WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) issued the following statement after the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released its memo on alleged abuses by the FBI and the Department of Justice:
“While I applaud the release of this memo, I also call for Congress to take immediate action to help prevent such behavior in the future. It is imperative it start by listening to Americans who have expressed outrage over its disregard for the Fourth Amendment and reexamining the powers it reauthorized right before we learned of the memo. Continuing to ignore the Constitution will only guarantee that others fall victim to government abusing its domestic surveillance powers.”
Glen Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide, which details surveillance and intrusion by America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ and how government pries so invasively into the private lives of its citizens, paints a disturbing picture of the intelligence community. Now we have the memo released by the House Intel Committee, which alleges that the FBI and DOJ lied to the FISA Court about the grounds for a warrant on Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page. According to the memo, the Fusion GPS dossier, compiled by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was the central basis for the FISA warrant against Page. The dossier and its origins were never turned over to the FISA court. The memo states, “The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.”
The FBI did not independently verify the claims of the Steele dossier in any serious way before seeking the FISA warrant. Those involved in the application include current deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
Note: “People with bias like Page and Strzok shouldn’t be allowed to search a government database that has America’s information.” – Rand Paul
Most importantly, the Carter Page application was NOT the launching point of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. If the Page FISA warrant had been the centerpiece and launching point of the investigation, Trump might have grounds to shut the whole thing down — Trump could claim, rightly, that the FBI, DOJ, and Hillary campaign worked together to trump up these charges, and then weaponized our intelligence and law enforcement community against him. But the memo itself states that “The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos. …The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.”
The fuss over National Security voiced by Democrats and Justice officials (including Comey) seems fraudulent. The memo does little if anything to endanger national security. Sounds more like a an attempt to avoid culpability for an attempted political hit on Trump (#cover up).
The Carter Page FISA application apparently cited a Yahoo News article that was based on leaks from Steele to the news outlet. However, this does not constitute corroborating evidence in the Steele dossier. Steele was later suspended and terminated from the FBI for “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
Steele voiced a disdain for Donald Trump, but this information was not included in the FISA application. Steele told associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Ohr didn’t report that in the FISA application, nor was information that Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS on compiling opposition research on Trump revealed to the FISA Court.
The FBI and DOJ clearly cut corners in an effort to push forward the Trump-Russia investigation. They worked with Fusion GPS materials to do so, and didn’t tell the FISA court. And then they apparently lied to the American people about the supposed risks to the intelligence community if the public found out about their original lies by omission.
Paul Plante says
What a bunch of pure political bull**** this is.
In a MASSLIVE article entitled “During Massachusetts visit, Nancy Pelosi says release of Devin Nunes memo would be ‘dangerous and reckless'” posted Feb 1, 2018 by Shira Schoenberg, we have ditzy Nancy Pelosi screeching at the top of her lungs as follows:
CAMBRIDGE — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, on Thursday called for the removal of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, over a controversial Republican memo.
Pelosi said releasing the memo would be “dangerous and reckless for our country.”
end quotes
HUH?
“Dangerous and reckless for our country?”
How so, Nancy?
Can you get over your hysteria long enough to tell us, because in all truth, Nancy, anyone who has read “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill already knows that the vaunted FBI has some real serious leadership and credibility issues, despite self-billing itself as the nation’s “premier” law enforcement agency.
Read “Black Mass” and you will see what an empty statement that is.
Getting back to the MASSLIVE article:
Pelosi, speaking to reporters in Cambridge after an event related to tax policy, said the memo is false, but contains enough facts to damage U.S. intelligence sources.
“They’re putting out a bogus memo that is not true but alluding to certain facts that are damaging,” Pelosi said.
“That’s why the Justice Department and FBI have said this is dangerous and reckless and should not be done.”
“It’s not based on fact, but it does reference highly classified intelligence matters,” Pelosi said.
“Now we see it’s altered to make matters worse.”
end quotes
Can anyone unravel that spew of Pelosi gibberish?
And then we have this:
Democrats have produced their own classified memo, but the Republicans who control the Intelligence Committee voted to only release the Republican one.
Pelosi said Democrats should have a chance to clarify what the Republicans are misrepresenting.
“How can you say Republicans should release their memo but Democrats can’t release theirs?” Pelosi said.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
end quote
You know what, Nancy?
There is nothing you pack of fools in Washington do that makes a lick of sense to anyone.
You act like undisciplined, squalling brats in a poorly run daycare center, the lot of you, and that starts with you, Nancy.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars you are.
And then we go to the Washington Post article “Release of disputed GOP memo on FBI surveillance unleashes waves of recrimination” by Devlin Barrett, Karoun Demirjian and Philip Rucker on 3 February 2018, as follows:
A GOP memo declassified on Friday accused senior law enforcement officials of misleading a court in order to conduct surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser, fueling a growing distrust between the White House and Republicans on one side and the Justice Department and FBI on the other.
The memo cites “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process,” a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The memo alleges that a surveillance warrant was obtained and renewed on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, with information from an individual with an anti-Trump agenda.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the issues raised by the memo are “of great importance for the country” and that the Justice Department “will fully and fairly ascertain the truth.”
end quotes
Memo to Jeff Sessions: dude, the very last federal agency we, the people, expect to fully and fairly ascertain the truth about anything is the political HACK-O-CRACY you are head of misnamed as the United States Department of Justice.
Getting back to the Washington Post:
The memo accuses Justice Department and FBI officials who approved the surveillance applications — a group that includes Rosenstein; then-FBI Director James B. Comey; his deputy, Andrew McCabe; and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates — of signing off on court surveillance requests that omitted key facts about the political motivations of the person supplying some of the information, Christopher Steele, a former intelligence officer in Britain.
The memo says Steele “was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
end quote
Now, there is a pertinent fact I personally would like to hear more about from the so-called but inaptly named U.S. Department of “Justice.”
Was this Steele actually suspended and terminated by the FBI?
If so, then why should we believe a word he says about anything?
Because he is tied into the Hillary Clinton campaign and political camp, and Hillary is for truth, justice and the American way?
Getting back to the Washington Post:
The memo argues that Steele’s contacts with reporters in the fall of 2016 “violated the cardinal rule of source handling — maintaining confidentiality — and demonstrated that Steele had become a less than reliable source for the FBI.”
The memo also said that the court application “extensively” cites a Yahoo News article about Page but that the FBI believed Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News.
The memo says Steele was a source for Yahoo News and that the Justice Department may have used the Yahoo story about Steele’s allegations to confirm Steele’s claims.
end quotes
This is straight put of a Mel Brooks movie, people.
And back again to the Washington Post:
In September 2016, according to the memo, Steele acknowledged that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” in a conversation with Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official.
At the time, Steele was researching possible Trump ties to Russia on behalf of Fusion GPS, a Washington firm that also hired Ohr’s wife to do Russia-related research.
Then, in spring 2016, Fusion GPS was hired by a lawyer representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to continue researching Trump.
end quotes
But this was not politically motivated, people!
And what a crock that is.
But stay tuned, people, for this crock of crap is brimming over, which means much more to come, so stay tuned and don’t touch that dial!
Chas Cornweller says
So, Paul, I go to read this article this weekend and lo and behold, look who was here! In my best Gomer Pyle impression…”Surprise, Surprise!”
Okay, now that that is out of the way, I can get down to brass tacks. First of all, the FBI has a job to do. They are the Top Cops in this country. Whether or not you like them or not is irrelevant. Whether or not you feel they act illegally or not in any endeavor, is irrelevant. Whether you think, feel or even know (which you don’t) that they act in accordance of which party pulls their string or harbor secret partisan lusting…is irrelevant.
