. 😦

                    3. Yeah, absolutely every example they had in the movie at school was stuff like “nurse that got infected from a needle prick”.

                      And then that 80s hollywood movie with the guy whose innocent life was destroyed by HIV… totally ignoring the plothole that…well, there’s a reason his behavior was frowned on. It wasn’t “because everyone is poopie heads.”

                    4. Bu-bu-but it starred Tom Hanks! And had a theme song by Bruce Springsteen!!!! Only a h8er wouldn’t want to throw all the money in the world at the problem!

                      The inability of the Medical System to effectively absorb and use that money, nor the many illnesses, such as childhood leukemia or MS, which would have gone unfunded is the kind of argument only a h8er could make.

                    1. Gun control? You mean the ability to put three shots at twenty-five feet into a cluster that can be covered with a quarter?

            5. pohjalainen, what you have to remember is this: Most of those stories about the FBI and their heroism? Pure propaganda, paid for and supported by the FBI itself. They’ve always been political, always been crooked, and always been untrustworthy.

              1. It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that’s all Bones was. I usually detect that sort of thing far more quickly.

            6. Hoover has very influential in the history of the FBI’s corporate culture. He liked hiring certain sorts of people, and so hands on regarding professional development that he would adjust people’s ties. The allegation that he was blackmailing federal members of legislature is thus troubling.

              The FBI has done good work. a) If they are responsible for minimizing kidnapping for ransom. b) The work infiltrating and disabling certain white supremacist domestic terrorist groups.

              However, there is also evidence for bad works. a) They didn’t do much against the white supremacist terrorists when the Democrats were still benefiting from the terrorism, and perhaps even needed it to stay viable as a party. b) Leaking Nixon’s stuff looks pretty suspect considering the stuff the FBI seems to have help cover up for previous Presidents.

              Hoover was very invested in PR, and shaped the FBI to seek it. So the FBI has good PR. But some of that PR is based on realities of decades ago. That the FBI may have found good recruits in the past does not mean it must do so in the present. Compare the real value of an Ivy League Bachelor’s, then and now.

              And I suspect the FBI may have advocated for SESTA as a way to go after critics. OTOH, maybe the FBI aren’t the brightest bulbs when it comes to tech.

              1. The FBI seems to have always been several different bureaus at once. Depending on who was in charge of a regional office, the experience of working there could be vastly different. The same person could be very competent in one area of investigation and very incompetent in another. Offices used to be so anxious to appear busy that they encouraged agents to hang out downtown doing nothing — anything except coming into the office between showing up in the morning and at the very end of the day.

                So it’s not surprising that you could end up with some agents crooked and other agents straight as arrows.

                1. What we’d need is more stories of those straight arrows – who either find out or know that the organization they work for is seriously crooked in some ways, and either try to do something about it or maybe just try to do meaningful work in the system in spite of it because they think that what they do (because the character is one who deals mostly with the morally clear stuff, solving straightforward crimes) is important enough that they just have to tolerate the bad in order to keep doing it.

                  But that would be a good setting for both the darker type of thrillers and mysteries as well as for dark comedy: a Retief type agent, somebody is both straight (in some ways) and clever enough to be able to run rings around his crooked superiors and foil their plans without them getting wise to it.

                  And if something like that would become popular enough it might help with foiling the image of the real FBI, and get people more receptive to what needs, or at least should be done, when something like this comes out.

                  1. Come to think of, perhaps you could claim that the best part of X-files was that at least it didn’t treat the bureau as something lily white. They were as deep in the mess as any other part of government in that series, from what I remember (I watched mostly just the monster of the week episodes after the first couple of seasons as it became pretty clear there was no real overarching arch story in it, or at least not one the series creators and makers would have thought through… so not much hope of getting a satisfying ending to it either. And I want those endings. Hate cliffhangers or not getting a real solution.).

                    But off hand that is about the only one of the really popular series/movies with that image I can think of.

        2. I’m hoping they’re waiting on the last of the DOJ IG investigations to wrap up and submit final reports to Congress and the AG. If the AG or Congress fail to act at that point, then I will be very upset.

            2. ,,,and a goodly number of those ammo boxes and spam cans are labeled in Cyrillic.

              The irony, it burns…

              1. Right now as the public story goes (Russia hacked etc) the Russians have done more to save the United States than any federal agency.

            3. Unfortunately, the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia is doing its best to ensure that someone is forced to turn to the ammo box anyway. The state leadership in Sacramento is pretty much going to force a confrontation with Trump one way or another. It’s only a matter of time before this all blows up.

        3. Shouldn’t there be arrests or something already?

          No, because who would believe orange Hitler? Look for a steady drip, drip, drip of revelations. Again, think of the average person who is mostly uninformed about the state of this (or any other) country — arrests now, no matter how well-deserved, can easily be spun as Trump is overreaching.

          Pile up enough irrefutable evidence that Joe and Jane Average can understand, then the arrests will come.

          2. Yep.

            He’s also establishing a standard as following the rules to the letter when he’s REALLY pissing them off– and he’s got decades of the Dems screaming about how the FBI is doing bad stuff that he can now throw at a Dem infested FBI corruption mess, once it’s very well established.

            1. And this is critically important. All of the stuff that the Dems are whining about? Trump has basically said, “Send me a bill so we can do what you want legally. No more of this quasi-legal executive order nonsense.” He said he’d enforce the marijuana laws, and then reminded Congress that he’s not the one who makes the laws. He said he was going to cancel Obama’s illegal DACA EO, and then offered Congress an even *better* offer than what Obama’s EO had provided (in exchange for his wall, of course).

                1. The problem that I see is that too many people don’t already know/believe that they are lying cheating twits; if they now claim to be honest, the LIVs will not see anything “different” from before.
                  After all, “nobody ever indicted Hillary, so she must be innocent” was the rallying cry across the land (heard it from my own MiL).

                  1. “After all, “nobody ever indicted Hillary, so she must be innocent” was the rallying cry across the land (heard it from my own MiL).”

                    THIS.

          3. This is what I think — hope — is happening. They HAVE to get enough overwhelming evidence to PROVE that the arrests are not just politically motivated. It’s hard to watch such a slow process, but…what’s that saying about the mill of the gods?

              1. I’ve been hitting the Diner’s backrooms and the Bar a few times a day. Some of the best news aggregators about this stuff I’ve come across, and with more informed commentary than I’m likely to find in the news.

                1. *looks at the group here*

                  Biggest advantage I can see is that there is no shame, here, about putting forward countering information.

                  Yeah, there’s a lot of “me, too”– but there’s a lot of disagreement, too.

                2. “… with more informed commentary than I’m likely to find in the news.”

                  There’s someplace in the news that you find informed commentary? Surely not the NY Times nor Washington Post nor CNN nor any of the Big Three networks!

                  2. baen’s bar: bar.baen.com

                    Tom Kratman’s forum and the general politics forum are decent, if eclectic, places for news aggregation

            2. The question that I keep seeing is “What is Sessions doing?”, with varying amounts of frustration.

              The answer I keep getting: “He still has a job, so he’s doing what POTUS wants, very quietly.”

              1. I have this strange flashback to 1970’s record commercials. Imagine the evidence being carefully collected. A lot of it. Overwhelming. No way to cover it over or explain it away, and then the Big Reveal… but all I can hear is the announcer.. “Sessions presents…”

                1. I fear we’re all going to be disappointed. This is too big, and they’re going to have to try to cover it up, or be faced with rebuilding key institutions like the FBI from the ground up, in other formats. It won’t happen. They’ll reform around the edges, in hopes that it will be enough, but… Nope. Housecleaning will, I fear, require a full-scale revolution on “our” parts, if you want liberty and freedom to prevail. Otherwise, plan on getting fitted out for a yoke…

                  1. I agree they’ll try that, Kirk, but I don’t think it will work. Your assumptions — and theirs — are circa 1970s. It’s different now, and it’s impossible to keep these things fully hidden. Trump is not an aberration. He’s just the first. If this doesn’t get cleaned up they’ll get FAR WORSE (from their perspective) than Trump. Horns first, at that.

                    1. They should have begun housecleaning back when we found out about Felt. They didn’t, and that’s why this cancer spread to the point we’re at now. I fear the political will ain’t there, and the agencies are going to throw up that we don’t dare put them down the way they should be, ‘cos “reasons”. Trump may not buy them, but to truly deal with the FBI/DOJ/Intel realm the way it needs to be, he’s going to need cooperation from the Congress. Which he’s unlikely to get.

                      Huge mess, coming. How we’ll navigate out of it? No idea. We may not.

                    2. Felt was a result of the Hoover cancer being allowed to metastasize. Nixon and Congress replacing Hoover with an outsider seems to have been an attempt to fix.

                      Our country has a long history of continuing on with some institutions too deeply broken for an easy fix. Weak medicine may suffice, and we might get away with prescribing strong medicine without needing to get out the strongest. Prognosis unclear, it may not be as bad as it could be. I may have a bias towards advocating for extremely weak dosages.

                    3. Trump wasn’t the first. Romney was the first. But the Dems couldn’t even suffer him to disrupt what they were doing. So we ended up with Trump, instead.

                      It’s like the inverse of Sacramento, where there currently doesn’t appear to be any leash on what the Dems are doing, and conservatives are grateful that Moonbeam is in place to keep the State Senate and Assembly from *really* going off the rails.

                  2. In the darker wanderings of the internet the talk is the stink is so bad it’s being slow walked out a piece at a time so the public won’t go into a state of shock and disbelief. And Sessions is putting together all the puzzle pieces for the final act.

                  3. “It won’t happen. They’ll reform around the edges, in hopes that it will be enough, but… Nope. ”
                    I have begun to understand why the Old Testament is so full of periodic purges of the Hebrew “deep state” and “too big to fail” malefactors.

              2. Okay, if the allegations are correct, these aren’t necessarily the smartest people with perfect tradecraft. But, they somehow managed to function in an environment where they are responsible for making charges stick to people, and that can’t have been all stealing credit and compliant judges.

