So the FBI had a spy inside the Trump for president campaign.
It seems all the big time journalists know who it is but aren’t telling. Rush Limbaugh says he knows the name but it isn’t one that would mean anything to most people.
It really doesn’t matter what the name is, if the FBI did in fact have a spy in the Trump campaign then the FBI needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom. If the guys at the top believe that spying on a presidential campaign is the job of the FBI then we need to get rid of anyone who took part or knew about that decision, and the next level under them as well. Even those who were not at the top but participated need to go because they don’t understand the role of the FBI and the danger of having federal agencies insert themselves into the election process.
We cannot have free and fair elections in this country if the FBI is involved in political campaigns.
If the FBI had a spy in the Trump campaign then the people of this country need to know when that spy was engaged by the FBI and when he started spying on the campaign.
The FBI has said that the investigation into the Trump campaign began after a drunken conversation between George Papadopoulos, an unpaid Trump campaign advisor, and an Australian diplomat with ties to the Clinton foundation, in a bar in London. It doesn’t seem like much to launch an investigation, which has now gone on for close to two years. But if the FBI actually had a spy inside the Trump campaign prior to Papadopoulos spouting off his mouth in a bar in London then the FBI has been telling even bigger lies about the investigation than it has been caught telling so far.
There is also mounting evidence that President Barack Obama knew about the investigation. Since Obama was heavily involved in the Clinton campaign, if it is discovered that Obama was using the power of his office to interfere in the presidential election, that is far more serious than some unpaid Trump campaign worker talking about getting Donald Trump together with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The FBI and the Justice Department have been involved in a cover-up of what they were actually doing ever since the congressional oversight committees started looking into it. Without the congressional oversight committees, the American people wouldn’t know that the FBI warrants were issued based on the Steele dossier – paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Special Prosecutor Bob Mueller is evidently charged by the Justice Department with investigating anything that is in any way related to President Trump. The American people were told Mueller was to investigate illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. But after a year, none of the indictments have anything to do with the Trump campaign colluding with the Russian government, and Mueller keeps widening his investigation, covering everyone who ever said they worked for the Trump campaign.
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The way the news media is reporting on the Trump administration and the Russian collusion probe, one would think that having “back channel” communications with a foreign government is illegal.
Back channel generally means not through official government channels, and sometimes that’s the best way to get things done. For Trump – with a State Department with many employees still loyal to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State John Kerry and former President Obama, and with the intelligence services leaking like a sieve – it makes a lot of sense to use back channel communications. If he doesn’t, he reads some version of what he said to a foreign head of state in The New York Times the next day.
No president can expect to carry out negotiations with foreign governments when the negotiations are publicized while they are ongoing.
Trump is a tough negotiator. He often takes an extreme position in the beginning and then walks it back. It’s an effective negotiating method. Even regular folks buying houses do it. If they want to buy a house for $250,000, they don’t offer $250,000 because that is a sign that they will pay more.
What Obama never seemed to realize in negotiations is that the other side will take less than they demand, and if you give on one item you’re supposed to get on another.
Obama’s style of negotiating was give, give, give. The Iran nuclear deal was a good example. Iran kept demanding more and more and Obama kept giving in until the US was flying planeloads of cash to Iran to get the deal signed. Iran was probably sad that the negotiations ended because the leaders must have realized that if they had asked for more, they would have received more.
Trump starts at the other extreme. Look at his opening gambit with North Korea: We will decimate you. And for the first time Kim Jong Un is willing to sit down with the American president to negotiate. If your negotiating with anyone else from North Korea, you’re not negotiating, you’re just talking. There is only one person in North Korea who can approve anything and that is Kim Jong Un.
Trump may not get anything from Kim Jong Un, but at least he has opened the door, which is far more than any past president has done.
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I’ve always thought that it would be a mistake for Trump to mess with the special prosecutor, but now that Mueller has gone after his personal attorney, I think that has to be reconsidered.
Attorney-client privilege is supposed to be right we all have. An attorney is not allowed by law to reveal information from his client. It appears that right doesn’t apply to Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen.
Trump has some options. First he could call Attorney General Jeff Sessions out from under his desk and order him to either call off his dogs or resign. Trump could pardon Cohen, or Trump can continue to do what he has done and allow Mueller to sniff around wherever he wants because Trump is confident that he has done nothing wrong.
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The evidence is that Michael Cohen is a sleazy lawyer. Sleazy lawyers often push too hard and get caught up in their own legal problems instead of dealing with the legal problems of their clients.
When Trump was elected president, Cohen, according to reports in the media, saw it as a big payday. He could get money from people and corporations for doing nothing other than being Trump’s personal lawyer. Cohen wasn’t quiet or secretive. If people wanted to pay him big bucks because he also happened to be Trump’s lawyer, he was willing to accept the money.
