We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
This is from back when F&F was ordered by Obama in 2009 (thanks, reader):
Thus, a lousy and aggressive, if reckless, border plan, OK'ed by Obama and Holder, that resulted tragically. A fatal SNAFU, resulting in American deaths and many Mexican deaths. Why not just say so? Admit a well-intentioned but ultimately tragic error. That is termed "manning-up." There is nothing much to conceal here that I can see.
Unless there are tons of unfortunate emails about the PR approach to the mess that would be embarassing to the Administration. Stupid, unnessary cover-up? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Or am I missing something?
This is stupid stuff. The Admin's covert leaks to the media are the bigger scandal. This is a sideshow, despite these terrible and unnecessary deaths. Nobody died in Watergate.
If the President isn't involved, why is he asserting exec priv?
Obama is trying to avoid, in his own ham-handed way, a major embarrassment for his administration: his hand-picked Attorney General allowed heavy-duty automatic weapons to be channeled into the hands of Mexican drug lords who then somehow unexpectedly used them to murder innocent people. Eric Holder lied about his knowledge of it, the major media helped hide it, and now the President is using his power to hinder the investigation by keeping documents away from Congress.
holder to issa:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/holder-letter.pdf?mobile=nc
issa to holder:
http://oversight.house.gov/release/issa-to-doj-make-us-an-offer/
what's interesting is that holder isn't identifying specific documents, only broad categories. in a civil lawsuit, where a privilege is claimed, the claim is made by first identifying the document, then stating the privilege, then providing enough facts about the document for the judge or discovery referee to decide whether the privilege can be invoked --this is sometimes called a "privilege log".
congress ought to demand that holder identify (i.e., to, from, date, subject summary) every specific document and explain why each document is privileged.
holder's request to the dear leader (first link above) is normal legal blather, correct enough -- but, notice how nonspecific the claim really is. if you reduced the privilege claim to the summary "privilege good, disclosure bad" what, exactly the privilege is claimed for is a just a short summary of what could be thousands of documents.
@fiftyville: in practice, the privilege extends to the executive department, the president is the one who holds and exercises it.
@fiftyville: in practice, the privilege extends to the executive department, the president is the one who holds and exercises it.
I was just looking into that b/c it surprised me that Obama would as much as take the fifth by invoking Executive Privilege.
It seems there are two major tiers of privilege; one protects communications to and from the Executive himself; the other between his officers. However, only the Executive can assert the privilege.
It appears what's being asserted here is the second kind, so it's not as much as admitting that Obama himself was in the loop of whatever decision making process was going on.
In the Navy, we were required to avoid "the appearance of impropriety."
From the Naval Inspector General's website:
"What is appearance of impropriety?
Employees shall endeavor to avoid any actions creating the appearance that they are violating the law or the ethical standards. Whether particular circumstances create an appearance that the law or these standards have been violated shall be determined from the perspective of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts."
Similar ethics standards apply throughout the Federal Government.
It is interesting that the leadership of our country doesn't seem to hold themselves to the same standards they require of everyone who works for them.
Well you just know that Obama is going to claim the Republicans are playing politics and that he will try to use this issue to fire up his base for his re-election campaign. He probably thinks this is a winning issue for him. I think he's just as wrong about this as Lizzie Warren is when she tries to change the subject about her own lies.
Republicans who think this issue is a distraction that plays into Obama's hand are wrong. This is the thread that, if pulled on strongly enough, could unravel the entire Obama empty suit. Congressional Republicans should remain polite but persistent. They should keep asking the now famous question: What did Obama know and when did he know it? Somewhere on the horizon, a charge of perjury is in the offing. You betcha'.
The only thing you're missing is that they know they are so much smarter than us and they are Dems so clearly they have the moral high ground and that the lapdog media is in the tank for them, so how can they lose?
Of course, requesting/declaring "executive privilege" means they have something or a lot of somethings to hide.
Their problem is, the official story is they were selling the guns down there so they could trace the trade routes and id the gun runners. The problem is, they apparently had no way at all of tracing the guns once they left there hands.