                I don’t think I would be successful if I were in Sessions shoes. Okay, not a lawyer, and pretty much zilch relevant experience. I think it is a legitimately challenging task.

                If it takes time, caution, and not shouting out what you are doing to everyone, it does.

                The folks talking lynching him for going after weed? Remember the California sheriff the feds busted for meth recently, who’d also doing illegal even in California things with pot? Obama’s sweetheart not-prosecuting-even-if-still-federally-illegal stuff undoubtedly has feds who were making money those ways. Find them, arrest them, use them to make a case against others. That is what Sessions may be up to. The stoner pearl clutching may well be part of the counter administration information warfare. But then, I would say that.

                1. Obama’s sweetheart not-prosecuting-even-if-still-federally-illegal stuff undoubtedly has feds who were making money those ways.

                  Or resources– either way, nail them.

                2. I was all for legalizing weed and putting an end to the more-stupid parts of the War On Drugs… UNTIL I learned that the major funding for the legalization push is coming from Soros via his Open Society Foundation.

                  Anything Soros wants that badly is not good for Western Civilization.

                    1. An acquaintance in Portland (who is in a position to know about it) tells horror stories of what the new stronger weed is doing to kids… we already knew that normal weed can act like the canary in the coal mine and expose latent psychosis, particularly in immature brains. This new extra-strong stuff takes it further — affected kids develop a destructive body dysphoria and cut off their own fingers, ears, and penises (and by the time they sober up and go to Emergency, it’s too late to do anything about it).

                  2. I agree that bad things have come of the legalization of marijuana, but IMO that is because we clamped down on the serious discussion and experimental laws (Federalism is a Laboratory TM) back in the fifties-seventies, and never settled things medically, philosophically, or rationally; we just substituted “law” (cf. Abortion) for personal responsibility and informed action.
                    So, now we’ll have the discussion and maybe make a better decision, but there are factors in the mix that simply weren’t there 50 years ago.

                    1. Look, I’m for legalization. BUT I think the kids need to be informed about the bad effects. Just because I think people have the right to go to hell anyway they choose, doesn’t mean I’ll lie and tell them it’s heaven at the end of that road.

                    2. My problem with legalization of Pot (and other drugs) is that “we won’t teach the kids about the real dangers of usage” and society will have to “pay the bill” for their idiocy.

                      Now, if society decided to “write off the idiots and let them die in the gutter”, I might accept it (but not like).

                      I just don’t believe that society will “let the idiots die in the gutter”. 😦

                    3. The problem with “telling them it does bad stuff” is the unending stream of hyperbole. We’re having that problem with fentynal (sp?), now. The usual suspects have been screaming that pot is the end of the world for so long that now that we have a drug that is the end of the world, no one is paying attention or believing them.

                3. “But, they somehow managed to function in an environment where they are responsible for making charges stick to people, and that can’t have been all stealing credit and compliant judges.”
                  Some of it was just plain lying.
                  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/
                  “Over the ensuing decades, the criminal-justice system has improved in many significant ways. But shame is still an appropriate response to it, as the Washington Post made clear Saturday in an article that begins with a punch to the gut: “Nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000,” the newspaper reported, adding that “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.”

                  The article notes that the admissions from the FBI and Department of Justice “confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques—like hair and bite-mark comparisons—that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.”

                  That link points back to 2012 coverage of problems with FBI forensic analysis, but the existence of shoddy forensics has been so clear for so long in so many different state and local jurisdictions that the following conclusion is difficult to avoid: Neither police agencies nor prosecutors are willing to call for the sorts of reforms that would prevent many innocents from being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, and neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party will force their hands.”

                  1. I’d consider the rest of the line the Atlantic quoted rather relevant:
                    Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project

                    You know, the Innocence Project. The guys who framed an innocent man so they could get the guilty guy off death row.

                    The actual story at WaPo is about hair match analysis from the 70s not being DNA level accurate, once you dig through the quotes from NACDL and Innocence Project. (no link because of the paywall; bing the address and you can read the catched version, though)

                    ****
                    Given the Atlantic’s tendencies, I wouldn’t trust any other claim in the article unless you can find an independent and very trustworthy support for it.

              3. “The answer I keep getting: “He still has a job, so he’s doing what POTUS wants, very quietly.””

                More likely answer: Vichy Mitchy and the rest of the GOPe have deliberately left impeachment on the table so if Trump did get rid of Sessions the “Saturday Night Massacre 2.0” will justify a reach across the aisle. Trump’s not taking that bait. We’ll see.

                1. Months ago I remember reading that the Senate had told Trump that no candidate to replace sessions would be approved. And Mitch has already made certain that never in recess.

          4. The problem is if that piling up goes past the mid-terms. There could very well be a new set of people in charge of Congress (I’m not even talking about a majority change, just which establishment folks are running things), who will stonewall. You have to get this stuff done in the time between elections.

        4. We won’t. But there might be a bit of unpleasantness. Hold fast. If nothing happens on this it just guarantee the map is about to go arrowy and angry red. But we’ll come back. You can’t kill a dream.

          1. Pardon me, ma’am, but I’m not sure what you mean by ‘arrowy and angry red’. I mean, I think you mean ‘things are about to go generally sideways’ but is this a reference to something specific? Arrows on a map implies troop movements on a battlefield, or the expectation thereof. Am I close?

            2. it’s a sort of version of “27 8×10 color glossy photograph pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one describing what it was”

      2. Being ever so cynical, I also will be unsurprised if there are no big repercussions. Again, living in and around New Orleans for 20 years, kinda jades one’s perspective. In fact, real and justified repercussions would be more of a surprise to me.
        I do hope I am wrong.

        1. There won’t be any repercussions. They’ll just drag things out until the perpetrators retire, or nobody cares any more, or both.

          Meanwhile, their hand-picked successors will be hiding behind their masks, weeviling along to overthrow the United States as a functioning polity.

          3. I don’t think so.
            Trump isn’t the kind to let his enemies prosper. However almost 1/3 of the country thinks he’s evil. About 1/3 would back him if he started cleaning house right now. It’s the middle 1/3 that needs enough evidence that this isn’t just politics as usual – that it’s real corruption – to accept that he’s doing what’s necessary. And most of those don’t follow the document trails or pay very much attention to the 24 hour news cycle.
            Cleaning house with 50/50 split in public opinion could enable legal obstructionism and possibly Impeachment proceedings. 60/40 opinion that there’s real corruption and the house cleaning can succeed.
            So wait for the IG reports. The current drip drip drip (and obvious dithering panic about it from the Dems) is moving opinions in the right direction. More crimes with more identified actors will move it more. If we had the video of Rosenstein threatening Congress, Trump could start now – but we don’t, so we’ll have to be patient a while longer.

        2. Can I match your cynicism with some optimism? I have also lived in New Orleans, and watched the attitude towards Ray Nagan go from “this man is our hero” to “he deserves every moment of his jail term and then some”. It doesn’t happen often enough that a dirty politician gets his just desserts, but it’s not impossible either.

          1. sadly Nagin is still perhaps the best mayor the city has had in my lifetime.
            Not that it is a very high bar to clear, but he did get a bunch of scum out when he cleared out the Brake Tag and Taxi corruption, and stop some of the idiocy of running the Airport.
            Too bad he turned int a typical N.O. politician and had all those people in his past he POed etc.

        3. I feel the same way. And yet, I remember how surprised we were when a case of voter fraud went to trial, not because it happened, but because someone was prosecuted.

      3. For me the biggest wonder is that Trump got elected, he’s able to actually do the work without being obstructed at every single turn, and he’s still alive.

        And for the sake of everyone there, and elsewhere, I sincerely pray that he stays safe and healthy.

        1. I pray for all leadership of the country, because it’s important for us. I prayed for Obama’s safety also, because any “hit” on him would have led to a full-on case of “burn it down” by the usual suspects.

          1. I’m mean. I not only pray for our leadership, I pray that He will make clear to them just what they have done.

  10. Well, perhaps it’s time to disband the FBI entirely and give its role (and any field agents who can be trusted to not be partisan political hacks) to the US Marshals Service. Oh, and completely gut and rewrite the civil service statutes too, while we’re at it…

    2. When I say that, people step back and give me cautious looks.

      The FBI has been caught out too many times. And now they don’t even bother to try to hide their crimes. As a law enfocement agency, the FBI has been ineffective for decades. As a political hammer… the incompetence level has made them ineffective for that, too.

      1. Setting aside dubious and outright unlawful behavior under Hoover, and the recent election-related stuff, the FBI still has a laundry list of embarrassments. Between 1990 and 2010, FBI had (just from memory) Waco, Ruby Ridge, crime lab DNA mishandling, bungling the Olympic Park bombing investigation, bungling the anthrax investigation, pseudo-forensic BS (unscientific methods and unverifiable analyses presented as evidence), and the dubious distinction of finally catching Robert Hanssen.

      2. Not just being brazen about it, but insisting that in this “game” they *will* win because they will outlast all the elected officials. Yes, one of their (former) folks said that.

    4. Turn them into a set of specialized labs and consultants for the locals, with maybe some coordination capability for interstate crimes, while removing their arrest power.

