W.J. Astore
My dad left me two silver dollars. They’re worth much in sentimental value (I’ll explain in a moment), but they also teach us something about how America has changed.
Here’s a photo of them. Lady Liberty is on the front, an eagle is on the back.
These were “peace” dollars issued in the aftermath of World War I. (Note the word “peace” under the eagle.) Imagine that: a coin issued by the USA dedicated to and celebrating peace! It’s truly hard to imagine such a coin being issued today, and not only because our currency is now made only with base metal (a debased currency?).
In keeping with U.S. foreign policy today, an equivalent 2018 (faux silver) dollar would doubtless feature the god of war on the front with a menacing eagle clutching missiles, drones, and bombs on the back.
Anyway, I promised a story about my dad’s silver dollars, and I’m going to let him tell it:
“I have a silver dollar in my coin collection. Helen and I were courting at the time. At Nantasket beach [in Massachusetts] there was a glass container with prizes, candy, coins, etc. Also a crank on the unit which when turned controlled a flexible scoop. The idea was to work the scoop to pick up something of value. Well, I took a chance. It was like magic; the scoop just went down and picked up the silver dollar. I gave it to Ma as a remembrance. We’ve had it ever since.”
“The other silver dollar has a story also. A buddy in the service [Army] gave it to me for a birthday present [during World War II].”
After my dad died, these coins passed to me. One is from 1922, the other from 1924. I love the “peace” eagle they feature, though we know peace was not in the cards for long after the Great War. And of course I love my dad’s stories of how he came to possess them.
When will America’s coinage next feature a tribute to the end of war and the promise of peace?
Bracing Views 
When will America’s coinage next feature a tribute to the end of war and the promise of peace?
The answer is not in my lifetime. Peace has become a bad word associated most often with Munich, or pacifism.
The Ancient Romans often issued coinage with the Emperors portrait on it. Some coins and monuments featured celebrations of various victories and barbarians prostrated in front of a victorious Emperor. State Propaganda extolling Imperial Might to every corner of the Empire.
Today we have our McMega-Media to fulfill the lack of bellicose coinage. As an example – Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war. Seven of the top 10 newspapers by circulation—USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday and Washington Post—supported the airstrikes. The New York Daily News and San Jose Mercury New soffered no opinion, while the New York Times (4/13/18) was ambiguous—mostly lamenting the lack of congressional approval.
None of the top 100 newspapers questioned the US’s legal or moral right to bomb Syria, and all accepted US government claims to be neutral arbiters of “international law.” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/18/out-26-major-editorials-trumps-syria-strikes-zero-opposed
================================================================
The Cable News outlets were all a glow about the strikes on Syria. The Democrats as usual talked out of both sides of their mouths, lamenting the fact that Trump (aka Agent Orange) did not get a permission slip to order the air strikes, at the same time spouting the script we have to do something.
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All agreed, none disagreed. . .E PLURIBUS UNUM = out of many, one . . .also IN GOD WE TRUST. . . PEACE.
It’s all BS, an attempt to control us. We must all think alike! Pledge allegiance!
I betcha Michael can say that better than I.
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Whenever I hear someone say, “We can’t just stand by and do nothing,” I think of President Eisenhower’s favorite rejoinder whenever someone tried to hustle him into taking actions that he did not think particulary wise: “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Since America’s record of “doing something” has proven so disastrous both to America and the world, it should seem obvious that a lot more standing and a lot less doing would benefit the world enormously. The Lunatic Leviathan really needs to take a long, long, long nap and cease “doing” anything.
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In the USA, war means never having to say you’re sorry.
The lack of criticism of the war machine is remarkable — but explicable for all the reasons we know. The people are kept isolated from war; Congress prefers to be spineless; the MSM is either toothless or complicit (talk about collusion!); and there’s much money to be made from war and weapons.
Trump is easing restrictions on weapons exports (who cares about human rights?), and military strikes like the one in Syria are seen as evidence of “toughness” by Trump, even if no missions are ever accomplished.
If we reap what we sow, America’s next dollar coin should show the god of war on the front with a screaming eagle tearing apart hapless foreigners on the back.
