Grilling the FBI agent

Peter Strzok is the reviled FBI agent to wrote all sorts of nasty texts about Trump using his official FBI phone. The texts were sent to an FBI colleague with whom he was having an affair, an interesting bit of spice but oh-so-common among Congressman, presidents, and assorted Washington folk.

Supposedly Strzok may have been in deep with the deep state that concocted the Russian interference hoax as part of a planned coup. That's according to the far-right conspiracy theorists, who really seem to believe this. (Sources 1, 2, 3.) And Fox News got heavily involved, showing that it isn't much different from the far-right conspiracy theorists. Everyone is now Alex Jones school-shootings-are-staged crazy.

This past Thursday, members of the House grilled Peter Strzok. It was a circus, with too many insane moments for complete discussion here. I'll pull out a couple bits I found significant.

Trey Gowdy, a one-man Jekyll-and-Hyde combo who can't decide whether to go full honest or full partisan, decided to grill Strzok about this text complaining about what an idiot Trump is. For some reason, Gowdy wants to take these off-hand texts as completely serious. (Scroll down here for the testimony.) Absurdly, he questions Strzok on what he meant when Strzok wrote the Clinton should win 100 million to zero. He refused to accept the answer that it was hyperbole, despite that it obviously was hyperbole. How does that make sense? How is that constructive at all as questioning?

Gowdy seems to have a special hatred for Strzok. Does Gowdy not know how people talk about Trump, and how Strzok is fairly representative? On the other hand, Gowdy can be realistic, like supporting the Mueller investigation and pointing out that there is no rationale for impeaching Rosenstein. This is a head-scratcher, but that's how Gowdy has been for a long time.

Stranger still...

Much more puzzling was Louie Gohmert's questioning. Gohmert appeared to be reading notes about the Inspector General for the intelligence community (ICIG) sending an investigator to verbally tell Strzok that Clinton's server had been hacked, something strange (an anomaly) installed, and emails copied and sent to a foreign account. Strzok remembered meeting with the investigator, but nothing else. Gohmert in incensed. How could such a finding be ignored by the FBI? Well, that's a good question. No one other than Gohmert seems to have information about this accusation. I have to wonder, was there a written report? Who was it sent to? Why didn't Horowitz, the Inspector General for the DOJ, mention it? And wasn't Hillary's server stored in some facility and wiped? How would an investigator find 'an anomaly' on it if that's true?

Gohmert seems to be the only person telling this story, which is a bit bizarre. I have to wonder if Gohmert got punked with a fabricated story using a few actual details, like the name of the IC Inspector General. So far, no reporters have followed up. But it can't be hard to call up the IC Inspector General and ask him about the server. I hope I get to read about it. It would be delicious if my theory was confirmed. I'll have to eat dirt if I'm completely wrong and there is an inspector's report to that effect.

Strzok's look of defiance

Image: 4videogames.com

February links

Good news for Dems. A court ruled that Pennsylvania was gerrymandered to benefit Republicans illegally. Therefore, when the new district lines are redrawn, the Dems may pick up several easy wins.

Do nothing Congress. A poli-sci professor reads the signs and predicts that Congress won't do much this year. Congress probably won't pass a budget resolution and therefore can't use reconciliation to pass bills with only 51 votes in the Senate.

Vain hope on immigration. This item was more meaningful before the Senate failed to pass any immigration deal today. In the House, a group of 48 reps are trying to reach an immigration agreement.

The story behind the Clinton's email server. A reporter read all the notes about the email server, and shares what he learned. Clinton was weird and backward when it came to using electronics, and that was the main consideration--how to kludge up something she could use. That is so sad. For the info, skip down to 'Act One.'

Trump's budget. Good graphics. I have to check more, such as the highly important question of the projected deficit.

Image: deadline.com

More links - even more interesting

Unmasking unmasking. Republicans are trying to shift the attention on Russian election interference to the unmasking of names in intelligence documents. It turns out that the House Intelligence Committee asked for some unmasking itself. Perhaps unmasking names isn't as bad as they're pretending it is.

Clinton Emails. I had an argument with another Bloomberg commenter on whether we should assume Hillary's server was hacked, even in the absence of leaks of her emails. The commenter provided a link to a video clip of a former intelligence officials saying that he'd have no respect for foreign intelligence agencies if they hadn't hacked her emails. (Sorry, I can't find the link. It was a respectable news channel.) I don't think this is compelling enough evidence to say the realistic people must assume her emails were hacked. Fox News (not a respectable organization) claimed that it received info about known hacks. But I guess they backed down on that. This New York Times article discusses some reasons to strongly suspect it happened.

But a final bit of speculation: it was a very close election. If foreign intelligence agencies has hacked her server and had emails, and didn't want to see Clinton as president, isn't it likely that they would have leaked the emails before the election? Consider whether some not-so-Clinton-friendly countries like Russia, Israel, or Saudi Arabia had those emails. Would they not have tried to tip the election? If indeed she'd been hacked, I'm rather surprised that information hasn't clearly surfaced.