  11. Little List Song

    As some days may happen
    That a victim must be found
    I’ve got a little list
    I’ve got a little list
    Of society offenders
    Who might well be underground
    And never would be missed
    They never would be missed

    There’s weightlifters and bodybuilders
    People of that sort
    Bank robbers who retire to spend
    The minute they get caught
    Bishops who don’t believe in God
    Chief constables who do
    All people who host chat shows
    And the guests who’s on them too
    And customs men who fumbling through your underwear insist
    I don’t think they’d be missed
    I’m sure they’d not be missed

    Chorus: He’s got them on the list
    He’s got them on the list
    And then none of them be missed
    And none of them be missed

    There’s the people with pretentious names
    Like Barack, Hillary, and James
    And the gynaecologist
    I’ve got him on the list
    All muggers, joggers, buggers, floggers
    People who play golf
    They never would be missed
    They never would be missed

    All waitresses who make you wait
    Accountants of all kinds
    And actresses who kiss and tell
    And wiggle their behinds
    And pouncy little singers who to entertain us try
    By dressing up like women and by singing far too high
    And who on close observance must be either stoned or pissed
    I don’t think they’d be missed
    I’m sure they not be missed

    Chorus: He’s got them on the list
    He’s got them on the list
    And then none of them be missed
    And none of them be missed

    There’s the beggars who write letters
    From the inland revenue
    And the gossip columnist
    I’ve got him on the list
    All critics and comedians and opera singers too
    And none of them be missed
    And none of them be missed

    All traffic wardens, bankers,
    Men who sell Venetian blinds
    All advertising chappies
    And Producers of all kinds
    And nasty little editors whose papers are the pits
    Who fill their rags with gossip
    And huge and floppy… ritz.
    And girls who sell the stories
    Of the Dems that they have kissed
    But you must have got the gist
    ‘Cause none of them be missed

    Chorus: You may put them on the list
    You may put them on the list
    And then none of them be missed
    And none of them be missed
    —
    Original song by: Gilbert and Sullivan
    Lyrics altered by various sources

    1. Point of interest: I think Larry Correia would take issue with “accountants of all kinds” being on the list. Similarly, I think it would not go particularly well for whoever tried to “put him underground.”

        2. The problem with accountants is that it’s so hard to tell the difference…

          HP Lovecraft never wrote anything as scary as the “Accounting 101” book I read…

              1. In the annals of Bizarre Turnaround History, the West now looking to African churches (and not the historical ones like the Copts, who are being obliterated by the Muslims) to maintain Christian values and doctrine is rather, um, bizarre. But much appreciated.

                1. Don’t let the bastards drive you out. It would give them way too much satisfaction. Jesus made you Catholic; nobody else has a right to get rid of you.

                  Also, you live where there are some EXCEPTIONAL parishes. Pick one that helps you.

                  I don’t know if I’ve plugged the Institute of Catholic Culture here, but they are a group out of DC that does lots of great talks for parishes, on a variety of levels. You can download audio or watch video. They also have a lot more Byzantine, Melkite, etc. content than one usually finds, and a lot of non-kooky academics. (You have to do a free registration, but it takes about three seconds.)

                  They have a very illuminating 3-part talk by a guy about why Bible scholarship has gotten so weird. Basically, a zillion different layers of national politics, from medieval times on, that invaded the academy.

                  But they have lots of positive learning materials, too. It’s not just defense and apologiae.

                  1. Don’t let the bastards drive you out. It would give them way too much satisfaction.

                    /agree

                    A close second to getting to take over the folks you don’t like is to take over something they love, and drive them out.

                    So don’t let them.

                    (Believe me, I know the pain…we got an extra-long sermon about not demonizing others this week. Where Father spent more than half of it demonizing those who oppose illegals as drunks who hate foreigners, and are full of hate, don’t be hateful. /sigh He really does mean well, so I’m willing to be the grown-up and realize he’s attacking the enemy that makes sense given his bad assumptions, but oy.)

                    Pretty sure you haven’t mentioned ICC before, because I don’t remember hearing about them. 🙂

                  2. For me, it wasn’t so much being driven out, but rather an extended foray into agnosticism. Once I realized that God has a sense of humor (and a rough one, too), I started my way back. But by then, the ALC and LCA had merged, and in the process made it ripe for the neolithic SJWs of the time. I put searching for a church on hold.
                    Out here, we’ve 1 or two local churches (not sure if the Quaker/community church I used to belong to is active any more; they broke my give-a-damn so thoroughly, I’ll never return), with not we really like. It’s a good hour into the city, so $SPOUSE is watching Dr. Charles Stanley. I’ll do some reading, but nothing formal.
                    I’ve heard that the Missouri Synod is still active and halfway decent; there’s a Wisconsin church, but rumor has it that the minister is an arse. Besides, one hour each way.

                    3. BTW you’re very wrong about Dave Freer and the Floppy Camel. First, they’re accusing Dave of blowing the floppy camel’s cover. He didn’t. He and I have discussed it (YES, Dave had enough info, I had same info and had independently figured it out YEARS GO) and Dave said he wouldn’t blow his cover. Lou Antonelli says Dave -_ WHO DIDN’T KNOW LOU THAT WELL — was not his source.
                      And yet you chose to turn on Dave? REALLY? WHY?
                      He wasn’t wrong on Jim Hypocrite Hines, either. Jim did one half-hearted post against MZB, (Dave Freer actually thinks it’s good. BAH) BUT he did a hundred against Larry. You see where his priorities are.
                      Now, I have seen you be sensible here. I don’t know what your investment is on turning on Dave over the Floppy Camel abusive troll, but I want you to know I think WAY less of you for it.
                      Good Day.

                    4. Hmm, don’t know who the Dave Freer post is pointed towards–twern’t me that commented on “Fieldsy”. WordPress acting up again?

                    7. Sarah, I don’t know how the “Array” handle got onto my post. I have *never* used that name; don’t post at Vile 666 or any of the puppykicker sites, and the few comments I make at MGC should always say RCPete. I have one other handle currently in use; at a few sites that are under attack by a cyberstalker, but it’s nothing like that.And no, I’m not the cyberstalker. He tried to go after someone here, and got clobbered.

                      I’ve read Brad’s post on CF, and Dave’s followup, but made no comments as far as I know.

                      So, I should say: “The post at 2/5/2018 7:28PM attributed to Array should belong to RCPete”

                      I hope this clears things up. FWIW, I’m on satellite internet. I usually keep the modem on for a long time (weeks, usually), but I don’t have any guarantees that my IP will be constant. My postings in the next few days will be out of Medford, at the hotel I”ll be staying in.

                      In the CPAP thread in the “State of the Writer” post, I was getting a few posts dropped. I don’t know if this had anything to do with this.

                      Pete

                    8. Pete, I believe you. I suspect due to your eyes, you picked up Array’s name, heaven knows where, and pasted it on your handle.
                      I believe you because analysis of the IP shows it HIGHLY unlikely it’s the same person. Not impossible, there are ways to do that, but considering you’re not one of the most controversial posters here, it seems unlikely.
                      So, that’s fine. But you can understand my distress, right? Because Array’s attack on Dave Freer was VILE and Dave is my brother.
                      So. I hope your surgery goes well, and sorry for jumping all over you.

                    9. I still don’t know how Array turned up; my browser (Pale Moon) autofills with RCPete. I thought it was weird when the comment went into moderation. Searching for Array only shows up in this subthread. My eyes are funky, but not that odd. I hope.

                      FWIW, my other handle is the name of a pet that shows up on the CBS Sherlock Holmes show.

                      Thanks for the good wishes; I can understand you getting ticked off at anybody attacking Dave over this. (Realizes that “ticked off” might be cosmic understatement.)

                    11. Yes, we in Missouri Synod are still alive and kicking. And still human. But still pretty doctrinally sound.

                  3. The main cathedral in Denver is okay. The presence is still attenuated (look, it’s what it is, okay? That’s how I choose) but it’s there. It’s what got me back after a long hiatus. BUT it’s a half hour drive and half hour PARKING so we rarely make it there. Our local one has the feel of “Mega suburban church.” Presence? Maybe. Not strong enough for me to detect.
                    Last week for the first time the guys broached the “conversion” thing. As in “maybe we should.” I had to point out ALL mainstream churches are like that.
                    And that’s where we are.

                    1. Denver’s where I wasn’t going to church, because it was a PITA to find one and attend, and so many of them had interior culture issues (some friends of mine had their wedding rehearsal double-booked because the schedulers didn’t talk to each other and they kept separate books. And they had to get a letter from the bishop to keep the day they’d already scheduled, because somebody wanted to bump it for a community celebration. Oh, and the murals had kids with backwards elbows.)

                      I’ve never had problems with that anywhere else. Just Denver.

                    3. Have you looked for the parishes that offer Latin masses?
                      You can sometimes find decent parishes that way– folks that will travel for Latin are unlikely to put up with varnished protestantism.

                2. Same here. I haven’t willingly set foot in a church (going to keep Mom and Dad off my back doesn’t count) in close to four years now. My problem’s not with God: it’s with the people who claim to follow Him and, increasingly, the people who claim to espouse His Word from the pulpit.

                  1. I’ll simply offer this:
                    When my mom moved out, my dad had a lot of pondering to do concerning his life. For years he had said “I can worship God just as well in the backyard as I can sitting in church with all those hypocrites.”
                    As he did the self-examination, he told me, “The church may be full of hypocrites. So what’s one more?” And he’s been an active participant ever since.
                    If you keep in mind that we’re all sinners, with logs in our own eyes, it’s a lot easier to deal with all those one-eyed folks sitting in the pews and leading the services.

                    (Note, that’s not an endorsement of you’re-ok-we’re-ok, nor of just letting doctrine slide. But humility is a major help.)

                    1. It’s not so much the hypocrites in the pews that bothers me – I’ll be the first to admit that was FAR from a perfect Christian – as it is the fact that I’ve witness multiple congregations blindly follow self-absorbed, narcissistic, and (in one case) sociopathic pastors and whatever hypocrisy and blasphemy (I’m not kidding, the ordained minister in question pointed out into the congregation and proclaimed, “The Messiah is one of you!” during a Christmas Eve service!) they spew forth from the pulpit, and then shun anyone who dares raise a hand and say, “excuse me, that’s not in accordance with the scriptures.”

                    3. I do understand your point*. We left a church for precisely that reason about 15 years ago. That pastor has since retired**. ~I~ wanted to stay and fight him, but the wife said we should leave. We have been happy with where we landed since then. But, I did tell the wife that since we had done it her way once, the next church where the pastor tried to adulterate the Gospel would have to excommunicate me and get a restraining order before I would leave them in the hands of an heretic.