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Great reply WJAstore, And I respect your Dad’s (rip) ‘Liberty Dollars’. Yet all FOUR of my grandparents HATED Windrow Wilson and his lies at campaigning he’d keep America OUT of “Europe’s War”. Moderate Republicans, they fell for the lie, this Elitist gave them and voted for him! Furious with their betrayal; they were starting families and building a married life.
OK, things “worked out” – but the got Hitler 20 ye
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Instead of the eagle, I’ve always thought that the vulture would more aptly represent the United States of today. You know, like that joke about the two vultures sitting up in a tree surveying the bleak desert below them, just waiting for something to die so they can swoop down and begin feasing on the remains. One of the buzzards finally grows exasperated at the meager choices and says to the other: “Patience, my ass. I’m going down there and kill something.” Or, as our instructors taught us back in Counter-Insurgency School at Coronado Island in 1969: “To hell with winning their hearts and minds. Just grab ’em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.”
Today, as applies to the U.S. Corporate-Military Junta looking to create or join a fight anywhere on Planet Earth in hopes that this might justify their death grip on the U.S. budget, the Impatient Vulture Doctrine goes something like this:
“To hell with waiting for a ‘brutal dictator’ to kill ‘his own people’ (i.e., the ones we’ve armed, funded, and trained to kill him), let’s just accuse him of some sort of dastardly ‘chemical’ thingie, get all-outraged-and-stuff, and then bomb the people who actually do support him before our proxie-jihadi head-choppers in their white helmets can do the job.”
For those still a bit unsure about the Vulture (or Buzzard) as replacement symbol for the eagle on U.S. coinage, perhaps the hyena would serve as well …
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“The people are kept isolated from war”
You are SO right!
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I never finished my Above post; something wrong with internet. bmcks
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BMKS – Not to worry, the meaning of your comment above came through loud and clear.
My mom’s Depression-Era generation hated President Harry S. Truman’s Korean “police action” since they had had enough of World War II and wanted to — as you say of your grandparents (like mine) — settle down and raise a family in peace. The Republican challenger in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower, promised that he would “go to Korea” and stop the fighting. He didn’t stop the “war” or “bring the boys home” (their American decendants remain in Korea today) but he did at least stop the fighting as far as concerned Americans. This won him re-election in 1956. It also enraged the standing military interests, both corporate stockholders and career officer corps, but as a former general himself, Ike could pull off the retreat without getting branded a “commie-pinko-pussy traitor,” as would have any Democrat in his position.
For my generation, in the first semester of our senior year of high school in 1964, we believed in Democrat President Lyndon Johnson when he said he would not send “American boys” to fight in some Asian war that “Asian boys” could very well fight for themselves. The Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona (and his “Goldwater Girl” You-Know-Her) wanted to bomb the dogshit out of North Vietnam. We couldn’t vote but our parents’ generation could and they elected Johnson in a landslide. Then, like Woodrow Wilson, he betrayed us in an instant having already promised the Joined Chefs of Stuff (itching to get into another Asian war to prove that they hadn’t really lost in Korea): “Just let me get elected and you can have your war.” Johnson justifiably went down in flames over that betrayal. Then Richard Nixon — who wouldn’t give up that “war president” horseshit either — sent me to Vietnam in 1970, earning my undying hatred. He won re-election in 1972 promising “Peace is at hand,” but when he savagely bombed North Vietnam shortly afterwards on Christmas day, he found himself promptly getting the boot for his very own betrayals.
Fast forward to 2016 and, amazingly, Donald Trump, the typical cut-taxes-on-the-super-wealthy Republican, actually ran to the Left of You-Know-Her, cynically promising Peace and Jobs, while You Know Her stupidly thought she could lure right-wing Republicans even further to the Right by posing as an “all-tough-and-stuff” Special Snowflake to Donald Trump’s less-than right-wing-enough Hothouse Orchid. Thus ensued a vicious game of “elite” touch football on the front lawn of the Summer-vacation mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. The Hothouse Orchid won, to hear the sore-loser Special Snowflake tell it, because “the Russians” and “Wikileaks” committed Journalism (by providing factual, documentary information to American voters) and thus did some sort of remote Vulcan mind-meld on the desperate demogaphics abandoned by those “really tough” right wing corporate “Democrats” who still persist in attacking right-wing Republicans from even further to the right. Sort of like Genghis Khan attacking Atilla the Hun as “insufficiently barbarian.” Gee whiz and golly gosh, Batman. I wonder which direction the country will take as a result of this corporate factional food fight on the far right edge of the Crack of Doom.