They have been murmured accusations that the true intent was to create violent incidents with US guns to use to push stricter gun control laws, which would explain the lack of tracing, but would be a truly despicable act.
The only defense they have is to say that they sold thousands of guns over several months before they realized they had no method in place to track them, which would be stupidity and incompetence on a breath taking scale even from a government agency.
Let's hope so B. Moe, let's hope so. I can only imagine the day little Chrissie Matthews realizes the tingle down his leg is caused by him pissing his pants as the good ship Obama sinks and pulls every media hyena down in its undertow.
"Why didn't the admin simply say that it was a bad plan, so they stopped it?"
When the Democrats dig themselves a hole, they go all in. When the hole is knee deep, that's just the beginning for them. They want a hole that's DEEP, real DEEP. F&F was a shovel ready project. There was no way they were going to stop digging when they got in over their heads. At the point where they couldn't climb out of the hole they had dug, they kept digging...and digging...and digging. Because they truly expected to dig themselves out of their self-made predicament. Conservatives know the sensible thing to do would have been to stop digging. But we're talking here about Liberals. They are SMART, real SMART. They were going to dig their way out of their hole. Yep, that's what they thought, dig their way out. So now you know. You can thank me later for 'splainin' it to you. (/eyeroll, palm to forehead)
It all took place in the candyland of Dems in control of all three units of both the exec and the legislative branches. So, don't restrict your imagination by projecting onto the scheme ANY such behavior barrier as a "tea party", and a world-historical midterm oppo sweep in November 2010--with the accompanying house committee subpoena power passing through and around ACORN to come under control of the oppo.
Holder's and the White House's role can be inferred from the nature of the bureaucratic involvement in the operation. Given the multiplicity of agencies in DoJ that were involved and the need to make recalcitrant bureaucracies cooperate there must have been high-level operational control or knowledge. Note that the official Administration position was that this was an operation launched by the U.S. Attorney in Arizona - an explanation that is pathetic that it would be humorous if it wasn't ominous.
As for White House involvement, note that F&F involves multiple cabinet-level departments. ATF is a Treasury operation, you have Justice's involvement with both the U.S. Attorney in Arizona and the FBI for background checks. You almost certainly had Homeland Security's involvement at least at an informational level - Napolitano was Arizona's governor for 6 years and the U.S. Attorney for Arizona was her former chief of staff. No way she wasn't fully up to speed on what was going on. So with all of these cabinet-level departments who made sure they all played nice with one another or at least cooperated with Justice (or who gave Holder the juice)?
Second, there is alot of smoke about how F&F was the same as the Bush-era Wide Receiver program. I expect that nonsense to be quickly swept aside but here's the critical part.... last year ATF whistleblowers testified that when they complained to their superiors about letting the guns walk (withdrawing surveillance) they were told that the guns would be picked up later at crime scenes in Mexico. One ATF agent testified that his superior told him that this was necessary because "if you are going to make an omelette, you need to scramble some eggs" This leads to an inescapable conclusion that dead Mexican citizens (and probably a great deal of innocent ones at that) wasn't a bug of F&F, but rather a feature - the only thing "botched" about F&F was that it was found out, it was an intended part of the program that people would die.
Third, the implications of the first two are so great (involvement by the highest levels of government in an operation that would use piles of dead Mexican citizens to further a gun control agenda or justify some restriction of 2nd Amendment rights) that we need to both tread carefully and relentlessly. Relentlessly because of both where Occam's Razor at this stage seems to lead us and the intensity and thinness of Administration stone walling implies that there really is fire generating smoke. However we also need to tread carefully and make sure we have our facts straight. Many of the guns in F&F were high-powered weapons - i.e. AK-patterned semi and large-caliber sniper rifles - but they weren't fully automatic.
Fourth, whatever his actual involvement I very much doubt this will get as far as Obama. Oliver North and John Poindexter helped shield Reagan from Iran-Contra and if Nixon didn't blab on tape I doubt they would have gotten him for Watergate - if it comes to that somebody in the West Wing will take the proverbial bullet for Obama. Remember we are less than 5 months from the election and all the Administration wants to do is play keep-away just a little longer until time runs out.
