It’s hard to believe the Facebook scandal is a scandal at all.

How did people think that Facebook came to be worth over $50 billion dollars allowing anybody to post nearly anything for free? Did they think that if they posted something about a lost dog and suddenly had ads appearing about dog care, dog food and invisible fences that it was an accident?

When the campaign of former President Barack Obama bragged about using Facebook data to target voters, it was hailed as the campaign of the future.

When Republicans do the same thing, it’s cause for a congressional investigation. Why is Congress investigating a company for allowing Republicans to do what Democrats had already bragged about doing and there was no investigation?

Obama last ran in 2012 – almost six years ago – when his team gathered vast amount of data about Facebook users. Then four years later, the Trump campaign did something similar. So in the four years between the Obama campaign and the Trump campaign, Facebook didn’t bother to fix the problem. Or perhaps Facebook didn’t see it as a problem when it was used by Democrats and it only became a problem that required Mark Zuckerberg to put on a suit and go to Washington to apologize because Republicans had figured out how to do the same thing.

What seems incredible is people actually thought the information they put on Facebook was private. It isn’t. You can click all the privacy buttons you want, once it’s on Facebook it’s out there and if somebody wants it, they will find it.

It’s like people who send emails or texts and think that by deleting them they disappear. They don’t.

*****

Special prosecutor Bob Mueller has upped the ante in his investigation of the Trump campaign illegally colluding with the Russian government to affect the outcome of the presidential election.

This week Mueller had the FBI search the office, home and hotel room of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen for information about the payment made by Cohen to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

It is a huge stretch to think this has anything to do with Russians. Both Cohen and Trump have said that Trump wasn’t informed of the payment that was made weeks before the presidential election.

What happened to attorney-client privilege? They took Cohen’s computers and phones. Certainly much of the information on there is protected by attorney-client privilege and the FBI has no right to ever see it.

The FBI was rebuked by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for allowing FBI agents who were involved in cases to view confidential information that they had no legal right to see. Agents who are not involved in a case are supposed to view the raw information and prevent FBI agents involved in the case from seeing protected attorney-client information. So the FBI already has a documented history of allowing agents to view protected information, and here the FBI is going to have the opportunity to do the same thing with information about the president.

It’s time for Trump to take the gloves off and fight back against Mueller. The investigation has reached the level of persecution.

Here’s a plan for Trump. First, convince Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who certainly qualifies as a useful idiot, to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for refusing to cooperate with congressional oversight committees. After Sessions fires Rosenstein, Trump needs announce that he’s shocked that Sessions has resigned “for health reasons.” Next Trump needs to hire Sen. Ted Cruz or someone of his ilk as attorney general. Cruz should fire everyone in the Justice Department who is working against Trump. Evidently the Justice Department is filled with attorneys loyal to Obama and defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump can’t afford to have people in the extremely powerful Justice Department working to undermine his presidency. Those who can’t be fired should be sent as far from Washington, DC, as possible – preferably somewhere with terrible weather.

FBI Director Chris Wray, another useful idiot, could be given the choice of doing the same thing with the FBI or he can resign to spend more time with his family. Either he can join the team or get off the field.

If Trump really wants to up the ante, he should have Cruz order simultaneous searches of the homes, beach homes, homes of lovers, vehicles, storage facilities and dog houses of Mueller, former FBI Director Jim Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI attorney Lisa Page, Judge Rudolph Contreras and any other bad actors as part of an investigation of treason.

There is enough evidence that has been made public that there was a plot in the FBI and Justice Department to overthrow the president, and a plot to overthrow the elected president could be treason.

It is certain that this group colluded with each other to attempt to rid the country of a president they don’t like. Maybe it would turn out that what they have done is technically legal, but considering how badly the FBI and Justice Department leak information, wouldn’t it be fun to have those leaks revealing personal and embarrassing information about this crowd? It’s exactly what they have conspired to do to Trump, but maybe Trump is above all of that and would rather get on with the job of being president without having to battle people who are supposed to be working for him.

