Obama to Catholics - you can keep your Pope.
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Obama's gravy train funding by way of fines has ended. Obama's scam was discussed in Ken Buck's book :"Draining The Swamp." (See 1 and 1a below.)
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If D.C was a ship it would sink from all the leaks. (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
When you begin to believe you can drink your own bathwater you will drown from a bloated ego.
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Dick
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1)
NEWS BREAKING: Jeff Sessions Just Cut Obama’s Liberal Funding Scam, Dems Are MELTING DOWN
Obama was making a mockery of our government, even using taxpayer money to fund his favorite leftist pet projects. Thanks to the Trump administration, that gravy train has come to an end!
DOJ settlement payoffs supporting liberal ‘community organizations.’ Who can imagine such a thing? When team Obama does it, it’s fine, but if anyone Trump did anything even remotely close we’d be having hearings all day, every day. Drain The Swamp Jeff!
In a strong move against corruption, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ended a decades-long DOJ practice that Obama used to funnel HUGE sums of money to radical Democrat groups (via Breitbart).Under the now-defunct practice, the U.S. Department of Justice would insist that DOJ case defendants, usually corporations, donate money to a “community organization” of the government’s choosing as part of its settlement.Basically, Obama’s Department of Justice would choose a big corporation facing legal troubles. Thanks to the 2008 financial crisis, there were plenty of banks being sued for inappropriate lending practices.The DOJ would go to these corporations and offer them a favorable settlement deal — with little or no criminal attachment — in exchange for sending money to a community group. Naturally, they were always community groups that advanced the liberal agenda.Some of the recipients of money from this practice included Planned Parenthood, The National Council of La Raza, and the National Urban League. Instead of working to fight crime, the DOJ was a fundraiser for causes like abortion and illegal immigration!This practice had flown under the radar for years. Watchdog organizations, however, note that it was not only unethical, but may also have been illegal. After all, it was giving the DOJ free reign to allocate monies without oversight by the Judiciary or Appropriations Committees in Congress.Attorney General Sessions eliminated this abuse of government power with a single memo. On Wednesday, Sessions issued the order to Justice Department leaders and attorneys, making clear that his DOJ is very different from that of his predecessors Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.The memorandum read:“Effective immediately, Department attorneys may not enter into any agreement on behalf of the United States in settlement of federal claims or charges … that directs or provides for a payment or loan to any non-governmental person or entity that is not a party to the dispute”.Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton applauded the move, stating that Session’s action brings an end to “extortion” by the Justice Department. And he wasn’t the only one cheering. The Heritage Foundation had been expressing outrage over this practice for years. And a group of congressional Republicans had been fighting the abuse since 2015.Obama’s government was filled with corruption like this. It was a bubbling cesspool of unethical activity. The swamp at its filthiest. Only the media never shined a light on Obama’s misdeeds. They did everything possible to cover-up for him!With President Trump, we’re finally seeing much-awaited progress in draining the swamp. Without money, these leftist organizations will lose their power. We need leaders who are tough on crime. Way to go AG Sessions!”
1a) Bye-Bye, Regulations! Trump Cuts Regulations with a Zeal Not Seen Since Reagan
By Virginia Kruta
Throughout his campaign, President Donald Trump promised to shrink the size of government — and to get the government out of the way of the American people.
Within a week of his Inauguration, during a meeting with business leaders (including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has since removed himself from contact with the Trump administration), Trump doubled down — promising a reduction in regulations by as much as 75%.
US News reported:
“Now, we're going to have regulation. And it'll be just as strong and just as good and just as protective of the people as we have right now,” Trump said from the White House. “But you're going to get such great service. There will be no country that's going to be faster, better, more fair, and at the same time protecting the people of the country.”
Though he didn't specify exactly what would be cut, he said his administration thinks it can streamline the government's involvement with the private sector by cutting regulations by “75 percent – maybe more.”
And just a week later, he took the first steps toward making good on that promise. On January 30, President Trump signed an order placing a cap on regulations and ensuring that for every one regulation his administration passed, two regulations would be rolled back.
And according to the Washington Examiner, Trump's efforts so far have been pretty successful:
And it appears that he is delivering big time, especially on his pledge to kill two regulations for every new one issued. According to a tally provided by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, the president has issued fewer rules than any other president since Ronald Reagan and cut the costs of those regulations significantly.
