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Accounting for the $2 million book payment plus returns on his investments, it's probably safe to say that Comey is worth about $14 million now. And since A Higher Loyalty provoked a bidding war among publishers and the winner, Macmillan, ordered an initial print run of 850,000 copies—more than five times Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury received in its first run—it looks like it could be on the bestseller list for quite some time. While the terms of Comey's deal with Macmillan have not been reported, it's number-one on the Amazon Charts with a list price of $17.99, and if he earns a percentage of each book sold he stands to make millions more in short order. Money is nice but not at the cost of reputation as well as respect from the rank & file FBI agents, as if he ever cared about that right? ______________________________________________ Life is short. It’s shorter with the wrong gun… | |||
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Festina Lente |
Everyone Is Smart Except Trump That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected president. It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do. They could not stand up to Matt Lauer at NBC. They could not stand up to Charlie Rose at CBS. They could not stand up to Mark Halperin at NBC. Nor up to Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic, nor Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, nor Michael Oreskes at NPR, at the New York Times, or at the Associated Press. But — oh, wow! — can they ever stand up to Putin! Only Trump is incapable of negotiating with the Russian tyrant. Remember the four years when Anderson Cooper was President of the United States? And before that — when the entire Washington Post editorial staff jointly were elected to be President? Remember? Neither do I. The Seedier Media never have negotiated life and death, not corporate life and death, and not human life and death. They think they know how to negotiate, but they do not know how. They go to a college, are told by peers that they are smart, get some good grades, proceed to a graduate degree in journalism, and get hired as analysts. Now they are expert, ready to take on Putin and the Iranian Ayatollahs at age 30. That is not the road to expertise in tough dealing. The alternate road is that, along the way, maybe you get forced into some street fights. Sometimes the other guy wins, and sometimes you beat the intestines out of him. Then you deal with grown-ups as you mature, and you learn that people can be nasty, often after they smile and speak softly. You get cheated a few times, played. And you learn. Maybe you become an attorney litigating multi-million-dollar case matters. Say what you will about attorneys, but those years — not the years in law school, not the years drafting legal memoranda, but the years of meeting face-to-face and confronting opposing counsel — those years can teach a great deal. They can teach how to transition from sweet, gentle, diplomatic negotiating to tough negotiating. At some point, with enough tough-nosed experience, you figure out Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” yourself. Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols. The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes. The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned. The second one screwed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle. Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama bin Laden when we had him in our sights. Hillary gave us Benghazi and more. And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day. So let us understand a few things: Negotiating with NATO: NATO is our friend. They also rip off America. They have been ripping us off forever. We saved their butts — before there even was a NATO — in World War I. They messed up, and 116,456 Americans had to die to save their butts. Then they messed up again for the next two decades because West Europeans are effete and so obsessed with their class manners and their rules of savoir faire and their socialist welfare states and their early retirements that they did not have the character to stand up to Hitler in the 1930s. Peace in our time. So they messed up, and we had to save their butts again. And another 405,399 Americans died for them during World War II. And then we had to rebuild them! And we had to station our boys in Germany and all over their blood-stained continent. So, hey, we love those guys. We love NATO. And yet they still rip us off. We pay 4% of our gigantic gross domestic product to protect them, and they will not pay a lousy 2% of their GDP towards their own defense. Is there a culture more penny-pinching-cheap-and-stingy than the fine constituents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? These cheap baseborn prigs will not pay their fare. They are too cheap. They expect America to send boys to die for them in one world war, then another — hundreds of thousands — and then to pay for their NATO defense even a century later. And then they have the temerity to cheat us further in trade. Long before Trump, they set up tariffs against us for so many things. If the average American knew how badly Europe has been ripping us off for decades with their tariffs, no one in this country would buy anything European again. We would say, as a matter of self-respect and personal pride, “I no longer will buy anything but American, no matter what it costs.” Every American President has complained about the cheating and imbalance — the NATO penny-pinching-cheapness, the tariff and trade imbalances. In more recent years, the various Bushes complained about it. Even Obama complained about it. But they all did it so