                      (* But, that distinction needed to be made, for clarity, I think.)
                      (** That church encountered other pastoral problems after that. But I think they now have a decent one leading them.)

                      Now that I think about it, my wife (before she was my wife) also left a church because of the pastor they called, and ended up going to another denomination entirely. The church was the only one (except for the other end of the “two point ministry” several miles further away) in that area that was of our general denomination. But, she found a very good church with an emphasis on the Word for the remainder of her time there.

                    4. > “excuse me, that’s not in accordance with the scriptures.”

                      That’s why a friend of mine is not particularly welcome at any of the churches in his town. Almost word for word…

                3. David Weber’s Safehold books dealt with this extensively, and it boiled down to: ” I still believe in God, I just don’t believe these people represent Him.”

                  Been there a while too.

                  1. Well, we’re those people who don’t fit in well. I walked away twice. First, when I was twelve and became Buddhist. Okay, teen insanity. But then I grew up and went back, at 14.
                    I walked away when our minister blamed Sarah Palin for the Giffords shooting FROM THE PULPIT. I stayed away for a year, but I missed it, and I found a decent church. But now ALL churches in our area are going funny…. I’m having to chase the men to go to church and I’m rapidly reaching the point of “I don’t know if it’s doing us any good.”
                    And we were never-fail, every-sunday, even when we went to Disneyland.

                    1. Lotta that going around. There’s a wide divergence between the small groups of mutually supporting believers that were once known as churches and the corporations-with-steeples to which our culture applies that same word, and more people are noticing than have before.
                      I’ve worked for churches, but currently I serve as a minister-at-large (for lack of a better term) not affiliated with a church, serving folks who are likewise unaffiliated — it’s a growing need. I had to really bust my tuchas to work out a way to get decent oversight and accountability (I’ve met me, and I shouldn’t be autonomous), but I did it. Make my money doing something else, of course, but that might be a feature rather than a bug.
                      Interesting time to be alive.

                    2. Sometimes the best way to express your love of His word and your expectations of the best from his worship leaders entails getting up and walking out. Use the time leading up to the next week’s sermon to formulate a simple, concise, emotion-unladen explanation for your disappointment with the offending sermon and your expectations in the future.

                      Don’t leave in a huff, you can take a minute and a huff if that is what is required to make a stately exit while signalling the preacher is speaking outside his expertise.

      1. Someone? Just someone?

        This is the land of self-starters. I figure everybody has a list. Some folks, it’s short and consists of “my ex-wife, her attorney, the judge, the punk who robbed the service station where my sister works, and the other judge.” Other folks it’s longer and less personal.

        The question isn’t who has a list, it’s what’s the execute trigger event for a significant portion of the list-makers?

        1. You’re going on the list!
          (Dang, no videos I can find of the George saying that in The Out Of Towners.)

        2. And REMEMBER – Plan, execute, STFU. No need for groups. Continue until the politicians go back to the Constitution.

          1. As an ancient computer security maxim says, “It’s hard to defend against a highly distributed enemy.”

        3. You’re allowed to make and have lists, unless you’re a student in school, in which case you are automatically considered a criminal.

      2. If you couldn’t generate one millions long, given the budget, you are a much nicer person than I am.

  12. “ maybe that’s why the media is pedaling so hard. They think they can make us believe again and then everything will be fine.”

    No, they think that if they cannot prove useful to their Democrat Overlords they will no longer be protected against the consequences of their actions and inactions. Once you don the kapo‘s tunic you have no choice but to stay useful to your acknowledged master.

    1. Exactly this – when they are no longer serving their purpose, they will be … cut off. No more nice high-paying, high-status jobs, no fawning public, no invitations to the nice parties, where important Dem pols whisper confidingly in their ears…
      Obscurity to the media presstitutes is the fate worse than death.

  13. Ox know: when in harness, pull!

    Media doesn’t see its duty as working for the truth, or they’d be pulling for it.

  14. The Obama regime was using the IRS against Tea Party organizations before there even was a Tea Party. The Obama regime used the BATF to construct a gun-running scheme waaaay back in 2009-2010 to discredit and destroy gun retailers in the SouthWest. Everybody knew Hillary was hinky before the Middle East business, nobody could avoid knowing afterward.

    I am not amazed that the FBI and DOJ are bent. They would have to be, wouldn’t they? All this other shit has been going on in their puddle, nobody got charged, the watch dog is in on it.

    I am not amazed that the MSM is still trying to cover for Obama. They’ve been doing it since the 1960s, there’s no reason to expect they’d stop now.

    Take a look at your country! It HAS to be crooked! There’s no scenario where the shit you see going on every day isn’t part of a criminal enterprise.

    Electric cars, really? Windmills and solar panels? REALLY? There’s ONE web search company, ONE cellphone company, ONE of a lot of things that there would be many more of in an unregulated, open market.

    Any single example can be excused, but -all- of them taken together?

    Here in Canada no one has any doubt that things are crooked. They’ve been fixing the price of BREAD here. Everything in this place costs 10% more than it does in the USA, after adjusting for money differences. The few things that are still made here cost 10% more. We call it the Canada Tax. Its the money you pay because you live here. Really what it is is the money the skimmers skim and the rent seekers rent. Are the Canadian judicial institutions bent? THEY HAVE TO BE. It can’t work any other way.

    Its like France before the Revolution. Legal theft.

    So, am I going to be amazed that Government Official Bob and Government Agency XYZ has been doing wildly illegal shit, trying to crush the Whatever Party? No! Obviously they are! They have to be! Otherwise the sons’ab1tches would be selling pencils on Sparks Street. Obviously the Canadian Media colludes with them. They -own- the Canadian media.

    Here’s my question. Why are you guys still watching TV? It’s like reading Floppy Cameld1ck’s blog. Entirely fact free and designed to hurt you.

      1. Which is why I read the local paper, they do have the news about things like “street closed for this long due to repairs” and so on.

        Besides I get it as a part of my pay. Would prefer that as money, but since that is not an option, you get the paper or you don’t but those are the only alternatives, well, I take the paper.

    3. The political elite and the MSM (but I repeat myself) demand sacrifices on the altars of their idols.

      Andrew Cuomo is playing to his party’s Left-wing base by pushing sea-based wind turbines that will endanger vulnerable fishing areas and produce electricity at $145.90 per megawatt hour when “the average cost of wholesale electricity in the state last year was $36.56.”
      https://nypost.com/2018/02/02/cuomos-latest-green-power-fiasco/

    4. > solar panels?

      Solyndra, anyone?

      An “investigation” poked cautiously at it, threw up their hands, and walked away. And so did everyone else. “Nothing to see here, move along.”

    5. Why watch TV? For the same reason I listened to Radio Moscow. It tells you not only what their big push will be, but what their next one will be as well. Like listening to Baghdad Bob, it’s comical, in a pathetic way.

    6. tv
      Later With Jools Holland
      MAV TV
      How It’s Made
      River Monsters
      Looney Toons
      Speed Week (out of Australia)
      Outrageous Acts Of Science
      F1 racing
      That’s why I watch TV. otherwise I don’t pay it much mind, though way too much money.

      1. > “How It’s Made”

        That show drives me crazy. I understand some of its crew are not native English speakers, but their consistent use of wrong words to describe processes hovers between “stupidly ignorant” and “wilfully misleading.”

        At least twice, they’ve referred to MIG welding as “soldering.” No, I don’t care if some French-Canadian-English dictionary might say that, it’s not the same thing at all.

        1. yeah, also you get some “misleading” things because the people making it were either vague, or refused to fully describe the process and even though they been filming for years, the crews seem to have no clue how to actually make stuff, or what certain things are. {Insert snarc about Frenchie Canukistani folk here}
          Still find it less annoying than the original Mythbusters for mistakes though. Haven’t seen the replacements version, the ads don’t appeal.

        1. Baen published Newt Gingrich’s 1945 Jim Baen talked occasionally about meeting with Gingrich at the capitol building. This was during the Clinton Administration, and he was audited not once, but twice. Odd thing, that.

        2. After Baen Books published Newt Gingrich’s Novel “1945”, Baen Books was hit for no apparent reason by two major IRS Tax audits.

          Plenty of people believe that the Tax audits were ordered by the Clinton White House because of Baen’s “support” of Newt Gingrich.

          1. The thing we learned with Lois Lerner is that these things don’t have to be “ordered” – the orcs are so aligned with the ideology they don’t require instructions to attack.

            1. “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”

              And no one questioned it, among the hundreds involved in Fast and Furious, Gibson Guitars, IRS, etc.

              Lot couldn’t find enough righteous to save Sodom.

            2. That calls for the quote from Gordon R. Dickson’s “The Last Master.”

              “Bureaucrats in a working system don’t need to conspire. They’re like spiders sitting at points on a community web. If one of them starts doing something for the good of the web, it’s because conditions seem to call for it—and those same conditions will also move other bureaucrats, whether they know the whole story or not. It’s as if the vibrations travel along the strands of the web, and the rest of them, following their nature, start doing what must be done-all without any direct spider-to-spider communication whatsoever.”

  15. I think the thing to look out for is an invitation from the Left to some foreign government to establish a military base here. Foot in the door for a stealth invasion from like-minded Leftists.

    Yeah, I know it sounds far fetched, but as a first step in the long game, it’s a pretty good one.

          1. Are you sure they don’t have it already? Truly go read the puppet masters, and see what happens in controlled areas. Also watch this space in two years or so for a thriller series based on a twist on TPM

          2. Read up on Chicago’s history of dumping sewage next to their fresh water intakes. The web seems to mostly return hit on the 1800, but people died of it when they did it again in the 1980s… after approval and permitting from city, county, state, and Federal authorities.

            Interestingly, I’m getting zero web hits on the later epidemic; I wonder if Chicago is using one of those “reputation management” services…

            1. I know it would happen sporadically in the 1960s, particularly after a really heavy rain. Yes, I’ll admit it; I was born there. 😦

              I hadn’t heard of them doing it as a regular practice in the ’80s, but it’s a place I try to forget. Still have family there, but God willing, I won’t be back.