Fast and Furious was a big push created by the Dems to have a justification for the removal of weapons from our own citizens. If we are fortunate, they may have created the mechanism for their own demise. It couldn’t happen to a better bunch!
That's an interesting question. When reputations, careers and possibly jail time are on the line will there be any loyalty to the crown prince narcissist. This could get real interesting and given the world situation real dangerous if this leads to a further void in national leadership.
I doubt it... remember both were military men and Iran-Contra was run out of the NSC so fewer chances for political critters.
The interesting wrinkle to all of this is the presence of the mole/whistleblower in DoJ who leaked the information to Issa. So far the Administration has been able to stonewall on F&F because it has a united front against Issa along with a compliant media.
The value of a mole in political warfare is not so much in the type or value of information that they can provide, though there is some to that, but the effect such leaks can have in the minds of the stonewallers.
Stonewalling/obstruction of justice is always a prisoner's dilemma game in that the price you pay for denying the information is much less than the cost of of releasing the information. However if you subsequently perceive the information is going to get released anyway and you're going to get nailed for obstruction, it's much better for you to be the first one to defect and cut a deal - there really isn't second place in snitching
With the mole Holder no longer has absolute control over the information flow and he has to be panicking over Issa's sudden focus on a limited number of the subpeaoned documents. Issa's action implies that he has private access to a large number of documents and he has cherry picked the best of them but neither Holder or any of the stonewallers/obstructionists know what Issa knows or doesn't know. In short Issa might have gotten into Holder's OODA loop
Perhaps the real reason why Obama rushed to invoke executive privilege is to try and swallow any future leakings from the mole into a constitutional issue.
Fear, uncertainty, doubt - that's the best way to turn any battle into a rout. A smart tactician would already prepare for the next round and get the goods on Holder and his DoJ goons as they conduct the inevitable mole hunt
There are three potential reasons for not releasing information related to F&F.
First Potential Reason: Events just got away, it happens, 1400 weapons sold and most not traceable. One should logically recognize this oversight sooner and stop at a lower number. However it could happen.
Second Potential Reason: Political justification to present a negative findings that American weapons were being sent to Mexico. In turn the government could justify a crack down on all automatic weapons sales with more justification for anti-gun laws.
Third Potential Reason: Mexican cartel was rewarding some individuals in the American government to allow such weapon transfer in return for monetary rewards. Quid pro quo, we let weapons sales occur, you give us money, e.g., campaign donations. Could this be the Chicago Way?
We need to find our the truth, the more they attempt to hide it, the more it becomes necessary to find out who did what. This program caused the death of Mexicans and Americans, hence accountability must occur. Those responsible must pay.
You don't suppose that the "designer" of this scheme was a female, or ethnic, or sexual minority do you? Is that why all this is going on--prevent another classic example of non-meritocracy gone wrong (again) from being exposed again?
FW/16: as far as the design being female-ish, that would be, guessing here, but --when she's pregnant she looks like one but she's two? Pregnant with something gestating deeper below the (clearly part if not all of the crime plan) 2nd Amendment ploy? and including as JKB/17 says more foreign aspect --and adventure?
You madam are inviting me to spend the next four hours writing several thousand words in this here comment box. Not that i'm any good of a sleuth --more that being retard (as 'retired' is southernized, especially rat cheer on the cusps of deep souf and wild west), i have time to dig into open-ended searching --to find some remarkable co incidents (besides that 'retired' -'retard' coincidence, hasten to add).
