I can’t Even

298 thoughts on “I can’t Even”

1. I try to find explanations for stuff, even sometimes when it becomes that the people in questions are liars or are crazy to a degree that explanation is far more work than it could possibly be worth.

   Sarah shared a link with me, which neither of us vouches for in any way beyond the simple case made within.

   https://triggerfinger.org/weblog/entry/10318305

   This is a plausible sounding explanation for how the FBI bureaucracy could get sucked into an extremely stupid sequence of gambles, doubling down at any failure.

   The major issue with it, is that it only focuses on the Obama era compromises of the Federal bureaucracy, and those other probable compromises may be of significance, even if theories about said compromises may have a much narrower audience willing to treat them as credible.

2. There’s a lot of information that would qualify as “nuclear secrets” that has nothing to do with the technical aspects of actual nuclear weapons or the US arsenal.

   For example, a reference in a diary to “we caught the Iranians cheating on their nuclear program through use of an unnamed classified technical source” would count as a “nuclear secret.” Likewise, something like “those morons at the Department of Energy need to get off their asses and approve new nuclear reactor designs” might also count, under certain circumstances.

   With the way classification works, something like “the Pentagon needs to hire some more nuclear physicists because they fired some for political opinions” could also count, since it refers to staffing and payrolls (which are considered classified information in most cases).

   Heck, a personal note mentioning “we accidentally left the codes for The Football in the White House a couple of times” would certainly count as Secret, or even Top Secret under the right conditions…

   1. If it were any of that, it would already have been “leaked”

   2. The President never gets technical information about nuclear weapons or pretty much anything else…That stuff is strictly need-to-know, and neither Presidents nor anyone except nuclear physicists would understand it anyway..My father was a physicist in this area….The code stuff is just ridiculous, because they are constantly changing and, in any event, local commanders have the right to determine whether to launch….And Trump isn’t an idiot, so he doesn’t have classified documents at Mar del Lago, as he has stated…

3. I’m still thinking the boxes contained names of Epstein clients.
   No way would the LibDems or dark gov types want them released.

   1. I would like to think that Epstein’s client list isn’t something that Trump would have sat on for years without doing something with it. Plus, even if he had it but had decided not to do anything with it right away, I would think that the people who are on the list would be too cautious to want to try and take it from him. That might cause him to start leaking very targeted information from it.

4. The aliens are next week, right?

   1. Watch if they don’t try to claim PDJT is an alien in a skin suit. WATCH

      1. No, no. Trump was going to sell the nuclear secrets to aliens. And you’re a racist transphobe if you question it.

      2. But— all the aliens in skin suits are on their side.

         1. Remember, they always project.

         2. They’re doing this wrong – at least if they were Goa’uld we would have the fun of watching them chew scenery.

            1. That’s Evil for you. Can’t even be entertaining!

            2. Darn straight.

               I’m inclined to think Ba’al would be better, overall, than the leadership we have right now. He has at least an ounce of respect for what Tau’ri can do when you really get them mad. And towards the end of the series, he’d picked up a certain enjoyment of Earth culture and the new flavors of decadence available to him.

               Other Goa’uld would definitely fall under the ‘Kill as Rapidly and Permanently as Possible’ category. Apophis would need to be shot with seven silver bullets, staked through the heart, garlic in the mouth, head lopped off, soaked in gasoline and piled with thermite, then burned. And the ashes divided into seven portions and scattered through each of the seven oceans. And an order of warriors specifically sworn to prevent him from ever returning, Med’jai-style.

               1. Well yes, I’d have liked to see Apophis vaporized but he was not the host; he was the parasite.

                  1. Absolutely true, and if possible, I would absolutely want to rescue that poor man. I’m just not sure about how feasible that might be.

                     (And I was also joking about just how frelling hard that guy is to kill. He just keeps. Coming. Back. Every time. Until they slammed him into a planet, that is. Dunno how he might be able to get out of that one.)

                     1. The Tok’ra were able to remove symbiotes. Get one of them trained as a trauma therapist and implant him.

                        1. Fair enough.

               2. Yeah, I can get behind that.

                  Ba’al was also a longterm thinker who didn’t indulge in casual megalomaniacal stupidity cough Anubis cough

5. I read somewhere it was the codes for weapons release, i.e. “The Football” . . . um the Secret Service “Football” is to always be in control of the Secret Service, not the President, and it is not supposed to leave their possession except for certain situations when it is opened for the Presidents use, or when the codes are being changed.
   In other words the SS lost the football . . . again, and if so, the codes are supposed to be useless, they should get changed immediately though it takes a lot of work, and the only reason a former president might have them in their possession is the codes being changed and the invalid ones offered as mementos for the library or something like that. If he supposedly had active codes in his possession. it should have been known immediately, and if true, is a massive FAIL of all too much of Gov’t.

   1. I think the “football” is always under military control. You always see it with a military officer and never being carried by a civilian. The whole ‘raid thing’ wouldn’t have anything to do with the football… at the turnover of one President to another they both have one and the actual codes etc. change over to the new President after the oath and the old one is no longer valid. Anyway, any codes or special access processes would have also been changed at the same time. My hunch is that the whole “nuclear” thing is an excuse and not really rational or realistic. Such goes the insanity!

      1. Per wiki, there is an officer from every service assigned to take turns carrying the football.

         1. I met a former “football” carrier. When he wasn’t with the POTUS (he sat outside the door during certain events and meetings), he proof-read documents for the Oval Office. He said he got very good and finding typos and punctuation glitches.

         2. Even NCIS got that right, in the first episode.

         3. I shoulda been more clear as I was grumpy, decaffeinated etc.

      2. Ranting with too much blood in my caffeine stream.
         Yes, though it is one of the officers assigned to the detail (I knew one of the Air Force guys who did time with the Clintons) they are (or were) often in “Plain Clothes”, depending on situation. Reagan’s ball carriers were mostly dressed like the Sec Serv guys, in part to “hide” them in the group, but after the Wall came down, more and more it’s be someone in Dress. The guy I knew also was always dressed in a suit, never his military dress, though likely because of Hillary’s detestation of the mil. She for some reason liked the guy I knew, and,though as hateful as she could be, she rarely had to have guys ordered to the detail, Bill never did (was always polite and easy to deal with, according to him), but they always had to assign every military man to AlGore’s detail. They all despised the man. It was the as part of the advance team for AlGore’s sorta campaign stop in NOLA that the guy I knew visited his aunt and we got to talking. Only reason he volunteered was it was the advance party, and ability to visit his aunt. So he flew in, did their coordinating etc, when AF2 arrived, meet it, take the trip in from the airport, then head out for the next trip stop, so he only had to be around the VP for a few hours at most, each stop.

   2. It’s bullshit. Also Clinton lost it for months.

      1. How can it even happen that the codes get lost for months? I remember reading that it did at the time, but seriously, how can that even happen? It’s not like losing that one key you have for a shed you rarely use.

         1. I knew people who worked for the Clintons. Think half-stoned boomer couple high on power

         2. Adding to Sarah’s point about baseline…. Mrs. Clinton seriously hates and fears the military.

            She singlehandedly turned an entire Air Force reserve office, in WASHINGTON STATE, into “I would vote for Satan himself over that woman” just by being her own utterly insane self.

            I didn’t get a lot of details, but the short version is that the reserve unit was tasked with hauling her somewhere dangerous, and she had two SS agents.

            ….she demanded the military members be disarmed, and didn’t let the SS guys stand down. For the entire, multi-shift trip.

            1. Sounds like something miss “Why aren’t I ahead by 50 points?” would do.

            2. I imagine the military probably likes her a lot better now, considering all the unvaxxed who got booted, all the officers who got purged, and the drop in recruitment. I imagine the ones who stuck and are joining know what they’ll be expected to do and who the ‘enemy’ is.

               1. Your imagination needs some help.

                  Why on earth would you think that the folks who were FORCED to do something, on pain of their families being left unsupported, will suddenly LIKE the thus and suches that forced them to do a stupid and dangerous thing?

               2. The son of one of the company’s employees is in Poland right now. He joined to serve his country, eing a small-town boy from Alabama.

                  1. My son is in Poland right now. I think- he’s military intelligence…

                     The current crop of FOGOs and politicians is none too popular with JOs is all I’m going to say.

               3. I am unsure if you are serious, or intending to vaporize the shunts on everyone’s Irony-meter.

                  1. Unfortunately, I’m serious. His mom is worried sick, and as our resident drama queen, if mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy.

                     1. I meant Bob….

                  2. We having eaten my comment….unfortunately I’m serious. His mom is not happy and given she’s our resident drama queen, when mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy…

            3. Hillary Clinton hates and fears everyone. She’s so toxic it’s amazing she hasn’t poisoned herself years ago. I’m, and everyone else in the old White House Travel Office, are 100% convinced she had Vince Foster murdered. And Blanche and Bill Dale were terrified that she’s have that done to them or their family members too.

               1. HRC is some sort of bizzare hybrid of Darhel and Posleen, without the redeeming qualities.

            4. Knew two people that met her, separately, in separate circumstances. And their opinions were very similar.
               She does have some charm to her. Not much. Mostly saves it for the people that she needs to charm. Everyone else either worships at her altar, or they die. Literally. (One of them is convinced that Hillary! is the one that “knows people” if you need someone whacked.)
               Both of them were not people she needed to be charming to. “Being treated like shit” would be an improvement, because shit has some value. You either do what she wants (reading her mind, of course) immediately and without hesitation, or take the abuse she gives you. If you do anything else, she’ll destroy you utterly.
               She wanted to be famous-her deal with the DNC to have her domestic agenda pushed in exchange for her standing by Bill in ’92 was her bottom floor price. “President” would be the middle of what she wanted. “God” is in the range of her ambitions. And if anyone or anything frustrates her, she’ll destroy them if they can’t be made of use to her later.
               One of the people that met her, when Monica Lewinski came out, wasn’t surprised. If I remember right, he said something along the lines of, “If I was married to her, I’d cheat, because she’ll eat you alive if you show any weakness at all.”

               1. My ‘experience’ of the Clintons is from my tour at Andrews AFB during their mis-Administration. Blanche Dale was my administrative clerk, and I got my info from her first hand. Hillary’s machinations damn near killed her; she had a stroke from the stress and lost part of her vision and gait. And this was the first instance I’d been exposed to weaponization of the IRS against an entire extended family who weren’t even political opponents; merely people that needed to be made an example of, and to provide a completely fabricated ‘excuse’ for removing him from that employment position. D.C. was the worst place the AF could ever have sent me to. It’s a cesspool. Gilded in many places, and I love the parks and museums, but the rest of it is still a cesspool.

                  1. She showed up at a union meeting I was at when running for POTUS. The hotel staff- the people who supposedly are Democrat loyalists, were instructed to not ever meet her eyes, and if they saw her coming stand with their face against the wall.

                     I doubt a single housekeeper in that hotel voted for her.