My point is this…where were all the conservatives when J. Edgar (looks good in his mother’s clothes) Hoover ran rough shod over the constitution, umm…starting back somewhere in the thirties? Where were the conservatives when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was falsely accused a communist, blackmailed, threatened, invited to take his own life and then ultimately killed off by the FBI? Where were you guys then? I’ll tell you where. Most likely in the rah-rah section of Hang em all and let God sort em out University. So, are they my favorite agency? Most likely not. But, like I said, they have a job to do.
Here’s the scoop. Last June, prior to the Conventions (Democratic and Republican) Wiki-leaks unleashed a boatload of e-mails from the DNC. Remember? Within those e-mails was the truth that the DNC had castrated the Bernie Sanders Campaign and had thrown their lot in with the Clinton Clowns. Remember? A second wave came out in late August and early September that further demonstrated the ineptitude of the Democratic National Committee and thus shedding same light on Clinton. Guess where those Wiki Leaks came from? Computer Hacks…that’s right! Whose computer hacks? Well, I think we all know…but, I am just going to spell it out here.
Because it IS important. Russia. Cough.
Okay, I gave you all a few minutes to calm down. Let’s look at Chris Steele and his modus operandi. Who is he and why does he figure in all of this? Well, he worked for M-15 (equivalent of our CIA and Russia’s KGB – which no longer exists…wink, wink, nudge, nudge). He is now a free agent in intelligence gathering. Think he has a few connections? Well, he does and was and is in quite the demand for vetting international figures with high up connections. So, he gets hired for vetting, folks. That’s his job. So…guess who hired him in the summer of 2016 to be vetted at a possible presidential candidate? I’ll go get a cup of coffee while you agonize. Give up? Already? Man! Okay…okay, I’ll tell you. The first employer of Mr. Chris Steel and Fusion GPS was none other than the conservative Website Washington Free Beacon, a Republican thinktank. GASPS! Seriously? He had told them there were some issues (has not been expressed publicly yet (it’s classified stupid!) (by the way that last statement is NOT aimed at you Paul…I would never call you stupid, never!) They passed on this advice (obviously) and guess who picked up Chris Steele now that he was wandering the streets with this information. Right! YOU get a cigar! And YOU get a cigar! And YOU get a cigar! And YOU get a cigar! Everyone gets a cigar! Winning! The Democratic National Committee. It’s not illegal and both sides do it all the time. And he told them the same thing he told the RNC. And I am going out on a limb with this, he has probably told the FBI the exact same things he knew way back in the summer of 2016. Just spitballing here…but, yeah…pretty sure he did. The problem the FBI had with Chris Steele is that he was willing to sell this information to public outlets, like newspapers. The FBI wanted this information contained.
Hmmm?
Lastly, the memo itself. A watered down, re-written and many, many pertinent words and sentences missing piece of nothing that does nothing, goes nowhere and shows us nothing. Written by a Republican, no less to murk up the waters. The very fact that this administration put this out, only reflects back to me that there IS something to hide. The FBI is Top Cop in this country. Whether we like that or not. They are doing their job. Right now, some of the best lawyer/law minds are digging down through thirty years of Trump/Russia real estate deals. They are looking into every nook and cranny of Donald J. Trump’s empire and his finances. THEY know what his tax return of last year looks like, even if you and I don’t get to see it. If there is something there, they know. The fact that this is taking so long, is not a good sign. You know that and I know that. There is no debate on that. The real issue is this…how does this play out? Because if it is bad (and it is as bad as I think it is) this has the propensity to pull the pillars down, a la Sampson in the Temple of the Dagon. Just a cursory glance at Duetsche Bank, and its scandals of late, will tell you all you need to know. Who used that bank for business dealings in the past? What did those business deals entail? Whose money was being used to who owned what? Where does the Donald fit in all of this? For that, I say stay tuned.
And Paul, I was following Watergate when it broke. Maybe you were too, I don’t know. But, if this breaks bad for this country…Watergate will become a footnote in history compared to this. If nothing comes of all that has happened (politically and financially speaking) to this country in the past five years, then we’ll be praying for the days of Watergate and Nixon and the lies and scandals that seemed too ludicrous and exotic to believe then. But, yes, I guess it was all true. And Paul, interestingly enough…Deep Throat was an FBI man. But, man can those guys play rough, huh?
Paul Plante says
Wow, Chas Cornweller, did you ever wax quite eloquent there!
What a prodigious effort, remarkable in its scope!
That is a literal cornucopia of pretty much everything possible that could be said on some issue or other, and then some more on some other stuff, besides.
Was it spontaneous, Chas Cornweller, an upwelling from the primal sources in the right brain hemisphere where that sort of thing is said to spring forth from, forces of raw nature which you could not control, or was it a more measured, more intellectual effort by the more logical and rigid left brain?
Or can’t you yet tell, not yet having developed the level of discernment necessary to know the difference?
Either way, it is largely way off base as concerns myself, and any thoughts or feeling I might have towards the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has rightly earned the sobriquet of the “Political Police,” for that is exactly what they are, Chas Cornweller, political police, dogs that can be told to either attack or back off, as the politicians who control them desire.
And you know the real shame of the story “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, Chas Cornweller?
It was not the the FBI was consorting with murderous criminals; it was how very shabbily the FBI and the Office of the U.S. Attorney treated the VICTIMS of Whitey Bulger.
As to where all the conservatives were when J. Edgar Hoover ran rough shod over the constitution, umm…starting back somewhere in the thirties (1924, actually), I don’t rightly have a clue, not being a conservative and not having myself been alive in the 1930’s.
As to how good he might have looked in his mother’s clothes, that is outside my field of knowledge, not being interested in people’s various predilections like that.
And did you know, Chas Cornweller, while we are on the subject of cross-dressers, that Lord Cornbury, an English governor of New York and New Jersey, was said to govern while wearing women’s clothes?
And it is said that J. Edgar Hoover had quite a collection of some real good pornography, as you would expect with someone with his political clout.
Did you know that, Chas Cornweller?
As to where the conservatives were when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was falsely accused a communist, blackmailed, threatened, invited to take his own life and then ultimately killed off by the FBI, beats the hell out of me, Chas Cornweller.
And where was I then?
I’ll tell you where.
I was serving MY COUNTRY in the United States Army is where I was, and definitely not in the rah-rah section of Hang em all and let God sort em out University.
As to this “job” you say they have to do, this is my experience of it, first hand, to wit:
27 February 2001
Hon. Donald T. Kinsella
Assistant U.S. Attorney
Chief, Criminal Division
Northern District of New York
U.S. Department of Justice
445 Broadway, Room 231
James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse
Albany, New York 12207-2924
Dear Mr. Kinsella:
With respect to that document and its relevance to the instant matter of your letter to me dated February 7, 2001, in or about January of 1989, some three (3) months after the events in Exhibit A had transpired, I was paid a visit at my home by Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Thomas Dauenhauer, who appeared at my home in Poestenkill, County of Rensselaer, State of New York, to inform me that I was the subject of an investigation being conducted by the Office of the United States Attorney into corruption in government in the County of Rensselaer, State of New York, and that if I had anything to say in my defense, I had best say it to him at that time.
At that time, in or about January of 1989, I recounted to Special Agent Dauenhauer all of the events detailed in Exhibit A, which events conclude on October 12, 1988, and then I filled him in on what had transpired in the matter since that time, which is as follows:
Agent Dauenhauer then informed me that if I had any evidence to corroborate what I had told him, that that would be the time to do so.
Accordingly, in response to Special Agent Dauenhauer’s query to me concerning involvement by the Rensselaer County Republican Party or party official David Dudley in the matter, I showed Special Agent Dauenhauer an October 1988 Albany Times Union article wherein was clearly stated that the Rensselaer County Department of Health was under the control of the Rensselaer County Republican Party as of October 12, 1988.
We then listened to a public address made by Rensselaer County Executive John L. Buono on local TV Channel 13 out of Menands, New York on or about October 12, 1988 wherein County Executive Buono made mention of the sum of $80,000.