gently, so diplomatically. They would deliver the sermon, just as the pastor predictably tells the church-goers on Sunday morning that he is against sin, and the Europeans would sit quietly and nod their heads — nodding from sleeping, not from agreeing — and then they would go back out and sin some more. Another four years of America being suckered and snookered. All they had to do was give Obama a Nobel Peace Prize his ninth month in office and let Kerry ride his bike around Paris. So Trump did what any effective negotiator would do: he took note of past approaches to NATO and their failures, and correctly determined that the only way to get these penny-pinching-cheap baseborn prigs to pay their freight would be to bulldoze right into their faces, stare them right in their glazed eyes with cameras rolling, and tell them point-blank the equivalent of: “You are the cheapest penny-pinching, miserly, stingy, tightwadded skinflints ever. And it is going to stop on my watch. Whatever it takes from my end, you selfish, curmudgeonly cheap prigs, you are going to pay your fair share. I am not being diplomatic. I am being All-Business: either you start to pay or, wow, are you in for some surprises! And you know what you read in the Fake News: I am crazy! I am out of control! So, lemme see. I know: We will go to trade war! How do you like that? Maybe we even will pull all our troops out of Europe. Hmmm. Yeah, maybe. Why not? Sounds good. Well, let’s see.” So Trump stuffed it into their quiche-and-schnitzel ingesting faces. And he convinced them — thanks to America’s Seedier Media who are the real secret to the “Legend That is Trump” — that he just might be crazy enough to go to trade war and to pull American boys home. They knew that Clinton and Bush x 2 and Kerry and Hillary and Nobel Laureate Obama never would do it. But they also know that Trump just might. And if they think they are going to find comfort and moderating in his new advisers, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, alongside him…. Nuh-uh. So CNN and the Washington Post and all the Seedier Media attacked Trump for days: He is destroying the alliance! He attacks our friends! Baloney. Obama was the one whom the Left Echo Chamber… Chamber… Chamber never called out for attacking our friends — Israel, Britain, so many others — while cozying up to Hugo Chavez, bowing to dictators, and dancing the tango for Raul Castro. Trump is just the opposite:He knows who the friends are, and he wants to maintain and strengthen those friendships. It is no different from a parent telling a 35-year-old son: “I have been supporting you for thirty-five years. I put you through college by signing four years and $100,000 in PLUS Loans. You graduated college fifteen years ago. For fifteen years I have been asking you nicely to look for a job and to start contributing. Instead, you sit home all day playing video games, texting your friends on a smartphone I pay for, and picking little fuzz balls out of your navel. So, look, I love you. You are my flesh and blood. But if you are not employed and earning a paycheck — and contributing to the cost of this household — in six months, we are throwing you out of the house.” That boy is NATO. Trump is Dad. And all of us have been signing for the PLUS Loans. Negotiating with Putin Putin is a bad guy. A really bad guy. He is better than Lenin. Better than Stalin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Pol Pot, Mao. But he is a really bad guy. Here’s the thing: Putin is a dictator. He answers to no one. He does whatever he wants. If there arises an opponent, that guy dies. Maybe the opponent gets poked with a poisoned umbrella. Maybe he gets shot on the street. Maybe the opponent is forced to watch Susan Rice interviews telling the world that Benghazi happened because of a YouTube video seen by nine derelicts in Berkeley and that Bowe Berghdal served with honor and distinction. But, one way or another, the opponent dies. Trump knows this about Putin. And here is what that means: If you insult Putin in public, like by telling the newsmedia just before or after meeting with him that he is the Butcher of Crimea, and he messed with our elections, and is an overall jerk — then you will get nothing behind closed doors from Putin. Putin will decide “To heck with you, and to heck with the relationship we just forged.” Putin will get even, will take intense personal revenge, even if it is bad for Russia — even if it is bad for Putin. Because there are no institutional reins on him. But if you go in public and tell everyone that Putin is a nice guy (y’know, just like Kim Jong Un) and that Putin intensely maintains that he did not mess with elections — not sweet little Putey Wutey (even though he obviously did) — then you next can maintain the momentum established beforehand in the private room. You can proceed to remind Putin what you told him privately: that this garbage has to stop — or else. That if he messes in Syria, we will do “X.” If he messes with our Iran boycott, we will do “Y.” We will generate so much oil from hydraulic fracturing and from ANWR and from all our sources that we will glut the market — if not tomorrow, then a year from now. We will send even more lethal offensive military weapons to Ukraine. We can restore the promised shield to Eastern Europe that Obama withdrew. And even if we cannot mess with Russian elections (because they have no elections), they do have computers — and, so help us, we will mess with their technology in a way they cannot imagine. Trump knows from his advisers what we can do. If he sweet-talks Putin in public — just Putin on the Ritz — then everything that Trump has told Putin privately can be reinforced with action, and he even can wedge concessions because, against