CURTAINS FOR US: We finally know what he did last summer!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2017

Part 1—Comey the God in July: On the bright side, we the liberals have finally been told what he did last summer.

More specifically, we've finally been told what he did on July 5, 2016.

Our instruction in this matter arrived on the scene ten months later. It was delivered, just yesterday, in a memo by Rod Rosenstein, Donald J. Trump's somewhat puzzling deputy Justice Department head.

(It remains to be seen if Rosenstein himself has been trapped in bit of a con.)

Needless to say, "ten months later" is ten months too late in matters of this type. Still and all, the late arrival of such news typifies the way our tribe's "intellectual leaders" have functioned in recent decades, at least since 1992.

Still and all, let's be thankful for tiny favors! Let's be thankful for Rosenstein's belated account of a set of actions by the being then known as Comey the God—actions which caused our tribe's top pundits and TV stars to run off and hide in the woods.

We'll highlight the most salient point Rosenstein made in this part of his memo. We will also stress the date which is under review.

To peruse the full memo, click here:

ROSENSTEIN (5/9/17): [Comey the God] was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the F.B.I. had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.

The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed Attorney General Loretta had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. There is a well-established process for other officials to step in when a conflict requires the recusal of the Attorney General. On July 5, however, the Director announced his own conclusions about the nation’s most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders.

Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.

Oof. "The goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference," Rosenstein thoughtfully said as he continued.

According to Rosenstein's memo, "Almost everyone agrees that [Comey the God] made serious mistakes [last July and later]; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives."

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! Quickly, let's run through what Rosenstein said:

On July 5, 2016, the being then known as Comey the God "ignored a longstanding principle" when he "held a press conference to release derogatory information" about Candidate Hillary Clinton. So Rod Rosenstein said.

According to Rosenstein, Comey "laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial." In Rosenstein's view, it was "a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do." Our emphasis!

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! Ten months later, we liberals got to read an account of what Comey did last summer. In rather typical tribal fashion, we were spared such ruminations back in July, in real time.

What happened when Comey engaged in this conduct last summer? At the risk of repetition, let's quickly review the way our favorite entertainers reacted on cable TV at that time.

Good God! For those of us who may have forgotten, a presidential campaign was underway at that time! In that sense, it wasn't just anyone who got mugged in the manner Rosenstein described.

It wasn't just anyone who got mugged; it was Candidate Hillary Clinton. And it wasn't just anyone she was opposing. From the liberal perspective, she was running against the craziest major-party nominee in all the annals of time.

Under the circumstances, you'd almost think that our tribe's corporate stars would have wanted to push back against what Comey did last summer. You'd almost think that these corporate stars would have wanted to push back hard, even bigly.

Gullibles, please! Let us borrow from Willa Cather, describing the way Nebraska's (Anglo) young men of the 1890s refused to act on their desires concerning the territory's vibrant immigrant girls:

"The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk youth."

If you thought our liberal corporate stars were going to push against Comey the God, you "mistook the mettle" of our tribe's vastly overpaid and overpraised corporate youth.

What happened last summer when Comey the God behaved in the manner described? As we noted in real time, this is what occurred:

During that first full week of July, Rachel Maddow was enjoying a well-deserved summer vacation. Steve Kornacki guest-hosted that week.

Good God! Two nights running, Kornacki aggressively reinforced Comey's claims and battered Clinton's defenders. (This was especially hard to watch because, until the suits reinvented his broadcast style, Kornacki had plainly been one of the smart ones.)

Good lord! If he'd been auditioning for Fox & Friends, Kornacki couldn't have pimped Comey harder. When Ellen Tauscher appeared on the show to criticize Comey's behavior, she was met with aggressive push-back and with withering scorn.

Maddow returned on Monday, July 11—and, as everyone knows, she is Our Own Rhodes Scholar! By now, she even owned a TV set. She may have had some tiny inkling about what Kornacki had done.

Did Maddow proceed to right the balance? Gullibles, please! According to the Nexis archive, she never mentioned Comey's name all through the summer and deep into the fall! Maddow finally spoke Comey's name in the last week in October!

Maddow gave Comey a total pass last summer! Unless we want to persist as fools, we would say it's fairly obvious why Our Own Scholar did that:

Last July, it was well-known that Comey was an insider establishment god. Over the course of the past thirty years, the insider establishment had always had a supply of such untouchables.

Generally, they were figures from the right. Their names were Powell, McCain, Rice, even Ryan. As of last summer, Comey the God belonged to this class.

By fairly obvious rule of law, these godlike figures could not be challenged within the insider establishment. Maddow would jump off the Golden Gate Bridge before she would challenge such insider figures. Except to gullibles like us, this fact has been clear for some time.

Alas! Our Own Rhodes Scholar returned from vacance and took a four-month dive. She'd done the same thing four years before, during Campaign 2012, when Saint McCain and the great Bob Scheiffer took the lead is savaging Susan Rice and creating the iconic Benghazi bullroar.

(At that time, it was Hayes who affirmed the GOP stance. Maddow maintained total silence, as she would do four years later when faced with Comey the God.)

In fairness, Maddow's a talented entertainer who likes to mug and clown. She would be an excellent choice for children's birthday parties.

She's also a multimillionaire corporate-owned self-dealer. We liberals have proven to be completely unable to discern such obvious facts, which helps explain why Donald J. Trump is currently in the White House.

Quite literally, Maddow didn't say a word in the face of Comey the God. Yesterday, ten months later, we liberals were finally allowed to learn what he did way back when.

We were informed by a Trump appointee in a scathing memo. You heard no such thing on Maddow's show, where a TV star was mugging and clowning and sleeping way off in the woods.

A few weeks back, we suggested you google Tomasky and Drum to see what they said last summer. You'll be embarrassed if you do. But this embarrassing deference to attacks by the gods has been a mark of our pitiful tribe for the past twenty-five years.

It's been this way since 1992; it was this way during Campaign 2000. The Marshalls, the Drums, the Dionnes, the Maddows have always agreed not to mention such things. Fools for Scandal came and went, as did the attacks on Gore.

This group-wide conduct has represented curtains for us, the brainy ones found Over Here in our pitiful tribe. Today, Donald J. Trump sits in the Oval. We happily cast all the blame at Those People, the dumb bunnies found Over There.

If you're a liberal or a Democrat, you've been represented, for twenty-five years, by waves of quisling climbers. With that in mind, we'll explore our own tribe's current inanity in our next few reports.

In the meantime, let's look on the bright side! Yesterday, we finally learned, from Donald Trump's man, what Comey did last summer.

The news arrived some ten months later. That was twenty-five years too late!

Tomorrow: Inanity all the way down