Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was one of the heads of the FBI who was in charge of the attempt to remove the President.  I guess I should say, unofficially in charge of removing Trump, as he was featured in the text messages between FBI agent Peter Strozk and his paramour with the overbite, as a participant in the “we need an insurance policy” against Trump’s election affair, among other affairs. He was fired on March 16th, two days before his 50th birthday, and hours before his pension was to begin.  Dems immediately blamed Trump for attacking the FBI.  They are making the attack, because this was not Trump’s doing.  The FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (the OPR) was behind it.  The OPR is the place where Mueller and Comey and McCabe referred complaints against the line FBI agents who violated one of the ethical or legal rules of the Bureau.  FBI agents are trained at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia.  From day one of their training, the agents are taught to follow the rules.   Any agent who strays from those rules is referred to the OPR for punishment.  When a line agent screws up, he or she faces sanctions, up to and including termination.  The cardinal rule of the FBI is that an agent always tells the truth.  The FBI prizes, or should I say now, prized its reputation as the guys in the white hats. They are, or were, the straight arrows.  Remember Efrem Zimbalist on TV?  The surest way to get fired in the FBI is for what they like to call, “a lack of candor.”  Candor is the quality of being honest.  The OPR investigated McCabe and recommended his firing, stating that “all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand.” AG Jeff Sessions said that the lack of candor at issue was McCabe’s interview regarding his handling of the Clinton Foundation investigation.  Isn’t it funny that everyone connected in any manner with anything named “Clinton” seems to come to a bad end?  (More about that later).  It’s not clear where the “under oath” part of the lack of candor comes into the McCabe case. You see, “a lack of candor under oath” can be a crime; either perjury or false swearing.  Which is pretty bad, since it’s a crime to lie to an FBI agent when you’re not under oath.  McCabe and Strozk and Mueller are trying to put General Flynn in prison for doing just that, under circumstances where James Comey first concluded that Flynn didn’t lie at all, and whatever Flynn said was already known to the FBI from the illegal wiretaps they got with the Steele dossier.  McCabe fought back, claiming that Trump was out to get him (I thought turnabout was fair play), and had unfairly attacked his credibility, which is strange, since he was fired due to his lack of credibility.  I guess you could say it was “definition” of character.  Predictably, the Dems and the media (redundant, I know) blamed it all on Trump, decrying a Republican plan to destroy law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  That’s even more strange than McCabe’s response, considering the Democrats’ history regarding law enforcement and intelligence gathering.  Democrats told us that the police, which would include the FBI, were racist killers, who killed minorities on sight for no reason.  The wanted the New York police investigated by who, the FBI.  (They’re rolling, they don’t have to make sense).  The also blamed police for crimes committed by criminals in Baltimore, Missouri and Boston.  Whatever went wrong, it was the fault of law enforcement.  The Dems also hated the intelligence community for decades, up until Trump.  Democrat Senator Frank Church singlehandedly destroyed the CIA’s ability to collect human intelligence after his hearings in the 1970’s.  When the lack of directly gathered intelligence led to 911, they blamed the CIA for that too.  They blamed the CIA and DIA and the NSA, really all of the agencies they now claim found nonexistent Russian collusion, for intercepting communications after 911.  They complained about the Patriot Act, and decried the interception of telecommunications in general.  They gave aid and comfort to Black Lives Matters and Antifa, and they complained when the police broke up the Occupy Wall Street encampments.  In fact, Democrats never met a law enforcement officer or intelligence officer they approved of until President Trump came along, and for some reason found it unfair to be the subject of a witch hunt over nonexistent collusion with Russians in the 2016 election.  Democrats are deranged by the very thought of Donald Trump.  The simple truth is that the Left doesn’t really care about Russian interference, it doesn’t care about the FBI, it doesn’t care about our ability to gather intelligence, it doesn’t even care about Hillary Clinton, and it clearly doesn’t give a furry rat’s ass about the voters.  The establishment on the Left, just like the establishment on the Right, cares only about staying in power.  If this proposition was wrong, Donald Trump would not have been elected.