The American Action Forum, a conservative think tank that charts federal policy and rules, called Trump's regulatory freeze “historic.”
CEI's Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. said federal agencies haven't seen such a shift away from red tape since former President Ronald Reagan arrived in Washington in 1981.
In total, President Trump has issued 1,063 rules. That may seem like a lot, especially considering that amounts to more than 7 per day. And even thought former President Barack Obama's total is higher — 1,139 total and slightly more than 8 per day — it might seem to fall short of the promised 75% reduction.
But according to Crews, those numbers can be deceptive:
“Since rule reductions look like rules, too, the reduction in regulation under Trump is more dramatic than what the raw counts can depict.”
His point — that sometimes it takes a new rule to get rid of an old one — was that a number of the “rules” signed by President Trump were adopted to get rid of old regulations rather than to impose new ones.
And that trend — getting away from the typical red tape of government operations — is echoing throughout his administration, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson works to streamline the State Department and Jared Kushner doing the same in the Office of American Innovation.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++2) Comey Unmasked
By Clarice Feldman
If your head is swimming with the accounts of “Russian Collusion” with the Trump campaign, a cock and bull story confected by Hillary Clinton to explain her loss and to undermine the President, allow me to simplify it now that James Comey has testified and revealed with a load of bunk it is.
First of all, don’t forget that as the head of the FBI, James Comey had the power to request the appointment of a Special Counsel anytime he felt it was warranted. In fact, despite countless leaks to the press that there was evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia, he had informed the relevant Congressional leaders that the FBI had no such evidence after months of investigation, a concession which, unsurprisingly enough, was never, leaked. The four Democrat leaders of the Gang of 8, which oversees the operation and knew this themselves, kept promulgating the lie that there was some such evidence.
After he was fired, in an act of venomous revenge -- not atypical of the Swamp – Comey had a friend, a Columbia Law School professor, leak his version of a conversation with the president. In this version, Trump was trying to hide the collusion by cutting off an investigation.
Why did he not simply release the memo to the press in a less cowardly fashion? Because he clearly hoped it would not be traced to him, and the motive thus made clear. Moreover, he confessed that he wanted to force the appointment of a special counsel. This follows to a striking degree the path in the Plame case -- where the attorney general, John Ashcroft, recused himself, and Comey was made acting attorney general, whereupon he appointed his friend Patrick Fitzgerald. I trust that many readers already are familiar with the manner in which Fitzpatrick’s investigation into a leak by Cheney-hater Richard Armitage, which tied up the administration and resulted in a confected process crime against a Cheney aide, Lewis Libby. In case you want to refresh your recollection of those events, here is the article I wrote about it eleven years ago.
This time, another leak about an inconsequential meeting with the Russian Ambassador caused Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself. As a correspondent notes about that recusal:
James Comey justified in his statements that on February 14th he did not inform his recently confirmed boss Attorney General Jeff Sessions, of the content of the oval office meeting with President Trump – or his suddenly overwhelming feelings of impropriety, because he anticipated Jeff Sessions would be forced to recuse himself from anything to do with the Russian investigation.. There was nothing known on February 14th which would establish a need for Sessions recusal. There’s no reasonable basis for such an assumption on February 14th, unless it was Comey’s intention to leak FISA-granted surveillance of Russian Ambassador Kislyak, having an innocuous meeting with Senator Jeff Sessions, to the Washington Post. A disingenuous, albeit politically framed, leak did factually surface on March 1st.
After Sessions’ recusal, the acting Attorney General Ron Rosenstein appointed Comey’s “good friend” Robert Mueller as special counsel:
“Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump and matters that arise or may arise directly from the investigation and other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. sec. 600.4 c [process crimes like destruction of evidence and perjury which occur during the investigation]”
In sum, knowing that the underlying case was garbage, Comey forced the hand of the attorney general and then the acting attorney general to recuse themselves and let his good friend go after the administration -- tying it up with criminal investigations and hoping to find some process crimes (perjury, obstruction, destruction of evidence) to prosecute. In other words, hoping for another witch-hunt.
