Sunday 15 April 2018

The Beclowning of the Leftists

Like many a normal person, I have relatives - members of my extended family - who are avowed leftists. Of course, they don't call themselves leftists. According to them, they are invariably the only people in the room who are right.

When Donald Trump was elected as President of the US, they loudly and proudly pronounced themselves opposed to every breath he took, even though as the leader of another country his election had little to no affect on them or their lives.

In May of 2017, at a family member's birthday celebration, I was derisively dismissed as stupid when I ventured that the Mueller investigation had, and would, discover nothing. I said at the time that I did not believe Trump had done anything wrong, even though various courts (most in Hawaii, strangely) seemed to disagree with his announced intention to protect America from sudden jihadi syndrome.

It's now almost a year later, and indeed Mueller has produced nothing but a few dubiously obtained "he didn't tell us the truth" indictments of people unrelated to his remit of investigating Trump's "collusion with Russia to sway the election".

Birthdays being the annual event that they are, and the passing of decades being a significant milestone, there is a large party planned for this May.

Should I raise the utter failure of Mueller's "investigation", and cite the ongoing investigations into assorted FBI, DoJ, and CIA figures; or should I be the proverbial better man, and let this particular sleeping dog lie?



On a related note: Scooter Libby has been pardoned. He allegedly leaked the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, and spent time in prison. Of course, he did no such thing, and the prosecution and court both knew it. A number of elements of that conviction were unsound:
1. The prosecution and the court  had a confession from Richard Armitage that HE leaked the name;
2. Valerie Plame was NOT a covert agent, but a lowly analyst
3. The prosecution relied on known false statements from a witness who was manipulated into saying something that could be used against Libby
4. The FBI made CLAIMS that Libby lied to agents, but as is usual FBI practice, no recording of the interview was made, only a Form 302, completed by one of the interviewing agents from memory and notes, and NOT PROVIDED TO THE INTERVIEWEE for verification.

Trump was right: given the abysmal recent performance of the FBI in relation to honesty and integrity, Libby's conviction was most definitely unsound.

No comments: