All posts by Jim

Left HS before report cards came out. Enlisted in the Marines for four years. By the time those years were over, I was hooked - they had me for life. Spent nearly ten years as enlisted. Received a Silver Star, Bronze Star w/V, Purple Heart as a Sgt during first RVN tour. Upon returning to the State's received a combat commission to 2Lt. Retired after 36 total years as a Colonel. Book follows my career, but is more about the heroes with whom I served, the great mentors I had, and the leadership principles they instilled in me.

The “New” FBI

They are now referred to as the Federal Bureau of Immunity, that is, unless your name isn’t Clinton; then your toast.

By Paul Sperry   October 6, 2016 | 8:54 pm

jamescomeyVeteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.

Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”

But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.

The immunity agreements came with outrageous side deals, including preventing agents from searching for any documents on a Dell laptop owned by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills generated after Jan. 31, 2015, when she communicated with the server administrator who destroyed subpoenaed emails.

Comey also agreed to have Mills’ laptop destroyed after the restricted search, denying Congress the chance to look at it and making the FBI an accomplice to the destruction of evidence.

Comey’s immunized witnesses nonetheless suffered chronic lapses in memory, made unsubstantiated claims of attorney-client privilege upon tougher questioning and at least two gave demonstrably false statements. And yet Comey indulged it all.

What’s more, Comey cut a deal to give Clinton a “voluntary” witness interview on a major holiday, and even let her ex-chief of staff sit in on the interview as a lawyer, even though she, too, was under investigation.

Clinton’s interview, the culmination of a yearlong investigation, lasted just 3½ hours. Despite some 40 bouts of amnesia, she wasn’t called back for questioning; and three days later, Comey cleared her of criminal wrongdoing.

“The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time,” Hughes said. “I hold Director Comey responsible.”

Agreed retired FBI agent Michael M. Biasello: “Comey has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of the organization.”

The accommodations afforded Clinton and her aides are “unprecedented,” Biasello added, “which is another way of saying this outcome was by design.” He called Comey’s decision not to seek charges “cowardly.”

“Each month for 27 years, I received oral and computer admonishments concerning the proper protocol for handling top-secret and other classified material, and was informed of the harsh penalties, to include prosecution and incarceration,” for mishandling such material, he pointed out. “Had myself or my colleagues engaged in behavior of the magnitude of Hillary Clinton, as described by Comey, we would be serving time in Leavenworth.”

Former FBI official I.C. Smith knows a thing or two about Clinton corruption. After working at FBI headquarters as a section chief in the National Security Division, he retired as special agent in charge of the Little Rock, Ark., field office, where he investigated top Clinton fundraisers for public corruption and even Chinese espionage.

“FBI agents upset with Comey’s decision have every reason to feel that way,” Smith said. “Clearly there was a different standard applied to Clinton.”

“I have no doubt resourceful prosecutors and FBI agents could have come up with some charge that she would have been subject to prosecution,” the 25-year veteran added. “What she did is absolutely abhorrent for anyone who has access to classified information.”

Smith said Congress should subpoena the case’s agents to testify about the direction they received from Comey and their supervisors: “It would be interesting to see what the results would be if those involved with the investigation were questioned under oath.”

Comey made the 25 agents who worked on the case sign nondisclosure agreements. But others say morale has sunk inside the bureau.

“The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation,” one agent in the Washington field office said. “There’s a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country.”

Comey has turned a once-proud institution known for its independence into one that bows to election pressure, hands out political immunity to candidates and effectively pardons their co-conspirators. He’s turned the FBI into the Federal Bureau of Immunity and lost the trust and respect of not only his agents but the country at large. He ought to step down.

Originally posted 2016-10-08 12:01:44.

“BABY ON BOARD” –

– A UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AIRCRAFT CARRIER?

If this wasn’t so sad, it would be a great story. I am certain the MSM is eating this up, I mean what could be more news worthy than  a nightly brief on how the “Baby on Board” is doing? I wonder if Mad Mabus and Ash & Trash Carter passed out “It’s a Girl” cigars and gave everyone at the five-sided nuthouse the rest of the day off. I love it. Welcome to our new “Armed” Forces. we just don’t know for what they are armed. 

Another dandy from Col Andy

Col Andyhttp://acoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/2016/10/baby-on-board-united-states-of-america.html

Originally posted 2016-10-07 15:21:42.

America’s Military Budget is Too Big

Obama's ArmyReally? Who says so? The main stream media? The pro-libs? In reality, anyone who wants to drive home their biased point that we spend too much on our military. But wait, are they telling you the truth? This is an eye opener.

Words by Wes O’Donnell, Professor of Predictive Analytics and Leadership. Managing Editor, InMilitary.com. Veteran, U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force. Connect with Wes on LinkedIn or at www.wesodonnell.com

Teaching college students about data and analytics is fun; I love how data can shatter preconceptions and everyday notions of reality. Knowing that their instructor is a military veteran, a group of my students recently asked me why America spends so much on its military. They claimed it was overkill and that the United States spends more on its military than the other top nine countries combined!

Really? Let’s look at the data. And just to be impartial, we’ll use numbers from an independent resource on global security, The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

And just to put it in context, let’s gobble up all of the other countries and put it next to Africa’s total debt and the UK’s budget deficit.

Wow! The U.S. military budget is indeed massive! So, is America an aggressive, war-mongering nation? Are we looking at the complete story? Are we seeing the whole picture?

America is a rich country. In fact, we are so massively rich and wealthy that you could combine the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the next top 4 countries inside the United States!

As David McCandless famously states, “It doesn’t seem fair to not factor in the wealth of a country when assessing its military budget.”

So what happens when you take military budgets as a proportion of each country’s GDP?

It turns out that Myanmar spends the most on their military at an incredible 26% of GDP! The United States is way down in 8th place at only 4% and the United Kingdom, our strongest ally, is 29th on the list at 2%.

So what about soldiers? Who do you think has the most soldiers? It has to be China, right?

 

But China has an enormous population, of course their military is going to be large. But what happens when we add in the data-set of “population” in relation to soldiers?

Now a sharper image comes into focus. North Korea has the most soldiers per 100,000 people, followed closely by Eritrea, a small country in the Horn of Africa. The United States is in 45th place with only 507 per 100,000 and China extremely far down the list at 124th with only 164 soldiers per 100,000 people.

And finally, to give the most complete picture, let’s calculate the total armed forces of a nation in relation to its population:

Once again, the United States is ranked at 61st on the list with North Korea, Russia and Israel taking up the first, second and third highest spots respectively.

The lesson for my students? Always be skeptical. Just because something makes a good headline, doesn’t make it true, even if it is from a seemingly reputable news source. Always ask if all of the data sets are represented. A very different picture may emerge.

Originally posted 2016-10-07 14:50:02.

Look out Haiti, Here They Come Again!

The Clinton’s are coming to help again! Is this a joke or what? There is no depth to how low the Clinton’s will go make a buck in the name of charity. Can you imagine how much “charity” they be able to provide (read receive) if she and Billy Bob are in the White House?

Bill Clinton Pushing for Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief After Fleecing Haitians

 In the wake of the devastating destruction to Haiti caused by Hurricane Matthew, President Bill Clinton took to Twitter and urged his six million-plus followers to go to the embattled Clinton Foundation to assist in relief efforts.

 

“Praying for everyone impacted by . Here’s how you can help in Haiti,” Clinton said his tweet, which linked to a Medium article, entitled, “Members of the Clinton Foundation Community Respond to Hurricane Matthew; Ways to Support.”

The last time tragedy struck the tiny Caribbean country, Bill and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — according to scores of enraged Haitians — used their billion dollar charity and leveraged their global connections to enrich themselves and their monied cronies.

Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010 — while 316,000 lifeless bodies lay buried under rubble, and while 300,000 Haitians suffered from injuries, with another 1.3 million displaced — the Clinton’s saw an opportunity to cash in.

Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, landed a lucrative and historically rare Haitian “gold exploitation permit,” while Clinton Foundation donors, including Digicel mobile phone company founder Denis O’Brien, were winning multi-million dollar contracts that would siphon massive profits from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

While then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department was funneling billions in relief funds to rebuild Haiti, the Clinton Foundation was leveraging its influence to guide high-dollar contracts to longtime Clinton cronies who would go on to reap millions off the catastrophe that had claimed so many lives on the devastated island.

“I deal through the Clinton Foundation,” Tony Rodham said according to a transcript of his testimony during court proceedings, obtained by The New York Times. “That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials. I hound my brother-in-law [Bill Clinton], because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it.”

The anger at the Clinton’s from the Haitian people is no secret.

Indeed, dozens of Haitian protesters gathered outside the Democrat National Convention in July and railed against the Clinton’s and the Clinton Foundation for their long-reported history of using their global connections to exploit the resources and the poor people of Haiti.

“The main message is that Hillary Clinton belongs in jail,” one protester said at the time when asked what the overall message of the protest was. “We believe that the world should know about the crimes the Clinton family has committed against the country of Haiti–the money they have stolen from the earthquake victims. And we believe that were this to be anyone else, they’d be in jail right now.”

“She’s not in jail because she’s being protected by the Obama administration, the Justice Department, State Department,” the protester said.

Bill Clinton’s tweet, urging support for Haiti, smacks of irony, and Twitter followers took notice.

“Clintons still scamming off poor Haiti after a natural disaster ,” one user wrote.

“Do u realize what the Clinton Foundation did to Haiti?” another Twitter user asked.

His question was quickly answered by another user, who said, “Practically stole 6 billion promising hospitals/homes to rebuild Haiti?”

“More like literally,” another user said.

“There it is, Clinton’s looking to fill their bank accounts off another natural disaster,” another user remarked.

As Breitbart News reported, Haitians have been protesting the Clinton’s for years for their transgressions against the tiny island nation.

Originally posted 2016-10-07 09:40:48.