Mueller

The D.C. Boomerang

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Have you ever thrown a boomerang?  Rumor has it that if you throw it just right it’ll come back to you.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election it now looks like one may have been thrown so hard and far on Capitol Hill that it’s just now making its way back to its rightful owner.

You remember back then Donald Trump, labeled Putin’s puppet by a few Democrats, was accused of colluding with the Russians to tilt the election in his favor.  And, quickly, right after Jeff Sessions recused himself as Attorney General, the Russia collusion investigation took flight.

On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters.  The “and related matters” language is like having a blank check.  You can wander into a lot of file cabinets, subpoenas, and personal computing devices when you are investigating “related matters.”

And the investigation did wander as it wondered.  It wandered for 22 months.  We learned that “Crossfire Hurricane” was the code name for the FBI investigation into the Russian interference.    We learned that Michael Cohen didn’t pay his taxes.  He’s in jail now.  We even learned about porn star Stormy Daniels.  Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was famous for fifteen minutes, too.  He’s in jail now as well.  He faces numerous counts of fraud and extortion.  That’s how far the investigation wandered as part of that “related matters” opportunity it was afforded.

House Judicial Committee leader Adam Schiff appeared on CNN, Meet the Depressed, and MSNBC roughly 201 times stating “we now have direct evidence linking Trump to the Russians.”   CNN, Meet the Depressed, and MSNBC commentators then repeated roughly 2001 times “there is direct evidence linking Trump to the Russians.”  It’s what all well-trained parrots do.

Only, there was no direct evidence.  After a bevy of witnesses paraded before Shiff and his minions, Robert Mueller himself appeared and told them himself that there was no link.  Well, he really said, “that is beyond my purview” roughly 20,001 times, but we digress.  And, poof went the two-year waste of time and money balloon.

And with that, the Ukraine phone call took center stage.

So whatever happened to that pesky Russian collusion problem?  It looks like the boomerang turned for home yesterday.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified documents revealing that former CIA Director John Brennan had briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia — as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”  Whoopsie do!

The “foreign policy adviser” who allegedly proposed “vilify[ing] Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services “was Jake Sullivan, now a top Biden aide.” Hillary OK’d his proposal on July 26, 2016, just days before the FBI opened the probe.  Whoopsie do do!

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-OH) tweeted Tuesday: “We now know that John Brennan and Hillary Clinton conjured up the phony Russian hoax with the Obama/Biden Administration to distract Americans from the Clinton email scandal. The witch hunt was worse than we ever thought!”

And with that, the boomerang is rapidly heading back to those who originally launched it perhaps.

A wise man opined years ago that if you want to know what one side is doing listen to what they are accusing the other side of doing and you’ll know.  He was right.

It’s about power.  It’s always about power.  So, what becomes of all of this power grab sabotage?  That answer likely depends on who assumes power in the White House and on Capitol Hill in January.

After all, not all boomerangs are made to return.  Some are used for (witch) hunting.

 

 

 

 

 

Phone A Friend

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Twenty years and 363 shows and counting Who Wants to be a Millionaire? keeps on putting out content that keeps viewers wanting more.  It’s won 7 daytime Emmy’s and is ranked as the sixth most popular game show in viewership in TV history.

Falling just shy of that is boomboomsroom.com (BBR).  It’s getting close to one year on Al Gore’s internet and is now over 275 posts.  We’ve won no awards and aren’t ranked on any list of popular websites.  YET!

Our reader feedback has been way more good than bad while still in our infancy.  We are learning every day and hopefully in your eyes getting better every day.  We feel like our content has now earned us the right to grow our readership.  And, we are politely asking for your help to do so.

If you think a friend, biz associate, or family member would like to read what we write please invite them to join our small, but growing community.   It’s quite easy of course.  You can send them a link, and tell them that we post most every Monday thru Friday.  Or, you could ask them to subscribe as you might have at the bottom of the home page.  Or, if they agree, you could just send us their preferred email (easy peasy) and we’ll handle the rest ASAP.  Some of you have done this more than a few times and we are grateful.

Remember, it’s just an email a day to them at 9 AM CST only on days that we have new content.  It’s free to subscribe/read, has no ads, and no spam.

And, most importantly, the website is far safer than our Russian interfered with election process.  Ask Mueller.  Never mind.

So please do two things for us.  One, phone (or text) a friend or ten and get them on board with us.  And, two, have a super weekend.

 

 

Ya Gotta Believe!

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Back when the 1973 New York Mets, aka “The Amazins,”  were making their very improbable run all the way to the World Series, team member Tug McGraw coined a phrase.    It was “Ya Gotta Believe.”  And believe the Mets did, going from last place in their division on a very late in the season August 30th all the way to a 4 games to 3 World Series loss to the Oakland A’s.  Tug’s tug on his teammates passion to unite behind a cause was a winning formula.

So too it is in politics.  Tell people something enough and eventually they will accept it as the truth and a way of life and unite behind a cause.  Just a few months back, and several hundred billions less in debt, the US Senate held a hearing to either approve or reject Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.  Quickly Christine Blasey Ford became the centerpiece of the effort to block his confirmation.  She claimed a then teen Kavanaugh about 30 odd years ago  attempted to rape her at a party.  Where?  She didn’t know where.  When? She didn’t know when.  Her friend that she said was with her at the party said she wasn’t.

It mattered not.  You gotta believe her some said.  Kamala Harris, Democratic Senator on the Confirmation Committee said she did. She is now a candidate for President.  Others did too.   Hawaii Senator Hirono went so far as to state that Ford needed to believed, she believed Ford, and that men needed to shut up.  This was before the testimony to reveal any credible evidence.  You know, everyone is guilty if they are on the wrong side of the argument until proven innocent.  When the hearings concluded, the unconvinced of guilt lefties felt like yet another “victim,” who just came forward, needed to be heard.  She was represented by the honorable, but now indicted for attempted bribery of nike, Michael Avenatti.  Nothing credible came of that either.   Shocker.  Another delay.

Eventually Kavanaugh was confirmed.  But, that was only after the delay and the narrative could be heard and heard and heard.  After all, what better free advertising for the party attempting to regain control of both houses in 2018?

Enter the Trump Collusion Mueller Investigation.  Enter Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee (House and the word Intelligence together, like politicians, make strange bedfellows).  Pencil Neck, as someone calls him, claims to have evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians.  Twenty-three months of Mueller, his cadre of lawyers, investigators, over 500 subpoenas and over one million pages of info requests of Trump’s team later, we have the Attorney General Robert Barr echoing Mueller that there was no collusion.  And, Mueller stated no legal reason to think Trump obstructed justice.  Barr said, too, that it fails to meet the legal bar for it.

Harry Reid said that he had evidence that Mitt Romney cheated on his income taxes.  Give em hell Harry.  No evidence yet.  None ever coming.

“We need Mueller to testify before the Oversight Committee,” comes the cry.  “Surely there is more to this,” comes the cry.  “What’ll we do with all of these pitchforks and lanterns,” comes the cry.

We now have government officials asking for government officials to interview under oath a government appointed special prosecutor who investigated the executive branch of our government for two years and came to no legal wrongdoings.  Ya Gotta Believe says Adam and others.  Adam, show us your evidence.  It was your civic duty, not political hay to make, 23 months ago.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative it seems. Oh, and if we can keep this up till, say, 2020, we can use this cloud hanging over Trump to beat Trump, can’t we?

Seems like one party would rather try to win running on what the other party did wrong (ya gotta believe) rather than what that party did itself right.  Right?  Wrong?  The American citizens lose either way.