But --cue 'irony' co-incident, a Longhorn on the horns of dilemma: writing quick and breezy on the Holder connections to --ah jeez, 'oil-for-food' to the Chiquita Banana Keystone affair, from Aracatapa to Stavanger to the Horn of Africa and the UN call for the very terrorism-victim compensation that Covington & Burling specializes in, away from our shores, from a nasty little pre-Fast & Furious model-shakedown cruise of a war in banana land that happened while EH was between jobs for Bubba and Obama and consigliari of Chiquita, which smuggled arms to both sides of a publicity-billed 'communist vs right wing death squad shootout' in which over several years of the early 2000s several thousand peasants living in rural villages in the banana-growing Magdalena District of Colombia were killed in the gang crossfires (just like Mexico/USA, the F&F border), the duplicitous arming of BOTH SIDES by Chiquita, which Holder was defending in court as late as 2007, and which the prosecution representing the bereaved in a civil action accepted in Miami say was all about creating enough local bloody chaos to depopulate an area Chiquita wanted --for bananas or perhaps something else rumored to ride those globe-girdling banana ships.
Mercifully leaving out another monstrous crime node involving EH and his crime syndicate --but it connects Macondo, a Chinese engineering group which performed the US govt required Blowout Preventer inspection report on the BP BOP and --here i'll bet your $5 back --has a piece of the enormous-to-be fish-oil-for-the-old market --to the EH links to the Yemen govt, whose oil ministry is in scandal for mystery-quid-pro-quo oil-for-food-like discounts to a Norwegian billionaire oil shipper and seafood exporter named John Fredriksen whose interlocking directorships include Det Norske Veritas, the company our govt selected to verify the BOP forensic report, same company which trains maritime crews bound for Yemeni waters (note, after 9/11, when Gitmo was set up, EH's firm Covington & Burling made a pro-bono grab for exclusive rights to represent the as yet non-existent Yemeni POWs) 'how-to-respond-to-pirates', the crews (never mounting on the ships the .50 cal mama deuces that two twin mounts, one fore and one aft, would end all pirate attacks the instant the news of the mounts hit the harbor towns) that get peacefully interned by said pirates (usually about 50 western ships so detained at any one time) until paid off by ships owners insurance (law firms like Covington & Burling expediting all and seeing to the hostages' PTSD) --which rates, like USD tuition, is always vaulted ahead of justification. Fredriksen, whose interests in Aker Biomarine, the company whose fleet trawls the northern and southern polar seas for Krill, which took a great leap forward when Macondo and the Corexit killed the numbers of and the demand for ("nerve damage i get from Gulf of Mexico seafood now?") Gulf of Mexico Menhaden, the leading producer of which (Houston company Omega Protein) challenged the Aker claim that Krill's oil was as good as Menhaden, and which during discovery phase of lawsuit lost one of seven trawlers along with three crewman due to a night ramming in the Gulfport Mississippi ship channel by a --in a spectacular defeat of the ordinary laws of chance --a large high-seas banana hauler under contract to --none other than Chiquita (search [sandy point london equus ]).
(pant pant --whew--) --there, i did it, i managed to barely scratch the surface --and i do mean barely --didn't mention the guy who put EH and Chiquita together also employed for four years the failed Times Square Bomber --guy from Yemen, natch, and who (i need to verify this) may employ the chairman of Obama's whitewashing --and challenged by a member whose report is on the web --Financial Crash Inquiry Commission -- and who recently settled in court a bitter attempted takeover of the packaging company owned by Utah's recent presidential candidate and previous ambassador to China John Huntsman's father, located in Salt Lake City, home of Schiff, which markets Aker Biomarine's krill oil (seeing the ubiquitous "Mega Red" ads on tv these days?) and is deep into a titanic global takeover of the Omega 3 industry via a deal to supply same to --China.
Nor did i mention a dozen other suspicious lines of association --hell, obama may be working for Holder, it could seem --If so, and Holder's law firm (he is or was until present gig, a partner) if true the suspicion, based on history beginning with the firm's breakout as one of the defending side in the famous Alger Hiss Case, where Hiss, aid to FDR and designer as well as first US Ambassador to the UN was convicted of being a paid agent of Joseph Stalin, may be himself explainable as simply an agent of the north america desk in the Kremlin, whose elder spooks nearing retirement have worked their entire lives to break the American exceptionalism, which by existing is a death threat to all authoritarian tyrannies, and will be until it itself is broken away from having the world reserve currency and being the destination of as much and many of the best and brightest as well as the available capital --that can escape from the zones of unlimited state power.