        2. To be “fair” to Chicago (man alive I hate being fair to Chicago), that was one asshole Chicago politician who wanted that and the other Chicago politicians spoke against that stupid idea. 😉

          1. Yeah, but that’s primarily professional jealousy. I mean what mobster rightly invites MS-13 or a rival family into his territory?

        3. The Chicago Machine members don’t understand the concept of guerrilla warfare against foreign occupiers. As much as I dislike the Taliban, and many of the groups in Iraq that attacked American (and other nation) troops, I can understand their antipathy toward foreign infidels with boots on THEIR land.

      3. In the 2000 election and recount in Florida, Fidel Castro offered to send Cuban troops to secure Florida polling sites. “After all, the USA has provided that service to so many other countries.”

        I never expected Fidel had a sense of humor, but that amused me for weeks…

        1. Radio Moscow amused me because it was so throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks. Radio Havana unnerved me because they were noticeably slicker. If Radio Moscow was a guy selling watches under his coat, Radio Havana was a well-groomed fellow selling investment opportunities. Castro’s offer doesn’t surprise me at all.

          1. Radio Moscow used to be everywhere on the shortwave bands, you could always count on getting Joe Adamov on Moscow Mailbag, or any of a long list of regulars. Hmmm…

            Moscow Mailbag is still out there, but it looks like Radio Moscow has changed it’s name to Sputnik News. No Joe, though, as he passed in 2005. Olga somebody’s got it now.

            When I get really bored later tonight…

    2. That’s one of the biggest arguments against letting either Puerto Rico OR California gain independence. Because they could and would issue that invitation.

      1. That’s a nice port you have there. Would be a shame if one of those Elbonian destroyers blew up and triggered the 18kT torpedo buried in the mud.

      2. the CA economy would devour itself in the time it takes us to go through a half gallon of milk.

        1. California seems determined to prove Mencken’s definition of democracy.

          HOW CRAZY? CALIFORNIA CRAZY
          Last week some readers thought I had taken leave of my senses when I wrote that—relatively speaking (the key qualifier)—Jerry Brown is about the only adult in the room among California Democrats (though this may apply to California Republicans, too, as I’ll demonstrate shortly). I wrote: “If you doubt me, just wait till we have a governor named ‘Gavin’ next year (which California richly deserves), and you’ll see what I mean.”

          Lo and behold, the Washington Post picked up this theme over the weekend, which just goes to show that Power Line always gets there first:

          Think California politics is on the far-left fringe? Just wait for the next elections.
          For those who think California politics is on the far-left fringe of the national spectrum, stand by. The next election season, already well underway here, will showcase a younger generation of Democrats that is more liberal and personally invested in standing up to President Trump’s Washington than those leaving office.

          Here in the self-labeled “state of resistance,” the political debate is being pushed further left without any sign of a Republican renaissance to serve as a check on spending and social policy ambitions. Even some Republicans are concerned about the departure of Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who proved to be fiscally cautious after inheriting a state seven years ago in deep recession. . .

          That means staking out the most liberal stance on issues such as single-payer health care in California, a highly expensive initiative that failed in the legislature last year.

          [SNIP]

          I think the next edition of the DSM needs a whole new category and scale to measure mental illness: California Crazy. Definitely goes past 11. No straws needed for inmates in this asylum.

          [END EXCERPT]

          Elsewhere (NRO gangblog The Corner, IIRC) I noted the news that California, which already suffers a shortage of doctors in seven of nine districts, is champing on the bit to enact universal single payer health care (funded in large extent with Federal Medicaid dollars) while maintaining itself a “sanctuary state.”

          Good luck with that.

            1. There was a Democratic California senator who wrote an article on how he was being attacked for killing that completely insane single-payer bill one the correct grounds of “this isn’t a bill; this is a wish list with no foundations.” He seemed surprised that people were mad that he wasn’t playing along. (That bit of insanity was impressively vague even for the normal run of propositions. “We want this, and it should be affordable. What do you mean it’s going to cost three times the state’s income? It should magically save us so much more!”)

          2. There are good reasons why we left the state. That it’s run by crazy people is only one of them.

    4. About a year after Obama took office, there was an announcement regarding some change with regards to Interpol in the US. IIRC, they were granted some additional privileges. People freaked out about it as impinging on US sovereignty. But when I took a closer look at what Interpol actually did in the US, the whole thing appeared to be a big nothingburger.

      But that’s also what was so strange about the whole thing. Based on my reading, the announced change literally – not figuratively, but literally – did nothing. So why bother with the announced change at all? I never did make sense of it.

      1. I vaguely remembered the brouhaha, because Andy McCarthy wrote about it negatively.
        I include a long excerpt to prepare the way for the final grafs.
        http://www.nationalreview.com/article/228930/interpol-immunity-andrew-c-mccarthy
        “The biggest problem with President Obama’s immunity grant is that it came without any explanation. The administration can’t or won’t explain why a president — whose administration is notoriously indifferent to American sovereignty — suddenly decided Interpol needed to be freed from the U.S. Constitution and other American law. Certainly, Interpol was not clamoring publicly for immunity; neither Noble nor any other Interpol official was heard to suggest that American law was interfering with some aspect or other of its operations. To his credit, Noble at least attempts a post hoc rationalization for Obama’s move. ”
        (see article below this one)
        “Advertently or not, however, Noble does tip us to President Obama’s thinking — and to why the administration clearly doesn’t want to discuss the matter any further. The issue is what Noble refers to as “international custom”; relatedly, this is about the game known as “customary international law,” so beloved by transnational progressives.”
        (read the snipped part, but you all know what kind of thing he says, I’m sure)
        “In 1983, President Reagan thought about the issue of diplomatic immunity for Interpol and decided that the agency merited limited protection but, because it was a police force, not unqualified protection. Significant privileges and immunities, he determined, should be withheld: Interpol’s property and assets should remain subject to search and seizure, and its archived records should remain subject to public scrutiny. That made good sense. If it hadn’t made good sense, Congress could have enacted corrective legislation — and surely Interpol would have complained. Everyone, however, was content, and for over a quarter-century the arrangement has worked.”
        …
        “President Obama plainly does not want to tell the American people he thinks President Reagan’s executive order needs to be scrapped because that’s not how they do it in Cameroon. So he just scrapped it and hopes, if he doesn’t tell us why, we won’t care to figure out why. This is surely another reckless gesture designed to eviscerate America’s special status and self-determinism — to make us just one of 192 other countries, no better, no different, no superpower.”
        (NOTE WHAT HE SAYS HERE, because it’s relevant to the FBI corruption case in hand)
        “Ron Noble is a superb administrator with a well-deserved reputation for competence and scruples. If every cop and prosecutor in the world were Ron Noble, we’d have no reason to be concerned about abuse. But, as I’ve said before, we don’t rely in the United States on the personal integrity of law-enforcement officials to keep law-enforcement agencies in check. We rely on the checks provided by American law. The vast majority of the police and prosecutors I’ve met and worked with over the years are very honorable — they’d never intentionally authorize an illegal arrest or search. But that said, none of us would want to see the Fourth Amendment repealed on the theory that we don’t need it to keep honest people honest.
        …
        The executive order removes Interpol from all constraints of American law. To hear Noble’s comment, one would assume that enforceable legal rules bar Interpol from conducting police activity on U.S. soil. But the executive order removes the enforceability of any such rules. That the order is not a positive grant of new powers to Interpol is irrelevant. The point is that the order removes the negative legal restraints that block Interpol from conducting unauthorized police activity. And it’s cold comfort to argue, as Noble does, that Interpol has a strong record of respecting its traditional limitations. It is a fact of life that when governmental agencies and bureaucracies are suddenly unconstrained, they inevitably freelance into all sorts of activities previously closed to them.
        If Interpol suddenly did start conducting operations that affected the liberty and privacy rights of Americans — whether on U.S. soil or overseas — it would now be immune from the provisions of law that can be invoked against, say, the FBI or the New York City Police Department. And if any American or official American entity — a private citizen, the FBI, a court, or Congress — wanted to inquire into what Interpol was up to, it would be unable to do so. The Obama order makes Interpol’s archives and other assets unreachable by search warrant, subpoena (administrative, judicial, or congressional), or the Freedom of Information Act. Noble is basically saying: Trust us, we wouldn’t do anything we shouldn’t do, and on the rare occasions when we falter, we are accountable.
        …
        (underline the name that you see next)
        Still, Noble is running a police agency. We are glad to have his goodwill, but we shouldn’t have to rely on it. I trust him, just like I trust FBI Director Bob Mueller, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, and the heads of lots of law-enforcement agencies.
        But I wouldn’t remove the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory provisions on which we rely to keep these agencies in check. We shouldn’t remove these provisions from Interpol, either. It is an unnecessary, reckless act. That it emulates the law of the Ivory Coast does not change that, which is no doubt why the Obama administration finds itself tongue-tied.”

        Here’s the article (cited by Andy) which proceeds in a more positive vein, which was about the best I could find other than Snopes (which trends left-wing these days); they both contain the same basic data.
        http://humanevents.com/2010/01/08/interpols-sec-gen-takes-obamas-orders-seriously/
        “Why does Interpol suddenly need diplomatic immunity? Noble explained that when President Reagan signed the original order, the organization didn’t have a permanent U.S. staff or office. That changed in 2004 with the opening of the Office of the Interpol Special Representative to the United Nations.
        The revisions bring Interpol’s U.S. office in line with its other seven international offices, all of which already enjoy full diplomatic immunity.”

        https://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/interpol.asp

        CLAIM: A new executive order gives INTERPOL license to operate with impunity within the U.S.
        MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION
        ORIGINS: On 17 December 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order which extended to
        INTERPOL, the international police organization, an additional subset of the standard “privileges, exemptions and immunities” granted to public international organizations by the U.S. under the International Organizations Immunities Act. President Obama’s executive order was an amendation of one issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 which first applied the International Organizations Immunities Act to INTERPOL.

