It's Just Perception, That's All

                Bias as a noun: prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person or group compared with another in a way considered to be unfair.

                Thursday  the infamous Peter Strzock gave some testimony to a joint session of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. I wasn’t able to catch much of it live but there’s plenty of it on You Tube and video out there if you think your brain won’t go numb watching it. It’s grueling but I recommend viewing some of the live action for yourself rather than rely on the mainstream media’s predictably pro left interpretation of what they wish happened.

                Among other clips, I watched all 28 minutes of Trey Gowdy’s interview of Strzock. The only reason it took 28 minutes was democrats spent nine minutes trying to derail the interrogation by questioning a “point of order.” Like Strzock, I had to be reminded what the question was by the time they shut up and quit interrupting.

                The rest of the time what I saw was Gowdy making Strzock look like a fool and a liar. But I’m conservative. I’ve already heard from some liberal friends (the ones who are capable of a civil conversation) that what they saw was Gowdy badgering Strzock about his personal opinions which had nothing to do with his professional performance.

                With all due respect to my civil liberal friends (both of you), I seriously have to wonder how badly you want to believe in unicorns to believe that.

                In a separate interview Darrel Issa, R-CA (almost as rare as a unicorn), made Strzok read some of his own text messages to his now well-known mistress and FBI attorney, Lisa Page. I will grant you it was humiliating. I was even uncomfortable watching it and I think Strzok is a traitor who should be hanged or at least sent to prison for 40 to 700 years. But if you’re going to commit stupid acts sometimes you have to admit in public you were stupid.

                Issa made him read his response to a question from Page on Aug. 16, 2016, “He’s not ever going to become president right? Right?”

                Strzok read, “No, no he’s not. We’ll stop him.” Strzock later told Gowdy that “we’ll” referred to the American people.

                Sure it did.

                Issa also made him read the following text to Page from August 15, 2016, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office that there’s no way he could be elected, but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

                Gee, I wonder what he meant by insurance policy. He couldn’t have been talking about the completely bogus piece of fiction known as the Steele Dossier, could he? No, of course not.

                You can find the transcript for yourself but honorable agent Peter Strzock referred to Trump in other texts as an idiot, a douche and a disaster, and those are just the words that I’m willing to spell because I fear a couple of my younger nieces may occasionally read what I have to say.

                Yet Strzock insisted in his testimony to Issa and to Gowdy that in no way did his personal opinions cloud or influence his professional judgement. Umm-hmm.  Insurance policy?

                I’m not the originator of this thought but you have to wonder how his line of reasoning went over with Mrs. Strzok when Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater tried to explain away Lisa Page? “Sure I was having an affair with her but at no time did it influence my commitment to our marriage or affect the integrity of my wedding vows.”

                What?

                Gowdy read one of Strzock’s texts to Page from 11/7/16 on the eve of the election when some on the left were cognizant enough to realize the wheels were coming off, “OMG, this is effing terrifying.”

                On 5/17/17, Mueller’s gang of villagers with pitchforks was officially formed and by 5/18, Strzock was already talking about impeachment of the President as the desired outcome. He did it again on 5/22. In neither case had a single interview that has been logged by the Mueller investigation and fish fry been conducted.

                Strzock again claimed to Gowdy that that was only his personal desire but it had no effect on his professional conduct. No bias there.

                People who are comfortable with that explanation make me nervous.

                Toward the end of his little chat with Strzok after he was done exposing him as a traitor and a fraud, Gowdy did say, “No wonder Mueller kicked you off the committee,” which actually seemed to take the smirk off of Stzock’s face for a moment.

                It was not Peter Strzock’s understanding that Mueller kicked him off the committee because of any bias on Strzock’s part. Nope. Strzock understood that he was only kicked off the committee because of the appearance of bias.

                Well, there certainly is that.

                Strzock began to tell Gowdy that he didn’t appreciate Gowdy daring to question his integrity (Strzock has to have to have some kind of narcissistic delusion going on to think he has anything resembling integrity going for him). Gowdy cut him off and gave what I thought was the highlight quote of the day’s testimony:

                “I don’t give a damn what you appreciate, Agent Strzock. I don’t appreciate an FBI agent with an unprecedented level of animus working on two major political investigations.” (The fairy tale alleging collusion between Trump and Russia as well as Strzock's work exonerating HRC of any of her many wrongdoings in her email scandal which is a whole other blog topic.)

                I completely agree with Gowdy and think Strzock—and others—are flagrant traitors and guilty of more charges than I’m capable of writing. But as I said before, I am conservative (no, really).

                Some democratic congressperson (I’m almost done and don’t feel like looking it up. You can if you want.) said that Strzock deserved a purple heart for enduring the unfair, super mean questioning by the republicans. A cry The Washington Post took up on Friday. And that’s how some liberals feel about the exact same events I just watched.

                I have a friend with a purple heart. Strzock doesn’t deserve a purple heart. He deserves the brand of a traitor.

                Food for thought:

                Last week, Joe Munchin, D-WV, told Chuck Schumer to “kiss my you-know-what” in response to Schumer trying to pressure democrats to block President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee.

                Nielsen released ratings last week that had The Food Network and HGTV both with more viewers for the first time than CNN or MSNBC.

                Not that we can ever afford to get cocky and stay home from the polls or let our guard down for a moment but one has to wonder what the Alt Left base has dwindled down to and how hard they have to want to believe they are relevant.