It is not illegal for a company to pay Cohen $1 million or $10 million for advice. If the company so desires they can pay him millions for advice on brain surgery, which he (I’m guessing) knows nothing about. As long as he is happy with the payment and the company is happy with his advice, that’s fine and dandy.
Lord knows the City of Greensboro has paid out big bucks for terrible advice. Maybe Greensboro would be better off if hiring consultants who get you in trouble were illegal.
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Renewing efforts to store spent nuclear power fuel at Yucca Mountain is back on the table. The federal government has spent billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain site but so far hasn’t stored any spent fuel rods there. The spent fuel rods are currently being stored at 121 temporary sites across the US.
Environmentalists have repeatedly been able to summon political forces to block Yucca Mountain from being used, mainly because it is not a perfect storage site. No one can argue with that, but the problem is that there isn’t a perfect storage site on Earth.
What should be considered is whether it is safer for the American people to store the spent fuel rods in Yucca Mountain, far away from any population, or to store them in temporary sites all over the country, much closer to population centers.
It’s hard to argue that Yucca Mountain is not a better storage site than the temporary sites now being used, and even for those who are adamantly opposed to nuclear energy, the spent nuclear rods still have to be stored somewhere. They won’t go away even if every nuclear power plant in the country were closed down tomorrow.
It may not be the best solution, but it is the best solution available for at least the next couple of decades. Trump may be the president who is willing to take the hit and start doing what the US should have started doing 20 years ago – storing the spent nuclear fuel in a permanent storage site.
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Once in a while, Trump needs to stop tweeting, put his phone down, turn off the television, run everyone out of his office, put his feet up on his desk and think.
Trump keeps moaning, complaining and threatening about Mueller, but he has in his power the ability to put a sudden stop to everything Mueller is doing.
All Trump has to do is order all the documents – from the very first memo or email considering the investigation to the latest complaint from Mueller to Rosenstein about Trump interfering in his investigation – revealed to the American people. This would include the scope memo, all the emails between Rosenstein and Mueller, the name of the FBI spy in the Trump campaign, the complete file on the investigation of Paul Manafort, the notes on the interview of Mike Flynn and everything else.
Get everything. Get the White House to scan everything and put it all on the White House website.
Evil flourishes in darkness and shrivels in light. If Mueller and his handpicked team of Hillary Clinton supporters are not evil then the light will strengthen their cause. But if they are evil and cannot operate except under the cloak of darkness, then they will be defeated when they have to operate in the light.
It is not an accident that the Justice Department won’t turn over documents to the congressional oversight committees. Every time they do, more is revealed about how they have gone outside the law in an attempt to get Trump.
Trump doesn’t have to fire anyone. He doesn’t even have to suspend anyone. All he needs to do is to make the facts of the case public.
He should put it all out there – the good, the bad and the ugly. Let the American people decide if Trump colluded with Putin or – if what is increasingly evident – that the FBI and the intelligence agencies attempted to keep Trump from ever becoming president and, once they lost that battle, to have Trump impeached.
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This should be really scary for Democrats. At the annual Guilford County Republican Party Lincoln Reagan Dinner there was a scattering of black Republicans in attendance.
Guilford County Republican Party Chairman Troy Lawson, who is black, was running the show.
Mark Robinson, whose speech before the Greensboro City Council on the right to bear arms went viral, surprised the crowd when he went to the podium to lead the Pledge of Allegiance because, before he did that, he recited Lincoln’s most famous speech – the Gettysburg Address. If everyone had not already been standing for the pledge, he would have received a standing ovation for that.
Former Greensboro City Councilmember Jim Kee was also in attendance along with other black Republicans seated throughout the dining room.
Having a few black Republicans at the premier fundraising event for the Guilford County Republican Party may not seem like much, but for decades the Democratic Party has depending on nearly unanimous support of black voters to win elections.
In North Carolina, white voters are somewhat evenly split, but black voters have traditionally given Democratic candidates support of above 90 percent. So some black Republicans may not seem like a sea change, but if only 15 percent of black voters start supporting Republican candidates, Democrats are going to have a really hard time winning elections.
Robinson and Key happen to be great examples of why black voters are turning to the Republican Party in increasing numbers.
Robinson’s issue is gun control. He believes that the right of American citizens to protect themselves by owning firearms is a constitutional right that must be protected. The Democrats support increasingly strict gun control laws.
Kee is a businessman who says that the Republican stance for fewer regulations and lower taxes aligns with his beliefs.
It might not seem like much to have some black Republicans at the annual fundraising event, but it is actually huge.
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President Trump is bringing a whole new way of governing to the White House. Presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama had all promised to move the American embassy in Israel to the capital of Israel – Jerusalem. It sounds like a no-brainer. I have been unable to find another country in the world where the US embassy is not in that nation’s capital. Perhaps there is one.