Last week The American Spectator reported on a release from a Congressional Committee which documented actual Russian collusion in U.S. political affairs.  No, it wasn’t one of the Committees investigating Russian collusion with Trump in the 2016 election.  It really had nothing to do with President Trump at all, or for that matter, with the 2016 election.  But much like the Congressional election investigations, this one has documented Russian collusion – with Democrats.  The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has released a report that details Russian meddling in U.S. energy markets.  You see, Russia is among the world’s leading producers of oil and natural gas.   Even so, the Russian economy only equals that of that other industrial powerhouse, Italy.    By contrast, the U.S. economy is more than 8 times bigger than Russia’s.   Now, say what you want about Italy, but they know their place in the world.  Russia, however, insists on portraying itself as a super-power, without super-power wealth.  It’s no coincidence that the term, “Potemkin Village,” a real looking, but fake facade, originated in Russia.  The real Russia is a Potemkin Village, albeit, a village with nuclear weapons.  All of this may explain why Russia goes to such great lengths to meddle, interfere, disrupt, or dare I say, collude in the affairs of other nations throughout the world.  It’s also an explanation for why the Russians, not only are unconcerned about being cast as the sinister bad-guy bullies of the world, they encourage it, because it helps their cause.  Simply put, the more willing people are to believe that Russia can affect all things, the more powerful Russia appears, and appearances, you might have heard, are everything.  And so, the Congress has documented Russian interference with our oil markets, involving Russian payments, filtered through a shell entity in Bermuda.  Payments to whom?  Why, to Democrats, of course.  The Russians are sending millions of dollars to U.S. environmental groups.  Are the Russians really concerned about the state of our environment?  Do they care about our air quality?  Not likely, as they are wholly unconcerned with those things in their own country.  Remember Chernobyl?  No.  The Russians are paying U.S. leftist environmental groups to oppose fracking, oil pipelines, and all other forms of crude oil exploration and production.  The environmental groups are happy to do just that, because their environmental positions rival religious zealotry.  They really believe their own crap, and would much rather see most of America living in cold dark caves than face the prospect that even one more barrel of oil might be produced.  The Green nuts get what they want, and the Russians get what they want – lower U.S. oil production, to allow them to monopolize the market, and to spread political discord.  More oil production in the U.S. means lower oil prices.  The Russians are slowly but surely going broke with oil prices below $100 a barrel.  If, with the willing complicity of the Green nuts, Russia can stop U.S. oil producers from pumping oil, then they can spend more on weapons to threaten the world, and fund more computer hacking and other attempts to destabilize democratic governments.  The result?  Just another example of left-wing hypocrisy.  The Democrats, on the one hand, want to get rid of fossil fuels, so they take money from Russians, thereby making it easier for the Russians to interfere in our affairs, then the same Democrats decry Russian collusion and interference.  And Trump is under investigation.  You can’t make this stuff up.    Who got these many millions of Russian paid dollars?  Ever hear of the Union of Concerned Scientists?  These are the nuts that are pushing a fake climate change agenda.  They are also behind a push to charge anyone who opposes their opinion on climate change with racketeering.  That’s right.  If you don’t do what we say, we’ll put you in prison.  I think the Russians invented that too.  Welcome to the fundamentally transformed America of Il Duce Obama and his band of merry socialists.  The Union of Concerned Scientists isn’t even composed of scientists.  If you send them $25, they’ll declare you a concerned scientist too.  Repeat after me – “money is power, and science is for sale.”  If you’re not scared by this, you should be.  Several Earth Days ago, I told you gentle readers that, when the Berlin Wall fell, all the Reds turned Green.  We now have direct proof of that statement.

The Justice Department has been investigating for Russian collusion in U.S. elections for about 20 months.  They wiretapped the Trump campaign looking for ties to Russia.  They found nothing.  Then, enter Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  We will set aside for another day the corrupt process which resulted in Mueller’s appointment.  Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, who was complicit in the FISA warrants based on the false Russian dossier from Christopher Steele.  With James Comey now a witness, the last person who should have been appointed as prosecutor was his friend Mueller.  But I digress.  The point is that after hiring 18 lawyers and spending 10 months and untold millions of dollars, Mueller has discovered the truth to be precisely what readers of Frank on Friday were told one year ago; namely, that the object of the Russians wasn’t to help Trump, but rather to sow the seeds of discontent to destabilize the United States.  Here’s what you learned last year in Frank on Friday:

Putin the Puppeteer
24 February 2017
“if Putin and Trump actually had been in cahoots, and if nothing happens in Russia without Putin’s approval, how do you explain the fact that, two days after the election, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister told a Russian News Agency that ‘there were numerous contacts during the campaign with members of Trump’s team?’  There is one, and only one explanation for this.  Vladimir Putin is a puppeteer, but he’s not pulling Trump’s strings.  It’s much worse.  Putin understood that there was a chance that an outsider could be elected President. Putin knew that this was an opportunity to undermine and destabilize the U.S. government. Had an Establishment candidate been elected, our government would still be polarized, beset by deep partisan divisions.  Putin the puppeteer is laughing up his sleeve.  All he had to do was have the Deputy Foreign Minister allege that there were contacts with Trump.  Now he can sit back and watch while our government tears itself apart.  Putin might have done it, but he didn’t do it to help Trump.”