They sure are noisy though, I’ll give them that.

Migration Season, Part 2

                “Those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law. They are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We cannot allow people to pour into the U.S. undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are lawfully waiting to become immigrants.”  --Barack Hussein Obama, Holy See of The Alt Left

                On June 23, Stephanie Leutert of the Lawfare Strauss Center For International Security (in The Republic of Austin--but wait til you see what her stats actually show) released a study aimed squarely at discrediting the Trump Administration’s fear of open borders and cited that the President’s claim of MS-13 gang members pouring across the border was a mere .075% of captured illegals according to her research.

                But buried in her data was the admission that in 2000, there were 1,643,677 illegals who crossed into the U.S. along our southern border and in 2017 that number had been cut to 303,916. A reduction of over 80%! Moreover, Leutert neglected to let CNN edit her data and blamed the reduction on an increase in border patrol agents from 9,147 to 16,605 and an increase of 750 miles of new fencing.

                Sounds like someone keeping an election promise to me.

                A June 18 Gallup News Poll shows that 62% of Americans (regardless of party) feel that Donald Trump keeps his promises. Fifty nine percent rate him a strong and decisive leader, and 53% believe he can bring about the change the country needs. Additionally, the poll showed a 12-year high satisfaction with the country’s direction. Didn’t see that on MSN did ya’?

                Sorry, big blue wave fans.

                A June 27 poll by Axios, a millennial website, revealed that 90% of republicans disbelieve anything the media says and prefer to do their own research for the truth. Seventy two percent of Americans, regardless of party, disbelieve the media. Sorry blue tricklers, you’re losing the kids too.

                Are there millennial republicans? You bet your hindquarters. I know a bunch of ‘em. My kids and most (certainly not all) of their friends are nearly as conservative as I am. (Well, ok, that’s just my opinion—no quantifiable measuring stick on degree of conservatism.) Fox News just won’t show them to you for some reason. It seems Sean and the crew (those lying bastards) would prefer to portray an entire generation of the more stereotypical millennial snowflakes, barely able to tie their shoes and use toilet paper.

                Not so. They’re out there and they are great kids. They are probably going to do a better job with this country than our generation has. Even most of the liberal kids I know aren’t idiots. They’re hard-working and sharp as can be, just idealistic as many youngsters probably ought to be.

                So last week I heard a radio report that at one border patrol station in Arizona in one week agents arrested 22 illegals, mostly in two vans of eight and nine each. In those two vans were three MS-13 gang members and two Barrio 18 gang members (presumably not in the same van). A considerably higher percentage than Leutert’s research would indicate but it is one isolated report.

                Additionally there was one backpack full of assorted but unspecified illegal drugs which the young men in the boy’s clubs apparently just found along the way because no one wanted to claim it. There were also two underage female human trafficking victims.

                Separately a young girl and her “uncle” were picked up. She must’ve been related to her auntie because there was no dna match between the minor girl and her uncle. Someone did call anonymously to claim her as a family member but declined an opportunity to come to the station and provide evidence of relation or to pick her up.

                The girl reported to authorities that her parents had told her she had been sold to a woman in Michigan (specific whereabouts unknown to the child) to work off the payment by performing domestic duties. There was no time frame specified for payment of said debt.

The Washington Post recently “analyzed” data from a study done by the Government Accountability Office and took exception to President Trump’s assertion that illegals are more criminal than their legal counterparts. WAPO concluded that there was no solid data to support a correlation between illegal immigration and crime.

According to Florida State University criminologist David Mears in a separate on-line article, this could be due to a focus on intake (arrest) records where information on illegals is scarce because citizenship isn’t always noted in records and in some states (California) is never noted.

So when The American Thinker did a fact check of WAPO’s “fact check” of President Trump’s claims they found that while illegals are estimated at 3.5% of the U.S. population they were  incarcerated at rates of 25%-39% during the 2005-2013 period of the study WAPO allegedly scrutinized.

Additionally, the GAO found 3,000,000 crimes attributable to illegals from ’05 to ’09, including 25,064 homicides, a ratio 4 times higher for murders by illegals per 100,000 illegals v. murders per 100,000 by legal residents. A rate of 22% to 37% of all U.S. murders were committed during that time period by illegals.

Perhaps this will make things a little more relevant--for incarcerated criminals between 2005 and 2009 the following rates of crime were directly attributable to illegals:

*15 murders per day

             *9 kidnappings per day

*43 sex offenses per day

*71 burglaries per day

*131 assaults per day

I take severe exception to Leutert’s and WAPO’s conclusions that we have little to fear from “undetected, undocumented, and unchecked” illegals pouring across our border.

The Kate Stienle murder in San Francisco is only “anecdotal” as CNN reported it if you want to accept that 25,064 homicides were anecdotal.

I would like to think that only in California is it possible for a seven-time deported illegal alien with multiple felony arrests to shoot an innocent young woman in the face at point blank range and be found guilty of only an “unfortunate accident.”

Oh, and throw this in, Business Insider, Politifact, USA Today, the DEA, Kiss-My-Ass-News and several other sources all agree that 90% of this country’s heroin is smuggled in across the Mexican border. Much of it comes in creative vehicle compartments straight through customs lines but literally tons of it is smuggled across the Sonoran Desert National Monument by drug mules (no, not actual mules, kids) with backpacks. They are picked up by prearranged contact along Interstate 8 and driven to “stock houses” in Arizona and California primarily.