            5. I recall a story about her freaking out a military bomb sniffer dog was allowed in he presence

         3. So what he lost was referred to as the “Biscuit”. It is a card given to the president when he is inaugurated and it has a bunch of codes groups on it. The president selects one (or perhaps more? is there a duress code or no code, don’t know) and communicates this to the Strategic command. That is then part of the authentication process. It is supposed to be on the presidents person (or nearby sleeping one presumes) at all times as without it he can not identify himself to strategic command. The story was reported in a tell all by one of the Clinton aides and has been verified by others (and reported in the Atlantic of all places).

   3. According to Daniel Ellsberg, who wrote a book about this, the Football is a total myth, as launch authority has been dangerously decentralized to avoid decapitation attacks….

      1. Yeah, Ellsberg is shooting shit, too.

         The “Football” exists – but it doesn’t have the launch codes in it. What it is is the current set of contingency plans, with an accompanying index.

         An identical set follows the VPOTUS around. Pre-Soviet collapse, there was also one following the Speaker around; I don’t know whether that is still done or not.

         Each of the persons that might order an attack (POTUS down to every person on the rather lengthy command continuity list) is issued a code card. A different one for each. IF an attack is being ordered by POTUS, or the succeeding VP, they would provide that code AND the contingency name to be carried out – so something like “I am ordering the execution of Plan Golf-Seven, here is the authorizing code.”

         Now, obviously, if anyone pretending to be POTUS, but that does not have those contingency plans with them, they cannot do it this way. That the plan is valid identifies them as one of the two (or three). That is where the different code comes in – whoever they are ordering to do it knows WHO is ordering it – and, if they are not the verified current NCA, they don’t do it. If they are, they can work with them to determine which plan should be executed. Slower than if POTUS orders it, but still allows some response (hopefully).

         Now, as to a DOOF-O-POTUS, or cackling VP, or drunk Speaker who loses his/her card – there will be a designated military officer, with his or her own code, to verify that this is, indeed, the proper idiot issuing the order. (Probably the Joint Chief – which just gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies these days…)

         1. And, that military officer, may be the only thing between the proper idiot totally screwing the pooch, and the rest of the world. They need to be well versed in what constitutes a lawful order. And be willing to say “No”, just as much as salute smartly and say “Yes Sir.”

            1. Oh fricking excellent the current JCOS appears to be a suck up yes man. We are so white fish product (schrod).

   4. One time, either the Jug Eared Fool or his veep, ol’ Tapioca Head Joe pointed out the military officer in the room who handled the briefcase.

      Which, you know, is something you’re NOT supposed to do.

      1. Yep. As explained elsewhere, the “Football” has the contingency plans in it – which are VERY sensitive material, obviously.

         I think it quite likely that very few POTUS have ever seen any of those plans. One of their incoming briefings would be the range and categories of what is in the briefcase, but the myriad of details are only known to whatever group of wonks at the Puzzle Palace puts them together. (Which means that neither Demento nor Cackles has any notion whatsoever; one forgot ten minutes later, the other never listened in the first place. Warm fuzzies, again…)

6. They put the “nuclear secrets” charge out there because they want to execute Trump like the Rosenbergs.

   They’re not even hiding it on Twitter. They want to arrest him, try him in a DC kangaroo court, and execute him. I remember saying, in the first dark days after the communist “color revolution,” that Trump and his family should flee the country. For a long time I laughed at those dark fears, as Biden and his inept crew stumbled around like fools. I’m not laughing any more.

   1. They are fucking insane. They do that, and the balloon goes up.

      1. The answer to both of those points is yes and yes. I’ll add a third; they are delusional enough to want it to go up.

         1. That might be enough for me to get off the bench…

         2. I believe so too, Card. It’s scary that we’re both getting the same vibe.

            1. I am suddenly in mind of the example from the Cold War about, “Imagine two fellows in an ocean of gasoline. One has TEN matches. The other has only EIGHT matches. Who is safer?”

               The thing is, the left keeps trying to strike a match to light things off, and evidently it’s really diesel or kerosene or fuel oil or maybe even bunker fuel (and cool!) as NOTHING CATCHES.

               If/when something does CATCH, are they EVER in for a NAAAAARRRRRSTY shock. Why, they might feel it for the rest of their lives.

               [NOTE: Keep calm, and let them dig their OWN graves and jump in. They do not need help. Or ‘help’. it drive them GOBSTOPPINGLY MAD, and what’s more fun than watching that, huh?]

         3. Indeed – they want all that and don’t really care who will be hurt, as they are convinced that somehow, it won’t be anyone who really matters.

            1. Of course it won’t be “anyone who really matters.” It will be everyone. Absolutely everyone. Save a very, very tiny minority.

               That teeny tiny minority come out of a civil war ahead of where they started. And they’re never the ones you think. They’re not the former powerful. No, the powerful have enemies, and civil war seems like just the time to strike. Those enemies know it, too. Not the revolutionaries. They’re often first against the wall. Not the normal people. Their lives just became worthless. Less even than the cost of a bullet, because who pays for things anymore? At least, that is what the opportunist will think.

               And not the opportunists, either. They’re not safe. Not by a long stretch. Not the beggars and thieves. Their livelihoods only exist at the pleasure of a wealthy, tolerant society. Balloon goes up, and the consequence for getting caught stealing is death. Death right now, or death that drags on for a day or two while your body kills you, but death nonetheless.

               And that’s the default punishment for everything, when things get bad. Who staffs prisons when the revolution is on and all a-rage? Death for even suspicion is on the table. Itchy trigger fingers galore. Which means it will be dangers to be, not just the enemy (whoever that may be in whatever place and time), but anyone who is not definitely one of your own.

               It’s not good to be odd in those situations. Sucks for the rainbow flag crowd, they’re going to hurt. And it sucks for the Odd odds, the ones that don’t fit a particular category. It is going to suck to be unprepared and hungry, forced to impossible choices. It is going to suck to be prepared and known, a target for the former and the bandity types. And it will suck to be prepared and unknown, scared of getting made, and watching as people around you die.

               And that’s assuming you survive the first, sharp shocks. Many won’t.

               Not the soldiers. Not the ones under arms before it starts, not the ones that join, and not the ones that get drafted or dragooned into service. No one who’s seen combat up close and ugly wants it to come here, at all, ever. Not one who’s managed to remain relatively sane.

               The generals won’t be coming away smiling and happy on the other side. They’re high value targets. Some of them will get sniped. Some of them will lose loved ones. Some will take their own lives. Actually, a lot of people commit suicide during that time. Real suicide, not Epstein suicide.

               Rural folks and farmers, they’re not going to enjoy the decline either. They’re targets, too. Never know when a band of starving refugees will show up and not take no for an answer. A lot of those starving refugees will die anyway. But not before some of those rural folks and farmers fall, too. There’s also no fertilizer, no transpo, no markets to sell to. Trust will plummet. Fast.

               The American Revolution was an anomaly. A miracle and a shrewdly fought campaign that involved a bit of luck and fortune, here and there. Or blessings from the Heavens, if you believe. I do. But we will not see the like again today.

               No sane man or woman looks to war with eager, hungry eyes.

               Yes, there are things worth fighting for. That must be fought for, even the cost be high. But a wise man tries every peaceful possibility that can be before that.

               Because there’s no going back from that. You don’t fight a war halfway. You fight it to win or you lose. Lose a little or lose big. And with a civil war, it is always big. Big as everything. Even if you “win.”

               Like the smirking bullies they are, the left fears not the conflict they, knowingly or not, are pushing themselves towards. It is not just the police that protect. It is the very reluctance that decent men and women have for violence. For warfare inside our own country. Because should it ever happen again, the first casualty will be no man or woman born, but the very peace that you don’t realize is so incredibly precious and rare… until it’s gone.

               1. It’s the zombie apocalypse without the zombies (other than the woke NPC’s that is)

                  1. I prefer writing my little zombie apocalypse in space. Wouldn’t want to live in one.

               2. The other advantage we had during the revolutionary war was that we were fighting England. This was the same advantage that Gandi had. The French, Spanish, Germans, or really anybody else would have had Gandi shot out of hand.

                  Our goes will not be civilized in any way. These are people who advocate for the murder of infants. They won’t care about you either.

                  1. Foes, not goes.

                     Spell check changed it twice. Grrr

                     1. The typos, they will always be with us. For the longest time, every chapter had precisely one typo in it that I missed before post. Every single one. Broke the chain at around chapter 40.

                        Briefly.

                        1. “What sort of demon is it?”
                           “A typo-grypher!”
                           “Typographers are not demonic.
                           “Not a typographer, a typogrypher. The difference only sounds subtle. One is, at worst, a bore or minor nuisance, and can be quite beneficial. The other? I have yet to discover the proper obscenities to describe properly.”

                  2. None of the other European countries could have produced colonies that were as successful as the Thirteen Colonies. Other countries set up colonies in the New World. But they didn’t have the same outlook and philosophies as those found in the Thirteen Colonies. So they trundled along, while the Thirteen Colonies flourished.

                     By the early Nineteenth Century, New York City was the largest English-speaking city in the world. I can’t imagine similar circumstances for any of the non-English-speaking settlements at that time (even if the French hadn’t lost control of their colonies decades earlier).

                     So it’s possible that the American War of Independence wouldn’t have turned out as well against another European nation. But it’s also likely that such colonies created and controlled by a different European power wouldn’t have even been successful enough to start seriously thinking about independence in the first place.

                     1. I can’t remember where I read it, but someone pointed out that one of the things that English colonies had was guns.

                        The Spanish colonies in California that included “we can shoot those SOBs first”? Were weird.

                        While English colonies took it as a matter of course that you’d be defending yourself, and basically normalized gun culture.

                        This is a Massive advantage when it comes to settling an area.

                        1. Also, we weren’t exclusive to only one country. Anyone could come here from anywhere. And the hardest workers and most ambitious people from all over did, because guns. They could work as hard as they liked and keep the fruits of their labors because they would be allowed to defend themselves.

                           Everyone from all over, working hard to make things better actually did.

                           Our homegrown midwits intend to stop it.

                           1. Good point, we “adopted” a ton of colonies with And So You Can Fight Back type habits.

                           2. “You have or are willing to adopt our values? You are OF US, and WELCOME!”

                              Don’t give a [CARP] about sex/gender, color/”race”.. you agree that the Declaration had it at least mostly right and the Bill of Rights was and is a MUCH NEEDED listing of SOME Rights…? then WELCOME!

                              You want to re-form the country in the image of the place you left? GO BACK AND ENJOY IT if that’s what you desire!

                           3. I don’t even care who they sleep with, provided it consensual and they don’t do it in my living room.

                           4. https://pin.it/2WEiuif

               3. Nice analysis. As the futurist/ commentator Gerald Celente says, “when people lose everything, they lose it”. We are approaching that time like a runaway train. A civil war is likely inevitable, especially when two sides have intractable positions. Unfortunately the lefts position at this point is to avoid treason charges for everything they have done recently starting with the Russia collusion fraud of 2016 to subvert an election. They have doubled down on everything since then and now are at the precipice of an abyss. If they take any more steps forward, they fall completely to their destruction and will, as Hillary said, “ hang together”. So they will fight, but they are not fighters and will ultimately lose.