From Russia Without Love
14 April 2017
“Russian activity was designed to destabilize our government, to cripple a Trump Administration.  Simply put, what the Russians did, they did for love of Mother Russia, not for love of Donald Trump.”

Dezinformatsiya
19 May 2017
“The Russians recognized the nomination of Donald Trump as an opportunity to destabilize the U.S. with disinformation.  It was tailor-made, because they started out with a polarized American electorate, and Democrats so consumed with hatred of Trump, that they were willing to believe anything.  The Democrats already had adopted the Russian election hacking story as an excuse for Hillary’s failure.  Hence, two days after election day, the Russian state-controlled media announced that Russian government officials had met with representatives of the Trump campaign throughout the campaign.  More dezinformatsiya, designed to keep Americans opposing one another instead of opposing Russian adventurism.”

Now, here’s what Mueller’s team of high-priced, Trump hating, Hillary loving jackals finally determined:  Mueller charged 13 Russians with a conspiracy to undermine the U.S. government by operating a shadowy internet operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged Facebook and other social media platforms to spread divisive messages leading up to the 2016 election. (I told you that 3 days after Mueller was appointed).  Mueller’s indictment alleges that “the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy.” ( I told you that, see above).  The indictment alleged that individuals and entities associated with the Russia-based Internet Research Agency purchased $100,000 in political advertisements designed to exploit political and social divisions in the United States.  The elaborate conspiracy was made possible in part by the theft of the social security numbers, home addresses, and birth dates of real U.S. persons, which allowed the defendants to open U.S. bank and PayPal accounts. (In other words, the Russians don’t engage in identity theft simply to steal money).  Rod Rosenstein said the Russians did not affect the outcome of the election. (Which should come as no surprise, because Hillary spent over $1 billion).  According to Mueller, as soon as Trump was elected, the Russians began working to undermine him and sow further discord.  On November 12, 2016, two groups held rallies, one to “show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump,” another through a group called “Trump is NOT my President.” (MSNBC actually encouraged its viewers to attend that one).  The Kremlin organized both of these rallies.  Mueller’s indictment alleged that some defendants posed as U.S. people and communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”  The most important disclosure in Mueller’s indictment was the finding that that there was “no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this activity.”  As Donald Trump is an American, presumably this conclusion includes him.  Which is the point.  Mueller’s assignment as Special Counsel was to investigate “links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”  Mission accomplished.  Mueller has brought a conspiracy indictment.  He has determined that no American knowingly participated with the Russians who were trying to interfere in the elections.  One cannot be a co-conspirator, an accomplice, or a colluder, whatever that is, unless one shares the criminal intent of one or more of the defendants.  Mueller’s job is done.  An honest special counsel who wasn’t presiding over a witch hunt designed to bring about the impeachment of Donald Trump would fold his tent and go away.  Don’t hold your breath.