When Special Agent Dauenhauer asked me if I had direct knowledge of this $80,000, I told Special Agent Dauenhauer of a meeting on the fifth floor of the Rensselaer County Office Building in or about March of 1988, where the $80,000 was openly discussed by Buono and a group of land developers and professional engineers and surveyors doing business in Rensselaer County.
I told Special Agent Dauenhauer that it was my understanding that the money was a bounty on my head, that whoever removed me from my office as Associate Public Health Engineer in Rensselaer County would get the money, and that if Buono wanted that money, he knew what he had to do to get it.
Thereafter, in October of 1988, Buono did act by having me barred from entry into the Rensselaer County Office Building while my office and files were ransacked and destroyed.
That money also served as an incentive for the assault on my person by a back-hoe operator in or about July of 1988 detailed in Exhibit A, which assault has left me in great pain and physical distress since.
In response to a request by Special Agent Dauenhauer for any further corroboration, I provided Special Agent Dauenhauer with a copy of a transcript of a March 1, 1988 meeting between New York State Health Department officials with oversight responsibility in Rensselaer County and land developers, professional engineers and land surveyors doing business in Rensselaer County, which transcript had been handed out at the subsequent March 1988 meeting in the Rensselaer County Office Building where the $80,000 was discussed.
In the transcript of the March 1, 1988 meeting, New York State Public Health Engineer James Decker verifies on the record that on Tuesday, March 1, 1988, the New York State Department of Health was aware of the negligent practices on-going in the Rensselaer County Department of Health at the time I took office in 1986.
In the transcript of the March 1, 1988 meeting, the Rensselaer County developers can be seen negotiating with New York State Health Department Division of Environmental Protection Director Leo Hetling to allow them to return to the improper practices of 1986, and the meeting concludes with Hetling telling the developers, “We’ll look at it.”
At the subsequent March 1988 meeting in the Rensselaer County Office Building where the $80,000 was discussed, New York State Public Health Engineer James Decker was present to verify that the transcribed March 1, 1988 meeting did in fact take place, and to also verify that the New York State Department of Health would not interfere if Rensselaer County were to return to the corrupt and fraudulent practices of 1986.
Subsequent to that meeting, I came under intense pressure to issue fraudulent approvals for land subdivisions in Rensselaer County, and in October of 1988, I became disabled and unable to further perform the duties of a licensed professional engineer in the Rensselaer County Health District.
Now, I know that all of the above was made the subject of an FBI file of some two-hundred fifty (250) pages in length, including the March 1, 1988 transcript, because I provided a copy of that FBI file to the office of U.S. Attorney French just this past year in connection with this matter, and so it is I who must confess to being confused by your February 7, 2001 letter to me wherein you inform me to bring this matter back to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, when that same agency ceased investigating this matter at the direction of the Office of the United States Attorney.
As was made clear to me by Special Agent Dauenhauer in or about May of 1989, without specific instructions to proceed from the Office of the United States Attorney, the Federal Bureau of Investigation considered this matter involving myself and the State of New York to be a dead issue.
More to the point, according to Special Agent Dauenhauer, material evidence in the form of letters as to knowledge and intent on the part of Rensselaer County officials to willfully violate the law collected from myself by Special Agent Dauenhauer as chain of custody from myself to the Office of the United States Attorney was allegedly removed from the record and destroyed by the Office of the United States Attorney at the time the FBI investigation was quashed in 1989.
So, given all of the above, which is documented in your own records, I am uncertain as to how to proceed further in this matter.
Accordingly, I am requesting as a person with a qualified disability that your office inform me as to exactly what procedure I am to follow at this time in bringing these alleged criminal matters back to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation where in or about 1989, the Office of the United States Attorney has already quashed the matter, and relevant evidence has been removed from the record, and/or lost and destroyed.
Thanking you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter, I remain
Respectfully,
Paul R. Plante
end quotes
Six months later, on 8-22-01, the political Federal Bureau of Investigation responded by entering into its records concerning myself, which were already in excess of 200 pages concerning public corruption in Rensselaer County in the state of New York, a FRAUDULENT New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 involuntary psychiatric commitment order which they knew was a FRAUD, but they accepted it, nonetheless, because they are political police, Chas Cornweller.
That is how they handle people who do not believe their myth or bull**** story that they are not politically motivated.
So let me say, Chas Cornweller, that based on the above, that my experience with them has left a sour taste in my mouth as an honest American citizen, but that is just me.
Back to you!
Chas Cornweller says
Paul Plante, you are truly a conundrum. And, yes…I know of your back story. An interesting thing, you and I are closely linked by the type of work we do/did. But, I have not had the soul breaking experience that you have endured. All I can say is, I recognize your pain and frustrations. I have worked both in private and public sectors in dealing with the bureaucracy of construction and development. Fortunately, for me, the private sector companies I had the pleasure of working with, had integrity. Well, most, anyways. There was this one, small mom and pop survey outfit that did some work with a southern company in Atlanta…and I could drop some big company names at this point…but I won’t. Well, it involved wetlands…The Army Corps of Engineers, the city I was working in and their city council members and our small outfit. Let’s just say in the end, my boss and his family got a brand new nineteen ninety-four Ford Expedition for all their efforts to insure this land was surveyed, secured, sold, and paved. I left soon after. My faith forever shaken to the dealings of big business and city council members. Did I report it? No. And why not? What would it have done anyway? Closed a mom and pop business? Ruined the political careers of certain members? Brought down a fortune five hundred company? Exposed the underbelly of corruption with insurance companies and railroad magnates? Hardly. I would have been fired…ridiculed, and would have never worked in this area again. Meanwhile, seventy-five acres of wetlands next to railroad tracks would still be covered in asphalt. So, no, I kept my mouth shut and went to work for people I admired and challenged me. Besides now, it is more than twenty-four years in the past and beyond the statutes of limitations. So, something we have in common. Except, I took the cowards way out. You…on the other hand. Got handed the shaft end of the shaft. Such is life.
As far as the FBI is concerned…are they capable of nefarious business? Yes, of course! But, they also are capable of insider information and moral integrity. Mr. Felt was a man of integrity in nineteen and seventy-two and three. He was the inside voice that enabled first amendment poster boys, Woodward and Bernstein to pursue the trail all the way into the White House. Where did he get his information? He was on the inside. Just like me and the land transaction of nineteen and ninety-three. He had the guts to step outside a comfortable place and relay the information on Nixon to the outside. The Washington Post had the courage to print it.
I just re-read your letter of February 2001. And while I am completely in solidarity with you and the situation that brought such grief to you, I can clearly see that you were up against a juggernaut of corruption in the late eighties. I am truly sorry for your plight. And I understand clearer, your frustrations with the “system”. Corruption is not partisan. It knows no color, creed or status. Corruption is an equal opportunity victimizer. I truly believe (stop me if I am wrong) you and I are on the same side here. But, the question still remains…is our present Commander in Chief a con-man? Is he in place to carry out the final and complete fleecing of America and the middle class? Is he in complete and unabridged collusion with a foreign government to manipulate the final purging of freedom and rights we so admire, here in America? Or, is he the populous savior of the middle class? Can he infuse monies into the upper reaches of the power holders in this country to enable a stronger economy by providing necessary jobs and cash flow so desperately needed to feed the machine? Is he the one? Has he the heart and soul to empathize with the poor and the down-trodden, the sick and the humble veterans? Is he the one? Can he and his party ride out the storm of accusation and innuendo of nefarious deeds done behind closed hotel/bank doors? Is he the one? Paul…that is the question. And it, scarily, is a yes or no answer type question. My money is on no. He is not. I’ve seen behind the power brokers doors. I know how they work. The poor and humble are not even on their radar. But, you know this as well. Thank you for the sideways complement at the beginning of your comment. But, I am not deserving of any praise of my intellect. I just had a fine education. I am just a normal dude, doing my best to raise my girls, love my wife/life and be the best citizen for my hometown and country I can be. But, I still can’t help but think of that scared, confused guy, way back in ’93 who turned his back on a business deal that should have never happened and walked away…saying nothing. Have a blessed week. Chas
Paul Plante says
Yes, Chas Cornweller, we are on the same side, although right now it appears to be the losing side, which is a real story about America, not us.