In fact, with a better understanding of the man heading the FBI, the President should have fired him immediately. As the Wall Street Journal warned in January:
If experience is a guide, Mr. Comey is the sort of man to be embraced with extreme political caution. Democrats cheered last summer when he invented a legal distinction between extreme carelessness and gross negligence to give Hillary Clinton a legal pass for mishandling classified information. Now they blame him for throwing the election to Mr. Trump for informing Congress, 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the investigation.
Republicans have also been burned by Mr. Comey, not just over his Clinton gymnastics but also his efforts to undermine the Bush Administration’s antiterror efforts during a prior stint as Deputy Attorney General. Now he will be responsible for current investigations into suspected links between the Russian government and some of Mr. Trump’s close associates.
We believe as much as anyone that FBI directors should be willing to go after criminality irrespective of politics. The trouble with Mr. Comey is that he is nothing if not political, especially when it comes to opportunities to burnish his personal reputation by going after the objects of liberal wrath
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Ask Frank Quattrone, the investment banker wrongly targeted by Mr. Comey in the post-Enron prosecution frenzy; or Scooter Libby, victim of the Javert-like exertions of Mr. Comey’s close friend Patrick Fitzgerald during the Plamegate hysteria.
At this point, Robert Mueller has several choices. With his appointment now revealed as a ruse designed by a vengeful partisan, he can resign, or he can wrap it up quickly -- after all, he now has all of Comey’s files on the already months-long investigation, which has produced nothing.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton argues that the Comey leak to the New York Times through his cut out invalidates the Special Counsel appointment,
2a) James Comey: The Cowering Inferno
Former FBI director James Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday suggests that the first question to FBI director nominee Christopher Wray at his Senate confirmation hearing should be: "Are you currently going through menopause?"
Comey said he was confused, uneasy, troubled, concerned, shocked, very disturbed, and stunned during his conversations with President Trump. The only missing menopausal symptoms are night sweats and weight gain.
Comey should have been sweating when he "woke up in the middle of the night" and decided to potentially violate federal law by using a close friend to leak contents of a government memo to a reporter at the New York Times, which Comey wrote while FBI director on an FBI computer while in an FBI car.
Comey's bombshell – that he's a leaker – came during questioning by Sen. Mark Warner:
I created records after conversations. I think I did it after each of our nine conversations. If I didn't, I did it for nearly all of them, especially the ones that were substantive.
Much of the media reaction to Comey's testimony, including some in the "fair and balanced" wing, began: "President Trump had a bad day."
Really? It's like a headline announcing that a guy was spared from an 11th-hour execution that reads: "Condemned Missed Traditional Last Meal."
Comey's angry, self-serving opinion of President Trump as a liar is the swamp "gospel" of self-evident "truth" by much of the spinner class. The real news – that Comey confirmed that Trump was never under investigation on Comey's watch, never interfered with the Russian investigation, and didn't order him to stop investigating Gen. Michael Flynn – is their "oh, yeah, by the way" subtext.
Comey admitted having "a queasy feeling" when he obeyed former attorney general Loretta Lynch's order to downplay the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton. She told him to call it a "matter," just as Clinton was spinning it.
That's the same Lynch who met with Bill Clinton in a plane on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport while his wife was under criminal investigation by Lynch's DOJ. Good thing for Lynch that Bill wasn't the Russian ambassador.
Comey's queasiness didn't prompt him to memorialize Lynch's instruction. He told Sen. Tom Cotton that he didn't record conversations or memos with the attorney general or any other senior member of the Obama administration.
Nor did Comey mention Lynch's order in his infamous July 2016 statement recommending against indictment of Clinton:
Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
Comey made it his job to decide that Clinton shouldn't be charged with violating numerous federal laws after laying out the case for her indictment. But he told the Senate committee it wasn't his job to decide if Trump had obstructed justice.
Comey didn't cave to "pressure" from Trump. He didn't obey what he now perceives as Trump's "order" to drop the investigation of Gen. Flynn.
Comey said he didn't have the "presence of mind" to tell Trump it was inappropriate. He said he was not strong, not "captain courageous." Wonder Woman in need of hormones, possibly.
Yet Comey never considered resigning or telling the White House counsel about his feelings about Trump's "inappropriate" behavior. He did tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump.