The real question is why the DOJ was conducting a hostile operation against a friendly government without the participation of the White House or the Department of State? Or was the op vetted by the foreign relations part of the Administration?
What? You don't think the facilitating of smuggling guns to groups destabilizing the foreign government, murdering the other nations citizens by the hundred isn't considered a hostile act?
To judge the seriousness of the issues involved in F&F, just ask yourself what the reaction of the Obama administration would have been if the office of the Attorney General of Mexico, the PGR and Federal Public Ministry, had been officially operating a similar gunrunning operation into the US. Would this have been considered a minor "distraction" or would it have elicited a very strong response about national sovereignty? We all know the answer to that. And that's why the Congressional investigation should be pursued to the bitter end until the truth is out. We need to know who conceived this lawless scheme, who authorized it, and who in the administration knew about it but did nothing to raise concerns over its legality and the possible consequences for the citizens of neighboring Mexico. If laws were broken by officials in the DOJ or other agencies, they should be prosecuted. If the evidence of malfeasance leads to the White House, perhaps even the Oval Office, the voters of this country have a right to know that too.
JKB explains part of it in #17 - a hostile act against a foreign government.
The other facet is a gun control agenda they don't want to admit to: We need to stop the flow of weapons into Mexico. Look at all the problems they are causing!
And have we mentioned the dead US Border Patrol guy?
Awww, shucks, FW --twarnt nuthin (blush, study shoe tops, scuff a little gravel) --
There's a few seminal articles that share that "aHA!" theme. Over the weekend i'll come back here and list 'em as they occur. Don't feel obliged to read them or reply --this stuff is morbid, really --like rubbernecking a traffic accident --shunning of any visiting brightness of spirit & lightness of mood ("Ohhhh, the dirty @#!&%@#s! Who do they think they ARE?").
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EH pardon of Marc Rich --was more than you probably think --basically, Latin America is a barely-touched commodities treasure box, and high seas freebooters always prefer trading with tyrants than plebiscites of the people. Save this and close-read when you can, noting date July 2005.
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Ignore the hippie genesis here and concentrate on the research, indexed after text concludes:
http://www.rense.com/general91/corp.htm
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Re today's headline 'securitygate' --here's the guy Panetta made news telling him to STFU --note the date here, then find your current National Security Adviser ref'd a few paras down. Search the net with the keywords, and note he also was prime behind-scenes protection for Fannie Mae during its blow-off phase, the several years before it bellied up as prelude of the 2008 crash opening act. Note that Vlad Putin came to power on the swing vote that moved to him on the basis of the Bosnia War peace deal and the NATO expansion eastward after the fall of USSR, and that this guy, NSA Tom Donilon, mechanic'd BOTH those initiatives --and if he did so with Russian policy vs USA in mind, and if he is as he appears to be the swing vote on a war with Iran, that everything in his record has severely damaged the USA --and yet he keeps getting higher and higher profile taskings regardless of what in the non-bizarro world would've sent him packing the very day the commandant of NATO inexplicably jumped way down the chain of command and ordered a British field officer to have his unit open fire on a company of Russian paratroops who had landed at a NATO controlled Yugoslav airport.
More on that later, including comment on how the middle-aged British professional soldier retired soon after, and became a British chart-topping pop singing star, and ditto retired the NATO boss, Wesley Clark of Arkansas, who then was invited by the DNC to make a run for president; how like Elliot Spitzer's CNN show biz career, all three instant-start at the top, soon after mildly disgraced yet arguably semi-humorous exits from previous chains of causation (Spitzer's cases, which cleared several nodes vital to building the financial crash, tossed out afterwards, in very short order, by the courts), then have a year of mystery credit to make the new career stick if they can (they couldn't).
IOW, re Iran, A hundred million Americans technically eligible for the job and without Tom Donilon's long 'insider heavyweight of the Dem party' record of creating catastrophic failures for USA, and HE is our attached-to-the-ear-of-the-president National Security Advisor? Are we on the verge of deliberately doing what is LEAST in our interests, and MOST in --to be perfectly frank --Russia's? Or Russia/China's?
