It’s Monday, August 20th, 2018…but before we begin, looking for an appropriate Reagan quote for our last edition, we were struck by the inaccuracy inherent in the following meme:
T’were true, t’would have read:
As to Bill McCraven…er, McRaven…a man we once respected if not admired…
Seriously, Brennan, adespicable douchebag,lied under oath to the Senate!!! Which makes him not only beneath contempt, but utterly undeserving of support from anyone above his level…which we guess leaves out McCraven.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, since we’re on the subject of the latest Deep State cause du jour, writing at NRO, Andy McCarthy generally correctly concludes…
“I do not share my friendDavid French’s theoretical constitutional concerns about the president’s revocation of security clearances — at least when it comes to former government officials who become media commentators and have no demonstrable need for a security clearance.Like David and many other analysts, though, I think it’s a big mistake to politicize the revocation of security clearances.(Which we don’t believe, Trump’s inarticulate comments to the possible contrary notwithstanding, was the case.)
Still, I am even less of a fan of the politicization of intelligence itself. And thatjustifiesthe revocation of former CIA director John Brennan’s clearance.
As is often the case with President Trump, the right thing has been done here for the wrong reason, namely, for vengeance against a political critic who is always zealous and often unhinged. (Again, we believe Trump’s inability to articulate the reasons behind the action does not constitute vengeance.) That a decision amounts to political payback does not necessarily make it wrong on the merits, but its in-your-face pettiness is counterproductive, undermining its justification.
…Brennan’s own role in the investigation of the Trump campaign is currently under scrutiny, along with such questions as whether the Obama administration put the nation’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Clinton campaign, and why an unverified dossier (a Clinton-campaign opposition-research project) was presented to the FISA court in order to obtain surveillance warrants against an American citizen. Until these probes have run their course, Brennan should resist the urge to comment, especially in ways that implicate his knowledge of classified matters. (So should the president, but that’s another story.)
Quite apart from the ongoing investigations, there is considerable evidence that intelligence was rampantly politicized on Brennan’s watch as CIA director and, before that, Obama’s homeland-security adviser.For example, Obama-administration national-security officials deceptivelydownplayed weapons threatsposed by Syria, Iran, and North Korea.As The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayesnotes, Brennan directed the CIA to keep under wraps the vast majority of documents seized in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, precisely because that information put the lie to Obama-administration narratives about a “decimated” al-Qaeda, the moderation of Iran, and general counterterrorism success.(Since this week’s craze is the Trump administration’s use of non-disclosure agreements, we should addHayes’s reportingthat Brennan’s CIA presented NDAs to survivors of the Benghazi terrorist attack — at a memorial service for those killed during the siege — in order to silence them while the Obama administration’s indefensible performance was being investigated.)In 2015,over 50 intelligence analysts complainedthat their reports on ISIS and al-Qaeda were being altered by senior officials in order to support misleading Obama-administration storylines.Brennan himself was instrumental in the administration’s submission to the demands of Islamist organizations that information about sharia-supremacist ideology be purged from the training of security officials.
That last decision flowed logically from Brennan’s absurd insistence that the Islamic concept of “jihad” refers merely to a “holy struggle” to “purify oneself or one’s community” (see my 2010 column, here).It’s as if there were no other conceivable interpretation of a tenet that, as the late, great Bernard Lewis observed, is doctrinally rooted in the imperative of forcible conquest — which is exactly how millions and millions of fundamentalist Muslims, including those who threaten the United States, understand it. Airbrushing sharia-supremacist ideology in order to appease an administration’s Islamist allies may be fit work for political consultants; it ill suits a director of central intelligence.
The yanking of Brennan’s security clearance is not only warranted, it is way overdue…”
“Scarier than former CIA chief John Brennan losing his security clearance is the idea that he ever had one in the first place.
…When one collates Brennan’s politicized and often incoherent explanations on a number of key intelligence matters in various capacities between 2009 and 2016 (on the circumstances surrounding Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a.k.a. the “underwear bomber,” his confusing and changing narratives surrounding the bin Laden raid, and his bizarre and careerist-inspired description of jihad: “Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community”), the portrait of a political contortionist rather than a professional and disinterested intelligence officer is confirmed.
All that can be said in condolence to John Brennan about losing his security clearance might be something along the lines of, “Try not to lie repeatedly to the U.S. Congress. Please do not allege that the current president of the United States is a traitor. And do not hire yourself out to partisans to issue near daily unproven invective, supposedly sanctified and monetized by your past tenure and present access to the highest level of covert U.S. intelligence.”
That was not too much to ask.“
Then there’s the reaction of someone who actually encountered what John Brennan claims to have experienced:
And John, our artificial hip, reconstructed elbow and atrial fibrillation notwithstanding, we stand ready to prove the truth of our position on your person at your earliest convenience. And we’ll throw in kickingJim Moran’s drunken Irish a*s as a freebie…along with that of his girlfriend-beating son!
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel asks what inquiring minds want to know:
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.
Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general. He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016—after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the bureau’s rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and employed Mr. Steele. Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain in classified 302 forms.
All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was with the Clinton crew—with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his interactions and what he collected.