        While the fact of the executive order is real, the claims that it gives INTERPOL license to start conducting warrantless searches, arresting U.S. citizens, and violating other constitutional guarantees to due process are exaggerated.

        The common perception of INTERPOL as a global police organization that sends agents around the world to track down suspects, make arrests, and haul criminals before international tribunals (such as the United Nations) for trial is erroneous. INTERPOL has no police force, and it does not conduct criminal investigations or make arrests. It’s merely an administrative organization that services its member countries (currently 188 in number) by facilitating and coordinating the sharing of law enforcement organization. If, for example, one country should issue an arrest warrant for a suspect currently residing in a second country, INTERPOL merely passes along the warrant and related information to the second country — it’s completely up to the latter’s government to decide if their laws justify an arrest and, if so, to send their own agents to effect it.
        As the New York Times noted, the granting of additional immunities to INTERPOL was prompted by that organization’s opening a liaison office at the United Nations’ New York headquarters in 2004 and was something first considered during the administration of George W. Bush:

  16. I was crazy this morning so I went to The Hill and read the comments after a story about the memo. Ack! The lying, misrepresentation, ignoring, accusing the other side of doing what the first side had done, name-calling, absolute refusal to face facts, and total belief on the part of some that Trump is on the way out (!) and the memo proves it, in the comments…. — way more than I can usually handle. And quite scary.

    1. Divergent Realities are a big mess. But when the Reality is NOT fissioning, but the perceptions of it are? That’s a much bigger mess.

      (I once read a book on the Manhattan Project that had a story I’ve seen elsewhere so I doubt it actually happened. Some higher up that didn’t quite ‘get’ the difficulty of the problem(s) asked,

      “Could you whip up a smaller one quick? We’ve got some trouble on this island…”

      “Sir, these things only come in two sizes. One is unimaginably powerful.”

      … “And the other?!”

      “is MUCH bigger.” )

      2. Worth reading about how much realities diverge when you are just painting pictures of it.
        http://neoneocon.com/2005/07/29/imagology-vs-reality/
        “Here’s a quote from Kundera’s 1990 work Immortality that I think bears another look. He is talking about the ascendance of imagery (which he refers to as “imagology,” meaning suggestive images and slogans) over ideology, or even over reality: …”

  17. OK, this is normal. This is what once dominant political factions DO when they are self-destructing at the end of their lifespan. The Southern Planters, fer crying out loud, started a war without an industrial base….over an election they didn’t like the results of, come to think.

    Governments never work as advertised, or anyway not often enough to be at all reassuring. OTOH, they work better than tribalism or anarchy, on average.

    Yes, we need to pursue this. It would be nice if the nitwits responsible actually did prison time. But if it causes the kind of damage I expect to the Democrat establishment and the Media establishment, that will be good enough. If, in a decade, a Liberal can be brought up short in embarrassment with the mention of Hillary Clinton, the way a Conservative could be embarrassed by bringing up Nixon, circa 1980, then I will be quite happy.

    And the lesson isn’t “The FBI is corrupt! Replace it!” The message is “Government is corrupt at its core. Not our government, now. All governments, ever. Therefore, it is imperative to trust government only with those functions that are absolutely necessary.

    1. Corruption is the government equivalent of rust — you can never long be wholly free of it and it requires your fullest effort to keep it at a minimum.

      The people selling you a load of merde are not the ones claiming government is corrupt, nor the ones claiming government can never be free of corruption — it is the people claiming that government can be corruption free without constant monitoring by the public (and note carefully the MSM is <Inot the public and does not act in the public interest.)

      1. The problem with the MSM is not so much that they are biased, or that they are mostly on one side, but that too many people still believe in the mirage of an unbiased press. Never happen. Ever. And if we could get people used to the idea that bias is inevitable, a lot of the remaining power of the Media would go *pift*.

        Of course, if the Conservative Right had gotten over the dumb idea that media could be unbiased, they could have started their own media outlets.

    2. the way a Conservative could be embarrassed by bringing up Nixon
      I’ve never been embarrassed by Nixon, as a conservative. He was never a conservative. I *am* embarrassed that he was a Republican – at least the idealistic side of me. The realistic side isn’t embarrassed by any of them, for any reason – just by my fellow patriots who aren’t willing to throw the rat bas****s out on their ear.

      1. At one time I favored Larry Niven’s organ bank idea, but who’d want any Hillary bits?

        I’m leaning toward “wood chipper” now.

        2. Just based on her apparent neurological problems, transplants from her (or anyone else with those apparent symptoms) would be problematic at best.

        3. I’ll settle for heads mounted on the spikes atop the White House fence, feeding the crows.

          Preferably starting with the head of that demented and morally retarded little poltroon Adam Schiff.

    4. “Therefore, it is imperative to trust government only with those functions that are absolutely necessary.”

      And then only when you’re standing over its shoulder, glaring, while pointing a loaded shotgun at its back,

    5. Actually, the South had more of an industrial base than people think, and in 1850 was on par with the North. If you want to play what-if, consider a Civil War fought ten years earlier. It’s not that the South had no industrial base, only it didn’t have an industrial base or population as large as the North’s in 1860.

      At least once came across mention of local Southern shops producing firearms and cutlery. These tended to wind up in the hands of local men going off to war. I’ve also found a Minnie Ball or two that was clearly cast in a home-made mold. I have reason to think at least some Confederate troops were making their own ammo this way. Keep in mind this would be for muzzleloaders.

      1. They had NO CANNON Foundries!!
        If you can’t make cannon, don’t go to war, YOU WILL LOOSE!

        1. Um, yes they did. How do I know? Because of the famed double barreled cannon of Athens, Georgia, was supposedly cast in Athens, Georgia.

          I don’t really want to go into details, as it gets into a forbidden topic, but the South did have some valid reasons to think they could win. The problem of industry and manpower did indeed exist, but looking only at that ignores that it took Grant to exploit this Achilles’ Heel, and four long, bloody, years. It also glosses over that the North successfully conquered and held an area larger than Europe, and that was quite a feat.

          1. Actually, this brings up an issue I’ve been meaning to raise for a while.

            “Four bloody long years”

            Is this the origin of the idea that wars should take five years or less? We seem to have it firmly fixed in out pointed little heads. Civil War? Four years. World Wars? Also quite short. Korean war? ‘50-‘53.

            Vietnam War? First advisors in country in 1950. By 1969 people are totally freaking out.

            Hello? Can you say “Thirty Years War”? Good. Now try “Hundred Years War” aka “Operation Speedy Resolution”.

            Now, the War on Terror. Bush told the country it would not be over quickly….and people are griping about it and have been since year two.

            1. People keep getting new advances where everything take less time. If you can cook in 5 min why can’t you conquer a country in a few months. And no, glassing doesn’t count.

              1. The thing is, the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan show we CAN (or at least, could then) Conquor a country in a few months, not to say weeks. But then we let ourselves get rooked into this ‘nation building’ nonsense. Look; either ‘conquor, rape, pillage, burn’ or ‘conquor, appoint administrators, occupy, supress uprisings’. If a nation gets built over the next few hundred years, good. They ain’t gonna be ready this decade.

          2. The CSA had certain strategic advantages, notably asymmetric war goals. If the South won, there would still be a United States…if the Federals won, the CSA would be found nowhere on the map. It made a big difference.

            1. I really don’t want to go there. Not because I think that topic will cause a heated argument, but because it could spin into other things that would.

              Will talk about the Athens Double Barrelled Cannon, though. The inventor thought a chain attached to two cannon balls fired at the same time would mow down enemy troops. The problem involved is fairly obvious, and the reader may want to contemplate that a bit.

              The inventor didn’t. The test firing was, um, spectacular to say the least. Not what he had planned, though. He thought he could work that particular bug out, but when he presented it to the Confederate Army, artillerymen and/or combat engineers went “Are you CRAZY?” and wanted no part of it.

              So it is that the double barreled cannon remains in Athens, Georgia to this very day. It’s said to face North – just in case.

              1. I remember hearing about that “interesting idea” but I didn’t remember that it was a Confederate inventor’s idea.

                That’s an idea that you’d hope that the “other side” would attempt. 😈

          3. One of the problems the South encountered was that they thought they could count on the British (and the rest of Europe) supporting them at least through trade and non-interference. Lincoln’s folks managed to stop that – and it hurt the South a lot.

          1. Tredegar wasn’t enough. The south didn’t have enough heavy industrial production. We’d best stop discussing this forbidden topic.

      2. The south had plenty of industrial capacity. There’s hundreds of miles of fall line for hydro-powered mills in the south. What I find surprising is that Bessemer Alabama didn’t become a steel making center in this country until about 1890.

        1. The fall-line makes it convenient, but there were plenty of hydro powered mills. It’s not unusual for highway crews to stumble across old grist mills while replacing small bridges with culverts. Know of a really large hydro project, circa 19th Century, that failed due to a drought. It was supposed to have been the largest hydro powered sawmill in the world at that time.

          What happened is that each area went with their strengths. There doesn’t see to be coal, limestone, and iron ore as conveniently located in the South as in the North. OTOH, the North doesn’t have the same length of growing season as the South.

          BTW, there’s a trap in thinking that the South overworked the land. I used to believe that, too, until I noticed the same crops just north of Appalachia but with richer soil, and realized it had been subject to the same agricultural practices. The difference seems to be more due to heat on the soil and some chemistry I don’t quite recall offhand.

        2. Capital issues, mostly. Hard to industrialize when almost all the rich people in your area don’t think in terms of anything but agriculture, and nobody from the outside cares to invest because they have opportunities closer to home.
          Worth noting, though, is that there were several small ironworks in what’s now the Birmingham area before the Civil War, that were destroyed when James Wilson raided through Alabama in 1865. In fact, his main target was a small factory complex in Selma.