OK, so that is never going to happen, and politically for Trump to fire Mueller at this point would be really bad for the Republican Party in the 2018 elections. But Trump could certainly advise Sessions that he needs to fire Rosenstein for not providing the congressional oversight committees with information they have requested and have a right to see.

Trump made some major mistakes in his initial hires, many of which he is fixing. But none rise to the same level as his enormous mistake in naming Sessions as attorney general. If Sessions were truly a Trump supporter, he would insist on resigning himself, but politicians all have huge egos and it appears that Sessions is unable to admit that he can’t do the job of attorney general.

Maybe Trump could assign someone to give Sessions a “to do” list everyday. Either Trump has to figure out a way to keep Sessions from hiding under his desk all day or get rid of him. And if Sessions won’t fire Rosenstein, whose wife has worked as an attorney for Hillary Clinton, Obama and Mueller, then they both need to go.

*****

The mainstream media seem to be having some trouble figuring out what is happening in the National Security Agency (NSA) since National Security Advisor John Bolton took over. Bolton is cleaning house the way Sessions and Wray should have done when they were appointed.

The NSA has been leaking damaging information about Trump like a sieve. It’s interesting to note that only damaging information has been leaked to the media. Information showing Trump in a positive light stays secret, but if it can be damaging its on the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times. No president can effectively negotiate with foreign heads of state when they know that their conversations will be leaked to the media. It’s one of Trump’s failings that he has allowed it to go on for so long.

The FBI and the Justice Department won’t provide information to the congressional oversight committees, but the NSA has had a conduit to the mainstream media.

*****

One has to assume that Trump didn’t just come in on a turnip truck. The idea that Special Prosecutor Mueller can trick Trump into sitting down for an interview by saying that Trump isn’t a target of the investigation is sad.

Mueller at any moment can change that and say, based on new information he received on his Apple Watch from Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, Trump is now a target.

But who knows. Trump is nothing if not always surprising.

One would hope that the raid on Trump’s personal attorney’s office and home would put an end to any notion Trump had of sitting down for an interview. Mueller has no interest in Russian collusion – evidently because he can’t find any – but he has an overriding interest in bringing down the president who fired his good friend former FBI Director Comey.

Mueller, because of his personal relationships with those involved, should have never been allowed to investigate this matter. And if he were as honest and trustworthy as he is purported to be, he would not have accepted the appointment. When it was discovered that the entire investigation was based on research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, if Rosenstein was a man of honor he would have pulled the plug.

The whole investigation is tainted with conflicts of interest so troubling that in a rational world it would have been stopped before it got started.

*****

The mainstream media complain constantly about Trump firing people or forcing them to resign. The truth is that Trump is moving far too slowly to clean the Obama true believers out of his administration.

It started when he allowed Sally Yates to become the acting attorney general. Trump would have been better off promoting some Republican assistant US attorney from Peoria. There wasn’t a single Republican US attorney left in the country at that point, but there must have been a Republican assistant somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department. Instead, he appointed someone who hates him and hates everything he stands for as the acting head of his Justice Department.

FBI Director Comey is another one who should have been fired on day one. If Trump had done so he wouldn’t have the special prosecutor.

The fact that Trump has not fired Rosenstein is absolutely unbelievable. What does someone have to do in the Trump administration to be fired?

Trump made McCabe acting head of the FBI. This is a man who wanted to take extraordinary measures to make certain that Trump never sat behind the desk in the Oval Office, and may have done so.

McCabe is as tightly tied to Hillary Clinton as it is possible for an FBI agent to be. He is bound to her with something more powerful than steel chains – money. People do not arrange for campaign donations of over $1 million without expecting something in return. Of course, Hillary Clinton got it. The investigation of her home brew email server was a sham from beginning to end.

Look at how the FBI does an investigation. They break into homes in the middle of the night and take everything they want. They didn’t even take the laptops that hadn’t been destroyed in the Hillary Clinton investigation. They actually didn’t do much of anything. And who was in charge of that investigation? McCabe.