Mr. Ohr’s conduct is itself deeply troubling. He was acting as a witness (via FBI interviews) in a case being overseen by a Justice Department in which he held a very senior position. He appears to have concealed this role from at least some superiors, since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified that he’d been unaware of Mr. Ohr’s intermediary status.
Lawyers meanwhile note that it is a crime for a federal official to participate in any government matter in which he has a financial interest. Fusion’s bank records presumably show Nellie Ohr, and by extension her husband, benefiting from the Trump opposition research that Mr. Ohr continued to pass to the FBI. The Justice Department declined to comment…”
No sh*t!!! So why, inquiring minds want to know, doesn’t The Donald expose all this subterfuge to the cold, harsh light of public disclosure?!?
Next up, courtesy of American Greatness via Speed Mach, Julie Kelly records…
“In his online appeal for money after being fired this week, disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok credited an unlikely source to vouch for his victim status: The Weekly Standard.
At one time a leading conservative magazine, the Standard declared last month that Strzok’s plight was merely an “overwrought tale of bias” and the case against him is “just sound and fury.” The articlebrushed off Strzok’s actions as “several bad judgment calls” and blasted Congressional Republicans for continuing a criminal investigation into the now-unemployed G-man.
Strzok is following only 32 people on his newly-verified Twitter account. Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the Standard, is one of them.
So, what’s with the fanboying between the Standard—an allegedly serious publication dedicated to advancing conservative principles—and a corrupt government bureaucrat who embodies everything the conservative movement fought against for decades?
I found an article in the Standard archives this week that might explain why…”
Opposition to The Donald is understandable…sleeping and consorting with the enemy is not. How far the once-mighty have fallen.
Since we’re on the subject of how far the once-mighty have fallen, not to mention the wages of sleeping and consorting with the enemy, Yahoo News incorrectly assesses how…
Some were forced out, such as Tim Pawlenty, a former two-term Minnesota governor who lost this week’s bid for a political comeback. Some, such as the retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chose to leave on their own. Others still serve, but with a muted voice.
Whether members of Congress, governors or state party leaders, they are struggling to fit into President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
The expanding list of marginalized GOP leaders underscores how thoroughly Trump has dominated — and changed — the Republican Party in the nearly two years since he seized the presidency. The overwhelming majority of elected officials, candidates and rank-and-file voters now follow the president with extraordinary loyalty, even if he strays far from the values and traditions many know and love. (Like Mark Sanford’s!)
The Republicans left behind are warning their party with increasing urgency, though it’s unclear whether anyone’s listening.
“I hope this is a very temporary place for the Republican Party,” said Corker. “I hope that very soon we will return to our roots as a party that’s very different, especially in tone, from what we’ve seen coming out of the White House.” (This from the man who enabled Obama’s Iran appeasement!)
The forgotten Republicans — people like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — have been unwilling to sit quietly as Trump steers the GOP away from free trade, fiscal responsibility, consistent foreign policy and civility.
Isolation and political exile have been their rewards.
…In South Carolina, Republican Rep. Mark Sanford narrowly lost his June primary hours after Trump tweeted he had been “very unhelpful” and highlighted the congressman’s extramarital affair. Days later, Sanford described Trumpism as “a cancerous growth.” As he prepares to leave Congress, he’s warning the GOP the cancer is spreading.
“We have a president that will tell numerous dis-truths in the course of a day, yet that’s not challenged,” Sanford said in an interview. “What’s cancerous here is in an open political system, there has to be some measure of objective truth.”
“I’m baffled by the way so many people have looked the other way,” he said. Asked whether he feels like he fits in today’s GOP, Sanford said simply, “No.““
Again, this from the married governor of South Carolina who literally disappeared for some six days with his Argentine mistress, then claimed to have been hiking the Appalachian Trail, resigned in disgrace, and after admitting his inability to make a living in the private sector, ran in a special election for Congress…theninexplicably WON!!! Talk about being baffled by the way so many people could have looked the other way!!!
We say good riddance…
…to bad rubbish!
Which brings us, once more appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s this from the sick mind of Bill Meisen:
Finally, we’ll call it a day with an item from FOX News which speaks volumes about the state of our Progressive-produced national psyche:
“…Leslie and Jim Parsons, owners of Bolley’s Famous Franks in Waterville, made a statement on their restaurant’s Facebook page announcing that they have received comments from “disturbing and hostile customers” over the change of their french-fry shape. (An economic decision based on the expense of hand-making crinkle-cut versus straight-cut fries.)
“So recently, within the last week, we have encountered some pretty disturbing and hostile customers apparently very unhappy with our straight cut french fries,” Leslie wrote on Facebook, saying that customers have “sworn at [them], threatened physical harm” to her, her husband and her children.
…Though the change was made in late June, the backlash over the new shape escalated over the past month. Jim told the Kennebec Journal that a man threatened to fight him at the store after becoming angry about the new french fries.
…Since posting the statement last week, the controversy seems to still be carrying on — though at a much more civilized level.
…Nathan Belcher argued, “I was a fan of the thick crinkle cut. There is definitely a difference. I came in once and got the new fries and have not been back since. Way too thin.That being said I’m not about to threaten someone over french fries. I just go other places for lunch now.”
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