          1. I’ve mentioned that hunk of iron ore I found, giving credence to claims that there was some iron smelting there during the Civil War. Maybe there was. If so, they had a serious issue. They had iron ore, and they had limestone, but the nearest coal was several hundred miles away.

            1. Mileage not a problem. That’s a prime reason for the railroad development in the South prior to the Civil War.

      3. Just about everyone who shot muzzleloaders cast their own bullets.

        When you had a gun made for you, you almost always would get a mould, and sometimes a few basic tools made by the gun maker to fit that particular piece. Miníe balls would be simple to cast, and you really didn’t need to include a cast iron obturater in the base of them like the Miníe was originally designed with. (And which was quickly abandoned when it was found to work just as well without one.)

  18. I told my mother a couple months back that the only reason the whole Russia Investigation was turning up absolutely nothing was because the paper trails were all leading straight back to the people conducting the investigation.

    Having read the memo, I can say that my hunches were in the right spot, but it doesn’t feel good to be vindicated in this matter.

    1. After Mueller was appointed and I read up on his past, my first thought was that he was hired to make sure none of the actual criminals were fingered.

  20. As somewhat of a palate cleanser to those digesting the Nunes Memo, the NY Sun reminds us of a different memo:

    A Tale of Two Memos: Mulvaney, Nunes Missives Both Press Rule of Law
    By IRA STOLL, Special to the Sun | February 5, 2018

    [SNIP]

    The Mulvaney Memo, issued January 23 as an email to all CFPB employees, is worth carving into granite, or at least quoting at some length. It encapsulates a humility and restraint and respect for rule of law that is often all too lacking in government.

    Mr. Mulvaney wrote, “We don’t just work for the government, we work for the people. And that means everyone: those who use credit cards, and those who provide those cards; those who take loans, and those who make them; those who buy cars, and those who sell them. All of those people are part of what makes this country great. And all of them deserve to be treated fairly by their government.”

    “It is not appropriate,” he went on, for any government entity to ‘push the envelope’ when it comes into conflict with our citizens. The damage that we can do to people could linger for years and cost them their jobs, their savings, and their homes. If the CFPB loses a court case because we ‘pushed too hard,’ we simply move on to the next matter.

    “But where do those that we have charged go to get their time, their money, or their good names back? If a company closes its doors under the weight of a multi-year Civil Investigative Demand, you and I will still have jobs at CFPB. But what about the workers who are laid off as a result? Where do they go the next morning?”

    Then this: “On regulation, it seems that the people we regulate should have the right to know what the rules are before being charged with breaking them. … I intend to execute the statutory mandate of the Bureau to protect consumers. But we will no longer go beyond that mandate. If Congress wants us to do more than is set forth in the Dodd-Frank Act, they can change the law. Until then, we will enforce the law as currently written.”

    [SNIP]

    … English philosopher John Locke’s 1689 Second Treatise on Government, which inspired the founders of America. Locke wrote, “the ruling power ought to govern by declared and received laws, and not by extemporary dictates and undetermined resolutions… that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law; and the rulers too kept within their bounds, and not be tempted, by the power they have in their hands.”

    With the notable exceptions of Matt Levine of Bloomberg News, who praised the Mulvaney Memo, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which reprinted a version of it, the mainstream press corps greeted it with derision. The New York Times ran a front-page news article impugning Mr. Mulvaney’s integrity by suggesting, with no evidence, that he’d been improperly swayed by donations to his previous campaigns for Congress, and by a decision by one industry group to have a convention at a Trump-branded hotel in Florida.

    The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post covered the story under the headline “How Mick Mulvaney Is Dismantling a Federal Agency,” describing Mr. Mulvaney as “malicious” and “perverted.”

    [SNIP]

    In the end the Nunes Memo and the Mulvaney Memo both get at a similar theme — that government officials, whether FBI agents or consumer financial protection bureaucrats, need to follow the law, and that the law should be known in advance and applied impartially. More than 300 years after Locke’s Second Treatise, you’d think this would not be such an intensely controversial point.

    Read the whole thing. Ponder what their reactions tells us about the MSM.

    1. Not to say, what it tells us about the Establishment Left; that they cannot rule as they would like to under laws explicitly and clearly declaired. They know damned well that if they tried half their cr*p under a rule of law, the common man would nail them to the barn door. So the rule of law must go.

      1. Every poll I’ve ever read about that presents leftist ideology and policies under honest descriptions gets them negative ratings; it’s only when they are disguised under their harmonious euphonyms that they get up-voted.

        1. An appalling number of polls report strong support for many ploicies … until they’re identified as Republican, conservative and/or pro-Life.

          Branding matters and the GOP has historically sucked at it. The 250-mph MSM headwind doesn’t help, of course.

    2. Thanks – as the writer says, “In the end the Nunes Memo and the Mulvaney Memo both get at a similar theme — that government officials, whether FBI agents or consumer financial protection bureaucrats, need to follow the law, and that the law should be known in advance and applied impartially. More than 300 years after Locke’s Second Treatise, you’d think this would not be such an intensely controversial point.”

  21. On the one hand, Trump has very strong motivation to solve the problem. As in quite possibly being impeached (if not removed)…and even framed for a felony or two.

    On the other hand, I’m worried that he doesn’t have the cold nerve to address the problem. Because that’s going to take a willingness to put a whole lot of Democrats in prisons.

      1. NO, it’s evident that he knew the ground was soft. He didn’t know that it was a swamp of very thin soupy foul mud. He’s swimming out of it. We’ll see if he has what it takes to fill it in with gravel, or drain it away.

      2. One of the things that worried about him was his apparent friendship with the Clintons.

        One of the things that now makes me suspect he knew exactly how bad it was, is the same.

  22. There is also the BIG Security problem in the State Department.
    People had to move Hillary’s emails from the Secure Net to her server and emails from her server to the Secure Net. Coverage 365 24/7 and not one or 2 people 3 shifts, possibly 7 to 10 per shift with supervisors.
    Breaking Security Laws 100’s of times a day, Day after Day, Year after Year. Every single act would and has gotten normal people 6+ years in a Fed Pen.

    ALL of Security KNEW about and did nothing. That alone is years in the Fed Pen. Security in the State Department has to be a TOTAL JOKE!!

    Just THINK about that for awhile. In the whole Hillary Email Mess NOT ONE WORD about what had to be going on at the State Department.

    Just like at the IRS, NOBODY not one person said a &)(&^^$%(&*)*& thing!
    The Dems are not worried that this stuff could happen to them THEY OWN THE DEEP STATE!!

    3. A LOT of people absolutely depended on Hillary being elected. Hence the absolute hysteria over Trump. I think they would have done better to just leave him alone, obstruct quietly for 4 years, and let him fall by the wayside.
      The Russian Caper probe looks more and more like the detective story plot-line where everybody knows the killer should have just left things alone, instead of going after people who he thought might bring him under suspicion.

      1. Even Jägermonsters know better than that:

         “Gorb. Dis iz turnink into vun of dose plans… hyu know—de kind vere we keel everybody dot notices dot ve’s killin’ people?”
         “It is?”
         “Uh huh. Adn how do dose alvays end?”
         “De dirigible iz in flames, everybody’z dead, an’ I’ve lost my hat.”
         “Dot’s right. Und any plan vere you lose you hat iz?”
         “A bad plan?”
         “Right again!”

  23. Just one more example that the Ring of Power serves no master except one.

    And none of -us- are that master.

    1. No, but there’s a bunch of us sneaky hobbits ready to sneak in and toss the thing in the volcano.

      1. No Hobbit destroyed the ring. Several were permanently corrupted by it.

        Ultimately, Frodo -failed-, and was consumed by the Ring-lust. -Gollum- destroyed it, trying to seize it.

        The key to avoiding the whole power mess is not to allow that crap to be forged in the first place, minimal government and on a very short leash. And when it does grow and metastasize anyway, we have to be prepared to chop it off near the root.

        The problem is -not- that power is in the wrong hands, it is that such power exists to be taken in hand. For it -will- be used, then abused.

  24. Ask me, everyone who knew this was going on but looked the other way should be fired, permanently lose their pensions and benefits, and be permanently stripped of their security clearance.

    Anyone who was actively complicit should be forced to publicly perform the Danny Deever Dance on the South Lawn and/or the Capital Steps. Said performance would be filmed and shown to all new government employees on Day 1 of their training, as well as all current govt. employees during their annual performance appraisal, as a reminder of what happens when you violate your oath of office and actively work against the government and constitution you swore to protect, defend, and uphold.

    But nobody asked me, and I’m no longer naive or idealistic enough to believe that anything major will be happen. There might me a scapegoat or two, a few sacrificial lambs will be thrown under the bus, but that will be that. The cesspool of corruption and crime that is the United States Government will continue to carry on as normal.

    I just celebrated three decades of life. I hope and pray that I’ll still be able to recognize the country I was born in when it comes time for me to celebrate four decades.

    Anyone else fear that we’re now dangerously close to needing to use the Fourth Box of Liberty?

    1. I somehow am disinclined to trust anybody with the task of cleaning those stables, much less repopulating them.

    2. Would there have been some place – or person – any single individual involved could have gone to to tell, and be halfway confident that something would have been done instead of him being fired and maybe in legal trouble himself. Or possibly ending up as an Arkancide?

      The upper echelon people maybe could have spoken up, but the lower worker bees? Difficult situation for any of them if they suspected or knew that the rot was widespread and speaking up might not get anybody but the speaker into trouble.

      That is how the rot stays and spreads. There aren’t that many individuals with the courage to risk everything when they think they will probably achieve nothing with it, except destroy their own lives.

      1. Even with all the laws protecting whistleblowers, they can and will be persecuted, fired, and prosecuted, if the perps think they can get away with it.
        The internet and prolifera of alternative news sites is making it harder to stifle the whistlers, though.

  25. Like I said at my blog – https://ombreolivier.liberty.me/recursive-custard/ – the problem is “who watches the watchmen?”

    Under Obama the answer was no one so the watchmen could do whatever they wanted. In fact the Obama administration encouraged them.