And no, Chas Cornweller, I don’t see in that situation that you were taking the coward’s way out.
The coward’s way out would have been to stay with them and keep your mouth shut while taking their dirty money.
Surveying has become such a pitiful joke up here that you can go into some subdivisions and find four separate corner stakes for the same corner as crooked surveyors literally move property lines to favor their clients with the money to pay for such chicanery.
And like me, Chas Cornweller, you could have spoken out.
But to who?
And why would you do that to yourself?
No, you did the right thing as I see it, so have n0 fear on that account.
My situation was different.
I had law enforcement authority.
Big joke that turned out to be.
I also had a public duty by virtue of my position as Associate Public Health Engineer to enforce the law.
I wasn’t asked to be crooked; I was told I had to be crooked, or I would never work again as an engineer in my life.
I opted for the second choice.
As to Trump, I have called him a loud-mouthed blowhard with a perpetual bad hair day who if elected will render the United States of America into an environmental and industrial wasteland reminiscent of Giedi Prime under the rule of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, with its bio-resources depleted and its environment fouled with industrial pollution.
Have I missed something?
Has anything changed?
And why are you blaming Trump on me, Chas Cornweller?
I DID NOT vote for him.
He is not my creature and never was, and I cannot believe that I live in a country with him as president.
So please, Chas Cornweller, don’t dump that idiot’s many problems on my doorstep as if I were in some way responsible for them.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Actually, no Chas. The download speeds with which the emails were taken is far too fast for online theft, it requires a device to download at that rate.
Like the one that maybe Seth Rich used?
But of course we’ll never know since the FBI NEVER looked at the DNC computers, they weren’t allowed. They took the word of a firm hired by the DNC, CrowdStrike.
Never once looked at the computer in question.
But you keep on keepin on with your lockstep-may I say goosestep- liberalism.
Chas Cornweller says
Wow Michael, that is a beautiful tin-foil hat you’re wearing there! The FBI WERE given forensic images of CrowdStrike’s servers. Access to servers being denied is not beyond protocol with large cyber security companies. That’s how trade secrets get stolen, sir. Also, the CIA also acknowledged that Russia hacked the e-mails. So, are they in on the coup as well?
How is it that Seth Rich got tagged for stealing the e-mails, when it just as easily could have been CrowdStrike that turned them over? So many holes in your rant/comment. The e-mails did decidedly come from Russia and that is the point you are missing here. But, of course you right wing neo-cons want to believe everything that drools from Herr Gropenfuhrer’s mouth. Like the memo itself is real. It was re-written from a sixty some page report, down to four pages. Again, so that Herr Gropenfuhrer could read it without falling asleep. And speaking of Nordic tendencies, liberals are usually in lock-step with no one. We form our own opinions for ourselves and follow no main path. You ought to know that. And as far as goose-stepping, that’s what fascist do. At least the ones that did for their fuhrer somewhere back in the thirties and forties. But, we all know that didn’t turn out so well for them either.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
They weren’t “CrowdStrike’s” servers Chas. They were the DNC’s and the Clinton campaigns.
But nice try.
Better watch out, the RUSSIANS are planting weeds in your garden.
OH NOES!!!!! RUSSIANS!!!!!
And you call me naïve? Pot, meet kettle.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
in the 30’s? You refer of course to the NATIONAL SOCIALISTS in Germany?
ANd sweetie? Speech codes- the nes plus ultra of liberalism- are absolute FASCISM.
And sunshine? YOUR side owns it.
Paul Plante says
Without looking either to the left or the right while ignoring all that crap about J. Edgar Hoover and whether or not like Lord Cornbury he wore women’s clothes to work, for that is all real old news, and notwithstanding whatever our dear friend and debating partner may think, it is quite clear all the way around that the so-called but misnamed “justice” department under Hussein Obama was protecting Hillary Clinton, along with the political police in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
To prove that, one need look no further than the NBC NEWS article “FBI boss suggests McCabe’s exit tied to review of Clinton email probe” by Pete Williams and Tracy Connor on 31 January 2018, to wit:
FBI Director Chris Wray made clear in a message sent to all bureau employees on Monday night that Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s decision to step aside was a result of forthcoming information to be detailed in an Inspector General report, according to a copy of his message obtained by NBC News.
Wray alluded to having seen aspects of the IG’s report into the way the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.
In the very next paragraph, Wray explained that McCabe had submitted his intention to retire, suggesting a connection between the findings of the IG report and McCabe’s decision.
Several sources familiar with McCabe’s move said the he made his decision as a result of a meeting with Wray in which the Inspector General’s investigation was discussed.
News that McCabe would leave his role seven weeks before he was expected to retire triggered speculation on Monday that he was being forced to leave under political pressure from President Donald Trump.
But several FBI insiders said that was not the case.
end quotes
I am sure that Chas Cornweller will attempt to spin this off in some other direction, but the facts are the facts, and while Chas Cornweller is entitled to his opinion of those facts, that opinion does not change the facts as they are, and all this horse**** about this gone-to-seed “spy” Steele who is looking for some glory days is a distraction.
He reminds me of another “intelligence” dude from back in the VEET NAM times who was the subject of this following discussion from pp.100-102 of “A BETTER WAR, The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam” by Lewis Sorley, a third-generation graduate of West Point holding a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University with two decades of service in the U.S. Army including command of tank and armored cavalry units, teaching at West Point and the Army War College, and Pentagon staff duty who was later a senior civilian official of the Central Intelligence Agency, to wit:
While the Ho Chi Minh Trail was under fierce and continuous air attack, access to the South Vietnamese coast from the sea had since mid-1966 been effectively sealed off through intensive patrolling by South Vietnamese and U.S. ships.
But there was a flood of supplies coming into the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville and then through Cambodia into III and IV Corps of South Vietnam and even up to the southern portions of II Corps.
By January 1969 it was clear to MACV analysts that Sihanoukville was “the primary point of entry for supplies, especially arms and ammunition, destined for enemy forces in southern South Vietnam.”
**************
The distribution system was well organized and efficient.
After leaving Sihanoukville, the munitions were transported to an arms depot at Kampong Speu, about twenty-five miles southwest of Phnom Penh, or to warehouses in the capital city.
From there they were distributed to enemy base areas in the border region, and eventually to troop units in South Vietnam.
At CIA this picture of the enemy supply system had for a long time been vigorously disputed.
There the “intelligence analysts at the Washington level” really came down to one man, a veteran CIA officer named James Graham.
The lead analyst on the problem, he stubbornly refused, year after year, to be convinced that any significant amount of military wherewithal was reaching the enemy through the port of Sihanoukville.
Within MCV, the “Graham Report” staking out that position became infamous.
MACV was incensed by its obtuseness, as they saw it, or worse.
Later (General) Davidson, who had struggled with this problem when he was MACV J-2, recalled that Graham once said to him, “Sometimes you’ve got to find what you’ve got to find.”
end quotes
“Sometimes you’ve got to find what you’ve got to find.”
That is the mantra of people like this glory hound Steele, and political hacks in our government, as well.
That is what Comey did when he exonerated Hillary, he found what he needed to find to stay on the good side of the Clintons..
And while that CIA dude was spinning his bull**** in 1969, I was in Viet Nam and my friends were dying for his lies.
Hence my skepticism about the veracity of “spies” like this Steele dude Chad Cornweller is so enamored of.
