Trump on Stone: "This has not been a fair process!"

Where is St. Patrick?

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

Now, I don’t know if it is true or not, but, supposedly, St. Patrick performed the miracle of banishing the snakes from Ireland. If this is true, I say we need dear old St. Paddy to return to earth for a wee bit and see if he can perform the same miracle in Washington DC, ‘cause I am pretty sure there are far more snakes-in-the-grass than even a political arena needs!

Now, lest anyone think I am overstating it by calling these less than honorable persons by the title of snake, let me share one of the definitions of snake: a treacherous or deceitful person. Some synonyms include: traitor, turncoat, betrayer, informer, back-stabber, and double-crosser. Wow, sounds like Congress is in session to me!

A snake-in-the-grass is a sly person who’s always doing things behind people’s backs. Kinda brings my thoughts right back to the passing of bills, the releasing of information, and other actions by our so-called representatives. They very much seem to prefer to do things under cover of darkness or behind closed doors.

Let us not forget the serpents. The really big snakes. The sly or treacherous persons who exploit their position of trust in order to betray it. We got way too many of those in Washington. Satan has been known as that old serpent called the devil. He was the tempter in the Garden of Eden. He is also known as the father of lies, the deceiver, the murderer, and the adversary. Again, sounds a lot like some of the folks in Washington, DC.

But, in reality, we cannot rely on St. Patrick to come down from Heaven and wipe out the sneaky snake population of DC. We have to banish the snakes on our own. We use our voices and our votes to drive them away and keep them away. We shine the light of truth into their dark holes and send them scurrying for cover instead of for cover-ups.

I love this great nation of ours. But, I am appalled at the corruption we are seeing that is creeping all across this land. President Trump is trying to drain the swamp, but the snakes certainly aren’t giving him a hand. And, oh yeah, snakes can swim. All of them. So, a murky swamp is the ideal location for their nefarious dealings.

I wish President Trump did have the power to banish the snakes. But, that is not his job. It is our job. So, let’s start banishing. Let’s use each and every election, from local to state to federal, and banish as many of the snakes as possible. And, while some snakes are hard to identify, the majority can be known by their distinctive markings. Most of the really dangerous ones have a (D) after their names.

Dems party in Puerto Rico with lobbyists and corporate executives (and who knows who else?)

Who is the lady in the bikini with Congressman Bob Menendez?

Andrew O'Reilly reports at Fox News,

“Democrats in Congress are so alarmed about federal workers not getting paid they’re partying on the beach instead of negotiating a compromise to reopen the government and secure the border,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted Sunday morning.

GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also lambasted the Democrats in Puerto Rico for “hitting the beach and partying with lobbyists” in a tweet on Sunday.

“While [President Trump] is in DC working to resolve the government shutdown and secure our border, Democrats are hitting the beach and partying with lobbyists,” McDaniel tweeted.

Around 109 lobbyists and corporate executives are named in a memo welcoming the guests to the seaside resort in Puerto Rico. Among those attending are members of some from prominent Washington firms as well as representatives from R.J. Reynolds, Facebook, Comcast, Amazon, PhRMA, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, and unions like the National Education Association.

“This year’s winter retreat promises to be our most widely attended yet with over 220 guests, including 39 Members of Congress and CHC BOLD PAC supporters expected to attend and participate!” a planning memo said.

Read more here.

Mattis duped by Theranos; The swamp's revolving door at the Pentagon

In The American Conservative, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos reports,

Before he became lionized as the “only adult in the room” capable of standing up to President Trump, General James Mattis was quite like any other brass scoping out a lucrative second career in the defense industry. And as with other military giants parlaying their four stars into a cushy boardroom chair or executive suite, he pushed and defended a sub-par product while on both sides of the revolving door. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that contract turned out to be an expensive fraud and a potential health hazard to the troops.

