Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
If you’re anything like me, you long ago concluded that politicians were a bunch of second-raters who’d do just about anything for a buck or a vote. But, you would tell yourself, you could have total faith in the folks in the intelligence community who had nothing on their minds but the safeguarding of America against her enemies, foreign and domestic.
If you’re anything like me, you long ago concluded that politicians were a bunch of second-raters who’d do just about anything for a buck or a vote. But, you would tell yourself, you could have total faith in the folks in the intelligence community who had nothing on their minds but the safeguarding of America against her enemies, foreign and domestic.
At some point, I suspect that was true. It is no longer.
At least when it comes to rotten politicians, we know who they are. Every two, four or six years, we can fire them. But those anonymous ciphers whose work is by its nature secretive can get away with just about anything, and that definitely includes murder.
In an article titled “The CIA’s Hacking Ability” by C. Mitchell Shaw in the New American, he lays out a case that proves that the CIA not only developed tools capable of hacking every major electronic device, but then proceeded to lose them.
We have all heard about Russia’s attempt to subvert the 2016 presidential election, just as we heard about some foreign nation — perhaps China or North Korea — hacking the computers of Sony Pictures, the State Department and the Pentagon, but it appears that American citizens may have more to fear from our own network of spies.
It was just a few years ago that we learned that the Obama administration engaged in hacking the computers at the Washington offices of the Associated Press, of Fox News reporter James Rosen and even the one belonging to his parents.
But even scarier is what happened to former CBS news correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who had made a name for herself over the years by ferreting out political scandals involving both Democrats and Republicans.
But in 2012, while working on an expose of the Obama administration’s part in the Benghazi attack that left four Americans, including an ambassador, dead, she heard a loud noise as her iMac’s fan began running at full speed, indicating that the processor was overheating. It grabbed her attention because the same thing had occurred a few days earlier with her Toshiba laptop at work.
When she took her machines to an expert, he discovered a piece of “commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency,” which he was able to narrow down to the CIA, the FBI, the DIA or the NSA. That was bad enough, but worse was that he also discovered the existence of three classified government documents, which could have led to Attkisson’s being charged under the Espionage Act.
Clearly, the Obama administration was looking to be in a position to have her arrested, indicted and charged if her investigation got too close to certain individuals.
The most terrifying aspect of the story isn’t that various government agencies have the power to access everything including your bank and medical records, but to set you up for criminal charges by concealing items inside your computer.
From this point on, if I ever hear about a school teacher or a basketball coach being discovered to have child porn on his computer, I will probably believe it’s true. But if it’s someone active in Republican politics or known to be a Trump supporter or a donor to the GOP, I’ll have to hear a confession with my own ears.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t that long ago that Obama turned the IRS into the militant arm of his party. But at least we knew who Lois Lerner was. But, these days, it seems to be anyone’s guess as to who, aside from James Comey and Reality Winner, is leaking Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders to the vultures at the NY Times and The Washington Post.
Clearly, it constitutes illegal activity carried out by Fifth Columnists receiving a federal paycheck who are taking advantage of the electronic surveillance tools with which they have proven they can’t be trusted.
None of that precludes loons outside the government doing all they can to undermine our nation. One of those was 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, IL, who clearly belonged in Bellevue.
Although Hodgkinson was an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders, a cuckoo in his own right, Sanders isn’t responsible for Hodgkinson using Republican congressmen and their aides for target practice. If I were to blame anyone aside from Hodgkinson, it would be Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Al Green, Rep. Maxine Waters, and their lap dogs in the media who have conspired to make it appear that Adolf Hitler has come out of hiding and taken up residence in the White House.
And, after all, which of us has not at some time fantasized using a time machine to transport us back to the late ‘20s or early '30s and assassinating Der Fuhrer before he could launch the events leading to the deaths of 70 million people?
For months, the leftist rabble has devoted all its time to demonizing President Trump over his alleged ties to Vladimir Putin, ties that have been concocted out of whole cloth in order to rationalize Hillary’s loss and to bring down the duly elected president. The Democrats in Congress and their lap dogs in the media should be ashamed of themselves, but shame, along with honesty and integrity, are alien to their nature.
In addition to all that, I’m willing to wager that despite their calls for Trump’s impeachment, dullards such as Maxine Waters and Al Green couldn’t find Russia on a map.
In other news, I’d like to know what’s with AOL? Every day, when I start up my computer, there on my screen is another headline alerting me to the news that Trump’s approval numbers have fallen to historical lows, and that he is currently less popular than poison ivy and paper cuts. And every day, I find myself wondering what’s the point of those daily bulletins. I mean, am I eventually supposed to decide that if nobody else likes the guy, I won’t like him, either? Do the folks at AOL all suffer from the delusion that we’re all back in high school, worried about not sitting at the bench with the cool kids?
Another question plaguing me is how it is that Dennis Rodman is constantly being allowed to fly in and out of North Korea. I would understand the State Department’s allowing him to go there if he had a one-way ticket. After all, it would be cruel to keep him apart from Kim Jung-un, the man Rodman refers to as his friend for life. But, North Korea is, I believe, an official enemy of ours, and I thought there were travel restrictions in place to deny Americans the freedom to go to such countries.
But, then, I never understood how it was that Jane Fonda was allowed to go to North Vietnam during the war, and then wasn’t arrested and tried for treason when she returned after openly consorting with the enemy.
At least now I know why Dennis Rodman’s nickname is Worm. What I can’t imagine, though, is why it wasn’t Ms. Fonda’s.
Patriotism, according to Samuel Johnson, is the last refuge of the scoundrel. I think that’s a bit harsh. I believe it depends on what it is that a person feels patriotic about. If he is devoted to the constitutional republic bestowed on us by a group of divinely inspired men named Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Washington, how could he not be a patriot?
On the other hand, I’m sure that everyone from Stalin, Hitler and Mao to Castro, Putin and Dennis Rodman’s best friend would all regard themselves as patriots. But that doesn’t excuse their crimes.
I have no reason to doubt that those shadowy figures I was discussing earlier, the ones involved in the resistance movement to Trump, consider themselves patriots. After all, I’m sure they would point out that their motives are pure, that they don’t stand to gain financially from hounding the man out of the Oval Office. What they somehow overlook is the fact that their success would spell the doom of the nation they claim to love.
After all, if a handful of men and women working under the cloak of darkness could bring down a president duly elected by millions of their fellow Americans, how would America be any different or in any way superior to those places where military coups are the order of the day?
These federally employed traitors are the equivalent of Othello, who loved Desdemona so much that, once his suspicions of her fidelity were aroused by Iago, felt he had no option but to strangle her.
Recently, a reader let me know that he loved my quote about porn and cooking shows. When I told him I couldn’t recall it, he sent it to me. Apparently, I have more character than I ever imagined because I found myself confessing the line wasn’t mine, but wished it were.
The line went: I don’t watch porn for the same reason I never watch cooking shows on TV. It never seems to work out as well at home.