And then we have The Washington Post article “Internal Justice Department probe eyes McCabe’s role in final weeks of 2016 election” by Devlin Barrett and Karoun Demirjian on 30 January 2018, to wit:
The Justice Department’s inspector general has been focused for months on why Andrew McCabe, as the No. 2 official at the FBI, appeared not to act for about three weeks on a request to examine a batch of Hillary Clinton-related emails found in the latter stages of the 2016 election campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
The inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has been asking witnesses why FBI leadership seemed unwilling to move forward on the examination of emails found on the laptop of former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) until late October — about three weeks after first being alerted to the issue, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
A key question of the internal investigation is whether McCabe or anyone else at the FBI wanted to avoid taking action on the laptop findings until after the Nov. 8 election, these people said.
end quotes
Why, besides for partisan political reasons, did McCabe of the FBI sit on his hands?
Getting back to the Washington Post:
A major line of inquiry for the inspector general has been trying to determine who at the FBI and the Justice Department knew about the Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, and when they learned about them.
McCabe is a central figure in those inquiries, these people said.
On Monday, McCabe left the FBI, following a meeting with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in which they discussed the inspector general’s investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Horowitz announced in January 2017 that he was examining the Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton investigation.
His report is expected in the spring.
The matter of the Weiner laptop emails has been debated publicly for more than a year, in part because many Clinton supporters say the FBI tilted the 2016 race toward Donald Trump when it announced in late October that it was reopening its probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state.
Key parts of what went into that decision have remained murky and are a major focus of the inspector general’s probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
end quote
Will our dear friend and American patriot Chas Cornweller dare to delve that murkiness?
Moving right along here:
In late September 2016, FBI agents in New York were investigating Weiner for possible Internet crimes involving a teenage girl.
In the course of that probe, they discovered that his laptop contained thousands of work emails belonging to Weiner’s then-wife, Huma Abedin.
Abedin was a longtime aide to Clinton, and agents wanted to know whether the emails in question might shed new light on the Clinton investigation, which had been closed in July without any charges.
The New York FBI office alerted FBI headquarters to the new email issue within days — accounts differ as to when precisely, but McCabe was aware of the matter by late September or early October at the latest, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The agents on the Weiner case wanted to talk to the Clinton email investigators and see whether the messages were potentially important.
Some people familiar with the matter said officials at FBI headquarters asked the New York agents to analyze the emails’ metadata — the sender, recipient and times of the messages — to see whether they seemed relevant to the closed probe.
McCabe was involved in those discussions, but there are differing accounts about how much then-FBI Director James B. Comey understood about the matter in the early days of October.
Senior Justice Department officials, according to several people familiar with the issue, were not notified until mid-October.
But for a period of at least three weeks, according to people involved at the time, nothing much happened — a lag that has sparked the inspector general’s questions.
end quotes
I wonder if Chas Cornweller has any insights there as to what was really going on behind closed doors, if it was something other than partisan politics.
Getting back to the Washington Post:
McCabe’s defenders in law enforcement say that there was nothing nefarious going on — officials were pursuing a careful process of determining whether the emails might be relevant, and that took time.
Other law enforcement officials, however, have said they are concerned that the issue seemed to die for a period of time at McCabe’s desk, without explanation.
end quotes
That is how investigations get buried right there.
And back to the story:
On Oct. 24, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that McCabe’s wife had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a close ally of Clinton, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
The donations were for McCabe’s wife’s unsuccessful run as a Democrat for the Virginia state legislature.
The dormant laptop issue then appeared to gain new attention inside the FBI and Justice Department.
At a meeting of senior officials of both agencies, senior Justice Department official George Toscas asked about the status of the inquiry into the emails on Weiner’s laptop, according to people familiar with the matter.
At the same time, the FBI was facing a new set of questions, this time about McCabe’s role in a stalled probe into the Clinton Foundation.
end quotes
Ah, yes, the stalled probe into the politically powerful Clintons.
But that wasn’t political, was it.
Back to the story:
Some within the FBI felt McCabe had repeatedly moved to hamstring that probe and were suspicious of his motives for doing so, according to people familiar with the matter.
McCabe’s defenders inside federal law enforcement have repeatedly said he tried to navigate a sensitive political investigation between Justice Department officials who thought the probe was going nowhere and FBI agents who believed they were being blocked from issuing subpoenas and taking other steps that could uncover critical evidence.
end quotes
Now, regardless of what Chas Cornweller might think, that all stinks to high heaven.
But let’s wait and see what he comes back with, for it sure ought to be quite interesting.
Chas Cornweller says
You want to know something Mike? It is exhausting putting my head inside your bubble (read:
responding to your inane line of thought and world-view).
One: please read up on the role of CrowdStrike and the FBI and all that happened in the summer of 2017.
Two: Waaaay back in ’52 and Joseph McCarthy and his “righteous” committee found communists in everybody’s garden, kitchens, and teapots. So, your little prodding there, kind of
fall flats with me.
Third: (sigh) Nazi’s… Liberal or Conservative? Quick, you have three seconds to answer. Trust me, if you get it wrong, you really do not have a clue as to what either are.
Four: Please don’t call me sweetie. We haven’t even been introduced. And it only makes you
look cheap.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Hitler’s speech on May 1, 1927.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
Doncha hate it when Reality imposes it’s will upon your liberal fantasies?
Riddle me this, riddler………..would the FBI allow YOU or ME to provide a 3rd party mirror for investigation? Now be honest……..for a liberal I realize that is poison but give it a shot. I’d suggest YOU read up on that issue, since you are so far off base it’s not even funny……not that you ever are.
As for McCarthy, two words: Venona. Papers.
See, McCarthy was RIGHT.
That’s ZERO for Three, sugarplum. Wanna try again?
tkenny says
Mike, please see this https://www.snopes.com/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/ and this https://www.britannica.com/event/National-Socialism on the Nazi question.
Paul Plante says
tkenny, dude, speaking of Hitler, which I understand we aren’t supposed to be doing in this country anymore, lest we scare the children and put a fright in them, do you remember when Hitler was Time magazine Man of the Year?
Monday, Jan. 02, 1939, it was, tkenny.
Americans loved the dude back then, and they thought his Germany was a great place to invest and make money.
It is about making money, afterall, isn’t it?
According to Time, the greatest single news event of 1938 took place on September 29, when four statesmen met at the Führerhaus, in Munich, to redraw the map of Europe.
The three visiting statesmen at that historic conference were Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier of France, and Dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy.
But by all odds the dominating figure at Munich was the German host, Adolf Hitler.
Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years.
He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds.
He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able.
He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.
All these events were shocking to nations which had defeated Germany on the battlefield only 20 years before, but nothing so terrified the world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events which during late summer and early autumn threatened a world war over Czechoslovakia.
When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe’s defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a “hands-off” promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938’s Man of the Year.
end quotes
Powerful praise or what, tkenny?
Actually, what comes across when you actually read history as opposed to watching it on TV was how cowardly the British and French “leaders” were at that time, like putty in Hitler’s hands, and Hitler knew it.
Consider this on that subject from “World Wars and Revolutions – The Course of Europe Since 1900” by Walter Phelps Hall, Ph.D, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University, copyright 1943, for example:
It is very difficult to fathom what lay behind French and British policy in the crisis of 1938.
Mile by mile the two governments gave way to Hitler’s threats and bombast, until finally there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia except a completely disillusioned and discouraged little rump of a country, which could not fight if it wanted to, and which was occupied without a shot by the Fuehrer the following spring.
Czechoslovakia was told by England and France that she must deliver “the districts mainly inhabited by the Sudeten Germans” to Germany.
If this was done there would be guarantees of her future independence.
This was selling the pass, for the districts to be ceded lay along the frontier where the Czechs had their fortifications.
England and France were now offering Hitler all that he demanded.
Runciman, meanwhile, made his formal report.
It proposed not only to give Germany all that Hitler had demanded but a little more, for he suggested not only that parts of Czechoslovakia be ceded Germany but also that the rump which remained should renounce all treaties of defense with other countries, suppress all anti-German agitation, and enter into close economic relations with the Reich.
