BloggeRhythms

Today’s top news item by far is the firing of FBI Director Comey by the POTUS. And after digesting numerous articles reflecting opinions of those in both major political party's, it becomes obvious that the one responsible for his termination is Comey himself. The outcome brought on by his decision to become a political influence, reaching beyond the bounds of his job description.  

As often happens, one of the most comprehensive analyses of the occurrence came from Michael Goodwin @nypost.com via Drudge who noted: “{T]he president did to Comey what no president had the courage to do to J. Edgar Hoover. Five presidents wanted to fire Hoover, with Harry Truman accusing him of running a police state and of blackmail. But all were afraid of Hoover, so he died in office.

“Trump acted before Comey could get that kind of lifetime protection, which has no place in American democracy. At our best, we are a nation of laws, not of people who accumulate power and ruthlessly wield it without accountability.” 

While Mr. Goodwin believes the president had many viable reasons to act, "it was the Justice Department’s investigation of his handling of the Clinton probe — started by the Obama administration — that did him in."

“Comey’s refusal to accept the department’s conclusion that he made major mistakes is reasonable grounds for dismissal of any employee in any circumstance, not least one who enjoys self-aggrandizing displays of independence.” 

Regarding other faulted aspects of the Clinton probe, Mr. Goodwin lists “the failure to empanel a grand jury, the willingness to destroy evidence as part of immunity agreements, the absurd claim that no reasonable prosecutor would take the case — each action and assertion suggested a less-than-thorough probe designed to please his Democratic bosses.” 

“Then there are the leaks of investigations that amounted to a flood of illegal disclosures about the Trump administration. Virtually everything we know about whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russian meddling in the election comes through leaks. 

“He also insisted on a special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, which ended up convicting the wrong man in an enduring injustice. 

“That background made him a hero to Democrats, which is why Obama made him head of the FBI in the first place. Then he finally drove the Dems crazy, with Obama’s Justice Department investigating him and Clinton blaming him for her loss. 

“So Comey exits, forced off the stage after giving everybody he ever worked for legitimate reasons to be unhappy with his performance. 

“That is not a virtue.” 

The inside aspects of the politics of the situation were expanded upon by Adam Shaw @FoxNews.com, who wrote about Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s saying about Democrats: "I think it gave them a chance to get back to something they argued about a month ago and it was losing steam – to have a special prosecutor or have a commission to look into it. But there’s committees of Congress, including my own committee, investigating this and it gives them an opportunity to bring those issues up again.” 

“Grassley added that Democrats’ arguments are damaged based on their criticisms of Comey’s decision in October to temporarily re-open the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.
“I don’t think they have much credibility,” he said. 

“Asked for what he thought of media outlets calling the firing "Nixonian" and reminiscent of President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” Grassley dismissed the claims.

“My message is this – suck it up and move on,” he said. 

Adding to the Democrat quandary is that Rod Rosenstein, who recommended to Trump that he fire Comey, “is widely respected by both career civil servants and members of both political parties,” according to Christopher Wallace @FoxNews.com.

“The Justice Department's newly appointed deputy attorney general earned praise from Democrats during confirmation hearings earlier this year before getting overwhelming approval, 94-6, in the Senate. 

During the hearings Rosenstein was never asked whether he felt Comey was up to the task of leading the FBI throughout multiple, highly politicized investigations. Yet, “Democrats did press him, repeatedly, to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign.”

Aside from the reactions of politicians, Donald Wofford, a 22-year veteran of the bureau in charge of authorizing domestic terrorism investigations at FBI headquarters in the late 1980s, provided his own opinion to Daniel J. Flynn @breitbart.com, saying: “The man should have been fired on July the 6th.”  

“Every time [FBI investigators] went into Comey’s office to update him and advise him on steps they would take, he said ‘no’ and obstructed them,” Wofford explains to Breitbart News. “He didn’t want anyone interviewing Huma Abedin. He didn’t want to use the grand jury. He wouldn’t let them get Hillary Clinton’s medical records when she said she couldn’t remember because she had a concussion.” 

Whereas Ken Maxwell, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism in the New York office “maintains that Comey fought to prevent politicization from tarnishing the image of the bureau, Wofford insists the ousted director politicized matters by quashing the investigation into Mrs. Clinton.” 

“He owed a lot of favors to Hillary Clinton,” Wofford posits. “He made sure the investigation went nowhere.” 

As opinion differences will certainly continue to arise, Rush asked a completely different kind of question today whereas he believes that Trump has been exceptionally supportive of Democrats since being elected.

Rush inquired: “Trump upheld Obama's honor when he bombed Syria. Trump has now defended Hillary's honor by firing Comey. Why aren’t liberals congratulating and thanking Trump?

“And now a Democrat is running the FBI on an interim basis, McCabe. Trump sure knows how to shut down an investigation, doesn't he? 

“Democrats are so twisted with hate. Going to destroy themselves.”

While the Democrat reaction to the Comey firing is fraught with inconsistencies and confused wavering, they’re not getting much help from their departed idol when it comes to maintaining their planet-friendly image either.  

According to Conor Swanberg @ijr.com/discuss: “Former President Barack Obama traveled to Italy this week to make a speech on climate change at the “Seed & Chips: The Global Food Innovation Summit” in the city of Milan.”

Receiving $3 million for the speech in Milan, he took a private jet to get there, had a 14 car convoy and added protection from a helicopter. What’s more, The Daily Mail reported that “300 police officers were used to protect the former president.”

This comes right after his post-presidency vacation, during which “Obama spent many weeks in French Polynesia on music mogul David Geffen's 450ft superyacht, which surely does not frugally sip fossil fuels like he wants the rest of the country to do. 

“Seems like President Obama's retirement is going well.” 

A reader, Lou J Apa, summed up the global-warming hypocrisy in a succinct paragraph: “All these so-called climate changers need to get real and stop flying, driving, using air conditioned hotels, and they should all stay home using telecom/computer conference calling technology! 

"That's what this technology was designed to do, to allow folks to avert travels and stay home so as not to spew out pollutants into the air! Shameful!!!!” 

The global-warming farce isn’t the only situation, however, in which emerging details contradict claims and premises presented by the left in the past.    

John Solomon and Sara Carter report @circa.com/politics, that: “The Obama administration made history during the 2016 election by releasing statistics for the first time showing how many times government officials sought to unmask the names of Americans captured in accidental National Security Agency intercepts. There was just one problem: the number of affected Americans was grossly underreported.

“So how does an agency entrusted with producing some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence and secrets get its math so mixed up? Apparently, it was a case of providing statistics from the wrong category.

“National intelligence officials say the 654 figure reported last year actually represented the number of times a government official had a request approved to unmask an American name and not the total number of U.S. persons’ identities that actually were unredacted after the fact in intelligence reports, as had been represented in last year’s report.” 

A senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the change explained to Circa: “We noticed the mistake when compiling the 2016 statistics this spring and decided we should correct it. We wanted the numbers we were releasing to be consistent, apples to apples. The number that should have been reported was 2,232.” 

What’s most important about the two preceding items is that, for whatever reason, those on the left in general don’t seem to realize, or perhaps accept, that the public’s access to information has improved significantly. Which may be a primary reason for why they’ve lost the White House, both Congressional houses, so many governorships and local elected positions.  

And yet, despite the devastation to their party, the false information and leadership’s double-standards continue unbridled. Which for the future, and the lack of better words, seems monumentally arrogant and far worse: pitifully stupid. 

That’s it for today folks. 

Adios