There's a headline AARP should be hyping to seniors everywhere: "Giant Terrorist Tracker Cowered by 70-Year-Old."
Comey said he leaked the contents of his record to the press because he "thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel." Contrast this with his stated desire not to instigate appointment of special counsel in the Clinton investigation. He didn't give it to Congress. He wanted special counsel on Trump's trail after admitting to the committee:
- Trump was never under investigation on his watch.
- It would have been legal to tell the public, as Trump had requested, that Trump wasn't under investigation.
- Trump told him that "if there are people in my circle that are, let's finish the investigation."
- At the time of their conversation, he didn't think that Trump had ordered him to "let [Gen. Michael] Flynn go."
- Post-firing, he now says it was an order – an order he didn't obey. That would be insubordination and grounds for firing.
- No "individual working for this administration, including the Justice Department," asked him to stop the Russian investigation. And he didn't.
This isn't the first time Comey tried to oust a top Republican, according to Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist. Davis quotes former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and others to counter Comey's version of events that allegedly transpired in then-attorney general John Ashcroft's hospital room in 2004.
In this account, Comey's actions showcase a duplicitous, secretive schemer whose true loyalties were not to the officials to whom he reported, but to partisan Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Comey gave a riveting account of the 2004 incident in his 2007 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding President George W. Bush's firing of U.S. attorneys – which, according to Davis, was orchestrated by none other than Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.):
Comey kept secret his pre-hearing planning with Schumer and his staff to maximize the fallout of the bomb he planned to drop on Gonzales and the Bush administration.
Chuck Schumer and James Comey scheming against Republican presidents?
Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.
As he told the senators, the fired director of the FBI doesn’t want to be compared to “Captains Courageous,” after which he then modestly compared himself to St. Thomas a Becket — a martyred saint.
Think about that one — the 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury crossed King Henry II and was murdered in his church by Henry’s liegemen. St. James a Comey crossed King Donald and is now negotiating an eight-figure book deal.
Oh sure, I can see the parallels.
Trump asked Comey to find the leakers and Comey did nothing, maybe because, as he finally admitted yesterday, he himself was one of the leakers, of one of his own memos about an early meeting with the president.
Of course, Comey didn’t cop to “leaking” anything. That would be so low-rent. He just wanted to get the information out “into the public square.” How noble of him.
Comey said he was afraid to be in the same room with Trump, because he didn’t want to have any one-on-one conversations with him … but he had no problems having at least four subsequent private phone conversations with Trump.
For a 6-8 guy who fancies himself a tough cop, Comey’s a bit of a snowflake, isn’t he? Did he have his own personal safe space in his office at the J. Edgar Hoover Building?
At the slightest pressure, Comey gets sick to his stomach. A few weeks back, he said that the thought of having an impact on the 2016 election made his “mildly nauseous.” Yesterday he said another political encounter left him “queasy.” He claimed he had to do something else because of his “gut.”
Have you tried Pepto-Bismol, Mr. Director?
Whenever a Republican senator asked him for an answer that might reflect positively on Trump, St. James replied, “That’s not a question I can answer in an open setting.”
Whenever a Democrat asked him for an answer to a leading question about some fake news the alt-left media had invented, he would likewise reply, “That’s not a question I can answer in an open setting.”
Leak after leak after leak. But of course St. James explained he could never be bothered shooting down the made-up fake news stories. Like the New York Times scoop of Feb. 14 headlined, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence.”
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton: “Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost totally false?”
J. Edgar Comey: “Yes.
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You may recall that alt-left bombshell. Even though it was 100 percent bogus, CNN quickly announced it had “independently confirmed” the lies. The editor of the Times added his own imprimatur: “I always know who the sources are for these stories. That’s why I’m so confident.”
And now we know it was very fake news. When Thomas Becket crossed Henry II, the king famously asked, “Who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?” The noblemen stepped up.
Donald Trump asked, “Who shall rid me of this turbulent hack?”
In the end, Trump handled the hit himself. The difference is, Becket had to wait two years to become a saint. Comey was canonized instantaneously, last night, at least on CNN and MSNBC.
Buy Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon: A Century of Scandal and Depravity,” at howiecarrshow.com.
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