The Runciman report was followed by sharp insistence at Prague on the part of the French and British ambassadors that Benes agree to the Anglo-French proposals.
The Germans took what they wanted, marched to within forty miles of Prague, and absorbed about 750,000 Czechs in the new Germany.
As they did so the Poles invaded Teschen, annexing about 80,000 Poles and 120,000 Czechs.
Hungary then advanced on the helpless Czechs from the south, crossed the Danube, took Bratislava, and would have divided Ruthenia and perhaps Slovakia with Poland had she been permitted to by the all-powerful Germans.
All French and British guarantees vanished into thin air.
end quotes
According to Time, most other world figures of 1938 faded in importance as the year drew to a close.
Prime Minister Chamberlain’s “peace with honor” seemed more than ever to have achieved neither.
An increasing number of Britons ridiculed his appease-the-dictators policy, believed that nothing save abject surrender could satisfy the dictators’ ambitions.
Among many Frenchmen there rose a feeling that Premier Daladier, by a few strokes of the pen at Munich, had turned France into a second-rate power.
Aping Mussolini in his gestures and copying triumphant Hitler’s shouting complex, the once liberal Daladier at year’s end was reduced to using parliamentary tricks to keep his job.
end quotes
I think that is part of the reason people today hold “liberals” in such contempt, and that is precisely because they are so pitifully weak like the once liberal Daladier who was reduced to aping Mussolini in his gestures and copying triumphant Hitler’s shouting complex while being reduced to using parliamentary tricks to keep his job.
So there is some history for you to cogitate on, tkenny, as you try and figure out where this second-class country we are now stuck living in is headed.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Tkenny, I don’t accept Snopes as a source, it is far too politically motivated. Look at the funding behind it.
EB is also motivated to put a ‘good face’ on certain political beliefs and they are none too neutral anymore.
Wiki, which is not much better but at least is trying says the below(partial clip from page)
“Hitler also spent large amounts of state revenues for a comprehensive social welfare system to combat the ill effects of the Great Depression, promising repeatedly throughout his regime the “creation of a socially just state.”[32] Hitler both expanded the state-owned welfare organizations[33] and privatized social welfare organizations[34] Nonetheless, the NSV instituted expansive programs to address the socio-economic inequalities among those deemed to be German citizens. Joseph Goebbels remarked about the merits of Hitler’s welfare state in a 1944 editorial “Our Socialism,” where he professed: “We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation.”[35]
With 17 million Germans receiving assistance under the auspices of National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) by 1939, the agency “projected a powerful image of caring and support.”[36] The National Socialists provided a plethora of social welfare programs under Nazi’s concept of Volksgemeinschaft which promoted the collectivity of a “people’s community” where citizens would sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The NSV operated “8,000 day-nurseries” by 1939, and funded holiday homes for mothers, distributed additional food for large families, and was involved with a “wide variety of other facilities.”[36]
The Nazi social welfare provisions included old age insurance, rent supplements, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes, interest-free loans for married couples, along with healthcare insurance, which was not decreed mandatory until 1941.[37] One of the NSV branches, the Office of Institutional and Special Welfare, was responsible “for travellers’ aid at railway stations; relief for ex-convicts; ‘support’ for re-migrants from abroad; alcoholics; and the fight against illicit drugs and epidemics.”[38] However, the physically disabled and homeless were persecuted in Nazi Germany.[39][40] The Office of Youth Relief, which had 30,000 branches offices by 1941, took the job of supervising “social workers, corrective training, mediation assistance,” and dealing with judicial authorities to prevent juvenile delinquency.[41] It is estimated that in the mid-1930s, German workers paid 15-35% of their income to taxes, social programs, and (due to government pressure) charities.[42]”
AH was a socialist, with Dictatorial underpinnings. No two ways about it.
And Dictators ALWAYS arrest/kill their most ardent supporters……….they know how to resist and overthrow.
Paul Plante says
There were COMMIES in everybody’s garden, kitchens, and teapots, back then, Chas Cornweller, the country was thick with them just as it was thick with Nazis before WWII and their Bunds.
The COMMIES back then were preaching the violent overthrow of our Constitutional frame of government.
Are you for that, Chas Cornweller, the violent overthrow of our Constitutional frame of government so a communist worker’s paradise such as exists in North Korea today can be put in place here instead?
Would you thrive, do you think, in a Communist worker’s paradise?
Did you know, Chas Cornweller, that in United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965), a sharply divided United States Supreme Court held void as a bill of attainder a statute making it a crime for a member of the Communist Party to serve as an officer or as an employee of a labor union?
Congress could, Chief Justice Warren wrote for the majority, under its commerce power, protect the economy from harm by enacting a prohibition generally applicable to any person who commits certain acts or possesses certain characteristics making him likely in Congress’ view to initiate political strikes or other harmful deeds and leaving it to the courts to determine whether a particular person committed the specified acts or possessed the specified characteristics; it was impermissible, however, for Congress to designate a class of persons–members of the Communist Party–as being forbidden to hold union office.
The dissenters viewed the statute as merely expressing in shorthand the characteristics of those persons who were likely to utilize union responsibilities to accomplish harmful acts; Congress could validly conclude that all members of the Communist Party possessed those characteristics.
However, a predecessor of the statute struck down in Brown, which had conditioned a union’s access to the NLRB upon the filing of affidavits by all of the union’s officers attesting that they were not members of or affiliated with the Communist Party, had been upheld, and although Chief Justice Warren distinguished the previous case from Brown on the basis that the Court in the previous decision had found the statute to be preventive rather than punitive, he then proceeded to reject the contention that the punishment necessary for a bill of attainder had to be punitive or retributive rather than preventive, thus undermining the prior decision.
In United States v. Lovett, (1946), No. 809-to-811 Decided: June 3, 1946, the United States Supreme Court gave us this following American history with regard to COMMIES among us:
In the background of the statute here challenged lies the House of Representatives’ feeling in the late thirties that many ‘subversives’ were occupying influential positions in the Government and elsewhere and that their influence must not remain unchallenged.
As part of its program against ‘subversive’ activities the House in May 1938 created a Committee on Un-American Activities, which became known as the Dies Committee after its Chairman, Congressman Martin Dies.
end quotes
Did you know about that, Chas Cornweller?
This Committee conducted a series of investigations and made lists of people and organizations it thought ‘subversive.’
The creation of the Dies Committee was followed by provisions such as Section 9A of the Hatch Act, 53 Stat. 1148, 1149, 18 U.S.C.A. 61i, and Sections 15(f) and 17(b) of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1941, 54 Stat. 611, 15 U.S.C.A. 721-728 note, which forbade the holding of a federal job by anyone who was a member of a political party or organization that advocated the overthrow of our Constitutional form of Government in the United States.
end quotes
I ask you again, Chas Cornweller, would you like to see the Democrats overthrow our Constitutional form of government to replace it with socialism like Hitler did in Germany?
Getting back to the Supreme Court, it became the practice to include a similar prohibition in all appropriations acts, together with criminal penalties for its violation, and under those provisions the Federal Bureau of Investigation began wholesale investigations of federal employees, which investigations were financed by special Congressional appropriations. 55 Stat. 292, 56 Stat. 468, 482.
Thousands were investigated.
While all this was happening Mr. Dies on February 1, 1943, in a long speech on the floor of the House attacked thirty-nine named Government employees as ‘irresponsible, unrepresentative, crackpot, radical bureaucrats’ and affiliates of ‘communist front organizations.’
end quotes
See what I am saying about the COMMIES being thick among us, Chas Cornweller, in everybody’s garden, kitchens, and teapots, as you so correctly say above.
And do you remember the Bunds, Chas Cornweller?
