Progressive-Democrats, Drugs, and Nuclear Weapons

It’s a long read, but Politico‘s piece is worth the time.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

Project Cassandra was making serious headway against Hezbollah’s drug dealing and money making—a $1 billion per year business that would seem to dwarf its terrorist activities—but as ex-President Barack Obama (D) and his (ex-)Secretary of State John Kerry got closer and closer to concluding Obama’s Executive Agreement with Iran that put a fig leaf over Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Cassandra was increasingly restricted.  David Asher, a DoD finance forensics analyst who helped establish Project Cassandra:

The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away.  So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations—even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission—it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.

And here is the confession of all of that by Obama administration personnel who are figuratively hiding their faces so as not to be identified and called to account:

Former Obama administration officials declined to comment on individual cases, but noted that the State Department condemned the Czech decision not to hand over Fayad.

Because ObamaTalk always was so effective at changing the behavior of our nation’s enemies.

And

Several of them, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were guided by broader policy objectives, including de-escalating the conflict with Iran, curbing its nuclear weapons program and freeing at least four American prisoners held by Tehran, and that some law enforcement efforts were undoubtedly constrained by those concerns.

There it is.  Curbing the drug trade, cutting Hezbollah off from its major source of money were not as important as that administration’s public appearances regarding peace in our time with Iran.  What else was less important than appearances?

…insight into not only drug trafficking and other criminal activity worldwide, but also into Hezbollah’s illicit conspiracies with top officials in the Iranian, Syrian, Venezuelan, and Russian governments—all the way up to presidents Nicolas Maduro, Assad, and Putin….

And more directly, getting at “the Ghost,” Abdallah Safieddine, Hezbollah’s longtime envoy to Iran who was—and still is, courtesy of these decisions

a major supplier of conventional and chemical weapons for use by Syrian President Bashar Assad against his people.

All bought and paid for with the proceeds from that drug trade.  Al Assad gassing his own people, after all, just wasn’t that important.  All enriching Hezbollah, too, and funding its own weapons inventory and increasing its threat to Israel.  Notice, too, that drug trade connection to Iran, with whom Obama and his Kerry were so desperate to conclude a deal with which they could pretend to look good in the eyes of the American Left.

There’s lots more in the Politico piece.

It’s hard to believe that the Progressive-Democrats in Congress at the time, at the very least the Party’s leadership, didn’t also know about this preference for an enemy’s—a terrorist organization’s—prosperous drug trade.

This is the set of priorities, the level of morality, that the Progressive-Democratic Party will have on offer in the 2018 mid-terms, the 2020 general election—imagine another Progressive-Democrat President—and beyond.

Wrong or Incompetent?

Howard Kurtz had a piece up this week decrying the NLMSM’s performance with its “reporting.”

With one blunder after another over the last 10 days, the press is on a losing streak that is starting to take a toll on its collective credibility.

In two cases of…error…the pseudo-reporters got dates critically wrong.  One involved a claim, confirmed by two other “news” outlets, that Donald Trump, Jr, had received a decryption key to some collusion-related, Wikileaks-held emails prior to their release.

But the collusion allegation collapsed when it turned out the email was actually sent 10 days later, when the hacked DNC material had already been made public.

Another outlet suspended its star reporter (notice that: they didn’t fire him) over another missed date.

His original report said Trump had ordered Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians during the campaign, which suggests collusion. But Trump actually directed Flynn to do so during the transition, as president-elect, when such diplomatic outreach would be routine….

Both of those instances relied on carefully anonymous sources, and in both of those cases the imitation reporters knew through their own sources that those dates were at best suspect and likely wrong.

The press’ losing streak is “starting to take a toll on its collective credibility?”  No, the press has had no credibility for a very long time; the current losing streak is only corroborating that.

Kurtz’ problem in assessing all of this is that he’s a man who knows no other business than what passes for modern journalism.  He’s been steeped in an industry that used have a simple, fundamental requirement: that the use of anonymous sources had to have, in the same article, corroboration by at least two on-the-record sources.  Instead, Kurtz’ business has made the conscious decision to walk away from that standard and, instead, to rely solely on carefully unidentified, deliberately anonymous sources.  As a result, we readers cannot assess the reliability of the sources and so of the articles; we cannot even determine whether those sources exist or the claims made are just manufactured rumors.

Wrong or incompetent, Trump asks in one of his ubiquitous tweets.  I say dishonest.  And Kurtz, raised as he’s been in a whorehouse, knows no other and is unable to see either the amorality or the dishonesty of his fellow residents.

When I Get Around to It

Senator Al Franken (D, MN) announced on the Senate floor—where, among other things, nothing he said would be actionable in a court of law—that he would resign from the Senate as a result of the plethora of women’s accusations of him sexually abusing and assaulting them.

When will he resign?  When he feels like it (my words).  In the coming weeks (his words).

Franken also said he appreciated the

irony that I am leaving while a man who bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who preyed on young girls runs for Senate with the full support of his party

With a couple minor details that give the lie to everything Franken says.  We have hard evidence of Franken’s assaults, and we have his confessions, and we have in his own words what he thinks about his own apologies.  What we have on Franken’s tape is Trump’s bragging about the ability to assault women, not about any actual assaults.  Franken knows this.  Franken also knows full well that Ray Moore, the candidate he was afraid to name, has been accused, but there’s no evidence of wrong-doing—only the unseemliness of a 30-year-old man dating teenaged girls, after first asking and receiving the parents’ permission.

The Progressive-Democratic Party members of the Senate (and of the House, come to that) know this, full well, too.  We’ll see in short order how soon or far away that Party’s leadership thinks “in the coming weeks” should really be.

Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea and Credibility

Judge Andrew Napolitano has suggested that Michael Flynn’s (late of the Trump administration and a retired general officer) guilty plea for Special Counselor Robert Mueller could lead to a Constitutional crisis by threatening criminal charges against President Donald trump.  Douglas Schoen has suggested that Flynn’s guilty plea should be cause for worry by the Trump administration.

However.

Flynn faced a multiplicity of charges that, if convicted on them, would have put him in jail for decades.  He pleaded guilty, instead, to a simple charge of lying to the FBI, and he faces months in jail from that (even less if he’s well-behaved in jail).

So: Flynn is a confessed liar (and with that he has badly stained the Army’s uniform that he had previously worn with such distinction).  He has sold his testimony (if not his soul) to the highest bidder.

Based on either of those huge failures alone, much less on the two taken together, how would it be possible for any judge or jury to take anything Flynn might say seriously?  How, even, could charges made that are based on anything Flynn might say from now on not be tossed out of hand?  How, even, could probable cause be shown for any warrants, if the claims are based on anything Flynn might say?

Flynn has less than zero credibility.

The VA Continues to Fail

…as it continues to exist.  This time, its failure is in not reporting “90% of potentially dangerous medical providers.”

Based on a sampling of 148 providers at five unidentified VA hospitals who required review, officials had only reported nine health care workers since 2014, and none had been reported to state licensing boards.

Never mind that

the VA is required to report providers to a national database designed to prevent them from crossing state lines and endangering other patients.

The GAO says in its report on this failure that much of the failure stems from “confusion” about VA responsibilities and reporting requirements.

Does any reader want to look at some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that I might know about?

VA management wasn’t confused.  They just don’t care.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.