When Attorney General Sessions said he was recusing himself from the Russia probe, Trump should have immediately shown him the door.

The NSA, which listens to everyone’s calls – including Trump’s calls to foreign countries – is chock full of Obama loyalists. Finally after over a year in office they are being cleaned out, but why has it taken so long?

Trump needs to be able to trust the people who are working for him not to be working against him. Here’s a hint for Trump: Anyone who agreed with the policies of his predecessor can’t possibly agree with his.

*****

Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Devin Nunes has issued an ultimatum to the FBI and Justice Department that if they don’t turn over the documents concerning the warrants for wiretaps on the Trump campaign and the internal electronic communications, he will go to court and have a federal judge order the FBI and Justice Department to do so.

Nunes shouldn’t have to go to court. Nunes should be able to call Trump and tell him to order the FBI and Justice Department to turn over the documents requested by a committee run by Republicans.

At times Trump is so bold it is frightening, and at times he is so timid it is confounding.

Trump certainly got played by Rosenstein, who advised Trump to fire Comey; then Rosenstein said that because Trump fired Comey he had to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump. So Trump, a novice at Washington politics, got burned and is still paying for it. Once burned twice shy. But there is a point where you have to put your past mistakes behind you and move on.

Trump needs to call FBI Director Wray into his office and tell him to gather up all the documents that Nunes has requested and personally take them to Nunes, at which time it would be wise for Wray to offer his personal apologies to Nunes for stonewalling and promise that it will never happen again. If Wray objects, fire him and hire someone who is not trying to run the president out of office and or hide the way the FBI does business from Congress.

The FBI clearly has huge problems from top to bottom. It’s what happens when an organization, even a great organization, is run by a crook. The people who rise to the top are the people who agree with the boss. In this case that would have been Comey. Both Comey and the Deputy Director McCabe have been fired. Does Trump believe those are the only two bad eggs in the FBI basket? If so, how did they get to be director and deputy director?

Just from the texts by special agent Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page, it is obvious that the organization, not just the two top members of the organization, is corrupt.

It doesn’t appear that Wray is doing anything to root out that corruption – Strzok still has his job, as does Page.

*****

Let’s see. According to the Democrats and the mainstream media, when Obama sent the National Guard to the border it was a good move and Obama was doing what was in the best interest of the country. When Trump sends the National Guard to the border, it is because Putin ordered him to do so and it’s a terrible thing for the country.

OK, so I made up the part about Putin. But it wouldn’t be surprising if the connection were made. It appears that leftwing loonies have taken over the Democratic Party and long ago took over the mainstream media.

Everything that Trump does can’t be bad. In fact, if they weren’t leftwing loonies they would realize that by criticizing everything Trump does, it makes their criticism less meaningful.

The rule is: If Trump does it then it’s bad; if Obama did it then it was good. If Trump does the same thing Obama did, it was good when Obama did it and bad when Trump did it.

*****

So Jimmy Kimmel thinks that it’s acceptable to make fun of the way immigrants speak English, if the last name of the immigrant is Trump?

Can you imagine the uproar from the mainstream media if Kimmel made fun of the way illegal immigrants spoke English? That would be gross discrimination. But making fun of Melania Trump because she was not born in this country and speaks with an accent is funny.

*****

Anybody who believes Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s pledge to serve her entire six-year Senate term if elected is so naive that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If Warren believes she has a reasonable chance of becoming the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee she will forget what she said about serving her entire term so quickly her head may spin entirely around.

It’s not simply Warren. The majority of senators can see themselves as president. The problem they have is that the majority of Americans don’t share that belief.

When Obama started hanging out in Iowa as if it were a second home, not many people, including Obama, saw him as the next president. Everyone knew that Hillary Clinton was the next Democratic presidential nominee.

What Obama discovered in Iowa is the same thing the Democrats discovered in 2016 – Hillary Clinton is a terrible candidate.