                  1. Not so inevitable as all that, not yet, I think. The left is dying. I mean the entire cult of the left, the one that has as its raison de e’tre push left always. There’s only so far you can go before the crazy, the stupid becomes lethal.

                     And I don’t mean that some guy comes up with a gun and shoots them all, though that might very well happen to some of them in more lawless places. The mask stuff, the corruption of children, of men and women, of common sense, of decency, of respect for the rule of law… They’re bleeding people. They lost Naomi freaking Wolf not too long ago. I remember her from ’08 or so, worried that Republicans were going to persecute people like her and put them in Guantanamo. And more. Many, many more.

                     If things go on as they are, if the left stays in power, it will die. Not might. WILL. Because there will be nearly nothing left to steal, corrupt, or take from their subjects formerly known as taxpayers. Before even that, their own constituents will pull them down and eat them. Perhaps literally, nasty as that sounds, but one wonders.

                     If Republicans take back the Congress, some people on our side are saying that There Will Be A Reckoning.

                     Pardon the skepticism, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I recall the Republican Congress during the Obama years. Spare me the election year drama.

                     The only way that happens is if the leadership of the party now goes. It will not happen under Mitch and his Establishment cronies. These are not our guys. They never have been our guys.

                     I heave heard rumors that there is D money going into MAGA coffers. The theory goes, they get Trump, and the general public gets queasy about supporting the MAGA candidates because OrgangeManBad is a traitor or something equally stupid. That may not work out quite like they hope.

                     The only way Democrats survive as a party is really if Republicans win. Not Establishment Rinos. MAGA conservatives. If the economy does not correct, everyone loses. Conservatives see Establishment cronies get in office, muck things up like always and don’t fix what’s broken? They won’t be blaming MAGA. They’ll be blaming the left that gets elected in red states: the Rinos, like Mitch and his buddies.

               4. The generals won’t be coming away smiling and happy on the other side. They’re high value targets. Some of them will get sniped

                  Some of them will get fragged. By the unwillingly vaxxed, among others.

                  1. Having read what I have about the side effects, good.

         4. I believe the Left is divided, despite projecting the image of marching in lockstep and speaking with one voice.

            Some of them are scared spitless at the thought of the balloon going up.

            Some of them are “Bring it on!” probably because they’ve drunk their own ink about “But the Government has nukes and tanks and F15 fighters!”

            And some of them are looking for a straw insurrection that they can easily pummel and stomp, producing just enough bloodshed to let them wave a few bloody shirts, afterwards.

            1. Yes, the left is divided, but just like the orcs of Mordor, they will drop their dispute to kill non-leftists when the see them before returning to trying to kill each other (see Frodo and Sam’s discussion hiding from orcs just as they cross into Mordor after the Tower of Cirith Ungol).

               1. Probably the best, most concise explanation/illustration of what I can only call a functional Evil Society.

                  The biggest objection to evil fantasy empires I hear is that evil people and creatures wouldn’t work together to accomplish anything since their highest priority is self-interest. I keep arguing back that evil’s highest priority isn’t selfishness, it’s hatred of good.

                  They would go down in flames or live in offal if they were able to take you down with them.

                  1. Depends on the details. Remember even now the leftists turn on one member of their ranks to tear and render, quite frequently.

            2. Probably also the ones who got bloodied a bit in the streets, when they had blue state law enforcement protecting them, a network to deliver pallets of bricks, and DAs who would make sure they faced no consequences.

               Sneaking up behind an old man wearing a flag or MAGA hat, hitting him from the back and melting into the crowds is just light real live fighting, right?

      2. Trying not to be scared here. I guess it’s good we are studying Psalms right now.

         1. Same

            1. If you will pardon the expression, I do not believe we walk through the valley of death yet. Not as a people, as such.

               Granted, we all owe Himself a death. May we meet that day with courage and humility when comes. But I believe there are more chapters to the story of our nation than are yet written. Perhaps we’ll get to see something more light of heart yet.

               1. If we’re lucky.

                  1. This? Merely the Meadow of Grumbles. A few rough patches, but navigable at need.

                     Navigate wisely folks.

                     1. The Gully Of Grumbles. 😛

                        Which eventually empties into the Canyon Of Cantankerous.

                        1. Which is yet another reason not to trust GPS. Far better to keep cross-checking with a MAP!

      3. Quite right. There are several triggers out there. While somewhat morbid, what would be interesting is making a list of them and placing bets on which one they set off first.

         1. This is one of the techniques used in finding old shipwrecks. Get a bunch of tides, ship, etc. experts together, give them all available info, a map, and a betting pool.

            Place marked with the majority of the bets? Really good spot to start looking.

            So yes. Such a list would be informative.

            1. This is literally the plot point for my Space Guy finding a weird number of wrecks.

               Everybody else is going all Sane and stuff… he just kinda goes with the flow.

               1. Nice! 🙂

            2. Ever read Earthweb (Marc Stiegler)? Planetary defense decisions were relied heavily on betting pools.

      4. Aye. DAMNIT.

   2. Evidence doesn’t matter, if they can get Trump in front of a DC jury, he’s done.

   3. Unsolicited plug for “Divided We Fall” – an anthology that our hostess contributed to. If you need to pull an all nighter and have no coffee available, just read the introductory story by Mack Henckel. GUARANTEED to keep you up. No warranty on whether you’ll manage to do anything useful, though, from under your desk…

      1. Oh I spent some sleepless nights after I read that anthology, yes, I did. I highly recommend it. But do have some comfy pillows under your desk, because you’ll be spending some time there.

         1. I put my own nightmare in there.

7. I’m just glad you didn’t show the Fibbies wearing Melania’s lingerie. O the horror! 😛

   1. Indeed. My eyes are hurting enough from what I did see.

      1. Yeah. Those boys need to wear opaque hose or tights. Ugh.

   2. Alright Imaginos1892 where did you put the brain bleach? Even just the thought of that is seriously creepy.

   3. It’s now the FABULOUS Bureau of Investigation!

      1. No, it’s not.
         It’s the Fabulous Bureau of Ignominy.

         1. 😀

         2. I see you are NOT in need of a hammer, for you have NAILED IT.

         3. Ignominy, intimidation, instigation, iniquity, incompetence, injustice – one is spoiled with accurate but depressing descriptions.

8. The ‘Nuclear’ meme is metaphorical, for the reasons listed and explained here, plus one:
   Nuclear power technology could have a major economic/political effect; Price of electricity.

   The least unlikely claim online is that PDT declassified the info on ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
   Which makes sense, since the same FBI crew who did CF, did the search at MAL >:-)

   1. The same magistrate who signed off on the search warrant happened to recuse himself from the Trump lawsuit against Hillary and company over the Russia collusion hoax. Further, the search warrant was essentially a general warrant, something that is prohibited.

      In essence, it was a patently illegal Stasi style secret police raid that the Democrats and their propaganda arm are trying to give the veneer of legitimacy to; i.e. the exact same thing they did before and after the 2016 election.

      1. Definitely a general warrant (assuming I have the legalese down). The wording is for everything official from Jan 20, 2017 to Jan 20, 2021. In short, everything that would go into the POTUS library.

         I wonder if a side effect of this crap is to try to erase POTUS from history.

         1. They don’t want to erase Trump; they want him to be their Emmanuel Goldstein as they impose their version of Ingsoc (WokeSoc) on us-after all they clearly believe that Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and their added WokeSoc credo, Conformity is Diversity. It’s why everyone who expresses dissent is always tied in negative invective to Trump, such as Ultra-Maga. Yes, those dissent take their invective as a matter of pride as it means the target is being hit, but their intent is to demonize, deligitimize and eventually get rid of, in the fullest sense of the term, all who disagree.

            1. Ingsoc?

               Blasphemy! Thou shalt not take my name in vain!

         2. Worse, it’s a “general warrant” – say better, fishing license – twisting several legal statutes to argue that it was illegal, and a violation of the Espionage Act, for Trump to take any of his Presidential papers home with him. Why do you think the warrant covered literally every document and piece of paper he came in contact with during his term in office?

            https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/08/13/margot-cleveland-examines-why-the-doj-selected-the-statues-it-did-for-raid-on-mar-a-lago/

            Some bootlicking “legal analyst” on MSNBC called AG Garland’s gymnastics to justify the Mar-a-Lago warrant “brilliant.” Most sane people would instead be describing the raid using terms like “unconstitutional,” “un-American” and “chickenshit.”

            1. Clear 4th Amendment violation by the FBI, the judge, and the attorney that called for the warrant. All belong in jail.

            2. Not UN-American. FULL-ON ANTI-AMERICAN!

      2. something that is prohibited.

         Who cares? They are among the Protected; nothing will ever happen to them, at least in any timeline they can comprehend. The warrant could read “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” and it would make no difference whatsoever.

         The entire point of the exercise is to acquire — or give cover for planting — materials they can leak to the MSM for maximum political damage. If they actually manage to get to use it in court, that’s just gravy.

9. The ‘Nuclear’ meme is metaphorical, for the reasons listed and explained here, plus one:
   Nuclear power technology could have a major economic/political effect; Price of electricity.

   The least unlikely claim online is that PDT declassified the info on ‘Crossfire Hurricane’.
   Which makes sense, since the same FBI crew who did CF, did the search at MAL >:-)

   1. Peter Grant linked to the 4 part column at Conservative Treehouse. (I’m showing Peter’s link because of the WP link-gulag.)

      https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/08/why-did-doj-and-fbi-execute-raid-on.html

      Sundance’s take was that Trump had the goods on the Russian Collusion hoax, with the unredacted names of the Fibbies (and other IC people) involved, but because of some maneuvering, the report was not releasable, and might still be considered “classified”.

      Why they didn’t politely take it at the earlier meetings will be left to those smelling a huge political rodent in the DC area. Nuclear secrets my arse.

      1. Red State also has a piece alleging a connection between Durhams ongoing investigation of the FBI as part of the Russia Collusion Hoax probe and the raid, including Twitter suspending one of the reporters who has been reporting on it, Paul Sperry. Note that Russia Collusion Hoax conspirator James Baker is head of legal at Twitter these days,.

         https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/08/13/twitter-suspended-paul-sperry-but-hes-still-reporting-some-troubling-things-about-fbi-raid-n611587

10. Odds can never even.

    1. That’s only a multiplicative. In additive or subtractive operations odds should always even.

11. They had to change the story, I suspect, because they realized it paints them in one of two lights:

    a) the charge is so extremely bad that it almost defies belief, which means that it’s obviously bullsh*t, which makes the Dems look bad.

    or

    b) the charge is genuine, but forces the Dems to admit to the fact that nuclear secrets have been missing from the National Archives for nearly 2 years AND NOBODY NOTICED, which makes the Dems look REALLY bad.