Pinal County (AZ) Sheriff Paul Babese estimates cartel operatives have 75-100 lookout posts in his county alone watching for incoming drugs and law enforcement and making sure the two rarely intersect. Babese and his deputies routinely find storage depots and abandoned campsites that show cartel support personnel ferry water, food, batteries and supplies to illegal mules.

The wailing liberal hearts on CNN and Facebook (there should be a difference but there isn’t) are absolutely right that many poor Central Americans only want a better life for their families and are seeking political asylum. Many of them are. And in spite of the fact that the left wants to claim compassion, love and human decency as exclusively liberal qualities I don’t know a single conservative who wouldn’t welcome those people into this country as friends and neighbors if they would check in at the front desk.

But you have got to be braindead, idiot-level stupid to not recognize that there is a flip side to that coin and that woven into the ranks of the decent people seeking a better life are a whole bunch of people who don’t care if they rape your wife and murder your children or dump eight kilos of heroin at your local grade school.

Not to mention the flood of human trafficking which no one has a handle on because it is so well hidden and insidious. How can anyone turn a blind eye to the need to examine each family attempting to cross to make sure they are a family and not a child-prostitution smuggling ring?

I swear to God, if I see one more “Being Human is Not Illegal” sign, all words properly spelled or not, I am going to turn someone’s rectum inside out. Of course being human isn’t illegal you dipsticks and the hell with you for thinking such sentiment is your province. Listen to a few Angel Moms for 30 minutes and decide if you have a right to sentence someone’s child to death because you own a rainbow tie-died T-shirt.

And Congress still hasn’t given us immigration reform. All they’ve done is continue to blame the President for not doing their job and make enough noise to cover up the release of the Inspector General’s Report documenting the highest levels of treason and government corruption in the history of the country. Coincidence?

Ask yourself this, do you want to live in a country where immigration policy is up to whomever happens to be President at the moment or would you rather have a legal process for immigration locked into place to be debated and decided, if necessary, by our legal system? I can’t believe any thinking person would find in favor of dictatorial tactics.

The law states that illegals with children caught sneaking in will be turned around and sent home the first time and since 1996 second-timers will be considered felons and be separated from their children because that actually seems more humane than incarcerating the kids in general pop.

That’s the law. Can you change stuff with executive orders? Apparently, for a few weeks or until there's a new president. Should you be able to? Again, do you want it left up to the whim of whoever is sleeping in the White House?

This is Congress’ responsibility and/or fault, not President Trump’s. Shame on those cowards of both parties for blaming the President for laws they don’t have the guts to tackle. I’m not sure what the most humane thing to do with the kids is but I know that border security is an absolute, non-negotiable must have.

Yet in return for the Wall; in return for a more sane system than chain migration and a visa lottery system, the President has basically offered immunity to another 1.8 million non-citizens, about half of whom are popularly known as DACA kids.  And the democrats continue to turn their back on it.

If the left also wants higher or eliminated quotas of people from Central and South American countries you might be surprised how much conservative support you could get. I would support a form of that and liberals hate my guts, at least I hope they do.

Call your congressperson and ask them to craft some sort of legislation raising quotas until good, hard-working, asylum-seeking persons no longer feel the need to sneak in. Craft it in a manner that determines such people are in a position to contribute to our country and are interested in pursuing citizenship and I’ll make noise on your behalf all day long.

But stop giving Congress a free pass to sit on their hands and whine like spoiled children and hold them accountable to do their freaking jobs.

Also, many of us would appreciate it if you would stop asking Americans to continue to allow crime and criminals to come across the border without so much as a “Hey, how ya’ doin’?” Even if you are that stupid, we are not and we won the election and the way things look now, we’ll likely win the next one. 

There aren’t as many of you as CNN keeps telling you there are.

Migration Season

                Here we go again, I’m afraid, with another “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative. This time with regard to illegal immigration. The stories and pictures and alleged news stories floating around range from not exactly true to completely made up nonsense and, as usual these days, the real story won’t matter nearly as much as the liberal media narrative.

                I’m not sure I’ve seen a picture yet of the current situation in which second-time offense illegal border crossers (second-time, repeat offenders are felons) were being separated from their children. The most widely publicized pictures of the “caged” children earlier this week were from 2014 and 2016 when somebody else was president.

                Let’s not forget that picture that pulled at all of our heart strings of the child standing at the chain link barricade crying uncontrollably for her mother. It was snapped by some chap named Vargas who knew an opportunity to make a couple of bucks when he saw it.

                As it turns out the child had merely been set down by her mother who moved to the other side of the barricade and picked the child back up. They never were separated and the whole event lasted about 30 seconds according to Vargas. Mom was a first-time offender which is just a misdemeanor and so separation wasn’t necessary because we will just send them back. Again, it’s not a felony unless you’re a repeat illegal tourista.

                There’s more to the story which I’m sure you’ve all heard by now and I just want to say that I think “kidnapping” was the wrong word Fox News, since the dad never reported it, wasn’t concerned and just seemed happy that she was being returned to him and his three other children in Honduras. I am an equal opportunity media critic.

                And by now I hope you’ve all heard of The Flores Settlement too, right? Maybe not if you’re main street news consumers as an NYT reporter was denying as recently as last Monday that there was any such law. But it was signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton and states that anytime a person in this country illegally is detained on a felony charge they must be separated from their children (understandably) while they sit in jail awaiting trial. That law has also been enforced every year since 1996, not just under Donald Trump. Surprise!