Trump is trying to hire... but will people serve? That's a good question tackled by this must-read article. There's a telling anecdote of an interview for a high position.

Unwarranted suspicion. The investigation of contacts between Trump advisers and Russians was started because of malice on the part of John Brennan, the former CIA director. The investigation was totally fake. Don't you believe me????? (I often don't believe the Washington Times.)

Trump war room. With Trump's return from his first foreign visits, he may be setting up a war room to fight back against the mounting Russia news blizzard. How they might fight back: Deny Russian contacts happened. Then claim what did happen is perfectly fine. Or get the supposedly recused chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to jump back in and run interference again. Or coordinate/non-coordinate with a group to run commercials attacking former FBI directory Comey.

Unfortunately, I doubt that they'll decide to be transparent on all Russia contacts. Cover-up and obfuscation seem to be the go-to strategies of politicians -- see Hillary and her email server. Also, a very readable speculation on Trump's mood and how it permeates everything.

Impeachment. A conservative gets that impeachment would be a fiasco. For the record, I don't see impeachment happening, due to the prez being a Republican and Republican control of the House. Duh! How the hell would it happen?

Don't cry for Robert E. Lee. The Atlantic has an illuminating article on the myth of Lee versus the reality. He wasn't exactly the reluctant defender of slavery. A good read as statues are being removed.

Paris climate accords. Trump, true to his rhetoric, pulled the US out of the non-binding accords. The effect is to make the US look greedy and rather irresponsible, and everyone else look more like grown-ups. Go, team, go!

Signs of more instability in the Mideast? Several major Mideast countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. What's going on? Even more infighting in that region, it appears. There are Muslims fighting the West, Sunnis and Shia fighting, Kurds being suppressed, and maybe now Sunnis fighting other Sunnis. What a mess. Here's a reflection: perhaps Obama was partly successfully in controlling the chaos. But he's gone now, and Trump's policies will give rein to more chaos. Update 6/12/17. An article explaining the Qatar situation. Another good article. More updates 7/16/17. Report that the United Arab Emirates probably hacked Qatar and placed false information to start this action. Trump doesn't understand this and isn't listening to the smarter cabinet secretaries. Secret alliance documents. Interesting, but the news story is somewhat muddy. Analysis that the Saudis are overplaying their hand.

Former libertarian turns supporter of welfare state. I guess he stopped fighting the wave and started communing and learning how the wave thinks. The wave wants the welfare state that is embodied by Social Security and Medicare. However, most GOP lawmakers haven't read between the lines, or won't be saying out loud that entitlements have won, even in the GOP. Because of this, legislative paralysis wins.

How to get caught leaking. Interesting background on the first leaker arrested in the very leaky start of the Trump administration. Possibly memorable trivia, but maybe throw-away trivia.

Rhetoric games. A National Review columnist notices one of the most common rhetorical tricks: 'Hey, what about this [outrage/blunder/hypocrisy]?'

The Swamp

Image: tulane,edu

Why I don't care about Hillary's emails

A commenter on Bernstein says: "This is not about party politics silly but ABUSE OF POWER, something we all should be united against."

Well, maybe, kinda, sorta. Hillary probably wanted more control over her documents than the rules gave her, so she went the private email route, which supposedly other Sectaries of State took before her.

She also didn't want to relinquish that control when she left office, so she took her emails with her. When she had to turn some over, again she wanted control, so she sorted them and gave what she felt like giving. This is a bit high-handed of her, but certainly not more than most (or all?) presidents, which is the office she aspires to. And I haven't noticed that we turned a president out of office for not sharing all the information he should have.

That's long way of saying that she behaves like many of her peers. Which means that we have to question why she should be held to higher standard. Sure, I'd like her to follow a higher standard, but I'm not going to eliminate her from consideration as a presidential candidate over this.

Another funny idea is that, in this age of hacks of Sony, the IRS, etc. and hacks by Wikileaks, Manning, and Snowden, it's possible that Hillary did a better job protecting her emails than the State Department would have.

So, again, what am I supposed to be all angry about? She doesn't follow the government rules--I don't follow all of them either. She abuses her power--like so many in top posts, but is she significantly worse? If so, explain how. She didn't secure government secrets--well, she did it better than many other officials, you have to admit that.

I'm sorry, but this just isn't stoking my moral outrage very much. Can't Hillary just do something really, terribly, and clearly awful and unforgivable, like hiring an assassin to kill Jeb Bush, or giving our negotiating strategy to the Iranians, or going to Trump's underground wedding to three 16-year-olds? That would make it easier to summon some outrage.

Then I'd have to hope the Republicans didn't top it the next day...

Everyone looks worse under the microscope.

Image: legalinsurrection.com

Update 7/29/16. Well a lot has happened. The biggest is that the director of the FBI said that Hillary was extremely careless with classified documents, but not to the point that she can be prosecuted. GOPers are outraged that HRC isn't headed to prison. Curses, foiled again. What the FBI Director James Comey said in his statement and in his testimony to Congress.