Possibly Not the Best Person Whose Opinion to Ask

Today's Metaphor

The Perfect Pair: James Clapper And The Most Busted Name In News

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on CNN on Monday with Jim Sciutto.  He asked the doddering old fool about the difference between the President’s new national security strategy categorizing China and Russia as rivals whose interests are "antithetical" to the U.S. and his praise for Putin.

During the President’s press conference, he brought up the phone call he had with Putin over the weekend, during which the Russian leader called Trump to thank him for sharing critical CIA intelligence that thwarted a planned terror attack in St. Petersburg. 

"I think that this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is," Clapper said. "He knows how to handle an asset and that's what he's doing with the president.”

Sciutto asked Clapper to repeat his statement, to confirm whether he was indeed calling the American president an "asset" of Russia.

"That's the appearance to me," Clapper said. "He's a KGB officer. That's what they do. They recruit assets."  He added that Putin appears to be using his past experience and instincts now to manage "a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president." 

Is there a more seditious Red-baiting un-American former government employee?

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John, If Things Are So Peachy, Why The Long Face?

I never tire to resurrecting that question when it comes to John Forbes Kerry.  Ketchup Boy, who testified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, said:

“And frankly—and last thing, this is counterintuitive but it’s true: Our citizens, our world today is actually, despite ISIL, despite the visible killings that you see and how horrific they are, we are actually living in a period of less daily threat to Americans and to people in the world than normally— less deaths, less violent deaths today than through the last century. And so even the concept of state war has changed in many people’s minds, and we’re seeing now more asymmetrical kinds of struggles.”

Utter stupidity has no limits. 

“The Islamic State awaits the army of ‘Rome,’ whose defeat at Dabiq, Syria, will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse,’ wrote Graeme Wood at The Atlantic.

FBI Director James Comey has said his bureau is investigating possible ISIS supporters in all 50 states.

James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, starkly testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, “When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years such data has been compiled.

Here’s the pull quote from The Washington Times:

“If ISIL were to substantially increase the priority it places on attacking the West rather than fighting to maintain and expand territorial control, then the group’s access to radicalized Westerners who have fought in Syria and Iraq would provide a pool of operatives who potentially have access to the United States and other Western countries,” he said. “Since the conflict began in 2011, more than 20,000 foreign fighters—at least 3,400 of whom are Westerners—have gone to Syria from more than 90 countries.”