                It is true that during the Obama administration, the law, which states that second-time illegal border crossers are upgraded from misdemeanor and need to face a judge, was completely ignored and, in fact, border patrol agents and many local law agencies were ordered to release such illegals before ICE could take custody of them and get them dealt with.

                It is also true that due to the sheer number of illegals flooding our country with Obama’s encouragement, so many more felons of other varieties were crossing the border that he had twice as many children being held in compounds as Trump has, but never mind the facts, libs.

                Trump’s DOJ declared a zero-tolerance policy for felonious entry into the United States and began enforcing the separation law on those criminals if they brought their children with them. And therein lies the rub or at least part of it. The left wishes to make no distinction between immigrants, who are welcome and cherished in this country, and illegal immigrants who slip across our border without permission, without undergoing background checks and without any means to support themselves upon arrival.

                No matter what our friends on the left think of us, none of us enjoy seeing children distraught and  separated from their parents. The President didn’t like it either, no matter how much Time Magazine wanted to say he was enjoying spreading misery to little boys and girls. That’s why he signed an executive order ending the practice of separating children from their illegal entry parents.           

It was comical on Thursday how quickly the left went from crowing about “making the President cave,” to realizing that that didn’t mean a return to Obama’s catch and release policy and that the order would probably be overturned in court because what the heck are you going to do with the kids while their parents sit in jail? In fact, once law makers realized the ball was going to be back in their court and they were actually going to have to do something about it like, you know, make a law, they freaked out and began accusing the President of “sewing chaos.”

                I think they’re right.  I think asking the human detritus representing us in Congress and The Senate to do their jobs is exactly sewing chaos these days because those losers are spectacular underachievers in their efforts to avoid any real responsibility for anything.

                Why does Congress think they are allowed to stand on the sideline and criticize the President for enforcing a law put into effect by their predecessors? Can you disagree with Kellyanne Conway when she says that when the people who make the laws ask the people who are supposed to enforce the laws not to enforce them we have entered a realm that is more than a little bit strange?

                The Rasmussen poll of likely voters released on Friday held that 54% of Americans blamed the parents crossing our border illegally for their children’s plight. Only 35% blamed the government. You wouldn’t have guessed that from the fake media coverage, would you?

                And what of the 12,000 children being held? Only 2,000 of them were actually the children of the adults they were with. According to the Department of Homeland Security 85% of those kids had dna that was not a match for their accompanying adults. Does anyone but me find that a little creepy or at least strange?

                All 10,000 of the other kids were probably not human trafficking victims. I’ve read that one of the tactics used to get into the country and get to stay under Obama was simply an appeal to rejoin your children who were already here.  Well, ok, but it doesn’t seem like a real loving, caring parental practice to me.

                I’m already at 1,000 words and I haven’t made most of the points I wanted to make or discuss about a really emotional subject with complicated possible solutions and ramifications. Maybe we can do that later. Some of you may have noticed my summer rant schedule is going to be subject to me being indoors long enough to write these.

                For now I will say this: We are watching you Congress. Do your jobs. There are dozens of reasons President Trump’s approval rating has soared to 52% (eat your heart out Obama) in an AP poll, no less. There is one really big reason Congress continues to consistently rack up an approval rating of 18% or lower. 

                If you need an explanation you just have to quit watching CNN. I’m sorry.

Happy Anniversary, Bob!

                “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” –Soviet Secret Police Chief Lavrentiy Berla, serving the regime of Joseph Stalin.

                “Ooops.” –U.S. Special Investigator Robert Mueller on several occasions, I am positive.

                Last week marks the one-year anniversary of one of the biggest boondoggle wastes of time and money in American history, the famous Trump-Russian Collusion Investigation, starring Pretty Boy Bobby Mueller, Rod Rosenstein and assorted others. And the evidence just keeps piling up!

                No, it doesn’t.

                Using the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Online, The New York Times and The Washington Post, here is a summary of the “preponderance of evidence” in proving collusion between President Trump’s campaign and The Evil Empire:

                --Persons associated with the Trump Campaign talked to some Russians.
                --Trump businesses, as have his competitors in the luxury property development business, have been doing business with wealthy Russians for decades. (And wealthy Germans, Saudi’s, Spaniards, French, Brits, pick a country and yup, probably them too.)
                --Russian propagandists trained Trump (that’s not actually a fact, it’s just an assertion by Maxine Waters that The NYT saw fit to print that I just couldn’t resist ‘cuz Battle Max cracks me up almost as much as Nancy Pants).
               --Michael Flynn accepted $43,000 from a Russian Ambassador for a speech that he failed to disclose. Shame. Shame.
                --Paul Manafort did some unsavory consulting work for Ukranian and Russian politicians as recently as nine years before Trump’s campaign, which was investigated by the DOJ who didn’t bother to indict him back in 2007 when it happened. Nope. Had to wait for Comrade Mueller to indict him in 2017.
                --And, of course. the Steele Dossier. Which, like Congresswoman Water’s senile ramblings, proved to have been a total fantastical fabrication with no basis in fact whatsoever. Well, there was that one fact I guess we’re just going to ignore—Hillary’s campaign paid for it.

                That’s it. In a year. There’s just nothing there.  I’m sorry, libs. It should just be over. How many magic bullets that turn into dust in the wind do there have to be before you quit pounding and kicking the floor at the super market and just get up and follow Mom to the check out line?

