Lobenthal.com

Trump’s shrieking about (non-exisitant) vote-rigging, voter fraud was a cover for the GOP’s latest election manipulation. And they had in their pocket the lying, hypocritical, partisan scoundrel James Comey.

Of course he thought it was too close to the election to bring up foreign intervention in our election; it might have hurt Trump’s chances!

Digby saw it coming:

“Liberals who lived through the ’90s and the endless Whitewater probe that went nowhere met President Obama’s appointment of James Comey as director of the FBI with a primal scream of  ‘Are you kidding me?'”

In reality–that is, exactly diametric to the “mainstream” “news” media’s portrayal of him, he’s got a very bad record. “A civil liberties hero he is not.”

I watched in horror in 2000 as  the Democrats went like lambs to the slaughter into electoral oblivion, permitting the Republicans to orchestrate a judicial coup d’etat. Nary a bleat was heard from them.

Does Reid’s letter to Comey indicate that the Dems have finally understood that the current GOP is a radical, lawless, and seditious organization?

Evidence is now emerging of coordination between Comey and Congressman Jason Chaffetz, the people’s representative who wastes millions of the people’s money on bogus investigations of Hillary Clinton–and has promised to waste millions more if she is elected.

A senior Democratic Congressional aide informed Shareblue that:

“Democratic Ranking Members on the relevant committees didn’t receive Comey’s letter until after the Republican Chairmen. In fact, the Democratic Ranking Members didn’t receive it until after the the Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz, tweeted it out and made it public.”

Update: Comey and Chaffetz accomplished what they meant to: Trump is way up in Florida. As the Russians say, “Krisha Paikala”–the roof is gone. This is what we have allowed our politics to become.

It may forestall Comey being indicted. He is charged, correctly with violating the Hatch Act in a complaint filed with the Department of Justice by The Democratic Coalition Against Trump. Eric Stetson at Daily Kos tells you what you need to know.

Comey has done his best to throw the election to Trump. There’s almost nothing more he could have done.  And he may well have succeeded. Hillary has come back thumping, cried Foul, as loud as she could, but at bottom the fact remains: in power or not, the GOP run the show, or rather run the crony-capitalist table that the country has turned into.

Decades of capitulation, appeasement, collusion by the Democrats have returned to bite them in the butt over and over again.

Comey may rank up there with Geithner. Comey has broken FBI precedent and protocol over and over again when it comes to the matter of one Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is either/or/both completely incompetent as well as unethical.

This particular fiasco was born of Obama’s desperate, unrelenting fixation on appearing non-partisan, on somehow winning love from the opposition. It really seems like to him that is the supreme accomplishment–and the fact that it is simply an impossibility makes the exercise in futility all the more lamentable, all the more destructive.

Needless to say, Comey is a Republican.

Obama’s make-love-not-war on the Republicans has been calamitous to our country and to the Democratic Party, as well as his presidency itself.  In his final State of the Union address, he actually apologized for not being able to change the political rancor in Washington.  He remains in some kind of denial about what the GOP has become. And then there was his paean to the goodness of GW Bush.

Hillary and her people also do not get it–remember that staffer quoted as saying she would govern in a totally non-partisan fashion.

If Comey’s violation of duty doesn’t change her mind, truly nothing can. But I would not be surprised if she retains him–if she does get elected–  just to prove how non-partisan and impartial she is. Yes, theoretically he is in for six years [sorry, ten altogether], but he has disgraced the agency and could easily be fired for cause.

If Comey has one drop of integrity remaining, he will immediately resign. I mean like now, Saturday.

You know, it really does seem sometimes as though the only commentators allowed to opine on world affairs in the “mainstream” media just happen to be foaming-at-the-mouth militarists.

But that couldn’t really be, could it?

And yet Belén Fernández at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) describes how the “Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for ‘Humanitarian’ War in Syria.”

Ooh, I wonder where she’s coming from. . .

Turns out, Behrman’s End of Summer plays even better than it reads!

On stage at the Metropolitan, it plays like a masterpiece of American self-portrait: a reflection on the American dilemma, the American dialectic.

I went to see it with John Metcalfe, antique clock restorer of legendary repute. He said that you almost don’t want to take time to laugh at the lines, many of which are funny, because you just can’t wait to hear the next one.

Behrman learned from Shaw and Chekhov and created a uniquely American drawing-room comedy of ideas, in which the Puritans, the robber barons, the lefties, the Fascists and more–as well as the people who just don’t know what to think of it all- are anatomized, typified, individualized.

Highly recommended.

It was pathetic to see the establishment environmental organizations roll over for Obama by falling under the siren song of “access.” Yes, they got in to see the Chief, but no, their goals were in no way vigorously supported by Obama.  So they got played. Once again.

Clinton’s scene will be a whole different kettle of fish, since she’s already revealed her hand–or rather, Wikileaks revealed it for her. Her contempt for environmentalists is another sign that SHE JUST DOESN’T GET IT. How can she not realize the climate hazards her grandchildren are going to have to face? Do people over 65 just stop being able to internalize shifting external realities?

(Boilerplate avowal: Trump is a deranged demagogue who will pillage this country and yes, I’ll vote for Clinton over him any day of the week.)

Access is irrelevant. What works is keeping the pressure on.

2000 might as well be the Ice Age given the instant amnesia of the”mainstream” media, but Heather Digby Parton at Salon, on the other hand, reminds us of the GOP’s long history of election thievery and voter suppression–continuing right up the present.

But of course the best deflection is a good offense! The GOP knows exactly how to harness the power of projection. What Trump is really doing is laying a pre-emptive defense that will serve to vanquish–at least in the court of public opinion–resistance to the voter suppression, intimidation and perhaps downright voting fraud he is undoubtedly planning. As the Supreme Court debacle also demonstrates, we are now dealing with a scofflaw political organization called the Republican Party.