This was an easy promise for those presidents to go after Jewish votes during the campaign, but everyone knew the Palestinians would cause problems if the embassy were moved and they chickened out. It was only a campaign promise and the people don’t expect candidates to keep their campaign promises. Except in rare cases like George “Read my lips, no new taxes” H.W. Bush He should have been a little more circumspect – “Read my lips, I might not raise taxes.”
But most of the time campaign promises are viewed by the candidate and by the public as something the candidate said to get elected, and if it turns out to be easy to do they might even do it.
Trump, not being an experienced politician during the campaign, as it turns out was actually telling people what he planned to do, and so far has a good record of doing it.
He has certainly had problems getting funding for the wall on the southern border, but $1.3 billion is nothing to sneeze at. It’s not enough to build the entire wall, but it is enough to figure out exactly what is needed and get started.
I love Hillary Clinton diehards who point out that Trump hasn’t built the wall that they don’t want, as if it was going to be like drawing a line across a map. It sometimes takes over a year to design a sidewalk. I have no idea how that is possible, but in government anything is possible.
Look at the Downtown Greenway in Greensboro. It was first promised in 2001 and might be completed by 2020. The Downtown Greenway is a four-mile wide sidewalk. Government projects take forever.
If you don’t like that example, drive to Charlotte. The three largest cities in North Carolina – Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh – are still connected by a four-lane interstate in some areas. In any reasonable world that section of I-85 would have been widened 20 years ago.
Trump has promised a wall and there is no indication that he is backing down, but it won’t be built in a day or a year. For a government project it’s actually moving at lightning speed.
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The Clintons are a gift that just keeps on giving. Their ability to rewrite history, making themselves the heroes, is unsurpassed – at least in modern times.
Bill Clinton was asked about Sen. John McCain voting on the nomination for the CIA director and Bill Clinton said, “If it hadn’t been for John McCain, I don’t think I could have had the ability to effectively end the Vietnam War, reconcile with Vietnam, get a full accounting for all the missing in action, and many other things. And they are now our best ally in Southeast Asia.”
For those who don’t remember, it was President Richard Nixon who signed the Paris Peace Accords and pulled American troops out of Vietnam in 1973. In 1974, President Gerald Ford announced there would be no further American military involvement in Vietnam. And in 1975, the South Vietnamese surrendered to the North Vietnamese.
In the last days before the fall of Saigon, there was some individual heroism, but the US policy was dismal. The US ran with its tale between its legs, leaving behind thousands of Vietnamese who had been loyal to the US to be tortured and killed by the North Vietnamese. It is not a part of our history for which we can be proud.
But in 1973, Bill Clinton graduated from Yale Law School. In 1974, he lost a congressional race in Arkansas. In 1975, he married Hillary Rodham, but it’s difficult to find a connection between that and the fall of Saigon.
After Ford came Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. How Bill Clinton could claim to have anything to do with ending a war that had ended before he ever held elected office is incredible.
If, for instance, George W. Bush claimed to have ended the Vietnam War, it would be front-page news. But Bill Clinton still has the support of the mainstream media.
In fact, why isn’t the #metoo movement calling for the prosecution of Bill Clinton? Bill Cosby was recently convicted for crimes that occurred over a decade ago. There is a credible accusation of rape against Bill Clinton and numerous accusations of sexual assault and sexual harassment. How can the president of the United States have a consensual relationship with a White House intern?
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It is so out of character for Trump to continue to allow his White House to leak information like a sieve. It seems that nothing that is said in the White House – from private conversations that Trump has with a foreign head of state, to briefing papers for a conversation with Putin, to conversations among the White House staff – is safe. It is all leaked to the mainstream media on a regular basis.
One would think that Trump would have fired people right and left until the leaks stopped. But he puts up with it.
The White House is going to leak, but that doesn’t mean that everything should leak. The president and the White House staff have to be able to have frank conversations where ideas, even bad ideas are, discussed without being made public.
If newsroom conversations were leaked the way White House conversations are leaked, the American people would have a completely different opinion of the people who are reporting their news.
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Everything in the Middle East is complicated, but if you take a step back, the reason why the Palestinians were protesting this week doesn’t make sense. The Palestinians were protesting because they believe that they should have the right to decide where the US embassy in Israel should be.
It seems that is a decision that should be made by the US and Israel, not by the Palestinians who are citizens of neither nation.
But when the Palestinians attacked the Israeli border, according to the mainstream media, the Israelis who protected their border were the bad guys. It’s hard to figure how protecting your own border from violent attacks could be considered wrong, but the mainstream media managed to twist it around so those being attacked in their own country were wrong.