As comedian Ron Placone likes to say on the Jimmy Dore youtube show: “America doesn’t need a third party, it needs a second one,” and this, the tired and corrupted corporate right-wing “Democrats” most certainly do not provide.
So, BMCKS, did I understand you correctly?
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Recall, Mike, that Nixon in ’68 allegedly had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War quickly. Instead, he dragged it out for another four years (or seven years, if you go to the fall of Saigon in ’75). Another 25,000 or so U.S. troops died, and perhaps a million SE Asians, all so Nixon could claim he had “peace with honor.”
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As a veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent, I understood perfectly my little part in dragging out the long defeat — known far and wide as “Vietnamization” or “Yellowing the Corpses” — past the re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972. After that, supposedly, Nixon and Kissinger wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to the latest and lamest excuse for a “government” in Saigon. But the U.S. military establishment wouldn’t hear of that “ending” business, which they understood perfectly well meant defeat, richly deserved, but bitterly resented all the same. So, the military brass and their corporate sponsors seethed and schemed, pressuring President Nixon into switching tactics (bombing instead of ground forces) without abandoning the dream of an “inevitable victory.” Reflecting upon all this a decade ago, I came up with my own take on “Peace with Honor,” which in fact meant no peace and no honor, but rather a dreary and demented reminder of the bloody Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
Peace With Horror
A leper knight rode into view
Astride his mangy steed
A harbinger of violence
A plague without a need
An apparition of discord
Upon which fear would feed
His unannounced arrival meant
He’d lost his leper’s bell
And yet his ugly innocence
Could not conceal the smell
His good intentions only paved
Another road to Hell
With mace and lance and sword deployed
He vowed in peace to live
Through rotting lips he promised not
To take, but only give
He swore to only kill the ones
Whom he said shouldn’t live
He did not speak the language and
He did not know the land
So why the healthy shrank from him
He could not understand
Why did they want the water when
He’d offered them the sand?
Committing to commitments he
Committed crimes galore
As steadfast in his loyalties
As any purchased whore
A mercenary madman like
His slogan: “Peace through War”
His slaying for salvation masked
An inner, grasping greed
A lust for living good and well
While looking past his deed
A dead man walking wakefully;
A graveyard gone to seed
He planned to leave in “phases,” so
He said to those back home
Who’d heard some nasty rumors rife
From Babylon to Rome
Of murders in their name meant to
Exalt their sacred tome
But still he needed to “protect”
Some pilgrims on the road
Who for “protection” glumly paid
A portion of their load:
For this decaying derelict,
An object episode
When asked to give a summary
Of what he had achieved
He shifted to the future tense
The gains that he perceived
And spoke in the subjunctive mood
To those he had aggrieved
“The future life to come portends
More suffering than now.
Through me alone can you avoid
What I will disavow:
The promises I never made
While making, anyhow.”
“I unsay things that I have said
And say I never did;
Then say them once again to pound
The meaning deeply hid,
Down where the lizard lives between
The ego and the id.”
“I’ve given you catastrophe
And called it a success;
If you want other outcomes then
Step forward and confess
That you believed a pack of lies
With no strain, sweat, or stress.”
“You know the meaning of my words
Lasts only just as long
As sound takes to decay in air
So that you take them wrong
If you assign significance
To my sly siren song.”
“A ‘propaganda catapult’
I’ve called myself, in fact;
A damning human document
Which I myself redact
At every opportunity
With no concern for tact.”
“If you think what I’ve done before
Has caused me to repent
Or dream that I, in any way,
Might let up or relent
Then I’ve got wars for you to buy,
Or maybe just to rent.”
“I’ve little time to live on earth,
So why should I reflect
Upon the dead and dying souls
Whose lives I’ve robbed and wrecked?
I care not if they hate, just that
They know to genuflect.”
Thus did the ruin of a world
Continue in its curse;
The great man on his horse relieved
The faithful of their purse
And gave them bad to save them from
What they feared even worse
So onward to Jerusalem
He staggered as he slew
In train with sack and booty that
He only thought his due
For spreading freedom’s germs among
The last surviving few
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2008
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Yes you did Michael Murry. You also finished off better than I could!