In 2012, while he was head of Central Command, the Marine General pressed the Army to procure and deploy blood testing equipment from a Silicon Valley company called Theranos. He communicated that he was having success with this effort directly to Theranos’s chief executive officer. Even though an Army health unit tried to terminate the contract due to its not meeting requirements, according to POGO, Mattis kept the pressure up. Luckily, it was never used on the battlefield.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise but upon retirement in 2013, Mattis asked a DoD counsel about the ethics guiding future employment with Theranos. They advised against it. So Mattis went to serve on its board instead for a $100,000 salary. Two years after Mattis quit to serve as Trump’s Pentagon chief in 2016, the two Theranos executives he worked with were indicted for “massive” fraud, perpetuating a “multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors and patients,” and misrepresenting their product entirely. It was a fake.

But assuming this was Mattis’s only foray into the private sector would be naive. When he was tapped for defense secretary—just three years after he left the military—he was worth upwards of $10 million. In addition to his retirement pay, which was close to $15,000 a month at the time, he received $242,000 as a board member, plus as much as $1.2 million in stock options in General Dynamics, the Pentagon’s fourth largest contractor. He also disclosed payments from other corporate boards, speech honorariums—including $20,000 from defense heavyweight Northrop Grumman—and a whopping $410,000 from Stanford University’s public policy think tank the Hoover Institution for serving as a “distinguished visiting fellow.”

Never for a moment think that Mattis won’t land softly after he leaves Washington—if he leaves at all. Given his past record, he will likely follow a very long line, as illustrated by POGO’s explosive report, of DoD officials who have used their positions while inside the government to represent the biggest recipients of federal funding on the outside. They then join ex-congressional staffers and lawmakers on powerful committees who grease the skids on Capitol Hill. And then they go to work for the very companies they’ve helped, fleshing out a small army of executives, lobbyists, and board members with direct access to the power brokers with the purse strings back on the inside.

Welcome to the Swamp.

...To get a sense of the demand, according to POGO (Project on Government Oversight), which had to compile all of this information through Freedom of Information requests, there were 625 instances in 2018 alone in which the top 20 defense contractors (think Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin) hired senior DoD officials for high-paying jobs—90 percent of which could be described as “influence peddling.”

...If a system is so motivated by personal gain (civil servants always mindful of campaign contributions and private sector job prospects) on one hand, and big business profits on the other, is there room for merit or innovation? One need only look at Lockheed’s F-35 joint strike fighter, the most expensive weapon system in history, which was relentlessly promoted over other programs by members of Congress and within the Pentagon despite years of test failures and cost overruns, to see what this gets you: planes that don’t fly, weapons that don’t work, and shortfalls in other parts of the budget that don’t matter to contractors like pilot training and maintenance of existing systems.

...“Are we approving weapons systems that are safe or not? And are we putting [servicemembers’] lives on the line” to benefit the interests of industry?

...current acting DoD Secretary Patrick Shanahan spent 31 years working for Boeing, which gets about $24 billion a year as the Pentagon’s second largest contractor. He was Boeing’s senior vice president in 2016 just before he was confirmed as Trump’s deputy secretary of defense in 2017. Last week he recused himself from all matters Boeing, but he wasn’t always so hands off. At one point, he “prodded” for the purchase of 12 $1.2 billion Boeing F-15X fighter planes, according to Bloomberg.

But the revolving door is so much more pervasive and insidious than POGO could possibly catalogue. So says Franklin “Chuck” Spinney, who worked as a civilian and military officer in the Pentagon for 31 years, beginning in 1968. He calls the military industrial complex a “quasi-isolated political economy” that is in many ways independent from the larger domestic economy. It has its own rules, norms, and culture, and unlike the real world, it is self-sustaining—not by healthy competition and efficiency, but by keeping the system on a permanent war footing, with money always pumping from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to the private sector and then back again. Left out are basic laws of supply and demand, geopolitical realities, and the greater interest of society.

...Unfortunately, there is little incentive in Capitol Hill or at the Pentagon to do the very least: pull the purse strings, close loopholes, encourage real competition, and end cost-plus practices.

Read more here.

His pals let Clapper skate

Ace of Spades writes today,

When a government no longer has moral authority over its citizens, it must rely exclusively on physical coercion and force, and then things get ugly quickly.