                According to Trump’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Mueller and his team of crack deputy dawgs have had themselves a gander at 1.4 million documents and have interviewed 28 witnesses and they have nothing to show for it but shame and embarrassment. As Giuliani said in an interview about Bobby M last week on Fox News (those lying bastards), “If you’re going to write a fair report, fine, write it. If you’re going to write an unfair report, write it and we will combat it. We are ready to rip it apart.”

                This isn’t the first time Mueller has been wrong. Really, really wrong.

                In 1986-1987, our boy Bob was the Assistant DA in Boston in charge of investigating organized crime. (If you’ve seen the movie “The Departed” you’ve got the back story on this.) The biggest crime boss in the city, Whitey Bulger, turned out to be Mueller’s confidential informant.

                It was a great relationship. In return for funneling Big Bad Bob information on other bad guys, Bulger pretty much got free reign to conduct whatever criminal activity he wanted to in Boston. Even better, it turns out Bulger was using Bunghole Bob as a stooge and was feeding him information on his competition so Bob could get them out of his way for him.

                I know it sounds like I’m making up my own movie, but I’m not. You can find all this on line—mostly in the Boston Herald.

                So the star of our show, Robert “Atta boy” Mueller, imprisoned four innocent men on murder charges for over 30 years. Unfortunately, two of them didn’t live to be exonerated by the DOJ when it was proven that Mueller and the FBI withheld evidence “to protect their informant.” Their informant, Whitey Bulger, remember. The guy who got to expand his criminal enterprise to the entire city because he duped Mueller into chasing his tail.

                The State of Massachusetts did give the families of the four guys who didn’t actually murder anyone as it turns out $102 million, a pat on the head and a really sheepish apology.

                When the FBI was getting ready to arrest Bulger in 1994 on racketeering charges, “somebody” tipped him off and he disappeared until 2011 when they finally caught up to him. He was enjoying the sea air in Santa Monica, CA, where they welcome criminals of all sorts and just kind of living the good life for 16 or 17 years while four innocent men rotted in prison cells thanks to Whitey Bulger and Blackie Bob. Bulger, 81,  is now inmate 02182-748 at the U.S. Penitentiary in Sumterville, FL.  Mueller is, well…

                So this Russia thing isn’t the first time B-b-b-bob Mueller has cost taxpayers a whole bunch of money. Or even the second.

                In 2001 when Mueller was head of the FBI somebody started mailing letters laced with anthrax to various unsuspecting folks. Ignoring a wheelbarrow full of facts that pointed to the same fun-loving characters and the organization that brought down the World Trade Center and caused some major remodeling projects at The Pentagon, Mueller instead focused like a laser on Steven Hatfill, an Army veteran working with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, an organization dedicated to protecting America from bioterrorist threats.

                Mueller felt that all the little clues in the letters, like “Death To America” and “Allah is great,” were just smokescreens to throw him off the trail of international criminal mastermind, Hatfill. There was never any evidence to  generate an indictment and after the DOJ cleared Hatfill of any wrongdoing and offered its sincerest apologies, he did at least go on to sue and win $6.2 million for the harassment the old FBI put him through. Put it on Mueller’s tab, eh.

                Mueller moved on too. When the DOJ said “You have to leave Hatfield alone, he didn’t do anything,” Mueller set his sights on a shady character named Bruce Ivins.

                Ivins was an Army researcher who had actually been assisting the FBI in their anthrax investigation for five years. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor said Ivins was “guilty beyond reasonable doubt.”

               The DOJ again said, “No he’s not.”

 

                This after a former FBI agent who had worked the case sued the FBI for concealing evidence exculpatory to Ivins. Obviously Ivins was never indicted either.

 

                  Don’t you kind of have to wonder why they were so hot after Hatfill for five years if Ivins were “guilty beyond reasonable doubt?” No one was ever indicted.

                Mueller’s stance on botching this one? He stated the FBI had made no mistakes and he refused to apologize to Hatfill, Ivins, and the American people.

                Is anyone else wondering how he got his current gig?

                So c’mon Bob, write your stupid report. No matter what, the media will do their best to make you look good and Trump look guilty. We know that. We expect it. We don’t care because we don’t believe either of you and all the caterwauling on the left is just background noise now. All we want is to quit hearing the constant droning on about Russia when there is absolutely nothing to drone on about.

                In the meantime, happy anniversary, big guy.     

Turning Down My Hearing Aid

                I didn’t think it could come to this but I have to try so hard to even hear what the left is saying from day to day anymore.  The anti-Trump rhetoric and the hatred of all things and people conservative has become so repetitive, groundless and boring that even when I force myself to read it and listen to it it begins to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher: “Wah-wah-wah-WAH-wah.”

                “We hate Trump…Trump’s a racist…all conservatives are racist…for sure they beat their wives around election time…Trump hates Mexicans…conservatives hate women…a billionaire playboy slept with a prostitute…” And always, “Russia, Russia, Russia!”

                Please just stop. We can’t even hear you anymore. Put your pussy hats on and play Yahtzee and tell each other how bad it is over some wine and cheese, but leave us alone.

                Blue wave? Blue wave? Blue puddle is more like it.