that background, Putin knows that no one will believe that he made any concessions. Everyone is set to believe that Putin is getting whatever he wants, that Trump understands nothing. So, in that setting, Putin can make concessions and still save face. That is why Trump talks about him that way. And that is the only possible way to do it when negotiating with a tyrant who has no checks and balances on him. If you embarrass the tyrant publicly, then the tyrant never will make concessions because he will fear that people will say he was intimidated and backed down. And that he never will do. Meanwhile, Trump has expelled 60 Russians from America, reversed Obama policy and sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, and is pressing Germany severely on its pipeline project with Russia. The Bottom Line At the end of the day, Donald Trump is over seventy years old. He has made many mistakes in his life. He still makes some. He is human. But Trump likewise has spent three score and a dozen years learning. He has seen some of his businesses go bankrupt, and he has learned from those experiences to be a billionaire and not let it happen again. No doubt that he has been fooled, outsmarted in years past. And he has learned from life. He is a tough and smart negotiator. He sizes up his opponent, and he knows that the approach that works best for one is not the same as for another. It does not matter what he says publicly about his negotiating opponent. What matters is what results months later. In his first eighteen months in Washington, this man has turned around the American economy, brought us near full employment, reduced the welfare and food stamp lines, wiped out ISIS in Raqqa, moved America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, successfully has launched massive deregulation of the economy, has opened oil exploration in ANWR, is rebuilding the military massively, has walked out of the useless Paris Climate Accords that were negotiated by America’s amateurs who always get snookered, canned the disastrous Iran Deal, exited the bogus United Nations Human Rights Council. He has Canada and Mexico convinced he will walk out of NAFTA if they do not pony up, and he has the Europeans convinced he will walk out of NATO if they don’t stop being the cheap and lazy parasitic penny-pinchers they are. He has slashed income taxes, expanded legal protections for college students falsely accused of crimes, has taken real steps to protect religious freedoms and liberties promised in the First Amendment, boldly has taken on the lyme-disease-quality of a legislative mess that he inherited from Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama on immigration, and has appointed a steady line of remarkably brilliant conservative federal judges to sit on the district courts, the circuit appellate courts, and the Supreme Court. What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet. We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day. https://spectator.org/everyone-is-smart-except-trump/ NRA Life Member - "Fear God and Dreadnaught" | |||
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Frangas non Flectes |
Absolutely spot-on, every last word of it! ______________________________________________ Carthago delenda est | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
Comey, the holier-than-thou, unbiased, above it all, impartial protector of our nations laws and Director of the FBI? A Higher Loyalty Comey? "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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Damn great article, feersum! Thanks. | |||
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Admin/Odd Duck |
While the media and leftists look towards the shiny object of the Putin summit.... there is more MAGA here: https://www.breitbart.com/econ...igrants-say-lawyers/
____________________________________________________ New and improved super concentrated me: Proud rebel, heretic, and Oneness Apostolic Pentecostal. There is iron in my words of death for all to see. So there is iron in my words of life. | |||
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A BIG +1! | |||
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4 pct, 2 pct... Part of the reason we spend 4 pct of GDP, is the high cost (nearly 50 pct of the 4 pct GDP figure, in maintaining our nuclear arsenal. This nuclear arsenal, more than our economic power, ensures that the USD remains the world's international currency (Bretton-Woods) of choice - our's. BTW - I ponder how much of Germany's WWII war reparation payments funded the recipients of these payments' 2 pct of GDP armed forces expenditures. Reparation payments finally ended a few years ago and I recall reading that the recipients of these payments lamenting the fact in losing the payments. Want to rule the world (like getting access to SWIFT transaction records, which no other government can), then you're going to out spend the competition on defense expenditures. As far as Germany. Let's mot forget that when WWII in Europe legally ended in 1990, Germany by international peace treaty is limited to 345K active troops; air, land, sea. It can have another 25K for non-combat uses. So it perhaps does not need to spend 2 pct of its impressive GDP (also not allowed to have nukes / WMD's). Europe fought 2 wars against Germany in the 20'th century, and imposed severe force restrictions and reparation payments. Why spend 2 pct on GDP if your country will be toast in the next European war (just like it was in the 30 year war 400 years before). Might as well spend it on social programs and have a good time, before the time is up. -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- -.-. --.- It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. Ayn Rand "He gains votes ever and anew by taking money from everybody and giving it to a few, while explaining that every penny was extracted from the few to be giving to the many." Ogden Nash from his poem - The Politician | |||