He is referring to the sleazy former CIA Director under Obama, James Clapper, for whom the statute of limitations will go into effect today on his blatant perjury in testimony before Congress.

Read more here.

Is there one former prosecutor in Washington who is not somehow involved in these scandals?

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

“The Swamp” usually refers to the vast federal bureaucratic machinery of mostly unelected top officials who exercise influence and power without worry about the appearance of conflicts of interest. They are often exempt from the consequences of the laws and regulations that affect others. The chief characteristics of the swamp are the interlocking friendships, business relationships, marriages and partnerships in Washington, and their immune response against anyone who challenges them.

...Mueller’s acquaintance, former FBI Director James Comey (Mueller and Comey were lauded dating back to the Bush Administration as “brothers in arms”), has testified that he was so exasperated with the president that he leaked his own confidential and likely classified memos of presidential meetings to the press via a friend in order that it “might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” It certainly did that. And mirabile dictu, the special counsel was soon none other than Robert Mueller with whom Comey had had a professional relationship in a variety of contexts for nearly 20 years. At some point, will one of Mueller’s staff have to depose him to ask whether he ever discussed the possibility of a special counsel appointment with Comey prior to Comey’s firing?

Will Mueller need to investigate Comey for leaking what may have been a classified memo and thus a likely felonious act? If the investigation touches upon the strange exemptions granted Hillary Clinton in the Uranium One scandal, will Mueller investigate his own prior investigation—a Mueller v. Mueller special counsel probe? Is the U.S. legal community so impoverished in former federal attorneys that we cannot find special counsels without any prior relationships with those knee-deep in the proposed investigations? Is there one former prosecutor in Washington who is not somehow involved in these scandals?

Hanson goes on to discuss in depth here many of the players in the swamp who colluded on behalf of the election of Hillary Clinton.

Coming out of the closet as an Establishment Republican Swamp Thing.

At Town Hall, Todd Starnes writes,

...I would expect Obama to undermine Trump -- that's what he does -- he's a community organizer. It's in his nature - he's an agitator.

But George W. Bush -- yeah -- well, his blindside against the president was mighty disappointing. I respected that man -- I knew he was a fake conservative - but he took care of our military -- he looked after the troops. He defended religious liberty. That speech he gave on the pile of rubble after 9-11 - one of the best speeches in modern presidential history.

So now you understand the lay of the land - ladies and gentlemen.

Establishment Republicans and Democrats on one side, We the People on the other.

When Obama shoved Obamacare down our throats, Bush turned the other way.

When Obama apologized for America on foreign soil, Bush was silent.

When Obama declared a war on police officers - Bush offered nary a peep.

When Obama waged war on religious liberty - Bush was AWOL.

And when Barack Obama vowed to fundamentally transform America -- George W. Bush -- stood down. Mission Accomplished.

So - maybe his speech yesterday in New York City -- was just Bush showing his true colors -- coming out of the closet as an Establishment Republican Swamp Thing.

Read more here.

"Drain the swamp? Well, it’s a start."

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today,

for president on the slogan “Make America Great Again!” And he’s also promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. But maybe the way to do that is to make Washington a little less great. Because as Washington has prospered over the last several decades — to the point where people are making Hunger Games comparisons — the rest of the country hasn’t done as well.

So perhaps it’s time for a role-reversal. I propose that over the next several years, we transfer a lot of federal employees out of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, to parts of the country that aren’t doing so well economically. This would provide a boost to places like Buffalo, New York, or Quincy, Illinois, or Fresno, California, while getting federal bureaucrats out of the D.C. bubble.

...So here’s my plan: During the next four years, the Trump Administration — and Congress — should plan to move at least 25% of the federal workforce located in the Washington, D.C. metro area to other locations around the country: Places that are economically suffering (which will have the advantage of making federal workers’ salaries go farther) and that need the business. Should Trump get another four years, he should do it all over again.

That would mean that in 8 years, the population of bureaucrats in the Washington, D.C. metro area would be roughly halved. That would make Washington less vibrant, but more affordable — and those bureaucrats working out of offices in the hinterland would be brought closer to the American people.

Drain the swamp? Well, it’s a start.

Read more here.