                This week part of Pretty Boy Bobby Mueller’s Salem Witch Hunt Squad (that won’t be the actual movie title but it should be entertaining when it comes out) presented an 18-count indictment in West Virginia to U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis (not to be confused with a poet with a similar name) against former Trump campaign aid Paul Manafort for tax evasion and bank fraud charges dating back to 2005 and 2007 when Trump was just a citizen.

                The charges had already been investigated once by the DOJ—in a bit more timely fashion—and were deemed in real time to not be substantial enough to bring an indictment. But now, as a result of Mueller trying to rip the cover off how Boris and Natasha forced 10’s of millions of Americans to vote for President Trump, the charges have new vitality and relevance and, at least Mueller’s crack investigative team is hoping, some serious leverage to force Manafort to give them something to bring Trump down.

                Something. Anything, please. Because in over a year they haven’t been able to uncover one piece of real, documentable, usable evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to rob HRC of her rightful spot on the throne and now they would settle for an eyewitness account of Trump stealing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from a friend’s lunchbox in the fifth grade.

                Judge Ellis told Mueller’s council at the hearing, “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort. You care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead to an impeachment or whatever of President Trump.”

 Information that doesn’t even have to be real or true. This is, after all, American politics and even scuzzier, American media.

Judge Ellis suggested (sounded stronger than a suggestion to me, but that’s how Fox, World Net and ABC reported it) Mueller’s team had “LIED” in an effort to seek “unfettered power” to bring down the President by whatever means possible.

When Mueller’s lead council on this case protested that they were empowered by the scope memo from our pal at Justice, Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein, Judge Ellis demanded he be allowed to see an unredeacted copy of said scope memo detailing said scope of Mueller’s “Russian” (or whatever the hell, we don’t care, we are just so darned MAD!!!) probe.

The sitting U.S. District Court Judge, who has held that title for 31 years, has published over 1000 decisions and sits by designation on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, was told by Mueller’s unnotable and soon forgettable little puke of a prosecutor that he could not because the memo contained sensitive national security information and intelligence matters.

Material so sensitive that it can only be viewed by people on Mueller’s team, including above-mentioned forgettable puke, other mid-level prosecutors, consultants, clerks, staff and pretty much anybody else who worked for Hillary’s campaign or is a member of the rumored Deep State, but not a sitting U.S. District Court Judge because everyone knows you can’t trust them.

In other words, Pretty Boy Bob and his band of merry traitors have whatever power they want to say they have to do whatever they want to do and no one can question them because no one can see the memo granting them the powers they may decide they need on any given day with regard to any given subject which took place during any given time frame. Or not.

And all that makes perfect sense to the left and its pet Media because all they want is Trump gone and how else are you going to do that but to have the authority to investigate things that have nothing to do with anything and probably aren’t even real?

Sounds like the America I love to me.

Do you think the glare of the light would blind liberals if they could pull their heads out of their…sand…long enough to see 3.9% unemployment, higher approval numbers than Obama had (Blue wave?); North Korea and South Korea actually talking to each other about the possibility of peace and denuclearization of their peninsula (so much more progress than Dennis Rodman made); China asking for an opportunity to negotiate a new trade agreement with the U.S. before the tariff battle escalates; Federal unemployment payments as low as they’ve been since 1973; 21 states with record low unemployment payouts; black unemployment at an all-time historical low; border security improving every day with the help of The National Guard and simple enforcement of existing laws; Kanye West, for God’s sake, singing praises of the President…

Have I lost you? Because there’s more. So much more.

Be glad you don’t have to live in a world so focused on negativity and  hate, unless you happen to be one of the handful of liberals who occasionally read my thoughts because you enjoy self flagellation.

I guess this Mueller thing isn’t exactly Civil War because there’s no actual shooting, unless you count the left wingnut who shot Rep. Scalise at softball practice or Steven Paddock in Vegas when he opened fire on a country western concert nearly setting a world record for mass killings (Sweden’s still the champ—sorry Second Amendment haters) which was a blessing in the words of an ABC executive at that time, “because only Trump supporters like country western music.”

But what do you call it when half the country is throwing such an hysterical and collective temper tantrum over the election results that they can’t accept a duly elected sitting President? When the only thing, it seems, that would make them happy is the overthrow—violently or otherwise—of the presidency and the installation of an unelected totalitarian liberal dictator with unlimited power to crush all conservative thought and agenda, in addition to the First, Second and other amendments—oh hell, make it the whole Constitution?

Sad is what I call it. Embarrassing is what I’d think any liberal with a shred of integrity would call it. But then again, I only think about it much on Sunday mornings anymore. The rest of the time the left is getting harder and harder for me to hear.

I’m just glad Russia made me vote for Trump.

 

 

What I Learned On Summer Vacation

                It was pretty hard to miss the walk outs and marches by teachers across the country on Friday. Even if you only get your news on Facebook it would be pretty difficult not to have heard the pleas of teachers for resources and reasonable classroom sizes to allow them to do their jobs the past several years.

                There is no doubt that teachers are underpaid. There is no doubt that teachers do not have the resources or support to do everything they need to do in the classroom. And there is absolutely no doubt that classroom sizes are too large for students needing individual help to receive it or for good teachers to be effective teachers.

                I support this country’s teachers 100% and want to see things get better for them as soon as possible if not immediately.

                Like so many issues this country faces our school system is being smothered and overburdened with too much government help.

It isn’t the money. There is plenty of money. It is what the money is being spent on. Or more specifically whom.

It ain’t your kids or their teachers.