First, she is lazy. Obama won Iowa for many of the same reasons that Trump won the presidency. Hillary Clinton has an enormous sense of entitlement. She didn’t bother to campaign much in Iowa in 2008 because everyone knew that she was the next Democratic nominee. All she thought she needed to do was show up at a couple of rallies, go in a couple of coffee shops and local restaurants to let people know how connected she was to the American people, and run a bunch of advertising. The truth is that she holds most regular Americans in great disdain and isn’t the least bit connected to them – and it shows.

What is truly incredible is not that Hillary Clinton didn’t learn from her mistakes in 2008, but that her campaign didn’t learn from her mistakes in 2008.

Hillary Clinton is one of those people, and we all know some, who never makes a mistake, so she can’t possibly learn from her mistakes, having in her mind never made one. But you would expect the highly paid professionals running her campaign to study her huge failure in 2008 and making certain she didn’t make the same mistakes in 2016.

Of course, part of the problem was that nobody was running the campaign. The attempt was made to run it by committee because Hillary Clinton couldn’t decide who should be calling the shots. It was the exact opposite of the Trump campaign, where one person, Donald Trump, made all the decisions. In Hillary Clinton’s campaign, nobody was calling the shots and it showed.

But what Obama and Trump prove is that someone the mainstream media give no chance of winning can win because the mainstream media have no idea what is going on in most of America, and that means that even a fake native American like Warren could get the Democratic nomination.

Warren is going to be out there campaigning in Iowa in 2019. In fact, as soon as she wins her Senate seat, she’ll probably be on a plane to Iowa to start campaigning, privately lamenting the fact that she was forced to get such a late start.

*****

The mainstream media are reporting that it is big news that National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Michael Anton is leaving the White House.

The new National Security Advisor, Bolton, took over this week. If he weren’t expected to make changes in the NSA, he wouldn’t be there. People don’t get fired from their jobs at the White House because they are doing what Trump wants them to do. One would hope that more employees will also be sent packing in short order.

Plus, Anton was suspected of leaking the information about Trump being advised not to congratulate Putin and doing it anyway. It had to be some fairly high-level staff member to have access to Trump’s briefing documents for a conversation with Putin. If it was Anton, he needed to go. In fact, even if it is only a suspicion that it’s Anton, he needs to go, and so does everyone else who is suspected of leaking information.   The NSC has been leaking like a sieve and Trump has to put a stop to it. If that means firing some of the innocent along with the guilty, that’s too bad.

*****

I suppose it should be no surprise, but we now have fact checking for the fact checkers. Real Clear Politics announced that it was going to start running a weekly feature where it fact checks the so-called fact checkers.

It sounds crazy, but it is a service that has long been needed. As one might imagine, the so-called fact checkers for The Washington Post and The New York Times have the same liberal bias as the newspapers where they work.

The huge problem with the fact checkers has been that they use opinions and state the liberal opinion as a fact. There is a tremendous amount of disagreement in what counts as a fact.

For instance, it is a fact that Trump said that he was going to build a wall and a fact that the wall hasn’t been built. So does that make Trump’s statement that he was going to build a wall false? It would certainly appear that way. But if you consider that building a 20-foot wall over 1,000 miles cannot be done in a year by anyone, it is less clear. The question then becomes: Has Trump backed off on his promise? The answer to that is no. But is the wall being built as quickly as it possibly? This is where you could get into opinion. Trump went out and personally inspected the prototypes that had been built, and it has been announced that construction is starting. Does this mean that the wall isn’t going to be built? It doesn’t appear to, but some say that since the wall hasn’t been built Trump lied.

The fact that the $1.3 trillion spending bill only had $1.6 billion in funding for the wall, according to some liberals, means that Trump failed to get the wall funded and it won’t be built.

According to some conservatives, because Congress passed a spending bill and not a budget, Trump has the authority to move a lot of money around and can use part of the defense appropriation or other appropriations to pay for the wall. There is also the question of how much money the federal government can spend in a year on building a wall.

There are a thousand different ways to look at the question.

 




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