For your edification, in case you don’t, the German American Bund, or German American Federation was a German-American pro-Nazi organization established in 1936 to succeed Friends of New Germany (FONG), the new name being chosen to emphasize the group’s American credentials after press criticism that the organization was unpatriotic.
The Bund was to consist only of American citizens of German descent and its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.
Did you know that, Chas Cornweller?
According to Wikipedia, and you really should know this stuff, Chas Cornweller, because it really happened, in May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German Nazi Party member Heinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization, and shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each.
Lest you think these were rural conservative Kook-a-Dooks, Chas Cornweller, Wikipedia tells us the FONG was based in liberal New York City but had a strong presence in Chicago, as well.
So were they liberal or conservative?
Quick, you have three seconds to answer.
Trust me, if you get it wrong, you really do not have a clue as to what either are.
Getting back to the Bunds, members wore a uniform, a white shirt and black trousers for men with a black hat festooned with a red symbol while women members wore a white blouse and a black skirt.
The organization led by Spanknöbel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations.
end quotes
Doesn’t that sound very much like what these Democrat party paramilitaries, the ANTIFAS, are doing in our country today?
At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, Chairman of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, became aware of the substantial number of foreigners legally and illegally entering and residing in the country, and the growing anti-Semitism along with vast amounts of anti-Semitic literature being distributed in the country.
end quotes
Democrat party immigration policies were in effect then, weren’t they?
Getting back to the Bunds, this led Congressman Dickstein, Chairman of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, to investigate independently the activities of Nazi and other fascist groups, leading to the formation of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities.
Throughout the rest of 1934, the Committee conducted hearings, bringing before it most of the major figures in the American fascist movement.
Dickstein’s investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the United States.
In March 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany in Buffalo, New York.
The Bund elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (Bundesführer).
Kuhn was a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) of the Nazi Party, who in 1934 was granted American citizenship.
end quotes
Did you know they let in Nazis back then, Chas Cornweller?
Linking back then to today, arguably, the zenith of the Bund’s activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in liberal New York City on February 20, 1939, where some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as “Frank D. Rosenfeld”, calling his New Deal the “Jew Deal” and denouncing what he believed to be Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership.
Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers.
The rally, which attracted 20,000 Nazi supporters, was the subject of the 2017 short documentary A Night at the Garden by Marshall Curry.
end quotes
Doesn’t that remind you, Chas Cornweller, of all the violence between the pipe-wielding Democrat party paramilitaries and the Trump supporters last year?
And that same U.S. Congressman Martin Dies (D-Texas) and his House Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II.
So there is some American history for you concerning the COMMIES and Nazis in this country.
Sounds a lot like today, doesn’t it?
Chas Cornweller says
Paul, I know you are a man of letters. I know you mean well and I know your heart is in the right place. But, dear sir, you are very, very difficult to respond to. There is a part of me that just wants to let this go. We’ve beat this horse into the ground. Those on the right WILL NOT agree with those on the left. It’s the reason God came up with word compromise. I do not see any god in this equation.
So, on that note…I bid adieu. I will leave you with three known historical facts.
1. Henry Ford, Prescott Bush, Charles Lindberg, John Rockefeller Sr., Andrew Mellon, Allen Dulles, Joseph Kennedy Sr. and William Randolph Hearst were ALL great admirers of Adolf Hitler.
2. That is indeed correct, a large rally WAS held in New York at Madison Square Gardens in support of German American Bund or German American Federation to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany. And indeed, Fritz Kuhn (a German born American Citizen) did call President Roosevelt by the name Frank D. Rosenfield. So? There are idiots in every generation.
3. General Motors and Ford had factories all throughout Germany prior to the war with America. Those factories were still up and running when Allied bombers were bombing Germany. Trucks used against American, British and Canadian troops during the Battle of the Bulge were run by engines supplied by General Motors and Ford built factories and slave labor. To give the devil his due…Henry Ford was NOT in control of his factories in Germany at this juncture, but, it has been alluded to in several known reports over the years, that parts were being supplied by way of Spain throughout the war. Prescott Bush (father of two (2!) American presidents, was director and shareholder of companies that profited from involvement with financial backers of Nazi Germany. Collusion? What do you think? (please don’t answer-not tonight, I have a headache.)
So, my friend, you see…and I know you knew all this, worldwide collusion with enemy states for financial gain is not a new game. You and I are just pawns in this crazy world we call home. We can squawk and fuss and fume all we want. All the back and forth we can both muster, but we are peeing into the wind, my friend. It really has nothing to do with Liberal or Conservative politics. It has to do with right and wrong, peace and war, love and hate, life…death. We live in a duality world. We must be very careful which actions we take…there is always, always, always…a re-action.
One last caveat. If you haven’t already, read Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin”. And as you will see, sir…not every American was enamored of Adolf or his policies. And state politics were just as screwed up then, as they are today. Not much changes. Such is the curse of knowing history.
Paul Plante says
You do the civilized world a disservice, Chas Cornweller, when you get all sensitive like that and then fold your tent and cut and run because I pointed out something very obvious about human nature that you didn’t want to hear.
History has never been kind to weak rulers.
That is what the Korean War was all about, afterall, Stalin and Mao and Kim Il Sung thinking Harry S. “The Buck Stops Here” Truman was a weak leader, and him reacting to the provocation to show he wasn’t.
Were you ever taught about the Korean War, Chas Cornweller?
I would bet not.
So there is no curse to knowing history, Chas Cornweller.
Those who use a mirror of brass can see to set their cap; those who use the mirror of antiquity can predict the rise and fall of nations.
Did you know that, Chas Cornweller?
It’s true.
If you know history, Chas Cornweller, then you are never out of position for what is coming next, nor are you surprised about it.
So, my friend, you see, and I know you knew all this, I know that worldwide collusion with enemy states for financial gain is not a new game, and I have known that history you bring up for quite some time now.
And I seriously disagree with you when you say “you and I are just pawns in this crazy world we call home.”
I am hardly a pawn, Chas Cornweller,
If I was a pawn, most likely I would get along a lot better than I do believing I am not a pawn, but such it is, Chas Cornweller.
And of course we can squawk and fuss and fume all we want.
It’s America, afterall, isn’t it?
And I hardly believe that I am peeing into the wind, my friend.
What a defeatist attitude that would be to adopt.
I’m not a defeatist, Chas Cornweller, so why would I start thinking of myself as a nothing when I am in fact an American citizen?
And of course with me it really has nothing to do with Liberal or Conservative politics, because I am neither.
And yes, of course it has to do with right and wrong, peace and war, love and hate, life, death.
What else is there, Chas Cornweller, besides a fantabulous bean burger from Kelly’s Gingernut Pub?
And while some, Chas Cornweller, live in a duality world, I don’t.
Mine is technicolor with full surround sound.
And I was taught as a mere child in the country, Chas Cornweller, that we must ALWAYS be very careful which actions we take, because there is always, always, always re-action.
That’s basic physics, Chas Cornweller.
You know, what goes up must always come down.
That applies to nations as much as it does to stones thrown in the air by little children in an attempt to hit the sun with one.
Watch out or you might get hit in the eye when they come back down.
Speaking of that, Chas Cornweller, can you believe it?
Nancy Pelosi was on the floor of the House of Representatives for eight interminable hours yesterday venting steam, in an effort that was remarkable both for its duration and for the vacuity of her speech.
She went on and on and on and on for eight long hours, and when she was finally done and people breathed a sigh of relief, nobody knew exactly what it was she really said, just that there was an awful lot of it said.
What I found remarkable was that she emitted such a quantity of hot air that she actually turned a snow storm up this way into rain.
Now, that is what I would have to call prodigious by any set of standards.
'Slide Easy' says
“Indian Chief, “Two Eagles,” was asked by a white government official, “You have observed the white man for 90 years. You’ve seen his wars and his technological advances. You’ve seen his progress, and the damage he’s done.”
The Chief nodded in agreement.
The official continued, “Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?”