According to a CNSNews.com article from 8/18/14, the number of nonteaching public education employees has increased 130% from 1970 to 2014 while the number of students in the system only increased 8.6%.

Nonteachers on public education payrolls now outnumber teachers in at least 21 states and are over 50% of the number of public education employees nationally.

In 2013, Virginia had 60,737 fewer teachers than nonteachers. Charles Pyle, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Education said simply, “That can’t be.” But the National Center For Educational Statistics for the Federal Department of Education said in many more words, “Yup, it really is.”

                From 1992 to 2009 the state of Texas experienced a 37% growth in student enrollment while during the same period experiencing a staggering 172% growth in nonteachers resulting in an annual increase in education spending for people not involved in educating anybody of $6 billion.

                Nationally this country could have redirected $24 billion ANNUALLY from 1992 to 2009, according to The Friedman Foundation, to teachers and classrooms if nonteaching positions had only grown at the same rate as student enrollment!!!!!!!

                Virginia, Vermont and Wyoming have 104 nonteaching personnel per 1000 students. (Wyoming?) That’s one administrator or service person per 10 kids roughly. Nevada and South Carolina do the best with the least budgetary fat at 26 and 28 nonteaching personnel per 1000 students. That’s one adminbot per 37 students, which is the teacher-student classroom ratio in many communities across this country…possibly the ones with one to 10 administrator-student ratios.

                So who are all these extra employees we didn’t need in the 70’s that are now so critical to the educational experience of kids in school today? I am certain there is an official breakdown somewhere but I couldn’t find it. Maybe a real journalist ought to look for it quick before pigs learn to fly. But as near as I can tell we are talking about nutritionists, psychologists, directors of this or that, compliance officers for various state and federal requirements, support assistants, surrogate parents, outreach officers, and more.

                On a site boasting “The 20 Best NonTeaching Jobs In Public Education,” I found opportunities for a Family Educator, a Content Specialist (after reading the job description I still don’t know what they do but it pays $78K per year, and can be done remotely from home in any city in California near a major airport), Operations Program Director (looked like an IT job at $150K/year), Zoo On The Move Program Instructor (Awww), Non-Teaching Adjunct for College Advancement ($53/hour), Director For Diversity and Inclusive Excellence (!), Curriculum Developer, College and Career Readiness Director, Family Services Coordinator (really?), and my favorite: Virtual Instructional Coach ($45/hour).

                There were others but the above were what I felt were representative of things my parents would have considered tax dollar lunacy when I was in school.

                The Fordham Institute reported in 2008 than one of the biggest nonteaching jobs added over the years in most school districts were “teacher’s aides.” That seems so odd to me since the point of teacher’s aides would seem to be to free teachers up to spend more productive time with students who need it, which is precisely one of the things we know teachers don’t have enough time to do.

                A little digging reveals that teacher’s aides are not necessarily the hands on classroom help you may think of when you think of the job title. Teachers aides is a broader job category now that includes assistants and professionals that deal with special nonclassroom functions like drug issues, health issues, pregnancy, homelessness, discipline and family issues.

                Aren’t those the kinds of things that used to be dealt with at home? Or perhaps not, but they weren’t under the schools purview unless you had a counselor or two that did their job well and cared about the kids (and God bless those folks) but they weren’t extra jobs or “programs” eating up tax dollars that are needed for teachers and their classrooms.

                Yet when you hear The American Federation of Teachers or CNN talk about there not being enough money for education and parading underpaid teachers and doomed students across TV screens to try and guilt the nation into coughing up more money, you never seem to hear about Content Specialists or Virtual Instructional Coaches that may have been added to your school district’s payroll and who contribute absolutely nothing to your child’s classroom experience.

                I found out why! The AFT represents them too! And most of us know why CNN won’t talk about them.

                The statistics on dollars spent in this country on education will make your head spin and then some. I’m not going to get into specifics because I’m already close to 1000 words and just describing the data would take 2000. The website for the National Center For Educational Statistics has pages of charts and graphs documenting what we spend on education, plus it varies greatly by state and it is more data than I care to wade through for free but I can tell you this: All the arrows and bars are going up.

                As a nation we spend more money per child in school now than we ever have. And this narrative that the problem is simply a lack of funds is bull crap, plain and simple. It is a lack of funds being spent in the proper place—on teachers and in the classroom.

                Denmark is the only nation on the planet that spends more money per capita than we do on nonteaching and administrative public education staff. And what do we have to show for it?

There are several dozen graphs on that NCES website that will show you that too. Nothing. No improvement in test scores or graduation rates in over 40 years.

Absolutely start paying our teachers what they are worth. Absolutely start spending every nickel we need to on improving the classroom experience. And take every last dollar of it from existing budgets and tax revenue by getting rid of as many noncritical, ridiculous, made up admin and nonteaching jobs as it takes.

Enough already. Just freaking enough.

Oh shucks, and I’m out of room to start a lively discussion about Voucher Virtue.

 

Mission Accomplished. Sort of.

                So, I hate when this happens. I spent all week documenting how President Trump’s private-business negotiation tactics are working as an international economic strategy between governments: China is making concessions on U.S. auto tariffs and other things; Mexico, in spite of their feigned upset over us not wanting Hondurans traipsing through their living room to enter our country, is very anxious to preserve some version of NAFTA even if it is more favorable to us; as is that odd little fellow they’re letting run Canada right now.

