This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
Here, Jason Chaffetz roasts the ass of the Ninth District Circuit Court of Appeals, hoisting them on the petard of their own details and their injunctions against Donald Trump.
Please remember, ladies and gentlemen, these are your federal tax dollars either
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
This was BZ’s third night running the new SHR laptop, bristling as it does with a full 16 gigs of buttery RAM goodness and a nice sound card. Once again, like Tuesday, BZ discovered that Windows 10 wanted to update right in the middle of the show. Uh, no. Learned that lesson.
Tonight in the Saloon we discussed:
“I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now”;
Happy Stories: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer shuts down Diane Feinstein when he doesn’t get the answer he wants from her;
Senator Ted Cruz chats with former temp AG Sally Yates, fired by Trump;
8 USC 1182: it exists, get over it;
Thousands flee Cook County because of Chicago violence;
I was vastly wrong: NYPD has 34,000 officers, not 24,000;
Pat Dollard was busy; we’re hoping for another appearance shortly;
Obama says: you need to eat a bug;
What is “anthropogenic”?
Scientists: you need to eat insects to stop “global warming”;
Memorial Day represents nothing but US oppression around the globe;
Obama’s rampant hypocrisy: $400,000 speeches & $3.26 million dollar cash grab;
Obama’s private jet and 14-vehicle convoy to Milan’s Globalist Food Control meet;
I tell you about the Religious Left: it takes faith to believe in global warming;
Al Gore only wants $15 trillion dollars from every nation and tax payer;
Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren thinks Obama might be just a bit hypocritical;
Bernie Sanders thinks Obama might be just a bit hypocritical;
Bill Maher thinks Obama might be just a bit hypocritical;
The sky began falling this past Tuesday;
An in-depth analysis of the firing of James Comey by President Donald Trump.
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. With luck all screens will be functioning next week. Shaun said so. Heh. Perhaps, if I speak soothing words, I’ll have the live feed on YouTube up and running. No promises yet. Besides, after last Wednesday on Sack Heads, why would you want to look at my ugly mug?
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
If you’d been listening to the American Media Maggots the past 24 hours, you’d think the sky had indeed fallen all across the United States of America.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has long been regarded as our nation’s premier federal investigative agency. Over the past year, however, the FBI’s reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice. That is deeply troubling to many Department employees and veterans, legislators and citizens.
The current FBI Director is an articulate and persuasive speaker about leadership and the immutable principles of the Department of Justice. He deserves our appreciation for his public service. As you and I have discussed, however, I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.
It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors. The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed attorney General Loretta Lynch had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. There is a well-established process for other officials to step in when a conflict requires the recusal of the Attorney General. On July 5, however, the Director announced his own conclusions about the nation’s most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders.
I set out my objections to now-former Director James Comey last year with his horribly flawed reasoning for failing to forward the Hillary Clinton case to the DOJ last year, and also in this post. I was heartened to see that the bulk of my objections were quite similar to those of the Deputy Attorney General.
We all know that President William Jefferson Clinton fired his FBI Director, William Sessions, back in 1993 for essentially political reasons. That was fine with Demorats.
Many Demorats themselves were calling for the severed head of William Comey quite recently.
Yes, two words: what changed?
We all know the answer, quite obviously. Judicial Watch’s CJ Farrell had this to say from last year.
Maxine Waters: I Don’t Support Trump Firing Comey, I Would Support Hillary Clinton Firing Comey
by Ian Schwartz
NBC’s Peter Alexander grills Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cali.) for her displeasure at President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey after she had announced in January that he has lost all credibility after attending a classified briefing conducted by the now-former director.
However, in the interview Wednesday on MSNBC, asked if she would be okay with a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton dismissing Comey from his position, Waters said yes.
“If she had won the White House, I believe that given what he did to her, and what he tried to do, she should have fired him. Yes,” the California Democrat said.
“So she should have fired him but had he shouldn’t fire him. This is why I’m confused,” Alexander said to Waters.
Honesty and clarity, for once, coming from Maxine Waters in terms of her clear bias.
Neither was our favorite moonbat, Keith Olbermann.