    1. Embrace the healing power of and.

       How much you want to bet the boxes were supposed to be declassified investigations into Q-anon and someone actually ended up getting a chunk of Q level information in there.

       Probably filed in the wrong file drawer initially, even. And they just found out. And because they have the grasp of human psychology that omg alien space lizards could rival, they thought it would be a swell idea to run a raid on everything off of it.

       In their eyes it’s urgent, because they’ve drunk their own bath water and honestly believe Trump is a Putin puppet, and if it was accidentally dropped in a Q-anon box, it’s possible he doesn’t know it’s there. Therefore they need to move before he find it.

       And because it’s a spill, they can claim to be justified in grabbing everything under very vague explanations because detailing exactly what got spilled, kind of makes the whole thing moot.

       And the chain of stupidity is complete…

       1. IIRC, the National Archives were digging through the boxes (with Trump’s permission) back in June. If something had been accidentally put into Trump’s boxes, I would think that the Archives people would have noticed it then, and something would have happened at that time. One of the big red flags on this whole affair is that the Archives people looked through everything back in June, and then nothing happened for two months.

          1. If they found classified information then, they had a legal responsibility to report and secure it at that time. If they failed to do so, then they broke the law, not Trump.

          2. That assumes that the Archives people didn’t put in the documents they wanted to raid for later, when they were going through them the first time.

             The delay would be for plausible deniability purposes.

       2. The Putin thing I never really got – as president, Trump was more or less beating Russia like a rented mule.

          1. Equal parts projection, and thinking that it would either make the Republicans turn on Trump, or embrace Putin.

             I think they still don’t understand that we can, and will, declare a pox on all their houses. I wonder if that is an extension of their zero-sum thinking?

12. The stuff a president would have ready access to, at the White House, wouldn’t be how to build a bomb. It would be how we plan to use them. Why Trump would take that home with him doesn’t occur to me. It’s not stuff that should be on his nightstand on the residential floor. “They” are saying (and remembering my daddy’s saying*) it was keep in a locked room type stuff.

    *”They say” will tell you a tale.

    1. Also, logic check. Why would I try to do a logic check on this lot. That makes no sense.

13. Evil is worse. Evil is vincibly ignorant. They could know better and choose not to. Many are in affected ignorance. They deliberately worked to keep themselves ignorant.

    1. THIS.

14. A whole bunch of folks are peeing in the ears of their favorite propagandists and presstitutes at various “news” purveyors.

    Part is in effort to find something, anything, that might stick enough to damage Trump in an election.

    Part is in effort to ensure any potential jury, grand or trial, is thoroughly poisoned.

    Part is in effort to ensure the FBI look heroic, not monstrous.

    Some is simply folks with the ability to sh!tpost and score points in some evil game.

    Some is just the usual presstitute habit of garbling anything they accquire.

    Some is simple hate/”revenge”.

    Their name is Legion.

    All of it is sufficiently salacious for “breaking news”, and SCOTUS seems to believe no presstitute can ever really slander “public figures”.

    So run they do. And more will follow.

    1. All of this is going before a DC grand jury, and likely before a DC criminal jury, before it’s all over. Not to mention the equally partisan DC Court of Appeals.

       That jury pool is already poisoned. Just ask the J6 defendants, or the Trump cabinet staffers who have had their slander suits against the Deep State thrown out of court, or for that matter John Durham.

15. IIRC certain science fiction magazine with a name beginning with “Analog” published instructions back in the ’70s on how to steal radioactive materials, cook them into bomb-relevant recipes, and create a Hiroshima-type bomb in a two-story house with a basement. They also made mention of the fact that between 30 and 50 of your would-be bombers would die from the process, regardless of whether law enforcement caught on.

    Seemed like a poor return on investment to me. Unless, one supposed the leaders convinced the followers they would receive 72 boxes of raisins in heaven. The good ones, not those dried blueberries or cranberries.

    

    Mon on topic, I’m a pretty forgiving person, normally; but I’d be okay with someone of the right Constitution giving every politician who took money from China a 30′ pine enema. With a fair trial, of course..

    And those are the people going after Trump. So they made me side with Trump.

    1. That was a point Tom Clancy made in The Sum of All Fears. They guys machining and making the glowing components all ended up dead from the side effects of working with glowing stuff. (And probably from inhaling solvents and other things you are not supposed to do when machining and processing minerals and explosives.)

       1. No, one security guard died from that. The machinists were murdered by he terrorists.

       2. Here’s an odd thought – high levels of gamma/other dangerous radiation have much the same effect as Lovecraftian deities/unknowable monstrosities/Others.

          If you see the glow, you’re dead. You simply don’t know it yet. There are things man is not meant to grasp, there is a power man cannot touch and still walk among the living.

          (Of course, once you’ve got sufficient levels of fail-safes and technology between Man and It, you’re fine. It’s interacting too closely with it that kills you. Don’t touch the Ark of the Covenant with your bare hands, or open it if you’re part of an organization specifically persecuting its people. Use a crane to put it in a box, then put that box into another, then put that box into another, then stuff it in a warehouse… well, I won’t say you’ll be fine, but you’ve got far better chances.)

          1. Such warehouse out near Univille, South Dakota.

             1. Well if that warehouse has a mysterious sudden fire then we know it wasn’t nuclear codes or other top secret stuff. It was Epstein’s client list, dirt on the FBI, or something else damaging to TPTB.

             2. We haven’t moved on to 14?

          2. The Nazis were so dumb in that movie. Ahh, yes this ancient Jewish artifact will give us power. So who gave the artifact it’s power, morons?

             1. Nazi occult theory was not notable for its logic.

                1. OBVIOUSLY it was stolen. They’re good at that.

          3. It is not true that if you see the glow you are dead. There were/are a number of research reactors using water for shielding where you can walk across a catwalk over the reactor, look down, and see a blue glow.

             1. Ah, interesting! I didn’t know that.

                Primarily exaggerating for comedic/dramatic purpose here. Not really meant to be taken literally or dogmatically, it just struck me as an interesting comparison.

             2. Chernekov radiation. The research reactor at my undergrad alma mater is designed so that one can safely see it. Somewhere in their records is a logbook that has my signature on it. As part of Engineering Open House (IIRC) I was allowed to perform some kind of very basic task, and got to sign off on it. It’s only been four decades, so it’s unsurprising I don’t remember exactly what it was.

                1. What are the blue sparks from a microwave? First one I ever saw was in the break room of a bank, and the display happened when a guy put a foil-wrapped sandwich in it. Long, blue sparks and sizzling sounds. I went under a table, just to be on the safe side.
                   They had to replace the microwave.

                   1. Electric arc. Normally, air is an excellent electrical insulator, but at a certain voltage, the molecules of the air become ionized and create a conducting path. Putting metal in a microwave under power creates conditions where that can happen, which is you should never do it. It’s the same thing as lightning, only on a much smaller scale.

                   2. As Confutus said, never put metal in a microwave. Except… it’s slightly more complicated than that, because certain shapes of metal are (I’ve heard) more prone to create those electric arcs than others. (I’ve never tested it myself, for obvious reasons). Specifically, shapes with sharp edges or points are more likely to create those arcs. So aluminum foil, which almost always forms lots of sharp edges and/or points when wrapped around things, is VERY likely to form arcs and damage the microwave. But if you absentmindedly leave a spoon in the bowl of soup you’re heating up, the curve of the spoon is not likely to form electric arcs and damage your microwave, so you might get away with it. A fork could, but probably won’t, damage it: there are three or four sharp points at the ends of the tines, but aluminum foil forms dozens of hundreds of such points. Apparently when the Mythbusters crew tested it, they could not get any electric sparks off of either a spoon or a fork.

                      1. It was a log-shaped sandwich in that really thin foil (this was the early 1970s).
                         The guy had a real gift for breaking things. I watched him stick a screwdriver into our card-printing machine while it was plugged in. Talk about your shower of sparks.

                         1. When I was about 12 or so, old enough to know better, i stuck an open-ended wrench into an electrical socket. It spat and sparked at me, and even melted and blackened a tiny bit of the wrench When my dad got home, I confessed, expecting a punishment. Dad merely said, “Learned your lesson, didn’t you?” Yes indeedy I had.

             3. Also radium dials and tritium sights glow.

                1. They don’t glow from radiation. They glow because radioactive isotopes energize the fluorescent paint.

    2. The Analog article was, I believe, ” Build your own A Bomb and wake up the neighborhood.”

       1. Now I know ATH is my second home.

       2. Don’t get Sarah going about Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority! 😀

          1. Or nukes in vending machines.

    3. I have a copy of the issue.

       In high school, I gave a presentation on how to build it.

       What?

       Is it really THAT much of a surprise?

       1. Not really much of surprise. We’ve know, conceptually, what it takes to build an atomic bomb since the ’20s. The Manhattan project was mostly the hard engineering necessary to make the right things happen in the right order at the right time. And, of course, manufacturing enough weapons grade U or Pu to make it possible.

    4. Yep. The author mentioned the need for naive/fanatic machinists, because you’d go through them in the process.

       1. You remember it!!!!

          1. Oh, yes.

16. Hmm. In that novel being drafted, the foreign mole in the FBI wanted the MAL raid as fishing for Intel.

    For example, notes on future plans against US adversaries.

17. Ironically enough, I found myself in need of the knowledge and experience a rocket scientist might know today. Well, I needed to resolve an object tumbling in space in three axes using ships that had to physically touch the object to arrest its spin. All I could come up with considering my limited knowledge was matching the spin, connecting, and slowly applying appropriate thrust. Which sounds like it would take a not insignificant amount of time, considering the technology involved.

    On topic, I am still waiting for more information on the topic to come to light. That may take a while. What does exist now is, frankly, risible. Again. They cannot believe that this will somehow come back on them, or create a precedent that their political opponents will take advantage of. Literally cannot.

    Because if they did, they’d never be this stupid. Yes, even considering the level of incompetence we have regrettably become familiar with. Because if they did consider that the same sort of thing they are doing here could come back on them, or be used against them in the future, they would be even more insane than I previously considered.

    As has been said before, there is only so crazy, so stupid that one can get before the consequences start to become lethal.

    1. They don’t expect to have any viable opponents they can’t deal with by any means in the future. Their plans are in place to cheat in the election sand get away with it as in years before. Then ban or cripple elections in the future.

18. Secret or Top Secret are not the same system as Q and L. The details of our catching the Iranians cheating and the high level source would almost certainly be Top Secret, Special Compartmented Information, and would have nothing to do with Q or L type classification.

19. OK so former classification holder First, no I no longer hold one (expired in 2015) nor do I ever want one again. Second, None of what I say here divulges anything that is NOT in public documents, the advantage is I did the Clearance training yearly while I used my clearance (unlike Certain Secrataries of State 🙂 ) and can summarize what I remember. That said here we go. First of all there are two different clearance Models DOE (Nee AEC) which has rwo known levels, Q and L . I know of these from the briefings, but for details go here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_clearance and of course its wikipedia so take with a large grain of salt. The other clearances use the DOD system , Top Secret, Secret and Confidential in decreasing order. There also used to be Restricted below confidential but that went away after WWII ( IN WWII we matched the British system I think they still have Restricted).