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@BMCKS (and others)
If you haven’t read it, you might enjoy reading “The Politics of War” by Walter Karp.
“The story of two wars which altered forever the political life of the American Republic (1890-1920)”
Karp is really tough on the “bottomless deceit” of Wilson. . . .a tribute to the intelligence of your antecedents.
And before Wilson, the McKinley Administration came up with war in Cuba, the conquest of the Philippines, and an imperialist foreign policy deemed “essential to the greatness of any splendid people…necessary to the strength and dignity of any nation.”
Karp is the real deal. He puts passion into his history writings, and doesn’t hold anything back.
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That’s powerful Michael.
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Thanks for the book title Don Bacon. I’m so bigoted against Wilson from my family, maybe a more historical back-up is necessary! Strangely, both my parents families are from New Jersey; use your imagination what they called ‘Princeton’……
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The media has no objection to an illegal US military attack on another far away besieged, half destroyed country which does not threaten US national security.
news report:
Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed . . .A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.
What if every country acted like this? I’ve tried various actions, nothing worked. So I’ve settled upon (1) blogging and (2) not voting (it only encourages them).
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Yes, Don Bacon, the press is owned by the MIC* today. *Wrong word, sorry. Major US corporations. As I’ve said here before, I worked for 2 multinational advertising agencies in the 60’s & 70’s, and no matter how much major clients screamed at Bill Paley of CBS to calm down the anti Vietnam rhetoric, he wouldn’t budge. Their viewership was so high, and SOLID, he could tell, say Ford, to get lost. Not true today: flimsy ratings, greedy stockholders, greedy executives. Strangely, in this mix, was even the character, ‘Ed Sullivan’ with his enormously popular show. Major advertisers were furious he promoted black groups like the Supremes, Bo Diddley, James Brown, etc. Household words today, even detractors of this 50’s ‘populuxe’ show admit he was very colorblind; just looked for talent. He again wouldn’t budge when advertisers threatened to take away advertising $. “Good bye!” He made a fortune for himself, and artists also. Everyone got rich!
That’s what I don’t understand about huge corporations today: they almost seem impoverished compared to the past. My bosses ran around in limousines! But treated us workers fairly, so we couldn’t care less!
Truth in Disclosure: I don’t believe their incredible ‘profit’ figures today. How in hell can 150Mil$ in missiles raise the stock price 5BIL$!? It makes no sense…unless they’re trying to suck the remaining Middle Class into their scam. Morals another issue…
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@BMCKS
You want it, you’ll get a truckload of “more historical back-up” on Wilson, who was a real lying scumbag (not unusual for a president, unfortunately).
Okay BMCKS, another book suggestion for you (and others) if you haven’t seen it. It’s “War Made Easy — how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death” by Norman Solomon.
Speaking of CBS, a quote from Solomon’s book:
Dan Rather, an iconic US journalist: “Look I’m an American. I never tried to kid anybody that I’m some internationalist or something. And when my country is at war, I want my country to win, whatever the definition of ‘win’ might be. Now, I can’t and don’t argue that that is coverage without prejudice. About that I am prejudiced.” So Dan brought us through the criminal war against Vietnam and the Nixon presidency.
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OK Don Bacon; you’ve got me between the eyes re Dan Rather. I know very little about him, as his rise came around the time I was leaving the business and moving on. I do remember the old guys complaining he was promoted “More like a movie star than newscaster”. That was the new trend in broadcasting, though CBS never recovered the high ratings it got under Edward R Morrow or Walter Cronkite. Your quote from Solomon’s book is most revealing to me: a pretty face, blabbing what our clients wanted to hear. The irony is when Rather was finally fired (retired Cronkite was shocked it took them so long!), CBS had slipped from #1 to #3 in ratings. Morrow was dead, and ‘Dan’ sued CBS for 70Mil$, where it was laughed out of court.
Old stories I know, but maybe the embryo stage of “Fake News”….