So what really happened in the White House? What was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back? I wrote back on Tuesday that Comey’s final waffling on the number of emails found in Weiner’s laptop was the kicker. Oddly enough, Dr Sebastian Gorka highlighted that same issue.
The New York Times wrote this about the White House decision.
‘Enough was Enough’: How Festering Anger at Comey Ended in His Firing
by Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, Michael S Schmidt and Peter Baker
WASHINGTON — By the end, neither of them thought much of the other.
After President Trump accused his predecessor in March of wiretapping him, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, was flabbergasted. The president, Mr. Comey told associates, was “outside the realm of normal,” even “crazy.”
For his part, Mr. Trump fumed when Mr. Comey publicly dismissed the sensational wiretapping claim. In the weeks that followed, he grew angrier and began talking about firing Mr. Comey. After stewing last weekend while watching Sunday talk shows at his New Jersey golf resort, Mr. Trump decided it was time. There was “something wrong with” Mr. Comey, he told aides.
The problem, you see, was that Donald Trump waited too long. As I believed and wrote numerous times, on January 20th at noon, President Trump should have demanded Comey’s resignation letter.
The collision between president and F.B.I. director that culminated with Mr. Comey’s stunning dismissal on Tuesday had been a long time coming. To a president obsessed with loyalty, Mr. Comey was a rogue operator who could not be trusted as the F.B.I. investigated Russian ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign. To a lawman obsessed with independence, Mr. Trump was the ultimate loose cannon, making irresponsible claims on Twitter and jeopardizing the bureau’s credibility.
The other problem was that Comey wasn’t obsessed with any independence other than his own, and not that of the bureau itself. The only person who jeopardized the FBI’s credibility was James Comey.
The White House, in a series of shifting and contradictory accounts, first said Mr. Trump decided to fire Mr. Comey because the attorney general and his deputy recommended it. By Wednesday, it had amended the timeline to say that the president had actually been thinking about getting rid of the F.B.I. director as far back as November, after he won the election, and then became “strongly inclined” after Mr. Comey testified before Congress last week.
Mr. Comey’s fate was sealed by his latest testimony about the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election and the Clinton email inquiry. Mr. Trump burned as he watched, convinced that Mr. Comey was grandstanding. He was particularly irked when Mr. Comey said he was “mildly nauseous” to think that his handling of the email case had influenced the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history.
Director Comey was grandstanding.
At that point, Mr. Trump began talking about firing him. He and his aides thought they had an opening because Mr. Comey gave an incorrect account of how Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, transferred emails to her husband’s laptop, an account the F.B.I. later corrected.
As I wrote on Tuesday, that element was the final straw. And yes, it did provide an opening.
At first, Mr. Trump, who is fond of vetting his decisions with a wide circle of staff members, advisers and friends, kept his thinking to a small circle, venting his anger to Vice President Mike Pence; the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II; and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who all told him they generally backed dismissing Mr. Comey.
Then President Trump finally did the right thing.
But wait; hold up on that car wash. Isn’t this the same New York Times that wrote in 1993:
DEFIANT F.B.I. CHIEF REMOVED FROM JOB BY THE PRESIDENT
By DAVID JOHNSTON Published: July 20, 1993
WASHINGTON, July 19— President Clinton today dismissed William S. Sessions, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had stubbornly rejected an Administration ultimatum to resign six months after a harsh internal ethics report on his conduct.
Mr. Clinton said he would announce his nominee to replace Mr. Sessions on Tuesday. He was expected to pick Judge Louis J. Freeh of Federal District Court in Manhattan; officials said Judge Freeh had impressed Mr. Clinton favorably on Friday at their first meeting.
Mr. Clinton, explaining his reasons for removing Mr. Sessions, effective immediately, said, “We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the F.B.I. It is time that this difficult chapter in the agency’s history is brought to a close.”
But in a parting news conference at F.B.I. headquarters after Mr. Clinton’s announcement, a defiant Mr. Sessions — his right arm in a sling as a result of a weekend fall — railed at what he called the unfairness of his removal, which comes nearly six years into his 10-year term.
“Because of the scurrilous attacks on me and my wife of 42 years, it has been decided by others that I can no longer be as forceful as I need to be in leading the F.B.I. and carrying out my responsibilities to the bureau and the nation,” he said. “It is because I believe in the principle of an independent F.B.I. that I have refused to voluntarily resign.”