    Nuclear information is special. The main set of information for this is called Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information (CNWDI pronounced Sinwidee by some…). To handle that you must have the proper clearance (TS or S in DOD depending on the material, Q or L in DOE) Need to kno. Your clearance can not be provisional I.e the full investigation is complete and up to date.

    Honestly I can think of NO CNWDI documents that would be in the Whitehouse nor any people (except from occasional Military and DOE people coming to brief) that would have the need to know for CNWDI, So it should not be that. Certainly the President does NOT have need to know for CNWDI What other things might be Nuclear in nature? I can think of three. Detailed targeting plans, General US Nuclear capabilities, intelligence or information on other countries capabilities. First the targeting plans. To my understanding that is whats in the “Football”. The football is handled by a Colonel (O-6, could be a navy captain I think). The President NEVER handles it, basically only that O-6 deals with it and some O-6 is there with it 24 hours a day. So that seems unlikely. General US Nuclear Capabilities (or new capabilities) are a possibility. President would be briefed on that, and it MIGHT be in the Presidents Daily Briefing (PDB), I wonder if they let the President keep that in the office (probably has the safe for classified documents somewhere near the Oval office or wherever he works). Would the documents go with the President? At least my training says not, after the position was transferred to the Turnip in Chief, Mr Trump no longer had need to know. Although rumors are Obummer took 30K plus documents with him. Finally there are Intelligence about opponents (Russia, CCP, Iran, North Korea etc). Certainly information like that could be in the PDB, but again would a President be allowed to take those with him? Perhaps in a form with the classified passages redacted. Each paragraph is marked with portion markers like these (U) (unclassified), (S) (classified Secret), (S/NF) (classified secret no foreign, even allied country folks), (TS) Top Secret, (TS/SCI) Top Secret Special Compartmented Information, (TS/SAP) Top Secret Special Access Program. The later two portion markings were allegedly found in some of the documents sent to Hilary’s home server… The portion makers would make it easy to create a redacted document. Note: this needs to be done by someone who knows what the hell they are doing Some programs (like Microsoft word in many of its incarnations) still have stuff in the document, a truly easy way to create a security violation.
    Given this I think the odds that Trump took ANYTHING not public domain related to “nuclear” secrets to Mar A Lago is somewhere between small and 0.

20. At this point, the Bee’s story about the raid really being a way to get new outfits for the Friday Night Drag Party at the FBI offices makes more sense than what’s in the “real” media.

    1. Man I love the Bee. But those folks ought to really watch their asses. Some portion of those 87K new IRS agents are to harasses them. The Bee got to be about as popular as Charlie Hebdo at a Saudi based Sunni mosque with the Brahmandarins.

       1. And some to harass me, and some–

          1. Urrgh hadn’t thought about that. Please document the heck out of the recent donations so they can’t cause trouble for you about that and claim its money laundering or some dumb ass thing. I had a run in with the IRS a while back. During the Obama years we were requested to verify our charitable deductions (we tithe, so maybe that was it combined with my spouses being an ordained pastor at the church we were attending). I then proceeded to get the itemized checks for all the donations and all the letters with the detailed responses got that all together and mailed it off certified to the place that requested the information. like 8 months later they finally sent back a response saying that yes our deductions were valid. I’ve always wondered if that was part and parcel of Obamas IRS harassing people of faith. If so I am deeply honored, as it says in the beatitudes (Mathew 5:10-12, NET translation)

             Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
             Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me. Rejoice and be glad, because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.

             Perhaps I can claim a tiny bit of that 🙂

             1. Just remember that all cumulative transactions totaling $600 or more must be reported to the IRS courtesy of the last Democratic Party power grab.

             2. Yep.
                They hit everyone at pjm in 2012.

                1. My guess is that FIRE will be on of the first targets of the expanded IRS, as they have a track record of success of challenging campus tyranny and have recently expanded to challenge tyranny on a broader scale

21. Although it has nothing to do with nuclear secrets, perhaps it would be useful to lay out the obvious. Well, it’s obvious to me. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I have had half an eye on political shenanigans ever since Watergate, which I do remember. Faintly, I could be wrong, but see what you all think.

    First, the part of Merrick Garland’s little speech about people who attack the integrity of the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors is nothing but smokescreen. He had to have known that it would look bad,and risked approving the warrant anyway. I don’t believe he gives three straws for the professionalism or integrity of his people.

    I think he is looking at a red wave in the November elections. Without a Democratic majority to block it, he and his department and their conduct since Trump’s election will become the prime targets of a House investigation and subject to very sharp and pointed questions by outraged and furious Congressmen. At that point, he won’t be able to hide from the spotlight, and some of his people will be racing for the cameras in order to spill the beans and save their own skins, The government’s loyal mouthpieces aren’t that loyal. If perchance he has been twisting arms to get favorable or block unfavorable press, the owners of those arms would be more than happy to see him go down.

    The White House has already blenched and waffled about whether he was politically motivated, (The answer to that question, Madame Press Secretary, is a firm “No” whether it’s the truth or not. There are a lot of questions you can dodge: that isn’t one of them). So he can’t count on support there, either. The Supreme Court? Not hardly. .All this threatens to leave him twisting in the wind.

    As far as seeking less intrusive means than a search warrant? Well, that may be Standard Operating Procedure, but treating the former President like a terrorist ringleader is about as far from standard as one can get. He is desperate to prove that Trump really is the wannabe coup leader the Democrats say he is. Since the J6 hearings didn’t throw up enough convincing evidence for that, well, if they dig through his papers, they can hoke up something. Ideally, pretext for a charge of treason, but failing that, sufficient material for another smokescreen.

    In short, desperate people do stupid things.

    1. “well, if they dig through his papers, they can hoke up something. ”

       Occam’s Razor: Given the vagueness of the warrant and the items to be seized, they can add classified documents real or forged of any sort they want.

       1. Anything to confuse the issue and delay the reckoning. It seems that he and his allies figure if they can discredit Trump, the whole movement of his all his supporters will evaporate. I’ve seen that one before, too, and it doesn’t always work that way. If a sufficient number of people don’t especially like Trump but support him anyway because of the kind of enemies he has made, then it doesn’t matter what happen to him. They risk creating a martyr.

       2. And they already tried that stunt in 2016 with the bogus computer traffic they created to try to manufacture a tie between Trump and Russia through “secret banking channels” . Its the exact same game plan, its simply juiced up some more.

       3. They probably can’t hoke something. Not something real. He’s almost SUPERNATURALLY clean.
          And given the nature of the raid, no one is going to believe their bullshit, other than their already sold fanboys.

          1. Though there’s always that Cardinal Richelieu quote: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

             1. Which Beria simplified to “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

          2. Oh, agreed. Now how many non-fanboys will be on the grand and petit DC juries?

             Again, it’s not that they win, it’s how much damage they’ll do trying.

             1. A lot, Steve. The good people we’ll lose, many of them kids. A wasted generation of productivity and innovation. This won’t kill us, but it will come close

          3. Aye, if they had any REAL dirt on him, it’d have been broadcast on every band from DC to DAYLIGHT in 2015.

       4. They’re arguing that all of President Trump’s Presidential papers are illegal (and his having them are a violation of the Espionage Act) whether classified or not.

          https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/08/13/margot-cleveland-examines-why-the-doj-selected-the-statues-it-did-for-raid-on-mar-a-lago/

          Yeah, I also posted it back up the thread. You can’t emphasize enough just how selective and underhanded (not to mention un-Constitutional and un-American) this is. But it will be enough for a DC jury, and that’s all that matters.

          1. It will be enough to send up the balloon, is what it will be.

          2. Is it just me, or is the pressure gauge edging into the red?

             1. There’s a little whistle starting.

          3. So are they going to raid all of those so-called presidential libraries, seeing as how they’re chock full of that stuff? Who’s next? Obama? Bush the Younger? Clinton?

    2. Absolutely agree!
       Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the poor Dems have collectively woken up to the reality that they will lose the House in January (election in November, but it all does not shake out until the new year), so no more Pelosi to cover for them and run interference. And likely they will also lose the stalemate in the Senate, all it would take is one seat.
       And bless their pea picking hearts, they have redefined the rules of engagement quite definitively, no more common courtesy across the aisle, it’s all about accusations and show trials, and the obvious dirt on the Democratic side is an over ripe plum ready for plucking.
       Now if it were just swapping control the Democrats might just badger the Republicans into the old time policies of forgive and forget. Go easy on the bastiches in other words, but with Donald Trump in the mix?
       Their house of cards is right on the edge of collapse and that fact is a gnawing rat in their collective guts.
       The raid was a hail Mary wrote large, much as the J6 show trial has been and it’s all falling apart in front of their eyes. And much as desperate cornered critters will do, they are going to drag as much as possible over the cliffs along with them.

       1. And if they take out Donald Trump, they’ll have the American people. I don’t think they GET that.

          1. they are going to drag as much as possible over the cliffs along with them.

             Like lemmings through the hourglass, so are the Dems of our lives.

             We’ll see how that works out for them seeing all the deplorable rabble waiting down here at the bottom of said cliffs.

             1. With pikes! 😀

                Watch that last step, it’s a long one…

                1. It’s never the long drop that gets you.

                   It’s the sudden stop on the spiky bits at the bottom.

                   1. If the drop is long enough, however, it doesn’t matter if it’s nice squishy water there. Even water that is chock full of bubbles and so squishier than usual. You hit it like it’s rock.

          2. “I’ll just pour this unwieldy long tube of uranium solution into this more convenient bucket.”
             BLUE-WHITE FLASH

             1. Stirring rapidly a big vat of Plutonium solution did produce drama. The vortex concentrated the metal, and things got spicy.

                Critically spicy.

22. What they are looking for is anything they can use as a pretext to go after congressional candidates running in November so that they can throw mud at them, hit them with bogus claims and charges, and try to prevent their getting elected, or if elected to create a pretext for disqualification, so that they can keep control of Congress if their get out the fraud effort fails.

    Keep what they did to General Kelly in mind as much as what they have done to Trump and everyone around him. \

    Democrats are all-in in keeping power by any means necessary and going full totalitarian. This is why they want 80,000 armed IRS agents willing to kill.

    1. They’re already doing that in PA.

       1. Yep. They want to make sure PA goes full Democratic Party on a state level so they can rig elections throughout PA in perpetuity by changing election laws to encourage it.

    2. This certainly may be an attempt to throw mud on anyone associated with MAGA or the Republicans.

       It may very well backfire biggly. This kind of thing might just convince people not to listen to a single charge against anyone for anything and vote straight Republican. I think that has already happened to some extent but this will ratchet it up a notch or 11.
       People are becoming primed to think that anyone accused of anything by the feds is being railroaded.