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The big news “anchors” make millions for reading the news that’s given to them. They don’t want to risk their jobs, their money, their “celebrity,” by criticizing the government/national security state. They’ve heard of all the people given their walking papers for criticizing wars (Phil Donahue and Ashleigh Banfield, for example). It’s so easy simply to submit while cashing your million dollar checks. At the same time, you keep your access to all the right parties and all the “right” people.
It’s never a scandal to promote America’s wars, torture, weapons, etc. Indeed, the only thing that hurts these media talking heads is a sexual scandal that can’t be swept under the rug. That, or falling ratings.
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Forget the animal images on the national coinage. For my money (about two cents’ worth), the Joker has to have the inside track when it comes to symbolizing post-literate America (the land that once could read and, occasionally, think). As Jack Paar, the orginal host of The Tonight Show used to say: “I kid you, not.”
Thanks to The Saker for bringing this to our attention, fellow Crimestoppers, but I swear, you simply cannot make up this kind of self-stroking, chicken-choking, twerp-circle-jerking, head-stuffed-securely-up-the-ass cluelessness. None of the ancient epithets for arrogant idiocy — “Dumber than Dirt,” “Too Stupid to Stipulate,” etc. — will any longer suffice to describe the corporate lobotomization of the United States. Check it out:
The 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner in National Reporting – Staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post
[choke, gag, ralph, barf, spit, puke, vomit]
Honest Injun. The prize goes to two corporate collections of discredited stenographers who have replaced “reporting” with repeating. I mean, what level of self-awareness must one NOT possess in order to actually transcribe in Korzybskian “spell-marks” the following word-like “noises”?
For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration. (The New York Times entry, submitted in this category, was moved into contention by the Board and then jointly awarded the Prize.)
“Deeply sourced”? At some point in the future — if suffering humanity even lives to see a someday and if an America even exists where the citizens have rediscovered the ability to read and think for themselves — historians of galactic, cosmic irony will have a field day with the following:
Winning Work
February 8, 2017 – Officials say Flynn discussed sanctions (Washington Post)
February 13, 2017 -White House received warning about Flynn (Washington Post)
February 28, 2017 – FBI was to pay author of Trump dossier (Washington Post)
March 1, 2017 – Sessions spoke twice to Russian envoy (Washington Post)
May 15, 2017 – Trump reveals secret intelligence to Russians (Washington Post)
May 22, 2017 – President asked intelligence chiefs to deny collusion (Washington Post)
June 14, 2017 – Trump’s actions now a focus of Mueller inquiry (Washington Post)
June 22, 2017 – Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault
July 31, 2017 – Trump crafted son’s statement on Russian contact (Washington Post)
December 13, 2017 – Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked (Washington Post)
May 16, 2017 -Trump Appealed To Comey To Haunt Inquiry Into Aide (New York Times)
July 10, 2017 – Trump’s Son Heard of Link To Moscow Before Meeting (New York Times)
July 11, 2017 – Emails Disclose Trump Son’s Glee At Russian Offer (New York Times)
December 30, 2017 – Unlikely Source Propelled Russian Meddling Inquiry (New York Times)
May 19, 2017 – Trump Admitted Dismissal At F.B.I. Eased Pressure (New York Times)
May 11, 2017 – President Shifts Rationale For Firing F.B.I. Director, Calling Him a ‘Showboat’ (New York Times)
April 6, 2017 – Undisclosed On Forms, Kushner Met 2 Russians (New York Times)
April 22, 2017 -In Trying to Avoid Politics, Comey Shaped an Election (New York Times)
May 17, 2017 -Trump Transition Said to Know Of Flynn Inquiry Before Hiring (New York Times)
September 7, 2017 – To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans (New York Times)
“Winning Work”? What a catalogue of clueless corporate cupidity. In closing, I can only say: “Thank goodness for youtube and the Jimmy Dore Show,” without which I doubt that I could maintain my sanity in the flatulent fog of dis- and mis-information — the journalistic equivalent of a loud fart in church — published by purveyors of puerile pointlessness who now bestow “prestigious” awards upon their very own selves for wasting the last year and a half imagining lurid fantasies instead of doing some honest research into what actually happened.
American “journalism” has crawled up its own ass and died. The Joker would love it.
