Thursday, May 11, 2017

Amid a lengthy series of Comey stuff, what stands out to you? [UPDATED]

It is an AP feed carried locally in Minnesota by Strib. It is as if Crabgrass could feature a sidebar poll, items by timestamp, which rings your bell? For me, this resonates:

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11:12 a.m.

Vice President Mike Pence is defending the firing of FBI Director James Comey, saying the "president made the right decision at the right time." He said Comey's firing was not related to the investigation into possible contacts between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.

Pence says the administration is now looking forward to finding someone to lead the law enforcement agency.

President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, criticized Comey's handling of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices.

Pence says Comey had lost the confidence of the American people. He says Trump took "strong and decisive leadership" to put the safety and security of the American people first.

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From the guy who'd told the world Mike Flynn had no contact with Russians. Then said he was lied to. Deja vu?

________________UPDATE________________
YouTube is abuzz. Pence, here, here and here.

Is this the guy that made Pence so firm in the beliefs of "storng and decisive leadership" as Pence told the press? And as to Pence's "will restore the confidence of the American people in the FBI," are you ready . . .

On that last YouTube, you can cut to the chase; about 4:30 - 5:00 for the preamble and then the bomb drop. Also, this.

I'd have more confidence in a rattlesnake. It rattles.

The guy's a partisan hack who chaired and led the Get-Hillary witch hunt. Would that guy in any way restore any confidence you might have lost by Comey pushing to get more funding support so the FBI could continue and then conclude the Russian influence investigation?

_____________FURTHER UPDATE______________
Those Pence YouTube videos were tedious watching once so once is enough and this update is based on recall. Pence said that it was only after recently confirmed second guy at the AG issued a report that Trump decided to fire Comey. Trump says he'd have fired him anyway, the report/memo from the second guy at the AG being, thus, irrelevant. But -

Pence was lied to. Again. What is it about Pence that he gets lied to so frequently? Is he plain gullible? Or is it he's such a ramrod dork folks just enjoy lying to him because he's there?

Also recall says Pence said the FBI staff had lost faith in Comey, and that's been called false by the acting FBI head. Is he going to be fired next, for contradicting Pence?

Not just recall, this AP link:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he would have fired FBI Director James Comey even without the recommendation from his top political appointees at the Justice Department, contradicting earlier White House accounts.

[...] “I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said in an interview with NBC. The White House and Vice President Mike Pence have said the president acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

“Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments came amid increased criticism of the White House’s evolving explanation of the firing.

In public testimony Thursday, the acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe, contradicted White House statements about why Comey was dismissed, particularly the assertion that Comey had lost the confidence of the rank and file of the FBI.

“That is not accurate,” McCabe said in response to a senator’s question. “I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.”

In the NBC interview, Trump repeated his assertion that Comey three times assured him he was not under investigation.

[...] McCabe called the Russia investigation “highly significant” — another contradiction of the White House portrayal — and assured senators Comey’s firing will not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

“You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing,” he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

So just don't listen to or believe a single thing Pence says or is quoted to have said. The man just gets lied to all the time so he's clueless and his analyses worthless. Gianforte probably will lie to him in Montana. He's a lie magnet.

______________FURTHER UPDATE______________
This post embeds two minutes from MSNBC Morning Joe, about Pence what he told the public, prior knowledge to the contrary.

Review those Pence video segments; then read this. A Twitter thread; some judge harshly.

We know Pence recanted public statements about Flynn, the story being he did not deliberately tell a lie but that he was lied to. Now this.

Each instance, what did Mike Pence know and when did he know it?

Separate from Pence in front of cameras saying what he said; Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has a good idea of how a clearly impartial special prosecutor could be appointed, and urges the nation to push for it ASAP.

BOTTOM LINE: Mike Pence is not presidential material. There is the fly on the wall wish, back when Trump made the decision to go with Mike Pence. What was he thinking? Who was influencing the decision? Who might have been chosen, if not Pence?

Wouldn't you like to have been there, hearing the discourse?

And then that early logo? It could have been a hoot to have been in design conferences.

____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
More on Pence unfitness for the job. This link, revisited.

https://www.creationtruth.org/about/
Pence is heading to Montana to dip his oar into things there, in support of the Republican money-bag candidate who funded a creationist museum.

