A Higher Loyalty -- James Comey goes to war against Trump

More like a prince and pauper thing.

People living in western liberal democracies where institutions actually work seem to fantasize with having a third world strongman leadership for some reason.

Reminds me of western muslims going to fight with ISIS and then getting pissed at not having internet for their Ipads and realizing that they couldnt leave or the kids that get turned into donkeys in Pinocchio.

 

It is a weird phenomenon, and one that really only became explicit fairly recently.

For instance, this skinny white alt-right kid was commenting on one of my friends Facebook posts last week about liberal democracy no longer meets the demands of the modern world, which was perhaps the most hilarious example of first world privilege that I had ever read. He waxed about how Russia had a strong autocrat and was going to be a world power because they didn't take in immigrants (completely ignoring their dismal birth rates and shitty and outdated post-Soviet industry, and the fact that Putin has been complete shit at managing their economy). He later addressed that by saying "GDP isn't everything because at least they'll be able to be a nation state," completely ignoring that GDP is historically pretty much everything and non-nation states with high GDP are generally a fuck of a lot happier than nation states with rampant poverty.

Like, this was some middle class white kid who grew up with and therefore never had to question things like free speech, due process, and functional governance and is openly advocating for autocracy just because it makes him feel like a bad ass.

Shit, sorry about the rant. But, yeah, it is strange. And I really do have a lot of respect for some former leftist strongme and autocrats like Castro, Chavez, Sankara, and Tito, but those guys weren't, or at least didn't seek to be, defined by their authoritarianism. To them, authoritarian policy was necessary (and often explicitly acknowledged as) evil, and they earnestly furthered policies that were intended to be better (effectively for Castro and Sankara, less so for Tito, and kind of not so in retrospect for Chavez) than the alternative for their people. Meanwhile, guys like Putin and Trump are swindlers who are actively selling out their countrymen for profit.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King

Ill say that a lot of times i do wish for king Stork, but stories of how things were back in the day put me in my place.

This is one of the reasons i dont subscribe to the "end justifies the means" policy, if your means are shitty its probably that the end is going to be shit.

And this reminds me of an interview with Andres Manuel the guy that its probably going to be president of Mexico, after he said he admired Castro he was told by the reported.

"In Cuba you wouldnt exist (as the top opposition leader)" he tried to squirm his way out by claiming that its a completely different set of circumstances but i think thats kind of an insult towards Cubans.

 

"We must keep our faith in the Republic. The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it." - Queen Jamilla

 

Hmm, I'd actually never heard of that. Thanks for sharing.

It still confounds me for citizens of liberal democracies, though. I get that even brutal dictators like Stalin brought prosperity, and incomptetent ones like Ceausescu brought stability, and are still regarded positively, but that's because their countries were impoverished hellscapes before them. I don't understand our excuse.

I'm not sure I understand the Manuel quote, but I absolutely subscribe to the ends justify the means for Castro, in that the alternative was giving way to exploitation, dependence, and (worse) oppression. In the arena of Castro's political suppression, I lay the blame at the feet of the United States first and foremost. Had Castro or the revolutionary government insisted on liberal safeguards that existed only in rich nations, they'd have been washed away within a year.

But Castro is such a unique example of a strong man, in that his rise was truly something that sounds unbelievable (leading a suicide mission with a handful of poorly armed idealists, politicking his way to freedom, and then defeating the greatest economic power in world history) and his position really did represent Cuba national interests.

I always like this reading from Galeano (who I know you have derided here as a writer for masturbators) on Castro's ends and means:

 

I suppose so but I think you and many may be underestimating how lowly many people think of him already. Pee Pee tape cant lower my view of him in any way. I think he is is totally and completely without honor or principle and I think that he is mentally ill. Pee Pee tape does not even come close to the the already low bar I see in him.

Trump is profoundly unqualified to be in the office of the presidency on every level that I can think of weather that be morally, intellectually or in regards to possessing any kind of gravity and selflessness that are needed to perform the position even at the most base levels. I think Trump is dangerous and I wish the worst thing we had to worry about with him as president was a Russian hooker peeing on him.

 

So he wants the same thing that the left ones, except his wet dream is to have a singular strong man at the focal point, at the very tippy top of the triangle.

Where is the left just once their Doctrine in charge. Hell, in 20 years you'll be able to enforce it with technology alone. You won't even have to depend on people's neighbors for ratting someone out for being a homophobe, or otherwise hurting someone's feelings... technology will be able to pick up on it and make the report by itself.

If that can happen, along with disarming most of the population... we would finally live in that liberal Paradise where there's nothing but rainbows, sunshine, Bambi and Thumper frolicking through the woods, a place where no one's feelings are ever hurt again and everything is fair for everyone all the time... except for white people.

Because most of the time when they tell you they want you quality, what they really mean is Revenge.

 

But there is explotaition (collective farms), dependence (soviet subsidies) and oppression (of political dissent) in Cuba.

The issue is that due to all the Castro's did they were reluctant to surrender power when it was in the best interest of Cubans to do so.

The Manuel quote is ironic because he is a top opposition leader, so he can say all he wants about the corrupt Mexican system but at least there is a real valve for true opposition to rise through the ranks and wrest power from the establishment, in Cuba political dissent is suppressed.

I understand that you may think given that a lot of wealthy people fled to the US and tend to give you a conservative view on Castro.

But i met poor Cubans who managed to get out of the island and they dont have a nice opinion of the system, specially those that grew in the special period after the fall of the USSR.

 

Linking Mark Dice videos is a bannable offense I think.

 

I think hes funny, but God damn is he a propagandist. I dont think hes even touched the syria situation. Hes making some good money polishing trumps nuts imo.

 

He looks like he's 6 months behind on his child support.

 

"I would never let hookers pee, I'm a germaphobe."

Has unprotected sex with a porn star.

 

A hard look at Comey's employment history will show, even the most challenged among us, that the upper echelon of US politics has nothing to do with D's and R's. The Bush and Clinton dynasties were connected at the groin and Comey is a product of that.

 

In short, Comey’s FBI did some terrible things.


In an effort to stop terrorist attacks before they happen, Comey expanded the practice instituted by his predecessor, Robert Mueller, to use undercover agents and informants to catch would-be attackers in sting operations. These stings never caught terrorists on the eve of their attack. Notably, the FBI twice investigated Omar Mateen, the Orlando nightclub shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 others while claiming allegiance to ISIS in a 911 call, but did not deem him a threat. At the same time, Comey’s FBI agents aided in the prosecution of Sami Osmakac, a Florida man caught in a sting operation, despite having called him in private conversations a “retarded fool.” They also busted penniless, mentally ill homeless men who claimed to be associating with ISIS. In one of those cases, an informant even gave a homeless man $40 so he could purchase the machete and knives he needed for his supposed plot. To catch a lonely Michigan man, the FBI used two female informants to set up a honeypot, in which the FBI informants claimed to be in love with the target so as to manipulate him. The target, in turn, claimed to have an AK-47 and to have attempted to travel to Syria. But it turned out he was just saying all that to impress the ladies.

When the FBI busted the dark web child-porn site Playpen, agents did not shut down the enterprise, going against previous FBI policy. In investigations of child pornography under Mueller, the FBI shut down child-porn websites immediately, believing that allowing distribution of the images and videos would further victimize the children who had been exploited. Comey’s FBI continued to operate Playpen for nearly two weeks in an effort to surreptitiously install tracking software on the computers of its users; child pornography was available from FBI servers during this period of time.

Just days before his firing, Comey testified before Congress that one-half of all smartphone and computer devices analyzed by the FBI can’t be examined “with any technique” due to encryption. During his tenure, Comey worked aggressively to give the FBI access to encrypted devices. Notably, Comey battled in court with Apple over the tech company’s unwillingness to help unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The FBI later paid a hacker somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million to help unlock the phone. At the time, Comey told a House committee: “There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America.”