                And then stupid Syria has to have another unspeakably horrible chemical weapons attack on its own people prompting us to do the only thing we could do: retaliate as you would do for any spoiled, unruly misbehaving child unless you live on Planet Snowflake.

                I guess retaliation would be unnecessary if you didn’t think that sort of atrocity needed to be punished just on the basis that it is an atrocity that humanity should not tolerate, but I think even the Trump-hating Team Blue would have to admit they’d like to not see chemical weapon use be exported from Syria into the hands of terrorists around the globe, specifically to a New York subway or some other U.S. target.

                What got me going this morning were a couple of Associated Press stories citing a lack of evidence for the missile attacks Friday by the U.S., Great Britain and France and referring to the attack as hasty and ill-conceived. In typical fashion the AP attributed such solid sources as, “critics,” “some,” “their,” and “many,” accusing, denying, criticizing and being upset.

                The stellar (NOT) journalistic integrity of the left continues.

                One of the AP articles said Theresa May, UK Prime Minister, could face “serious backlash” for not seeking approval from Parliament for participating in the action, “reminding many of the tainted legacy of former PM Tony Blair’s rush to back George W. Bush in Iraq.”

                Later in the article the AP, perhaps accidentally, did reveal that May wasn’t legally required to seek lawmaker’s approval for her decision. “Opposition leaders,” (no names at all) were really mad about it though. Isn’t that kind of like Schumer and Pelosi being upset because Donald Trump said “Yay, America?” In other words, so what?

                French President Emmanuel Macron showed surprising common sense and grit for a Frenchman and said, “We cannot tolerate the normalization of the use of chemical weapons,” and then sent French warplanes into the strike. I didn’t even know the French had warplanes, let alone missiles, but I read online that they are actually the third largest military force in NATO.  Hmmm.

                And following his quote (proving that AP reporters do know how to attribute information when they want to or it serves their op-ed narrative) the news service labored so hard to also say Macron was in big trouble for doing anything Donald Trump thought was a good idea. 

                The AP quoted another real person—far right leader Marine Le Pen—as tweeting that Macron had exposed France to “unpredictable and potentially dramatic consequences,” by participating in the strike.

                Not real specific but Le Pen does get points for scary drama. Le Pen is also the person who called for labor strikes in France that have halted two-thirds of their train system so far. It seems socializing capitalism isn’t working out all that well.

                Anyway, Macron has his own hate club and issues to deal with in France and it sounds like he faces the same issues Trump does in that if he came out in favor of oxygen his opposition would begin holding their breath until they passed out.

                USA Today, The Telegraph, The Guardian, even Reuters and The Washington Post all cite intelligence reports and eyewitness accounts of the chlorine and sarin gas attack in Duomo, Syria, on April 7, killing at leas 40 people many of whom were children. The withdrawal of ground troops from the area immediately before the attack seems to be pretty strong evidence the Syrian government knew a little something about what was coming.

                I found two accounts that also document several other uses of chemical agents by the Syrian government with far fewer casualties but the same nasty results since the April 4^th chemical attack last year that left 80 dead. A pretty strong indicator Bassir Assad didn’t get the hint after our last missile strike.

                Even German President Angela Merkel endorsed the strike and she’s one of the world leaders whose criticism of and disdain for Trump is so very embarrassing for U. S. citizens on the left who give a damn what she thinks.

                And yet CBS, the NBC conglomeration and CNN continue to lead the cry that we have “acted without evidence.” Their sources (and I am not making this up): Russian military experts who have visited the site and said that the use of chemical weapons is not conclusive.

                Russian military experts.

The leftist media is so anxious to defy and criticize President Trump that they are now taking the word of Russian military experts over U.S., French, British and German intelligence reports as well as video and pictures showing dead bodies with foam coagulated in their mouths and throats and eyewitness accounts of the distinct smell of chlorine at the site.

                The Russian military experts in the employ of the very same Russia that Pretty Boy Bobby Mueller is trying so hard to prove colluded with Donald Trump to swing the election in his favor because Putin fairly trembled in his boots over the prospect of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House and her promise of at least four more years of the dreaded Obama Doctrine of drawing useless and meaningless lines in the sand.

                After all, it was that sainted, international powerhouse negotiator Obama who forced Putin to agree to keep Syria in check and make sure that all those chemical weapons and the technology to manufacture them were destroyed. Or else.

                Whew! Thanks Barack. That really worked.

                Maybe not as well as 105 heavy ordinance missiles destroying three chemical weapon manufacturing facilities Friday night, but good try!

                Anyway, bravo again Mr. President, although I have to agree with that guy Many On The Left who says “Mission accomplished,” may be a little premature. I understand what the president meant—the mission was a retaliatory strike to punish Assad for using chemical agents and that was accomplished emphatically—but I think it is pretty undeniable that the little conflict in that region is far from over.

                What may—I hope—prove interesting is if a superior private business negotiation skill set translates as well in global politics as I believe it is in global economics. Maybe this will prove to have more to do with Putin’s need to support Syria because he needs a bootleg option to sell Russian oil with so many sanctions in place against Russia over the Ukraine and other annoying Russian politics than it will with bombs and bullets.

                Though I can already hear the wailing about relieving economic pressure on Russia to minimize their need for a relationship with Syria as a trade partner as “conclusive proof” that the Trump-Russia collusion the left has been fantasizing about for going on two years is real, damnit, and Hillary should be president. Waaah.

                But for now: Mission Accomplished.