Harry Truman used to call himself a “light-foot Baptist,” that is, a Baptist who was perhaps not as devout as some other Baptists.  By that definition, I don’t think I’d qualify as even a “light-foot Catholic.”  I guess I’d be more of an amputee Catholic, because I’ve pretty much been cut off from the faith for many years.  It wasn’t for lack of trying. As a kid, we went to church, went to Sunday school, and made communion and confirmation.  I understood the Catholic doctrine, but I could never buy into it.  You see, I am doubly damned with both a  highly developed ability to determine when something makes sense and when it doesn’t, and a good memory.  Some will tell you that it’s not supposed to make sense.  Faith is belief in things unseen, right?  The Second Century theologian Tertullian, when asked why he was willing to believe stories of miracles, is quoted as responding, “Credo quia absurdum,” which has been translated variously as “It is so extraordinary that it must be true” or “I believe, because it is absurd.”  I prefer the second translation.  Catholic doctrine is just too schizophrenic for my taste.  I understand the carrot and the stick, but really!  Jesus suffered the little children to come unto him, he turned the other cheek, and preached love and forgiveness.  On the other hand, “You ate meat during Lent?  Burn in Hell!”  You missed Mass one Sunday?  Burn in Hell!”  Masturbation?  Yep, that’s a mortal sin, so Hell’s really going to be crowded.  Then there’s the infallibility thing.  The Church sets itself up as the one source of supposed truth on every subject, which now that I think of it, is exactly how liberals treat us, which probably explains why the Council of Bishops is more like the Council of Bolsheviks, and the Maryknolls are no holds barred Commies.  Infallibility is supposed to extend only to matters of faith, but the Church, much like our federal government, has expanded its reach.  The Catholic Church was primarily responsible for the Dark Ages, and no matter how dark it got, the Church just kept pulling down the shades.  Then, when the light went back on just before the Renaissance, that light was coming from the pyres of heretics being “purified” by the Inquisition.  Poor Galileo had to burn in Hell for over 400 years before the Church admitted that the Earth actually may revolve around the Sun, and finally sprung him.  No, change does not come very fast for the Catholic Church, and I’m afraid their time may be running out.  What, you may  ask, has set me off on this rant at this particular time?  Well, my wife and I went to the Shore last weekend, and I went to church with her.  Normally, as an amputated Catholic, I avoid Mass at all costs, except for Christmas, Easter, and the occasional wedding or funeral.  But I went this week, and was treated to a stunningly insulting performance by the priest who celebrated the Mass.   Now, as I do not often attend Church, I do not pretend to be an authority on homilies, but even my wife panned this one.  The Celebrant of the Mass was a Senior Priest, which is redundant, because one would be hard put to find many priests under the age of 65.  This one was 79 years old, and from the start of the Mass, and up through the Gospel, he was moving along so rapidly that he had my admiration.  Unfortunately, he then began his homily, which was both infuriating and incomprehensible.  Whenever a priest starts out with, “I don’t often discuss politics, but …” you know you are in trouble.  Although he doesn’t often discuss politics, this priest chose two hot issues for his lecture – DACA and gun laws.  (Parenthetically, Tertullian also is credited with the saying, “out of the frying pan into the fire”).  The priest’s DACA comments were the infuriating portion of his homily.  He declared that he was old enough (no lie there) to remember when the DACA people arrived in the U.S., and said that because we gave them jobs, and other things, the government now had no right to make them leave.  Apparently, the facts that the President isn’t making them  leave, and that they would be legalized tomorrow if only the Democrats would agree to reasonable immigration laws to prevent a recurrence of this problem was lost on the Father.  Immediately, the parishioners turned ugly.  This surprised me.  I was angry, sure, but I’m a heathen, and I  was able to restrain myself from commenting.  The rest of the crowd were not “sometimes” Catholics.  This church is in a town known as the Irish Riviera, the regular parishioners never miss a Mass, and these people were pissed.  The “we gave them other things” comment prompted a woman on my right to loudly blurt, “Yeah, food stamps.”  There was perceptible discontented murmuring throughout the room.  The priest rambled on and on, making little discernible sense.  His point, if there was one, was either, “two wrongs do make a right,” “no illegal alien should be expected to obey our laws,” or “don’t render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; tell Caesar what he must render unto you.”  By the time he transitioned into his gun law comments, or at least I think he did, no one could follow them.  When the homily mercifully ended, an elderly gentleman behind me asked his wife, “Did you understand one thing that jerk said?”  This was a tough crowd.  Getting back to old Tertullian, he also said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  As we walked out, I knew how the martyrs must have felt.  We could dismiss this priest as out of touch with the real world, but I think senility had a lot to do with it too.  Which is the point of this rant.  In 1970, the average age for all priests was 35, today it is approaching 65.  I hear that the Pope is considering allowing priests to marry.  This is an innovation which can no longer be delayed.   The Catholic Church is sorely in need of new blood.  If it is to survive, change must come.