It appears, according to the New York Times, that President William Clinton, a Demorat, was perfectly well within his rights and abilities to fire Director Sessions who insisted that the FBI be independent. That same newspaper now states that President Donald Trump, a Republican, is not perfectly well within his rights and abilities to fire Director Comey who insisted that the FBI be independent.
The difference? Political parties. Simply that.
James Comey, in a letter to his office the day after his firing, said the president was within his authority to fire a sitting FBI director. From TheHill.com:
Comey farewell: ‘A president can fire an FBI director for any reason’
Former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday sent a letter to agents and friends following President Trump firing him the previous day.
“I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI director for any reason, or for no reason at all,” he wrote, according to CNN. “I’m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed.”
Leftist attorney and professor Alan Dershowitz came in on the side of President Trump. From Breitbart.com:
Dershowitz: Comey Firing ‘Appropriate,’ No Special Prosecutor
by Joel B Pollak
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday night that President Donald Trump was well within his rights to fire former FBI director James Comey, and that there was no need for a special prosecutor in the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Dershowitz appeared next to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who was apoplectic. “The fact that he did this will disgrace his memory for as long as this presidency is remembered. There is only one date that will be remembered after Januarth 20th so far in the Trump presidency, and it is the day of the ‘Tuesday Night Massacre,’” Toobin said, referencing President Richard Nixon’s firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal.
Toobin had also told CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier that Trump would likely name a “campaign stooge” as Comey’s replacement at the FBI.
But Dershowitz disagreed.
“Should Comey be the director of the FBI? The answer to that is no,” he said, noting that he had called earlier for Comey to resign. “He lost his credibility. … A lot of this is his fault.”
When Toobin objected that Trump had fired former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as well as Comey, “all three of whom had the potential to investigate and trouble the Trump presidency,” Dershowitz argued that they were all Democrat appointees and had all been dismissed appropriately by a Republican president.
Perquisites of the job that have been replicated time and again by Demorat presidents.
Where is John McCain on this because, after all, when the story appears to be about someone else, well, it’s really about John McCain, isn’t it? From the WashingtonPost.com:
John McCain on Comey firing: ‘There will be more shoes to drop’
by Josh Rogin
President Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James B. Comey is bad for the country and will not be the end of the Trump-Russia affair, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told a group of foreign diplomats and experts Tuesday night.
Although McCain did not directly accuse the White House of firing Comey to thwart the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible Russia ties, he did say that if that was the intention, it would fail.
Again, news about truth isn’t news. News about specious insinuation is news.
“This scandal is going to go on. I’ve seen it before,” McCain told a meeting of the Munich Security Conference core group. “This is a centipede. I guarantee you there will be more shoes to drop, I can just guarantee it. There’s just too much information that we don’t have that will be coming out.”
He called Trump’s actions against Comey “unprecedented” and said the position of FBI director has held special meaning in American public life dating back decades.
Ooooh, scary, John, very scary.
“Probably the most respected individual in all of the American government is probably the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” McCain said. “I’m very sorry that this has happened.”
The event was off the record, but McCain gave me permission to place his comments on the record. He said that Trump had the legal basis to fire Comey but that his decision would have long-term negative consequences.
“I regret it, I think it’s unfortunate,” McCain said. “The president does have that constitutional authority. But I can’t help but think that this is not a good thing for America.”
I refer to this article solely to illustrate how terribly out-of-touch is John McCain with the law and with reality. However, even McCain isn’t yet sufficiently addled to refute the authority of a president to fire an FBI director.
Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom weighs in on the Comey situation and likewise concludes that President Trump acted appropriately. “I’m glad it happened.”
As I’ve said, I still have law enforcement contacts across the fruited plain and I know that the bulk of line-level agents, not necessarily supervisors or managers, were relieved to see the dismissal of William Comey. Judge Andrew Napolitano confirms this.
Newt Gingrich also weighs in on the issue with Sean Hannity.
Let us not forget the 10 major scandals that occurred on the 3.5-year watch of Director Comey.