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Sorry for the inadvertent e-mail address fragment in the “name” field. Perhaps the editor could remove that. But speaking of the Pulitzer Prize for Pathetic Propaganda, how about a more realistic award, in verse, for:
Boobie Infotainment
(from Fernando Po, U.S.A., America’s post-literate retreat to Plato’s Cave)
Some chose to place a saintly crown
Upon her dead blonde head,
While others felt relieved at last:
“She’s better off,” they said.
A woman born of others’ needs:
An unreal life she led.
The tabloids built an image up
To vend to those who dreamed
Of two deadbeat aristocrats
Unreasonably teamed:
A fable for frustrated lives
Vicariously beamed
Into those households where the proles
Preferred their rubbish crass
Along with propaganda “news,”
Leaked from and to an ass,
Delivered by celebrities
With tits or balls of brass.
Thus Marilyn, Diana, or
Maid Monica will do —
Along with Michael Jackson and
Dead Elvis Presley, too —
Distracting ‘Murcans from the bad
And ugly larger view.
Just so did Bush and Blair concoct
Some “coalition” fun.
They’d have a go at poor Saddam
And set him on the run:
The mad dog and his Englishman
Out in the noonday sun.
This illustrates a lesson that
Some liars never learn:
Do not believe the lie yourself
Or else you’ll surely burn
And find your ashes dumped into
A small ceramic urn.
As Hayakawa wrote, we have
This thing, the Empty Eye:
A Technicolor campfire on
Which Boobies now rely
To dull the pain with images
That pass too swiftly by.
The Eye emitted “content” both
Innocuous and bland
And pushed it past the limits of
What Boobie brains could stand,
Inducing thought rejection all
Across the Boobies’ land.
The pictures came and went too fast
To process on the fly,
So Boobies felt upset but they
Could find no reason why.
The only thing they knew is that
They felt compelled to buy.
With nervous systems stunned and jazzed
They couldn’t bring to mind
Some cartoons from the past that told
Of just this Boobie kind:
A salesman of the bait-and-switch
Who robbed a sailor blind.
He’d beg a meal from Popeye then
This Wimpy guy would say:
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for
A hamburger today.”
Which meant, of course, that he had no
Intention to repay.
King George the bumbling Boobie, too,
Worked things the selfsame way.
He waged a war on nothing down
But promised that some day
Some other one would come along
And all the costs defray.
“When Tuesday comes, I won’t be here,”
He snickered as he spent.
“I’ll eat my burger now and get
Those lenders to relent
Till I can high-tail out of town
And stiff them for the rent.”
The Infotainment tabloids, though,
Saw no need to retort.
They liked the dead-blonde pictures that
They showed around for sport.
Convinced that only “good news” lies
Deserved a full “report.”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2006, 2009
Yeah. I think that about covers rewards for “journalism” in the United States.
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Michael I thought this was an Onion-style spoof when I read:
> Trump’s Son Heard of Link To Moscow Before Meeting (New York Times)
> Emails Disclose Trump Son’s Glee At Russian Offer (New York Times)
But they were part of the basis for a Pulitzer!! You didn’t make it up!!!
. . .Wow. . . . Bow-wow.
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War is how Americans learn Geography. Just some tidbits: James Comey has been through the ringer in the McMega-Media perhaps part of lyrics in Frank Sinatra’s song That’s Life says it all:
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate
A poet, a pawn and a king
I’ve been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race
Comey will never be pauper. In 2005, Comey left law enforcement for the defense industry, joining money-in-politics powerhouse Lockheed Martin. As senior vice president and general counsel he earned more than $6 million in compensation in his last full year with the company. https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=70344
He (Comey) announced he would leave Lockheed Martin to join the senior management committee at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment management firm. Comey received a three million dollar payout from Bridgewater. >> Comment: A happy marriage of the Organs of State Security and the Wall Street-Security-Military-Industrial Complex.
Comey will probably hit the trail for speaking engagements for corporate AmeriKa.
Remember when Shapely Sarah Palin said on 11 September 2008 appearance on ABC News on Russia: “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”. Sarah Palin did not say ‘I can see Russia from my house.’ That line originated with an SNL spoof.
A lot of people laughed at Sarah. Now we have MSDNC’ Rachael Maddow, and Chris Matthews among others, who see Russians everywhere infecting America. It is like the Army-McCarthy Hearings of the 1950’s. They are everywhere, everywhere.
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