As reported a few weeks ago, the recent Golden Globe Awards show was a veritable festival of left wing whining, bitching and moaning over a number of complaints, real and imagined.  The women wore black to highlight the flood of sexual harassment complaints by women in the entertainment industry.  Those of us in the Northeast tend to think of Southern California as a pleasant oasis from the snow, sleet and cold we endure, however, according to these women at the Golden Globes, it must be Hell.  They’re not entirely wrong.  I mean, their State government is broke, despite crippling taxation.  They’ve got earthquakes, and raging wildfires, and when the fires go out, they’ve got mudslides.  But the Hollywood women aren’t complaining about those things.  No.  They are complaining about actors, producers and directors who are filthy pigs who engage in sexual harassment and worse.  I discussed this at length on January 12, but some expansion is in order.  As a man with a wife and two daughters, I have nothing but contempt for the filthy pig harassers.  Violations should be promptly reported, and the violators brought to justice.  There are nearly 1.4 million lawyers in America, so finding one willing to sue the bastards will not be a problem.  As a former career prosecutor, I know that law enforcement authorities take sexual abuse complaints very seriously, as well they should.  However, I take exception to the Hollywood complainers who have belatedly decided to chime in, or pile on, with their #metoo Twitter hashtag.  Don’t get me wrong.  It is high time that the abusers are getting their comeuppance.  I get that struggling actresses didn’t have the power to buck the filthy moguls, but what about the powerful women of Hollywood?  Meryl Streep, acclaimed as the greatest actress of our time, has 3 Academy Awards, and 20 nominations.  Who could she possibly be afraid of?  Yet, she’s part of the #metoo crowd, and she’s still complaining about things she says Dustin Hoffman did to her in 1980.  Apparently 38 year old abuse complaints are in fashion. (See the case of Roy Moore).  If she was abused for 38 years, Meryl Streep can’t say “I didn’t know,” like Oprah is trying to tell us regarding Harvey Weinstein.  So why didn’t Meryl just go sit down with Oprah and blow the whistle on the Oprah show?  She could have saved a lot a women a lot of misery had she done so.  She didn’t.  We must assume either that she and many others decided that taking money from abusers was preferable to stopping the abuse.  If so, on behalf of the millions of non-abusive males, let me propose a new hashtag – #dontblameus.  Perhaps Hollywood is so thoroughly corrupt that even Meryl could have been black-balled?  If so, then please don’t assume that the rampant immorality of Hollywood exists in the real world.  It doesn’t, so #dontblameus.  But Hollywood nitwits, like foulmouthed cafone, Robert DeNiro, don’t live in the real world, so how could they know that?  And therein lies the real problem.  Although the denizens of Hollywood don’t reside in the real world, they truly believe that their world is the real world, and that, being successful actors makes them authorities on all subjects.  Simply put, they falsely equate a large bank account with intelligence. (See cafone DeNiro, above).  Sadly, with rare exception, most of them possess only enough intelligence to repeat the dialogue written for them by somebody else.  No matter.  They consider themselves part of the mainstream.  Even the actors at the top of the Hollywood pay scale, seek to identify with the masses that they claim to speak for; people they never met, don’t understand, and really have nothing in common with.  I’ll explain.  In the very same black dress Golden Globe show, successful actress Sarah Jessica Parker shouted out to her “sisters … working in the trenches,” and declared that, “parity and equality and safe work environments — they shouldn’t be controversial.” Wow.  I thought NJ was unpleasant, but Hollywood really must be a Hellhole.  Just think about all those nasty trenches in Beverly Hills and Malibu.  No one I know is against parity, equality and safe working conditions, so what’s Sarah talking about?  Money, of course.  Although they are paid millions of dollars, they’ve bought into the “women are paid less than men” complaint.  Foulmouthed cafone Robert DeNiro even said, “I am still fighting for Meryl to be able to get 79 cents of what a man would get.”  This is doubly stupid because: A – who’s he fighting? and B- women getting 79 cents on the dollar is the complaint, not the solution.  The 79 cents number comes from a comparison of salaries without consideration of hours worked.  Not surprisingly, many women work fewer hours because they are primarily responsible for child care.  Therefore, if women cared for the children and also had to put in as many hours as men on the job, that would be the proof of discrimination, not the 79 cents statistic.  Regardless, the Hollywood actresses like Streep and Parker (each of whom has a net worth of $90 million), still want that additional 21 cents so they can achieve parity.  They also want quotas – for themselves.  Reese Witherspoon (net worth $80 million), says women are greatly underrepresented on the big screen, leading to fewer opportunities to make money, “Women make up 50% of the population, and we should be playing 50% of the roles on the screen.”  Once again #dontblameus.  If actresses would only learn to portray superheroes, shoot people, drive cars real fast, and curse a lot, they’d get more roles, so #dontblameus.  They even complain about biology.  “While many men are cast as leads well into their 40s and 50s, the same can’t be said for women.”  Honestly, #dontblameus for that one.  The men may work longer, but they die an average of 6 years earlier than women, leaving women in control of most of the wealth in America.  Plus, women now hold 52% of all management and professional positions, and about 60% of all college students are women.  I’m not complaining, but these are facts, so #dontblameus.  To wrap up, there are many real problems in the world, sexual abuse being one of them.  I just find it hard to take seriously complaints from actresses who not so long ago gave a standing ovation to child rapist Roman Polanski.  And if you don’t like it, #dontblameus.