The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied. “When white man find land, Indians running it. No taxes, No debt, Plenty buffalo, Plenty beaver, Clean Water; Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; All night having sex.”
Then the chief leaned back and smiled. “Only white man dumb enough to think he can improve system like that.”
Paul Plante says
Actually, to be entirely accurate here, it should be noted that only a real dumb “white man” would be dumb enough to think he could improve a system like that, and lord knows, being realistic here, history is chock-a-block full of them, that I won’t deny, having come across many of them in my lifetime, the holier-than-thous who believe that being able to quote snippets excised from the Bible gives them a God-given right and duty to order the lives of those deemed by them to be less human.
That is what got “OLD WHITEY,” as the United States federal government has long since been known, involved in a bloody put-down of an independence movement in the Philippines opposed to American colonization in the name of religion, that proselytizing by the sword being done by American troops fresh into the Philippines from the American West where they had been doing the same for the American Indians, and then what is now called “The Forgotten War,” because it is, that being the war against GODLESS COMMIE-NISM in Korea between June of 1950 and 1953, when the Communist Chinese Forces gained great face and stature and prestige among other Asian nations, even including some of Chiang’s officers on Formosa, as well as valuable fighting experience fighting and beating the best America had to offer at that time, and then again in VEET NAM.
But because there seem to be a plethora today of real stupid white men in positions of power over others, not all men with skin that appears white are so stupid as that, and know better.
Having lived among the free Indians in the western mountains, I am sure that that old chief knew that to be true.
Just saying.
Paul Plante says
And Chas Cornweller, pray tell, what is with all the condescension (an attitude of patronizing superiority; disdain) there with your “Paul, I know you are a man of letters, I know you mean well and I know your heart is in the right place?”
Some people, Chas Cornweller, can drip sarcasm and condescension, but you have obviously gained the ability to apply it with a fire hose, for which some would commend you.
You speak to me with your “I know you mean well” as if you were Morris the Cat sitting there on your velvet pillow and I was some lackey or minion of yours bringing you yet another “treat,” only to see you turn your nose at it because it wasn’t suitable for you to eat.
Memo to Chas Cornweller: no, Chas Cornweller, I am NOT trying to “mean well” in here.
What I am doing in here is standing up for MY value system, which is not the Republican value system or the Democrat value system or the liberal value system or the conservative value system or the Marxist value system or the COMMIE value system, a point you seem totally incapable of grasping.
And since I happened to be alive when events you have only read about, or heard about, were happening, and since I have knowledge of those times, I am attempting to un-fracture some of the fractured history you are feeding us in here, as if the COMMIES were nothing more than a figment of Joe McCarthy’s fertile imagination.
There are people, Chas Cornweller, who can critique liberalism in America without being a conservative, or critique the Democrats without being a Republican, and I happen to be one of them.
But you are an ideologue (an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic), and so, that is the lens through which you view everyone else.
Hence, to you, if I don’t drink the liberal Kool-Aide or the Democrat Kool-Aide, then in your view, that can only be because I am a conservative and a Republican, when nothing could be further from the truth you can’t grasp or seemingly handle – that being that some of us in America are not tainted by Republican/Democrat politics and in fact, have a healthy loathing (a feeling of intense disgust) for both parties.
That is why you, dear sir, find me very, very difficult to respond to.
And what horse have we beat into the ground?
That those on the right who are ignorant morons WILL NOT agree with those on the left who are ignorant morons?
As to COMPROMISE, Chas Cornweller, the word means “accept standards that are lower than is desirable.”
That is what your beloved and sacred Democrats do when they compromise with the Republicans you love to hate, and vice versa, and there is where my “trouble” or “problems” with the “system” and Sonia Sotomayor all stem from – my refusal as a public health engineer to compromise the health and well-being of children so some Democrat or Republican could pollute their drinking water and poison them, all in the name of making money for them at the expense of others, which is the Democrat/Republican way.
Between them, the Democrats and Republicans have compromised this nation into ****hole status.
And no, Chas Cornweller, it was not God who came up with word compromise.
That word is an invention of greedy, grasping politicians.
As to my being truly a conundrum to you, Chas Cornweller, it is because I am not a Kool-Aide drinker or an ideologue for any politician’s cause.
And do you really know of my “back story,” as you call it?
Or do you only know my back story from that judicial slime job tkenny dragged into here in another thread where the political appointee judges of the Appellate Court for the Third Judicial Department of the State of New York issued a now-discredited ruling in Matter of Plante (that being myself) v. Buono (that being then-Rensselaer County Executive John L. “Smiling Jack” Buono, who was offered an $80,000 bribe in 1988 to get rid of me), 172 A.D.2d 81 (1991), wherein was stated as follows:
“Thus, combined with the fact that even at the hearing petitioner (myself) did not completely recognize Van Praag (former New York State Republican Party secretary and political hack serving as Rensselaer County Commissioner of Health despite not being a medical doctor) as his direct superior in the county government and that, as he is fully aware, his credibility has been destroyed, it cannot be said that his dismissal is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock one’s sense of fairness”
With respect to Republican/Democrat compromises and the slimeball politics both parties play, Chas Cornweller, focus on that phrase, “as he (myself) is fully aware, his (my) credibility has been destroyed.”
Does that mean I have no credibility, Chas Cornweller?
Or does it mean that my credibility as a witness against corruption was destroyed by those who are corrupt and wanted me never to get on a witness stand against them?
And who was it, Chas Cornweller, that “destroyed” my credibility, and how did they do it?
The answer as to who destroyed my credibility, of course, is the Democrats and Republicans acting in concert to do so.
Above here, Chas Cornweller, you speak of corruption you witnessed, or were a witness to, and you pose these following questions:
Did I report it?
No.
And why not?
What would it have done anyway?
Closed a mom and pop business?
Ruined the political careers of certain members?
Brought down a fortune five hundred company?
Exposed the underbelly of corruption with insurance companies and railroad magnates?
Hardly.
I would have been fired…ridiculed, and would have never worked in this area again.
end quotes
Ridicule (the subjection of someone to contemptuous and dismissive language or behavior), as you know, Chas Cornweller, is a very powerful political weapon of both the Republicans and the Democrats, and I had that weapon used against me by both of them working together in harmony, because both are corrupt, Chas Cornweller, and both are the same.
So why would I embrace the cause of either as an American citizen?
So they will stop hitting me?
You say that you just re-read my letter of February 2001 above here to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York where I talk about evidence I had gathered during my law enforcement investigation of endemic public corruption in the Rensselaer County Department disappearing after a special agent of the FBI took that evidence from me.
That is a part of how, as I very well know, my credibility was destroyed.
So why would I be a fan of the FBI today?
And yes, Chas Cornweller, I was up against a juggernaut of corruption in the late eighties, but that corruption went back to the 1970s at least, and that juggernaut of corruption as you call it was a product of both the Republican and Democrat parties that came to pervade every level of government up here from the dog catcher right on up to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York and the FBI and all levels in between, including those political judges tkenny relies on to tell people in here I have no credibility.
And it is not “my plight,” Chas Cornweller, it is the plight of those children in Hoosick Falls, New York who were poisoned by their drinking water which was contaminated with PFOA, a carcinogen, as a result of that endemic corruption I was trying to put an end to.
To close, Chas Cornweller, as you say, corruption is not partisan.
Both the Republican party and the Democrat party are the champions of public corruption in this nation.
Without the Democrats and Republicans, there could be no long-lasting public corruption such as we have in this state I am in, because it takes a corrupt judge to sustain public corruption, and it is the Democrats and Republicans who give us those corrupt judges, not to give us law, but to protect the corruption itself.
So, to ask you a question, Chas Cornweller: Can the Democrats and Republicans continue to ride out the storm of accusation and innuendo of nefarious deeds done by both of them behind closed hotel/bank doors?
What are your thoughts on that?
The candid world would like to know.