Other examples of problems under Comey’s watch include the following:

• An FBI translator, Daniela Green, traveled to Syria in 2014 and married Denis Cuspert, an ISIS operative and former German hip-hop artist. The FBI employee wasn’t undercover when this happened. She was in love. When she returned to the United States, Green received favorable treatment by becoming a cooperating witness — just two years in prison for making false statements — despite dozens of FBI cases in which ISIS sympathizers do far less and receive significantly harsher sentences.
• More than a year after two men attacked a convention center near Dallas where Pamela Geller had organized the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest,” the FBI admitted in a court filing that it had an undercover agent embedded close to the two attackers, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. After one of the attackers posted a link to the “Draw Muhammad” event, the undercover agent wrote: “Tear Up Texas.” The undercover agent was on site during the attack but fled when the shooting started. In April, after CBS’s “60 Minutes” covered the story, Sen. Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Comey asking, among other questions: “Did the FBI suspect that Simpson and Soofi planned an attack at the drawing contest? Did the FBI have any formal or informal operational plan to intervene to stop Simpson and Soofi from carrying out an attack?”
• The FBI expanded its authority to investigate people in the United States even when they are not suspected of being involved in criminal activity. This is commonly done in the service of recruiting informants, of which the FBI has more than 15,000. According to a classified FBI manual on the handling of informants that was updated under Comey, FBI agents are encouraged to build files on possible informants, may use undercover identities to recruit informants, and with proper clearances may recruit minors as well as journalists, clergy, and lawyers. The FBI under Comey also codified a policy of using immigration as leverage to recruit informants and the threat of removal to keep coerced informants productive.

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/17...y-the-fbi-did-some-terrible-things-under-him/

 

“Comey is the most skilled opportunist ever,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, the Intercept co-founder who frequently points out the untoward love that is being offered in the Trump era to “deep state” figures who were once viewed with great skepticism.

Greenwald notes the irony that the former FBI director is “about to get very rich by selling an anti-Trump book even though, according to Nate Silver, Comey is the person most responsible for Trump’s win.”

Comey’s revelation that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices dealt a blow to her campaign just weeks before Election Day. It was a punishingdevelopment, made much more potent when the news organizations treated it like the Second Coming. (The statistics guru Silver said the announcement and the media coverage had a significant negative effect on Clinton’s campaign.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...2d48460b955_story.html?utm_term=.75e10692fc13

 

But painting Comey that way misses a lot. He led the FBI when the bureau possiblymishandled its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, perhaps costing Hillary Clinton the election. He was also the FBI director when he oversaw increased surveillance of Muslim communities and a culture of suspicion against Muslims and used suspect methods to stop terrorists.

Put together, as the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan noted on March 31, Comey is undeserving of the veneration and softball questions he will surely field in the coming days in response to his much-hyped new book.That, in part, is because he did a successful job at cultivating his holier-than-thou persona, says Matthew Miller, a top Justice Department spokesperson in the Obama administration.

“He wanted to position himself as the hero,” Miller told me, “the man of integrity who was going to tell the American people how it is — the last virgin in town.”

The problem, though, is that the media fell for it.

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17194396/james-comey-book-interview-higher-loyalty-hero

 

Their doctrine of democratic governance filtered through a representative system, and constrained by constitutional limits (subject to change according to a set procedure) and guided by reason. That's not at all similar to the right-wing ideal of a single leader ruling without constraints.

And you really went off the rails after that. Don't be another idiot troll coming in here to stir shit up. We're all full.

 

A good article about Comey:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43718532

"I think he is vain, arrogant, pious, slightly pompous, supercilious, faux-naïve over the Hillary Clinton emails and the role he played in determining the outcome of the election, and sly in the personal comments he makes about Donald Trump - orange face, white half-moon eyes and (not unusually small) hands.

A little juvenile, no? And most of all I think it is the lowest of political smears to give credence to the Moscow hotel peeing prostitutes story on the basis of salacious and unsubstantiated claims.

"I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013," Comey said in an interview with ABC News.

Well if you don't know, then don't say it. If the long serving prosecutor (as he was in his younger days) had said that in court, the defence would have risen and said "Objection your honour, conjecture". And the judge would have sustained that objection.

So why is Comey doing that in a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" way in his interview with George Stephanopoulos? It makes him look like a small, bitter man who lost his mind and lost his judgement at roughly the same time. There were a couple of other asides about the Trump's marriage that seemed to me to fit into the "unworthy" category.

But there is one other judgement I would make about Comey. I don't think he's a liar. And on the stuff that really matters, that is the key...

...His behaviour over the Hillary Clinton emails is unbelievable - for both Republicans and Democrats alike - although for different reasons. And they show the worst of Comey. He announces she's not going to be prosecuted for her use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State, but then added a stern rebuke to her behaviour, saying she'd been extremely careless. FBI directors normally don't say anything. That was grandstanding."

 

Needs something to make it pop. Try italics