While the Montana candidate's motives are non-public, one might be correct in inferring a Dominionist intent. When you have to guess you weigh uncertain probabilities and possibilities in your mind. My guess is a Dominionist candidate is being offered Montana. Clearly, guesses can be wrong, but guesses also can be correct. My further guess is a Dominionist is traveling there to assist as he sees feasible, The Dominion being imposed upon our nation despite the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment. A traveling Dominionist with a looseness with the truth. The visit by Pence there should be interesting.

How do you read the tea leaves?

[Note, anti-establishment is my attitude, non-establishment is the Constitutional clause. I miswrote.]

_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
The Republican candidate's simple public explanation, he is religious and wishes to present a different view from the regularly accepted evolution explanations of the fossil record. It is only fair to state that.

After checking a few items the above linked search returned, a Great Falls Tribune report seems analytical in coverage, without being judgmental - with clear descriptive opening and ongoing reporting, not editorializing:

Among the foundational ideas of the Glendive museum:

•The Bible is an accurate, literal history of the world. The world is about 6,000-6,400 years old and a six-day divine creation.

•The flood of the Bible’s book of Genesis, the Noah’s Ark flood, split the continents apart with water called from the deep and set off a worldwide cataclysm that buried the creatures that would become fossils in one mass event. The long flood, ensuing volcanic eruptions and an ice age radically changed the planet.

•Dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. Dinosaurs were on the ark.

•Life can not be traced back as branches to a trunk. God created “kinds,” like dog kind from whence sprung dogs, wolves, coyotes. Humans and primates don’t come from the same “kind.” Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon and humans are all of “humankind,” which came from Adam and Eve.

An experienced tour guide, Robert Canen, vice president of administration, presented the debate between evolution and creationism as similar to a court case, where two parties are giving a different interpretation of the same evidence.

“We want you to look through a different lens. Does the fossil record fit a long record, millions or billions of years, or a more recent catastrophe?” he said to those on a tour this spring.

The tour begins with a tyrannosaurus skull and a Bible verse, Job 12:7-10 (“..ask the animals, and they will teach...”).

Visitors walk over a glass bridge above a re-created sea floor and then into a blue chamber of huge underwater creatures.

[... Museum guide] Canen described where the fossils were found, the center of continents and the tops of mountains among locations. The textbook explanation is a gradual rise of mountains from what was sea floor. The museum’s version is God calling up waters of the deep, setting off tsunamis and flooding and depositing marine life in a widespread way.

[...] The Bible also accounts for the size of the specimen in the collection, Canen said. Yes, the science points to more oxygen in the atmosphere then, but think of Methuselah, whom the Bible pegs at 969 years old when he died. If people lived 10 times longer than they do now, apply that factor of 10 to animals.

Also, a bit of Cowgirl levity. With a serious skeptical comment thread.

Yet the worry is serious, and to me all that bundle of stuff is the main reason I would prefer to not see the Republican candidate win the Montana Special Congressional Election.

Were I there and having a vote, Quist is the man!


Also, at a guess Quist would be exceptionally good in Congress on bank regulation and consumer lending practices reform and regulation. He's experienced. One could say, "The Quists in the course of things, have been 'experienced over the rocks' by neglectful or willfully indifferent bank service." Throw in title companies possibly practicing law; preparing binding real property transaction documents in a way that begs for relief.

____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
In proof reading you look for typos, sentence fragments, tense or singular-plural confusions; etc. Awkward or unclear writing.

So you focus on detail and not the large picture.

Thus, after doing last updating and looking over the post as a whole, only then was the parallelism of images in the post noticed. It was not intentional. But I like it.

____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Who is scripting this stuff? Already quoted, this, and from the above excerpt, this part:

“I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said in an interview with NBC. The White House and Vice President Mike Pence have said the president acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Then, e.g., LA Times, saying:

In any case, the decision to fire the FBI director was all Trump's, as he made clear in the letter by which he fired him.

But the White House wanted to make it look like Rosenstein’s choice, [...]

The White House pointed to the long memo Rosenstein wrote laying out Comey’s failings: [...]

Here’s the curious thing about Rosenstein’s memo, though: It never actually recommends that Comey should be sacked.

It comes pretty close. “Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected” to fix the FBI’s problems, it says. But Rosenstein never explicitly states that Comey needs to go.

That has led some of Rosenstein’s admirers in both parties to argue that the deputy attorney general was played – that he was used by Trump and Sessions to justify a decision they had already been made.

That first quote, "the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein." It's the guy's name, and the pairing, but in the scripting you have to think about, "Get me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," or however that opening quote went; then later a letter and not a memo fostering the undoing of the pair from how they were used.