       1. They are going to do more than throw mud. They are going to use the full force of the federal government to try to destroy anyone who supports Trump. Just ask Eric “Bang Bang Fang Fang” Swallwell, who today openly threatened Trump supporters by tweeting that ‘those still supportive of the former president have one last opportunity to get “off the Trump train” before it gets “ugly.” Otherwise, they’d find themselves in the “wreckage” ‘ (via Fox News).

          1. Subtle! (/sarc off)

          2. Swallwell will likely be the first visited by the Neuvo French Revolutionaries.

          3. Bluster, bluster, threat, threat. The Wig Bad Bolf can puff and huff, but can’t how your blouse down if you have built a brouse of hicks. (Thank you, Archie Campbell). There are too many supporters of Trump for the DOJ to take them all on, the FBI just torpedoed itself, and the IRS is already falling behind on its current workload. Even if all the extra personnel authorized by Congress were hired today (they won’t be) and trained tomorrow (they won’t be that, either), it would still take time to get its act together. The uglier they try to get by flouting the law they are supposed to uphold, the more resistance they will create.

             1. And if they go after those of us out in the open, it will only make things worse.

23. The raid was a fishing expedition, but not for the nuke stuff, they are still trying to get him convicted in NY state, if they have their way, it will be taxes. Anything to get him convicted of a felony. The swamp needs to get PDJT purged, he gave people ideas about the swamp, they can not abide that.

    1. Taxes? They raided the wrong place. The problem is they can’t legally raid the locations that would have the tax information business, private, or intertwined.

24. Let’s consider the deep background of theories about the FBI.

    Hoover put the organization together. He had previously worked another organization under Wilson, and the actual early days of the FBI was heavily FDR era. These two presidents are of some relevance to how Hoover might have understood the tasks he accepted on their behalf.

    Wilson was a tyrant. He ran significant domestic information operations, he segregated parts of the civil service, nad after his death some of his officers were involved in carrying out anti-black mass murder. It is frankly credible that the resurgance of ‘white supremacist terrorism’ in the 1920s and 1930s by Democrats, to a significant degree in the South, was in fact directly inspired by his influence. Hoover having /any/ ties to Wilson’s efforts or movement is not at all good optics for a security organization or a law organization.

    FDR was a tyrant. His progressives were a continuation of the Wilson progressives. He also had remarkable information operations directed against the American people, and did infringe on the civil rights of Americans. Likewise, pretty bad optics in hindsight.

    I must admit a personal grudge against FDR, and a belief that he was as evil a man as Hitler, simply more constrained than Hitler.

    1. Any sane human being has a personal grudge against FDR. And I agree with you.

       1. The classic point on this:

          George Takei opposes the party whose president oversaw the end of slavery, while supporting the party whose president imprisoned his family.

          Libs have very selective morals.

          1. To be fair, George Takei was damaged at a very early age, by those exact actions.

          2. I keep telling folks, “DUMBASSAMIDE is a HELLUVA DRUG!”

    2. As a Jew, I can state unequivocably that of that of the major belligerents (US, UK, Germany, USSR, Japan), the Nazis were only 3rd nastiest, and Hitler makes #3 in terms of personal nastiness behind Stalin and FDR (I don’t know enough about the Japanese leadership to place them).

25. But what if Hoover actually was clean and innocent, and therefore also the FBI?

    One caveat is that the culture in the FBI seems to be by branches, with some branches getting stupud and corrupt in certain ways, while others can remain clean.

    One of the things that seems to be pretty true across all branches is a strong orientation to PR and public image. This really does seem to be consistent to the culture of the entire organization. Which maps to Wilson’s and FDR’s information operations.

    Other concerns may be more specific to the DC branch. Hoover had a reputation for collecting information on DC politicians. And, bringing it carefully to their attention for the purpose of leverage.

    So, when he died, DC politicians where careful to ensure that the replacement head was an outsider, /not/ one of his cronies. One of the people passed over for this was Mark Felt.

    1. By my read, J. Edgar Hoover was an empire builder. He was Republican-oriented and did most of his building during the Eisenhower administration and the height of the Cold War when he pursued Communists with vigor, using their own infiltration and subversion tactics against them. He thought Martin Luther King was a Communist agent and pursued him as such. although he was by most evidence I have seen one of the least Communist of black civil rights activists of the era. Evidently he considered the FBI to be his personal domain and he was none too scrupulous about how used it to maintain its independence and to resist and manipulate Democratic and Republican Presidents alike. He and his subordinates carefully cultivated a squeaky clean PR image, which was always better than the reality, since he apparently kept one set of rules for his juniors and another for himself. After his passing, the independence of the FBI was sharply curtailed, but evidently the temptation to use it as a political tool became irresistible.

26. Side issue, one definition of Establishment Conservative is ‘spent at least two decades apologizing for Nixon’. In being more fully informed, and in hindsight, Nixon was framed by the FBI for political reasons and for personal revenge, and Republicans really should have never been apologizing for him.

    Okay, Nixon really did do wrong things. But, Democrats also did a number of wrong things, and the FBI was cheerfully willing to cover it all up. Considering immediately prior FBI handling of presidents: JFK cheated Nixon in the 1960 election, his margin of victory was supported by white supremacist terrorism, and he was a rapist. LBJ was a crook even by the standards of the Texas machine that he came out of. FBI silence in public about the extent to which the Democrats in the South at the time were still pretty much a criminal conspiracy speaks very very loudly.

    This take on Watergate is hardly going to be the most broadly persuasive argument.

    1. The left had it in for Nixon because he supported McCarthy.

       1. And despite the efforts to ‘fortify’ (like an ‘election’…) it, History has revealed that McCarthy was far more correct than incorrect.

          1. As far as I can tell (though I’m certainly open to corrections by those who’ve studied the subject in depth), McCarthy’s biggest mistake wasn’t that he went after innocent targets — all those he accused of Communist leanings did indeed have them — but rather that he went after targets he couldn’t prove, because proving them would have involved revealing classified information which might have given away sources & methods. So the media was able to turn that into “McCarthy went after innocent people” in popular opinion.

       2. Well, actually, the left hated Nixon because he ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the Senate in 1950- and dared to win!

          Sound familiar?

27. Let’s skip ahead to Clinton, where matters get extremely interesting again.

    The talking point then was that his personal life had nothing to do with him as a public figure, and the historical record may wind up showing the exact opposite.

    We’ve had Presidents before who were serial sexual predators. JFK pretty much fits that pattern, as may LBJ.

    Clinton very clearly is a serial sexual predator to the degree that it shapes all of his human interactions. (Hillary’s issues likewise shape all her human interactions, but they may be a different flavor of wrong.) Look at the case studies of Walter Breen and Marion Bradley, they were both sexual predators, and actively managed all of their human contacts in service of their predation. Some of their contacts were victims, some were carefully curated enablers, some were merely selected for being vulnerable to manipulation (and were mentally warped, but not to the point of becoming enablers), and some of them had no idea that anything wrong was occurring.

    It is probable that Clinton was likewise very attentive to how much he could manipulate his contacts, to whether he had, and to exposing secrets of his behavior to people that he can not compromised in ways that would ensure that they would not betray him. He also had eight years of making law enforcement appointments.

    And, some of these serial sexual predators get a charge out of compromising innocents, and bending people towards complicity, even if the initial innocents in question are not their most favorite type of victim.

28. LBJ and JFK could maybe manage to keep things covered up without the help of a vicious harpy who gets a charge out of terrorizing people. Billy Jeff could not manage to keep things a secret even with HRC doing everything in her ability to provide cover. Billy Jeff is very likely the extreme degree of sexual predator.

    Pedophile cult is probably a step way too far, for what we can be pretty sure is the case. But, it is very likely that he did deliberately promote leadership within the FBI and other organizations who practiced predatory sexual behavior towards other adults. For other organizations, the President formally has a lot of power over military officers, and look at Fat Leonard. Bill having a habit of preferring to promote sexual predators would explain officers that senior being disordered enough for prostitutes, etc. to be an incentive.

    It is extremely likely that Clinton did a lot of the prep work for Obama, and that Obama was maybe not sexually disordered enough to have done some of that work himself.

29. Obama’s appointments and other actions have been freakishly destructive.

    I think my earliest comment is correct to indicate the Obama administration.

    But, Clinton’s appointees and the hires that Clinton motivated were an important foundation for Obama’s work.

    Additionally, Bush (43) was grossly negligent. He was grossly negligent in not realizing the priority that should be put on removing Clinton’s influence, in not removing that influence, and in fact in collaborating with the Democrats, instead of opposing them in everything.

    I should have paid attention to the warnings about Bush, which were on target, in hindsight. But, he does not seem to have contributed to the problems by the means of being a sex pervert.

    Obama’s effectiveness in destruction was rooted in a very strong mental and intellectual perversion. He basically hates everyone in America, and inflicts suffering on people as a necessary part of maintaining his mental equilibrium.

    Biden is a sex pervert again.

    1. He’s now Clinton’s best bud. His daughters say they’re like twins separated at birth. (Bush). He also identifies as “Christian Socialist.”
       So, collaborator.
       Meanwhile Obama wants to punish us because daddy left him. And this is somehow our fault.

       1. Bill Clinton is very good at seeming agreeable, and he probably also exploited bitterness about the Bush sons not going further in politics. Obviously you have to have a low Wisdom score to fall for this, but maybe W thinks he can save Bill’s soul by being his buddy. Also, Bill probably is doing everything he can to distance himself from Hillary, both because he is thinking of himself and because HRC is nobody to live with.

          But yeah, the whole situation is bad/creepy.

       2. I’ve been saying for about 3-4 years now that Trump is our best president since Reagan. (I rate Reagan, the “Great Communicator”, higher than Trump because Trump’s communication style is great for firing up the base, it tends to put people off who are in the middle of the road politically, and think “rude = bad”. Reagan was much better at remaining polite while making very sharp points in his messaging). Thing is, the more I learn about the Bush family, the more I realize that that’s d*mning with faint praise. (Asterisk just in case WP has some sort of filter). Still don’t regret voting for W in 2000 general election as I still firmly believe that Gore would have been worse, but I certainly wouldn’t vote for him in any primaries were he eligible and running.

    2. The ONLY reason I have to doubt that Obama is pulling the puppet strings is he has an ego the size of a super-Jupiter would have bragged about it by now.

30. The Clintons cleared out just about everyone from the Democratic Party who might have competed with them, or displaced them.

    Obama was a shock and a surprise to them. Possibly the roots of his support were within a cult of communism, and hence why someone looking at support within the Democratic Party could have missed it.

    HRC’s disordered appetite very definitely includes ambition, and greed. She can’t view her husband’s stuff as an accomplishment, only the stuff that is directly coming to her, that ‘she earned’.

    2008 was not productive for her state of mind, but 2016 seems to have sent her well and truly around the bend, and maybe resulted in her dragging the rest of the party with her. That her people put out the ‘but her emails’ ad copy with such timing WRT the FBI raid suggests that it is in fact her insanity driving things.

    Both Barry Obama and Billy Clinton seem to have politicized the FBI. But, this issue may be in part or in whole be her demands being heeded by politicized FBI management.

    1. Obama came out of nowhere. He was elected to the Senate, spoke at the convention, and then became the party’s nominee before his first Senate term was up. He quite literally did not exist on the national stage when the Clintons were in the White House. Word is that even his own people viewed his run for the party nomination as a trial run for when he made his serious attempt in a subsequent election. He wasn’t supposed to win that year.

       The question is how Obama did it. While I haven’t done any real research into the topic, it’s possible that the Clintons clearing of the board in order to solidify their power within the party is actually what made his ascension possible. Hillary is unlikable. Even many within the Democratic Party just flat out don’t like her. Such people would look for anyone willing and able to stand against her. But the Clintons had been careful to remove all of their opposition. That left a huge void, and Obama was able to step into it. If the Clintons hadn’t created that void, it’s possible that some of the old hands in the party would have blocked Obama’s advancement to the presidential nomination.

       Edwards was the other option that year that might have blocked Obama. But of course he scored an own goal when proof emerged via the National Enquirer that he’d been having an affair with a campaign staffer, had a kid from that affair, and had been inappropriately paying the staffer with campaign funds.

       1. Obama was always a front person for the Chicago commies. His state office and Senate runs were successful because he essentially eliminated the opposition through the leaks of sealed court documents that destroyed his opponents publicly, particularly in the US Senate race where it was sealed divorce records that got released (that was the divorce that involved Jeri Ryan of Star Trek Voyager fame).

          Those same commies are now the heart of Team HarrisBiden and the powers that run the federal bureaucracy on a daily basis It is not a coincidence that they are emulating Soviet and CCP style tactics and ideology

          1. I’ve always thought Obama was offered a deal: he would get the perks and trappings of officw, while being the spokesman/salesman for the people with real power. I underestimated him…but maybe, so did they.

       2. the Birther claims originated in the Hillary campaign, and Trump was one of her go-to disseminators. Because he was so new and unknown, she and her fellow travelers were unprepared to torpedo him sufficiently to allow her to overcome the hatred much of the party has for her.

       3. Obama made it because he didn’t have a record, not really. He was relatively clean. He didn’t have any major stupid sins that someone like Limbaugh or Savage or FOX News could dig up to really go after him. (Remember, a lot of people hate the casualties of the Weather Underground, but it was “okay” because they were “against the war in Vietnam” and such crap.)
          It didn’t hurt that he was black, of course. In fact, that was one of his bigger selling points. The Democrats could now boast that they had gotten the first black President elected. And twice!
          And you can ignore the fact that he was a lightweight in every possible way.

          1. There was a lot of stuff about Obama’s background. Tony Riezko, for example. The problems were that none of it involved a voting record, and the corruption was completely ignored by the disinterested press (which dismissed it in those rare instances in which it was forced to acknowledge that corruption).

             1. Like I said, relatively clean. Easy to conceal because it didn’t involve a live boy or a dead girl.

                1. Oh, I’m sure there were live boys, for a value of boys.

                   1. I think so as well, but he was never really caught with said live boy, so…

                      1. there are stories, yeah. But no one dared come up and say it in the light of day no.

          2. Obama was remarkably two-faced: He could say one thing to one group one day, and the opposite to another group the next. He took great pride in being all things to all people, because he could conceal contrary evidence such as his birth and educational records. Those who saw his Chicago background, his rise to prominence without having to actually win elections, his lack of executive experience, his connections to notable black racists, et cetera, and suspected that he had something to hide, namely his real and decidedly leftist agenda, were too easy to dismiss.

    2. The “but her emails” t-shirts is actually par for the course for her.

       She instructed Democrat propagandists way back in the Nineties to gloat about the Waco massacre. On the now defunct Ken Hamblin discussion board, one of her bootlickers gloated about “Koresh southern fried baby.”

       And you wonder why I want them dead.

       1. No one wonders why you want them dead. We wonder why you’re glowing hard enough to hurt our eyes.

          1. “Three Letter Glow So Bright…” -caption from a funny meme image I found on the ‘net sometime ago…

          2. Pu

             1. PU in vast quantities.

                1. Something smells, yes.

                   ….

                   Right. Back to cleaning my room.

       2. o/Glow little glow worm fly yer fire
Glow like an incandescent wire o/

    3. Hillary has never been a team player. It’s all about her. You’re either on her team doing what she says, or you’re out, and buried.

    4. The Clintons politically corrupted the bureaucracy, including the FBI.

       But alas, it was Bush 43 and Dick Cheney that really weaponized the FBI and the rest of the national security state, even if the Clintons had used it and IRS to go after their political opponents.

       Then along came Obama and his fellow travelers, who radicalized the federal bureaucracy.

       And here we are, with an unaccountable Deep State in all its terrible glory.

       1. ….are you talking about where W went and tilted the federal agencies into actually doing their jobs, in a somewhat efficient manner?

          With things like actually charging people who were very obvious threats and actually violating laws, rather than being kind of bumbling “go see if you can find an excuse” nonsense?

          That’s not weaponizing. That’s doing their freaking jobs.

          Weaponizing means taking a tool from its intended purpose and applying it to an unintended one.

          1. Yes, Bush created a set of effective government tools to do a particular job — problem is, tools can be used for a multitude of purposes, and over the past 22 years, those tools have become weapons.

             Republicans create the toolkit, frequently with bipartisan support, because Democrats and bureaucrats looove them some big government…and then the leftists weaponize it. And then the Republicans wring their hands over the sad state of affairs and create another tool. Round and round it goes, and when it stops nobody knows. The Republican Party sucks.

             1. Yes, my sharpened butcher knives could be very effective for maiming people.

                ….that doesn’t mean that having decently sharp kitchen knives is a bad thing. That way lies the UK and “are you a chief” interviews to folks with kitchen knives.

                The term weaponized means taking something that is good, and using it for harm.

                Thus, “W actually made the guys do their job in a somewhat useful manner” would not be weaponizing.

                That moral weight falls on the people actually pushing something immoral.

                1. Yes. But Government is not the same as random individuals. Our civilization spent centuries figuring out that you do not give the government any tools beyond what is absolutely necessary to perform their function, coupled with constant vigilance for when the tools are abused.

                   1. Our civilization spent centuries figuring out that you do not give the government any tools beyond what is absolutely necessary to perform their function, coupled with constant vigilance for when the tools are abused.

                      Which doesn’t actually support the idea that performing a function is thus weaponization.

                      1. When whether that function is performed AT ALL depending on what political party you belong to, it is weaponization by all rational definition.

                         When Hunter Biden is arrested, you might have an argument.

                         1. The original claim was that Bush had weaponized the “national security state”.

                            1. Sigh. Patriot Act.

                            2. They got information sharing.

                               Because the valid-task-of-government of noticing terrorism attempts was being done poorly due to a lack of information exchange.

                               Basically, it was breaking down the keeping-information-in-house walls, which makes it easier to identify terrorists– and makes it harder to hide wrongdoing in law enforcement.

                            3. Yeah, but there’s a lot of weaponized stupid. I haven’t tested, for instance, but I could easily be on a no fly list.
                               And people like Biden are using the terrorism thing to declare anyone who opposes them a terrorist.

                            4. Because leftists project– and AntiFa/BurnLootMurder are terror groups.

                               Remember how Kennedy was on the No Fly List because someone padded it out with IRA terrorist names, so it wasn’t all Islamic names?

                               They keep stepping on themselves because they’re really not too sane….

                            5. So they aggregated a lot of little corrupt bureaucracies into one big corrupt bureaucracy. They concentrated the government’s power and authority in one place. What an improvement that has turned out to be.
                               ———————————
                               Terrorists and wacko nut jobs can’t threaten our way of life, or change who we are. Only we can do that. If we surrender to fear, if we give up our freedom for an illusion of security, we do to ourselves what all the wackos and terrorists in the world can only dream of doing to us.

                            6. ….that’s not how it works, actually.

                               The same bureaucrats, just now they have a communication route, and a much higher chance that if they do something shady, it will be noticed, and noticed by someone they don’t have any power over.

                            7. Clinton maybe set deliberate sabotage into place, with some of the segregation of information flow.

                               Fixing that may have been good.

                               Bush made a lot of changes, some of them heavily protested or complained about by the people in those bureaucracies, and almost certainly, from the scope of the changes, some of those objections had /some/ validity.

                               The TSA, which he did to cut a deal with the Democrats, may have been an evil on net.

                               There are relatively few obvious signs of Bush 43 doing the sort of stunts that Clinton and Obama abused LE and IC bureaucracies for. But, 41 was a CIA manager. McMullin, a CIA man, is in hindsight slime, and was potentially acting to preserve the influence of the Bush faction/Republican establishment. The Lawyer/JD model and the BA model explain much about professional political activists going Never Trump. But, McMullin, in combination with IC tied lawyer on twitter esotericcd, in combination with DC bureaucracy tied Tom Nichols, etc., could simply be a subtle case of Bush 43 having abused his influence over the bureaucracy to entrench corrupt loyalists.

                            8. I’d easily agree that the TSA doesn’t need to exist. 😀

                               Now, the argument you make at the end could be argued, and hopefully someone could bring out evidence for it, but it’d be an uphill battle, especially when Clinton did do so much screwy stuff.

                         2. Exhibit B:

                            https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/08/15/did-the-fbi-raid-her-home-damning-receipt-filled-thread-shows-how-hillary-clinton-not-only-kept-classified-material-she-destroyed-it/

                            1. Did you catch the hat she’s fund raising with?

                               https://shop.onwardtogether.org/products/but-her-emails-hat

                               She had it ready to go, which suggests some extra issues in the DC field office.

                      2. Wasn’t about that, was about Everything Can Be A Weapon.

                         And because everything can be a weapon you don’t let the government have many things.

31. The FBI shooting of the other night is weird, and suspicious.

    My most extreme suspicion there is one that is again broadly going to be unpersuasive to a general audience.

    Basically, I suspect that the person who carried the nailgun is not the person who was shot.

    Same MO as my paranoid suspicion of the Christmas bombing.

    There was some interesting Twitter traffic immediately after the Christmas bombing. A local journalist whose twitter feeds looked like the Feds had been cultivating him, and had primed him with a bunch of talking points in a very timely way. Which suggests that the feds knew that the bombing would happen there, before it did.

    It was also interesting how fast the FBI announced that they had identified the suspect from remains.

    One explanation is that the FBI had killed the guy, and planted the bomb, as a test for starting to practice domestic terrorism. This is an extremely speculative explanation.

    As is the explanation that the FBI had someone they controlled do the nailgun run, and the death was carefully managed, and may be someone else.

    1. So the “shooter” allegedly had an AR-15 but took a nail gun into the FBI office.

       The actual rifle was supposedly saved for his fatal gunfight with the local cops later that afternoon.