The bottom line is this: former FBI Director James Comey made quite a number of flawed decisions based not upon the law but instead on politics. He placed himself in front of cameras frequently as he enjoyed the limelight. He did so for self-aggrandizing reasons. Having a self-righteous and poor decision-maker in charge of the FBI is not a formula for success or for ensuring confidence in the bureau.
What you plan to do on Memorial Day is absolutely anathema to Leftists, Demorats and to Barack Hussein Obama. There should be no fires, no charcoal, no propane, no gathering, no smashing of grass by your feet, no using your heinous C02-emitting vehicles to get to the barbecue and, certainly, there should be no meat involved whatsoever.
That’s not even getting to the point that Obama surely believes celebrating Memorial Day does nothing but promote the oppression of persons globally by Evil America.
Yet, despite that, there is the truth. First, from RickWells.us:
Obama Pitches Alternatives To Meat -That’s Insects, At UN Globalist Food Control Event
On Tuesday Hussein Obama graced the incredibly fortunate people of Milan with his wondrous presence as the location of his coming out as the new globalist spokesperson. They can all tell their grandchildren when they get old about the time they sat in traffic and basked in the Obama greatness as his fourteen car motorcade and police escort passed nearby.
Obama was in Milan to participate in what the organizers billed as the Seeds and Chips Global Food Innovation Summit, a UN effort to control our lives, largely through the climate hoax and with a focus on telling us what we will and will not eat. A portion of the proceedings took the format of Obama sitting and engaging in inane and uninteresting chit-chat with his cook.
Well, let’s stop right there. First, Barack Hussein Obama had to get to the venue in the first place, yes? Why not on a private jet, and why not in a lengthy motorcade whose vehicles spewed tons of C02 into the atmo? From the IJR.com:
Former President Barack Obama traveled to Italy this week to make a speech on climate change at the “Seed & Chips: The Global Food Innovation Summit” in the city of Milan.
It seems like Obama has taken a page out of Leonardo DiCaprio’s book of “do as I say, not as I do” and took a private jet to Milan. Not only that, he had a 14 car convoy to get into the city, which also included protection from above with a helicopter.
It doesn’t end there. According to The Daily Mail, 300 police officers were used to protect the former president.
That would seem to include overtime, stressed budgets, more persons in C02-emitting vehicles and, after all, 14 C02-spewing cars in a motorcade. All to promote the exact opposite of what Leftists used to demand from others. Just not Barack Obama these days.
Obama, the expert on everything, is being a little coy in the initial stages of converting the peasants of the word from meat eaters to bug eaters, warning the commoners that more people on the planet were eating meat, creating the false hazard of the UN boogeyman, unsustainability. Naturally that led him back, as everything does, to a need to control the people based upon the climate.
Obama cautioned against the hazards of too many human carnivores, as he sat cross-legged for a little girl talk with his cook, noting, “People aren’t as familiar with the impact of cows and methane. As people want to increase more meat consumption, that in turn is spiking the growth of greenhouse emissions coming out of the agricultural sectors.”
Barack Hussein Obama — tone deaf as per normal — said:
“No matter what, we are going to see an increase in meat consumption.” He designated developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam as the culprits. He primed the pump for austerity, stating that more advanced countries would have to teach people to “have a smaller steak” and investigate other ways to reduce their meat consumption. They’ll undoubtedly train us in the same manner they educated us out of our big cars in the seventies with high fuel prices, by making steak too expensive to eat, through taxes and regulations, so all we can afford are the smaller, cheaper cuts.
Guess what? I eat massive steaks and lobster most every weekend. I drive a rather large Kraut Kar with an amazing engine that runs on Premium. Normally aspirated, it still accelerates like a banshee on fire. I drive it hard and I drive it fast much to the dismay of my wife and my personal angel. I was warned: “never drive faster than your angel can travel.” My personal angel can easily keep up with me. We have this pact.
Obama said that eating more steaks leads to ultimate destruction. From Breitbart.com:
Barack Obama: Eating More Steaks Contributes to Climate Change
by Charlie Spiering
Former President Barack Obama warned the world that more people on the planet were eating meat, causing a dramatic rise in climate emissions.