Another random puzzle piece, note the Rich Boys article mentions Milio International --an oil trading company Marc Rich started up in late 90s Moscow.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69709434.html
puts Milio partner to Arcadia, started up by (well-known as Yakuza-controlled) Mitsui Sumitomo Bank --during the time when it was being advised by Goldman Sachs via two Tokyo-stationed current admin heavies, Treasury Sec Geithner and Gary Gensler, today's chairman of the CFTC, the commodity futures trading commission (in the news lately as the 'choosin' recusin' friend of Jon Corzine who should've but didn't ("Oh, darn! Silly me!") catch the MF Global embezzlement.
Mitsui sold Arcadia a year or two before the 2008 gasoline price spike/Russian invasion of Georgia/bank panic/LEH b'rupt/USA-to-world Financial Crash/PANIC the SH*T outta American voters/election of obama sequence.
Who bought Arcadia? Why, mercy sakes, it were John Fredriksen!
What'd he do with it? He hired some BPO traders and put them to work manipulating the oil futures market, in concert with an unknown number of 'dark pools' of hidden money --including sovereign wealth, legal private offshored, and mafia drug money-laundering outfits, all enjoying the vital, crucial, critical 'privacy' created in the late 90s Clinton legislation (much of it via Gary Gensler -writing Clinton legislation as deputy and undersecretary for Bubba's Treasury dept after leaving Goldman Sachs).
Look at this as a wrist slap, a CYA against the tip of a tip of one of a sea of icebergs --to damp suspicions of collusion on the part of a rising public awareness that the morale-crushing rate of change of pump prices in spring of 2008 was 'conspiracy' --Bill O'Reilly wanted a rottweiler prosecution so he got a chihuahua and a feather in his cap, allowing him to 'move on'.
So, is Mitsui out of this thing, after the Arcadia sale? Ha! Mitsui is a ten percent partner in the BP Macondo well --the disaster well. Think about that for a sec. Mitsui was, is, dunno, the largest investor in Goldman Sachs, when Jon Corzine took GS public in 1996 or so. All of the new holders of GS stock were GS insiders, except for two, the two largest --both with around 12% iirc --being Mitsui Sumitomo, and Bishop Estates, a vast trust established to educate native Hawaiian youngsters, a big player in real estate, too, doing business with Bank of Hawaii, where a VP mortgage expert and local legend as groundbreaking female banker was none other than Obama's grandma.
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Remember the article above, the Truth Serum? That steering committee through the decade leading up to the 2008 election listed another member beside Donilon? Peter Sutherland? Head of Royal Bank of Scotland, an early wipe-out in the crash which now is in the say 7th inning of the Ruin of the West? He was also until the crash got him much fired, BP board chair AND Goldman Sachs/Europe president. Or was it other way around?
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Over in Sochi, near the powerful fascist world threatening nation of since-2008-one-third-truncated Georgia, Vlad Putin, in defiance of TRussian firms in painful need of the work, has his new roads widened and tunnels dug thru the mountains by --Mitsui Sumitomo.
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Over on the other side of the whirlled, eleven or thirteen time zones away, in the home waters of that Aker Biomarine Krill fleet, a forty year long, bitter and unresolvable Barents Sea arctic asset property line dispute between Russia and Norway (which alone besides faraway-to-sea Iceland never joined the EU and is thus standing strong with its own currency now) was suddenly at the stroke of a pen wiped away. When? Exactly one week after the Macondo well exploded. Fancy that, after 40 intransigent years.
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--whew --running out of gas --markets just closed so am out of excuse to sit here affront the tv any longer for now -- must go topple water-eating oak-killing-in-droughts junipers 'til my saw too like me runs out of gas --
"On April 27, 2010, Norway and Russia announced an end to their 40-year arctic border dispute in the Barents Sea. Future joint energy development is expected."
And the tie that binds you might ask (or is it a near cousin)? How about the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma and their intimate family relationship with the Chinese?
