2017 Mar 7^th & 8^th

For those of you who follow this blog, you need to know that the absence of yesterday’s entry was the result of a power outage followed by a computer glitch. That was yesterday; today we’re back.

The column by Patrick J. Buchanan today is titled, “Beltway conspiracy to break Trump.” Buchanan writes, “At its heart is the deep state—agents of the intelligence community, and their media collaborators, and their Amen corner in a Democratic party whose control of our permanent government is all but total.”

Does the man hide under a rock? This Democratic Party controls a government where the senate has a Republican majority, albeit slim; the house has a substantial Republican majority; the President was elected as a Republican; SCOTUS, with its new appointee, will be conservative. Trump’s Republican cabinet appointees are well on their way to demolishing the organizations they are supposed to oversee.  Still, Buchanan writes that “Democratic control of permanent government is all but total.”

Buchanan claims that, “What appears to be a big lie…that Russian intelligence officials…hacked the DNC…to systematically sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Therefore Trump stole the election and is an illegitimate president.” Most people who have some credibility on this issue agree that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome of the election. Speaking of attempting to delegitimize an election, Trump’s attempts to push the birther issue and claim that Obama was not a legitimate president maintains its position as tops in the absurdist contest. (Unless we count Trump’s Trump Tower phone hacking claim.)

Buchanan claims that reporters don’t have to testify under oath or “…be prosecuted to undermine the elected commander-in-chief.” This sounds like Buchanan believes that criticizing the president “undermining the elected commander-in-chief” should be a criminal offense. What does he think Trump tried to do with all that birther nonsense?

Buchanan tells us, “…Intelligence officials got a warrant to surveil Trump campaign officials or the Trump Tower, and. though failing to succeed in the FISA court in October, they did they did succeed in June.”  Predictably, Buchanan insists that this should be followed up by an investigation into whether any Trump campaign officials criminally colluded with the Russians. That’s obvious, but he goes on to insist that Comey identify, “…any FBI or intel agent who has leaked the fruits of their investigation, or fake-news, to the media.” This reflects Trump’s obsession with leaks.

Buchanan says nothing about the number of connections between the Trump campaign members  paid for various performances in Russia, or the very curious insistence by Trump that the Republican Party Platform completely scrub the plank recommending arms for Ukraine. That brazen pro-Russian action would have had any reputable intelligence professional alerted. All of these pro-Russian activities are supposed to be a way to reset our relationships with Russia. Sure they are!

The MI-6 agent, Christopher Steele, who produced the scandalous dossier on Trump is out of hiding. Stele claims he surfaced because Comey refused to follow up on the dossier about Trump and continued his assault on Hillary Clinton. There is certainly ample evidence that Comey did everything he could to push the election win away from Hillary Clinton. He released the fact that he was reexamining her emails before the election and then just before the vote claimed he had found nothing new; very obvious, but not very clever. No wonder Christopher Steele believes Comey’s credibility is gone and that he will have to push what he found out about Trump without help from the FBI.

As it happens, more and more of Steele’s work checks out; poor Donald, it looks like he’s out of his league. Isn’t that a surprise?