       Nothing suspicious about that.

       1. Bingo.

          On the other hand, crazy can be really irrational.

          Generally, crazy takes time to cook, and cooks according to its own schedule.

          So crazy happening with convenient timing when a bunch of other things are happening on a schedule is unlikely. But, that is a statistical inference, and sometimes surrounding events are not actually information.

          Intel judgements do not seem to work off of a deep dive into real statistical rigor, so it may still be a sound enough guess.

          The basic problem here, a problem for a lot of people, is that ‘leaders’ have screwed with lot of ordinary people by betraying their trust.

          There may be an innocent explanation for events, certain leaders may not have been evilly manipulating things behind the curtains, but those leaders will be distrusted anyway.

          And every time an official asserts “No, it cannot possibly be anything other than the Official Truth, only crazy people have doubts”, doubts are raised.

32. Regarding Wray’s statement after that shooting, Wray needs to resign.

    If a loss in confidence in the FBI really is a serious problem, then one of the possible roots of loss of confidence is spokesmen declaring official truth that is publicly verifiably untrue.

    Wray has spoken on a number of topics in public in recent years. Perhaps unnecessarily so.

    Some of these statements have seemed to be apparently untrue.

    If public trust in the FBI is the most important goal, Wray is no longer equipped to lead the FBI.

    The FBI needs an interim head, and then a ‘permanent’ head, who has not been persuaded to take a public stance on any matter that is in anyway controversial.

    The head of the FBI would need to be able to talk about questions of ‘whether the FBI should exist’, ‘what the duties of the FBI should be’ and ‘what the budget of the FBI should be’, and say nothing at all.

    Spokesmen should be speaking mainly about issues of minor importance. And, frankly, FBI spokesmen would be a bit more trustable if their take on this or that minor investigation was less of ‘The FBI is totally awesome’, and more about giving credit to other organizations, etc.

    The degree of credit seeking, the degree of an FBI centered universe and the degree of curating the image of FBI agents all combine to make the FBI less credible. They have a good initial impression, but further study reveals the things that are too consistent, and the things not consistent enough.

33. Because this needs to be spread around, just for the lulz:

    Who did this? 🤣🤣🤣pic.twitter.com/tC4n63NqXl

    — 🍊I Meme Therefore I Am ☢️🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) August 13, 2022

34. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/08/13/yes-theyre-going-to-arrest-donald-trump-deal-with-it-n1620780

    1. I saw that article. It says that we’ll be good little boys and not use violence against the tyrants.

       Without specifically calling for violence right now, I have to say, who the fuck are you? Approximately a third of Americans identify as conservative. Does this writer think that all those millions of people are exactly like her fellow Conservative Book Club members?

       1. Ken, you can be first out the gate. Okay? Really dude, if you feel that strongly just be our guest. Go nuts.

          I’ll watch from the safety of my humble abode, feet up and popcorn handy.

35. Here’s my fondest hope of this whole little disaster.

    They’re making too many people pay attention to the games they’re playing. Worse, they’re the ones making us pay attention.

    Remember the House Post Office scandal? The one that Rush Limbaugh broke, and pretty much was one of the driving factors of the ’94 changeover of a lot of the House and Senate?

    And do you remember how the press-who was biased but not as biased as they are now-had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that story?

    People are noticing that the CDC has suddenly dropped all of those nasty crow flu restrictions, making them “suggestions.”
    The J6 prime-time inquiry failed to get any attention when they were showing it.
    And they did yet another round of “let’s get Trump!” and dropped it so that it would be the only thing people were talking about during the weekend news cycle.
    The overturn of Roe V. Wade and how people are screaming like banshees about places are “restricting rights”-when most of the restrictions are less than most of Europe, let alone pre-Wade.
    How “inflation has gone down”-because they predicted a 9.1% increase, and it was “merely” 8.5%.

    They’re making people pay attention. And, not in a good way. With one of the most contested midterm elections in years coming up. And the Bidenstein Monster is in no way as good a politician as Slick Willy-if there’s a sudden shift in the House and Senate, there’s no way he can triangulate or make some common cause with the new legislatures.

    My hope is that there’s a lot of padding under the water, where we can’t see it. A lot of paddling, and there’s a major seismic shift this election cycle. Not sure what I can do now about it, other than vote and tell people to hold these people’s feet to the fire.

36. Everyone who is steelmanning the accusation, talking about what kind of documents the President might have access to, or what the state of play for Los Alamos-era nuclear designs are, etc., etc., is completely getting it wrong.

    To get it right, read the announcement as if it was spoken by Jon Lovitz’ Pathological Liar character:

    Press: Mr. Lovitz, the Mar-A-Lago raid looks like a political hit, what do you have to say in response to that?

    Lovitz: Uh, well, it was because he had, uh, uh, nuclear secrets, yeah, that’s the ticket. Nuclear secrets! That he was going to, uh, give to the Russians! Yeah! And that proves he was a Russian plant all along, that’s the ticket!

    And if there were no “nuclear secrets” in the generically-listed boxes of documents, well, there are now.

    1. They were found by his wife, Morgan Fairchild! 😉

37. Should we, regardless of our religion or absence of same, have the same drive as Ignatius of Antioch?
    He believed he was “All-in” for his faith and gloried—at age 70—at the anticipation of being martyred for it.
    Does that attitude attract or repel people? Please note the only “violence” he advocated was spreading the Gospel to people who killed you for spreading it.

    https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/martyr-or-madman

    1. I’m not hot to be martyred. I have a lot of books to write. BUT if that’s what serves Himself’s purpose, so be it.
       Not without fighting, though.

       1. Yeah, as much as I honor and respect Ignatius and Boniface, I don’t see that’s my way, either.

38. I’ve been meaning to say something about our national security state for a long time. It’s almost fractally wrong. It doesn’t matter which aspect of it you examine, and for what purpose you evaluate it, it’s as wrong as the entire thing from any perspective.

    The whole mess kicked off with the Manhattan project: Where a community of physicists had an actual new branch of physics with radical military implications. (The physics, by the way, was public knowledge.) The military isolated the physicists in isolated small towns around the country to work on a secret weapons project. This period in the 40s, sans global computer networks, sans cellphones, in an empty country with infrequent visits to the outside world, in a patriotic country in a world at war: This was the best case scenario for any of this – the safes, the barbed wire compounds, the gate guards, the Rube-Goldberg Maxwell Smart security procedures, the engineers not telling their spouses what they did during the day, the DSM diagnosible organizational OCD – any of it had of actually working. It didn’t work then, at all. All the security measures were trivially overcome by a few of the scientists with Soviet sympathies. None of it could prevent a few individual bad actors from betraying all the carefully hoarded secrets.

    Things have only gotten worse with time, to the point where our own people have to go through ludicrous procedures to work with trivial banal bits of information that the entire rest of the world was already sold by traitors, or could work out from using public information and their brain. The costs have grown incalculable, the benefits have vanished. Secrecy is paralyzing us. The mystique, and the lunacy, surrounding secrecy is killing us.

    1. It’s all part of the “centralized state” bullshit imposed on the world — not just the US — around that time. None of it works, but it has been assumed to for almost 100 years.
       And now it’s coming apart.

39. The security state does a lot of harmful things merely by existing. It allows people to build shitty little empires based off of allegedly important (but usually stupid) bits of information that allows them to strut and act superior to the nominal government. (It’s blown up to the point where this shadow government is openly hostile to and insubordinate to elected officials.)

    It gives people a false sense of security: All the Hollywood fantasies about a secret world full of secret knowledge gives people the impression of competence that mostly isn’t there. If it were ever put to the test, what we’ve hoarded is a very momentary “soft-power” advantage of a few small surprises (if that). That sort of thing vanishes shortly after the cards are on the table. In the end, the hard power, the vehicles, the men, the equipment, the organization and training: This stuff doesn’t evaporate like a mirage the moment the enemy can look at it. The Men In Black won’t be riding to the rescue in an existential war with some wunderwaffen that has never seen the light of public scrutiny.

    It stifles and drives away exactly the sort of people who you would want to work on our military technology, and prevents them from doing their jobs if they perservere despite the madness of it all. It gives people a false impression about where technical knowledge resides: Not on dead paper in some safe in a secure site! It lives in the brains of the engineers and tradesmen who are actively building technology. You can’t lock it up, you can only win (or lose) the loyalty of the men working in the field. Burying it in a report, then burying the report in a safe, then burying the safe in a black site doesn’t safeguard the technology, it destroys it when the men who actually have the skills go walking out the door, never having passed on the real tacit knowledge to an apprentice!

    No one who hasn’t seen it knows how bad it is. And that is the root of the problem!

    1. I absolutely agree with you. I haven’t seen it, but in the last year I’ve looked into a lot of our history since Wilson and the other progressive presidents got their foot in the door.
       It’s all rotten. The only thing I can say is that it’s the same in the rest of the world.

    2. :blinks:

       ….what are you defining as “the security state”?

       I had a clearance– it was boring, all my fun stuff is totally not restricted– and there’s nothing that even looks kind of like what you’re talking about.

       Everything that I’ve seen that was classified or Sensitive?

       It’s “stuff that is actually dangerous for folks in the area.”

       Like, how to kill the power to a base.

       Where the Easy To Break part in a ship is.

       That kind of stuff.

       At some point, I had Secret Information.

       It was some kind of a frequency thing.

       For calibrating some equipment.

       …there is seriously no not-evil use for that information, outside of the military.

       1. It should be pointed out that the nature of your former job means you would be under a massive selection bias towards Secrets That Matter, and away from the ones that all the other people who deal with classified information report having had experience with.

          1. I was in the job that was being complained about– and I still have no idea what exactly they’re talking about.

             1. There are at least two positions under the security umbrella that could be talked about.

                Techs repair and maintain equipment.

                Engineers design variations on equipment, or design new equipment.

                They may necessarily have different levels of curation on the information fed to them, and different needs for information.

                Engineers both mine a lot of sources for inspiration, and produce a lot of experiments that don’t work, but which could still be used by an expert to deduce other elements of stuff that the engineer was exposed to.

                And, we have had the classification edifice in place for up to eighty years? The non-classified engineering world has developed a lot of stuff in that time. Classification bureaucracy’s estimate of what non-classified knowledge can develop /will/ lag.

          2. This.

    3. This!

       The Reader signed well over 50 debriefing papers when he retired. The content of maybe 5 of those compartments was actually worth securing. That said, you won’t hear about any of them from me.

40. Pingback: Strange Daze: Where the sidewalk ends and the stupid burns.

41. Just a belated thought: Trump should insist on the release of the names and security clearances of the FBI agents that searched his home. After all, if they were looking for classified documents, every agent must be cleared to see Top Secret documents (nuclear secrets or not).
    If any of the agents conducting the search did not have Top Secret clearance, the FBI is guilty of revealing our nation’s secrets to people without proper authorization.

    1. Yep.

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