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Glorious SPAM! |
Why 2% of their GDP? Because that's what they agreed to. If they did not want to pay that they should have negotiated a different rate. One can come up with all the excuses they want, fact is they agreed to 2%. So they have to pay 2%. Period. It's actually pretty simple. The number of troops they are allowed, the types of weapons, reparations for past wrongs, all immaterial. They entered into an agreement at 2%, they pay 2%. If they don't want to pay 2% they can void the agreement and fend for themselves. | |||
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Ubique |
Nonsense. Germany mothballed a large portion of its armour in the '90s because they did not feel the need for it anymore. They have recently started bringing the vehicles back on line to meet their current obligations, but they have lots of room under the current treaty limitations to both increase numbers and more importantly the quality of their systems. WRT your comments on why they should bother, if you are being serious, the answer is deterrence. A strong NATO is one thing that will absolutely discourage a Russian attack. With Obama around, Putin was pretty sure nobody would challenge his expansions. Right now Putin is assessing Trump, but also the European governments, to see if they have the will to defend their borders. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1...tanks/3459678686400/ https://nationalinterest.org/b...k-forces-by-40-20639 Calgary Shooting Centre | |||
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| I believe in the principle of Due Process  |
Is it “pay 2%” or “spend 2%?” If so, who do they pay the 2% to? Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me. When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown | |||
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Unflappable Enginerd |
And yet we're told almost daily that he's an R. __________________________________ NRA Benefactor I lost all my weapons in a boating, umm, accident. http://www.aufamily.com/forums/ | |||
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Member |
The other thing that isn't helping are the Nord pipelines - Germany/europe buying energy from Russia. Maybe NATO needs to be re-evaluated for usefulness...maybe we could talk to Romania/Bulgaria and get an agreement to put a naval base on the Black Sea. Permanent naval bases in Libya & Somalia (probably better in the long term than the mini-base in Djibouti).
...let him who has no sword sell his robe and buy one. Luke 22:35-36 NAV "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." Matthew 10:16 NASV | |||
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Political Cynic |
Comey isn't an R he's a T for traitor [B] Against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC | |||
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Back to winning: I'm in for the long haul not weekly media inspired hysterics.
"Senators voted 50-49 on Andrew Oldham's nomination to be a judge on the Fifth Circuit, making him Trump's 23rd circuit court judge confirmed since he took office last year." http://thehill.com/blogs/floor...-picks-for-key-court ____________________________________________________ The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart. | |||
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| I believe in the principle of Due Process |
Great. Now they are putting judges on the Circuit Courts of Appeals younger than my sons. Oldham is only 39, but he seems sound. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Oldham Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me. When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown | |||
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Member |
Link TRUMP HONORS FALLEN SECRET SERVICE AGENT, RECEIVES HIS BODY President Donald Trump honored fallen Secret Service Agent Nole Edward Remagen who died of a stroke during his recent trip to Europe in a Wednesday statement. “Earlier this week, United States Secret Service Special Agent Nole Edward Remagen suffered a stroke while on duty in Scotland,” Trump said. “Yesterday, he passed away, surrounded by family and fellow Secret Service agents. Our hearts are filled with sadness over the loss of a beloved and devoted Special Agent, husband and father.” Trump noted Remagen’s service record, saying, “A five-year veteran of the United States Marines, Special Agent Remagen spent 19 years with the Secret Service. At the time of his passing, he was among the elite heroes who serve in the Presidential Protection Division of the Secret Service.” He added, “Melania and I are deeply grateful for his lifetime of devotion, and today, we pause to honor his life and 24 years of service to our Nation.” Trump visited Andrews Air Force base to receive Remagen’s body Wednesday afternoon. You can donate to the Remagen family by visiting their Go Fund Me page. | |||
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Member |
^^^^^ Why do they need a gofundme page??? They'll get life insurance, unless he was a moron SS, and most likely a nice little sum for passing while on the job. WTF NRA Life Member "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Teddy Roosevelt | |||
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I can't answer your question. I was more focused on the fact that in addition to the statement, President Trump went to Andrews to receive the body. | |||
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