    The more I think about it, the more I think the only solution is to fire everyone in certain agencies/departments (FBI, IRS, DoJ, BLM BATFE …) based in DC who are more senior than some TBD GS grade. And once fired enact the Instapundit lobbyist tax that says that any income they have that comes from contact with the government is taxed at 100%+.

    1. If the person is a manager or supervisor, they need to be fired, and perma-banned from ever holding a government job, elected or appointed position, government contract, or working for a lobby. That includes 100% of the SES.

      1. Should probably be merciful towards the rank-and-filers, it can be nearly impossible to do anything from those positions even when one wants to. Especially when they have no idea who they could trust to even talk with. Lots of rot in there probably too, but no way to find out who, and it would not be good to lose all the experience there is doing what their actual jobs should be.

        But be wary about promoting any of them. Keep the old guard as rank-and-file and get new blood for the supervising jobs.

        1. The question you have to ask about that “innocent rank-and-file” group is this: Who recruited, selected, trained, and acculturated them? What in your experience leads you to think that the venal and corrupt would hire anyone who might turn on them?

    2. “In fact the Obama administration encouraged them.”
      This is why we have the proverb “a fish rots from the head down.”
      However, in fact, the fish is rotten inside all the time; it is only when encouraged that it erupts and takes over.
      Kind of a stinky analogy, but YKWIM.

  26. My prediction- we won’t see a whole lot of overt official movement on the case until after the 2018 midterms. There’s a whole lot of people waiting to see which way the wind will blow.

    The GOPe and Deep State will try to wait things out, and see what happens, as there is always a chance of a “Blue Wave”, and this whole Trump thing being just a passing bump in the road. Work too hard, and you’ll face a vengeful Hillary.

    But, should the Dems lose the midterms (likely), then there will be a serious house cleaning. That will very likely trigger a purge of the old baggage- HRC, Pelosi, and others. And then you may see that they are shocked, SHOCKED! at this kind of behavior.

    Time is on Trump’s side here.

    1. You are assuming an honest election. Even Hildebeeste couldn’t keep the Democrats from stealing the New Hampshire Senate seat in 2016. They’ll have someone competent this time.

  27. the press will cover for dems but not for republicans.

    Unfortunately, they are de-facto covering for Trump by being so hysterical over-the-top that he could, in fact, get away with a lot because no one would believe them.

    It’s WATCH dog, not ATTACK dog. You get the latter when you want the former, and you are unhappy in the long run.

  28. OK, folks, a quick note. I’m going for round 2 of cornea work (The Left Eye Gets It), with the procedure scheduled for Wednesday morning. I’m in a weirder mood than normal; not terrified, not totally calm. A quick prayer would be appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Pete

    P.S. Looks like I’m going to sign up for the retina work/vitreous fluid change in the right eye once it’s feasible. Maybe April. I’m getting tired of this and want it done.

      1. Yes. The vitreous fluid (more of a gel, I gather) is removed and saline is put in place. I my case, it was in aid of a membrane peel (search epiretinal membrane if you want more into), but one advantage is that it can remove all or most of the floaters. The procedure is done under sedation; you see what’s going on, but with the meds, you Just Don’t Care–a good attitude when you have tiny forceps in your eye.

        It took an hour in the OR, and I was able to drive the next day (not ideal, but it worked out). It took a couple of months to get acuity up to snuff, but most of that was the membrane peel.

        For more details, search “vitrectomy”.

        1. Sounds horrible for someone such as I who reacts violently even to such mild treatments as eye drops being put in. Think: projectile blinking.

  29. The private sector is apparently addressing the problem of corrupt and incompetent policing:

    Britain’s first ‘private police force’ has 100 per cent conviction rate and is now investigating murder and rape
    TM Eye – led by former Scotland Yard senior officers – is now probing murders and rapes and are believed to bring more private convictions than any other organisation except for the RSPCA
    By Holly Christodoulou
    A PRIVATE police force probing hundreds of crimes including murder and rape has a 100 per cent conviction rate.

    The firm – Britain’s first – has successfully prosecuted more than 400 criminals and is led by former Scotland Yard senior officers.

    TM Eye is now believed to bring more private convictions than any other organisation except for the RSPCA, Daily Mail reports.

    The company has a service called “My Local Bobby”, which costs wealthy homeowners around £200 a month and involves a guard patrolling their streets.

    TM Eye are also looking three murder cases that cops were unable to solve and are helping out in rape, missing persons, burglary, theft, stalking and blackmail cases.

    In two years, the company has successfully convicted 403 criminals for fraud, intellectual property theft and other offences.

    [END EXCERPT]

    HT: William Katz’ Urgent Agenda blog. The article notes concern that this might develop into a two-tier policing system where crimes against poor people get ignored.

    I got news for ya, bub!

    1. Looks like an entrepreneurial Ankh-Morpork “guild” supplementing the Night Watch.
      As you say, rich people always get better service than poor ones, but there is a trickle-down effect that comes from stopping ANY crime anywhere, and getting criminals off the street, so if rich people want to pay directly for the service, how is that different from raising their taxes and paying more to the police?

      TM Eye doesn’t charge for investigative services but recoups costs from the courts if offenders are convicted.
      My Local Bobby was launched last year and covers up to 250 houses in plush Belgravia, Mayfair and Kensington.
      Rich clients shelling out up to £200 a month are given a “meet and greet” service from the car or Tube and have a hotline straight to their officer, who can respond to crime in five minutes.
      The firm’s managing director David McKelvey, a retired Scotland Yard detective chief inspector, said: “We probably do more undercover work than any other law enforcement agency. We have a better surveillance capability and equipment than most forces.
      “It’s about catching the bad guys and protecting the public, and we can help with that.
      “Police are on their knees, sick to the teeth with what is going on in their job. The bottom line is we have better uniforms, better pay and better support at work. It’s a huge growth industry.”

      1. “ there is a trickle-down effect that comes from stopping ANY crime anywhere”

        One aspect of stopping crimes against the rich is that criminals are forced to make-up in quantity what they miss in quality, which increases the operating costs of criminality.

  30. Btw, if you are interested in the inner workings of the FBI, John Douglas gives a pretty good look at how things worked from the late Sixties into the Eighties. Mindhunter is the one that talks most about life in the regular Bureau, while the other books talk more about life as a profiler.

    The Mindhunter series on Netflix is… um… fact-related. They turn a fat old male psych professor who did consults over the phone, into a skinny young gorgeous female magical forensics person, with whom the MC has an affair.

    Ronald Ressler, who was another of the FBI profiler guys, also has a series of books on various federal law enforcement groups. The Secret Service one is probably the most enlightening one.

    The FBI Files is an uneven true crime show, but it actually is pretty good about showing some facets of Bureau workings. One of the more interesting eps is one about the Secret Service counterfeiting squad that ran across a counterfeiter who was also a serial rapist and killer, and got almost no help from the FBI in pursuing it. (It’s a sort of mea culpa episode.)

    Explaining why the FBI takes on some cases (fighting for jurisdiction unfairly, sometimes) and avoids others is actually one of the least well-explained things about the agency. Part of it is budget and part of it is changes in criteria, but I’ve never seen a really good explanation anywhere.

    2. I would guess, based on the totally unrelated groups I’ve seen that don’t lay things on the table, that they push really hard when it’s a “this might be connected to so and so” type case.

      Between international organized crime like the cartels, and (mostly) internal organized crime like the biker gangs, there can be a lot of “we have a hint this MIGHT get us information we really need for Big Huge Thing” cases that nobody would think of twice.

      Hell, for an obvious example, most of the “satanist” stuff can tie to either a couple of the really nasty Mexican cartels, or be some of those white power meth gangs from Idaho.

  31. Douglas and Ressler are both examples of people who had other work experience, in LE or the military or both, before joining the FBI. A lot of the really corrupt agents (as well as some of the really good ones, to be fair) are people who got their first job with the FBI. If they chose to specialize in sucking up instead of investigation, or if Daddy or the Ivy League got them the job, they can get very high up before anybody notices that they are incompetent in everything but flattering the boss. If someone has always been assigned to high-prestige, low-legwork areas, that’s also a clue.

    Forensic accountants are a big part of the FBI, and they seldom go crooked. (Or if they do, they are very very good at not getting caught.) Labpeople seem to be either very good folks, who choose the FBI over other job offers, or crap who can only get a government job. (The one who lied about thousands of cases was a diversity hire, it’s a shame to say.)

    A lot of FBI agents without skills are very big on insecure arrogance. FBI agents who have skills don’t need to be jerks. Everybody outside the agency notices this.

    (There was a short period of time when I was very into researching the FBI, for X-Files reasons. These are general impressions I got.)

  32. If anyone wants more stuff to be angry about, I recommend the analyses at neoneocon.com, and J. E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding (neo is a very astute political observer, with good credentials, and Dyer is a former Naval Intelligence officer and writes like one – lots of docs at her post).
    Their latest posts are here:
    http://neoneocon.com/2018/02/05/first-we-had-clinton-and-co-paid-for-the-dossier-now-we-have/

    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/02/05/grassley-graham-memo-steele-apparently-used-info-clinton-associate-dossier/
    “Grassley and Graham would legitimately suspect “credibility-washing” of Clinton-backed oppo research in this. …
    The implication is that the purpose of funneling pieces of “information” through Steele (perhaps with the added “credibility” aura of circulating it through the State Department) was to position allegations from oppo research to actually affect the FBI’s activities, with a seeming imprint of legitimacy.

    I appreciate and endorse the senators’ desire to have as much as possible declassified, so that the public can see what they have seen, and judge for ourselves what really happened.

    Given how much of this saga amounts only to what Steele, Fusion, Shearer, Hillary, the DNC, and specific people within the DOJ and FBI were doing, there are few if any national security secrets at issue here. There is mainly the desire to shield the truth — truth about people who were acting in political roles, not in national security roles — from the American people.”

  33. Pingback: The memo, and what it implies | Spin, strangeness, and charm

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