“As people want to increase meat consumption, that in turn is spiking the growth of greenhouse emissions coming out of the agricultural sector,” Obama said, pointing to countries that were consuming more meat.
Cows and methane. Are you serious?
“What is true is that I’m not a vegetarian,” Obama admitted, adding that he “respected vegetarians” but continued to eat meat.
But here’s the ultimate Best Part:
Barack Hussein Obama made $400,000 from a speech he proffered to those he hated on Wall Street on behalf of global punters, a firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. A mere niggling detail not worth mentioning. Right? And wasn’t there more?
Obama Climate Change Speech Earns $3.26 Million for Personal Foundation
by Ben Kew
Former president Barack Obama’s speech on climate change in Italy raised €3 million ($3.26m) in ticket sales for his personal foundation, according to a report from The Times.
Having travelled to Milan in a private jet, Obama settled into a presidential suite at the Park Hyatt hotel, costing roughly €8,400 a night. Meanwhile, his entourage of security occupied two separate floors across the hotel, while his security detail required a convoy of 14 cars, a helicopter, and 300 extra police.
The event, which attracted 3500 people paying €850 a ticket, raised nearly €3 million, all of which will go to the Obama Foundation dedicated to “renewal and global progress.”
Doesn’t this “Obama Foundation” sound suspiciously familiar? Like the — ahem — Clinton Foundation? You know, the place that acquired its funds by having Bill and Hill do the exact same thing — making speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop?
Obama’s visit to Italy forms part of a series of speeches in which he defends his record in office and attempts to undermine the policies of the Trump administration. In an acceptance speech after receiving the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage” award, Obama urged lawmakers to show “political courage” to save his landmark healthcare bill known as the Affordable Care Act.
You get that? “Part of a series of speeches”? At hundreds of thousands of dollars each? Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren carefully disagrees with Obama’s expensive speeches as she speaks with SiriusXM 102 Radio Andy’s program “Alter Family Politics.”
Even Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders weigh in against Barack Hussein Obama.
Once more, the rampant and burgeoning hypocrisy of Leftists and specifically Mr Obama.
In the meantime, enjoy your steak on Memorial Day.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
This was BZ’s second night running the new SHR laptop with Windows 10, and the machine hosed me. I had previously set up the show on Spreaker, filling out the requisite information and, with 7 minutes before broadcast, it told me I had updates ready and forced me into a restart. It took 6 minutes to restart and I was able to open Spreaker and complete filling out the show material with about 10 seconds before the show had to begin at 8 PM Pacific. Furthermore, I lost all my audio cuts with the restart and played the Patton speech so that I could have enough time to reacquire those cuts from the internet as it was playing. Close.
If I sounded a bit rushed and flustered at the beginning of the Saloon, now you know why. Not happy, but made it work.
Tonight in the Saloon we discussed:
General George Smith Patton addresses the troops;
Damn, it’s hot in the studio again; the official SHR lava lamp is still lighted;
President Trump fires FBI Director James Comey; I give background;
The chatroom fills out; Conservative LA visits the chatroom briefly; thanks for that;
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs the sanctuary city bill, Leftists go insane;
Emmanuel Macron beats Marine Le Pen; France has a new president;
France decides it wants the status quo and continues to embrace multi-kulti;
Germany’s Angela Merkel larfs maniacally as she is now the official French President By Proxy;
Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. My apologies for not monitoring the chatroom because the second screen wasn’t working yet; it will next week.
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.
This is the continuation of a series of posts dealing with issues where some individuals in the United States government are attempting to hold at least a portion of the rest of the federal government accountable and responsible for its actions and inactions. The public displays we find, however, are not unlike the most bizarre of Kabuki Theater or Theater of the Absurd.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.
If you’d been listening to the American Media Maggots the past 24 hours, you’d think the sky had indeed fallen all across the United States of America.
Many Demorats themselves were calling for the severed head of William Comey quite recently.
What you plan to do on Memorial Day is absolutely anathema to Leftists, Demorats and to Barack Hussein Obama. There should be no fires, no charcoal, no propane, no gathering, no smashing of grass by your feet, no using your heinous C02-emitting vehicles to get to the barbecue and, certainly, there should be no meat involved whatsoever.
My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.