"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." — Groucho Marx
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have publicly affirmed that Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 death was a suicide. During a Senate hearing, Patel stated, "You know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was," referencing his experience in the prison system. Bongino, after reviewing the FBI's case files, echoed this conclusion, asserting there is no evidence suggesting Epstein's death was anything other than a suicide.
No evidence except a broken hyoid bone that requires more force than could be generated using a plasticized paper sheet and about 18 inches of fall space, while multiple surveillance cameras all failed at the same time and all the guards were asleep or in the coffee room. Circumstantial I’ll grant you, but c’mon boys, I wasn’t born yesterday.
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These statements have sparked backlash among some of their former supporters, particularly within MAGA circles, who have long believed Epstein's death was a cover-up to protect powerful individuals linked to his sex trafficking and blackmail operation, with deep ties to Israel and MI-6. Critics have accused Patel and Bongino of betraying the movement and succumbing to institutional biases.
Despite the controversy, Patel has announced a major transparency initiative, promising the public release of "truckloads" of previously hidden documents within a week, covering significant topics such as the Epstein case, the January 6 Capitol fiasco, and the opioid crisis.
While the official stance remains that Epstein's death was a suicide, the forthcoming document releases may provide further insights into the case.
This all sounds to me like a chaff-and-flare evasion maneuver: throw out a cloud of shiny, sparkly material, then turn sharply in a different direction to avoid incoming fire. In the case of US politics, we might rename it the hope-n-change maneuver, where the hopeful masses are misled by seeming reformers into trapsing down primrose paths, while nothing of any substance changes.
Throughout his first administration, and now into his second, Donald Trump has been amazingly consistent on two things: 1) he has a lousy hiring record; and 2) he has yet to achieve anything of true, lasting value. Much like his commercial empire, Trump has done a masterful job of selling his name, but his actual products have been a bit more elusive.
From Flynn, Sessions, Comey, McCabe, Wray, and Barr in Admin 1.0, to Bondi, Patel, Kennedy, and Bongino in Admin 2.0, we have been treated to so much sound and fury signifying nothing. At any moment, I expect Q2 to get underway, placating the expectant masses with soothing words of future payoffs for apparent failure in the moment, as the magnificent 4-D Plan sets up all the black hats to be taken down at once.
If anything, Trump 2.0 seems to be the ultimate triumph of media over substance. We have a TeeVee star as president, an author as Veep, a Fox host wanna-be as AG, two podcasters heading up the FBI, and now a TeeVee judge as US Attorney for DC, not to mention three actors as “envoys” to Hollywood, as if a section of Los Angeles is a foreign country. On second thought, maybe it is.
I predict, in the absence of a great many high-profile perp walks, that the mid-term elections will be a major Democrat resurrection, immediately followed by many more years of lawfare and gut-wrenching spasms of disappointment and despair.
So far, everything I have seen confirms my long-held suspicion that Trump is little more than a highly sophisticated psy-op to dispel, discourage and destroy the Perot-Paul populist revolt. At the same time, I have seen nothing that makes me believe the Repugnicans are anything more than the usual spineless supplicants they have always been.
The MAGA reformers are fighting a two-front war against entrenched power blocks that are nothing more than mutually reinforcing support groups. It’s like watching a joint meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and NarcAnon joining forces against a sure-fire cure for addiction. Nothing will stop the coffee and donuts!
The sum total of the past decade in Washington has been for Trump to cancel Obama, only to be cancelled by Biden (or whomever it was), only to have Trump cancel the cancellations. Nothing of substance has been achieved and the entrenched Deepsters are only dug in deeper. All branches of government have either abdicated their assigned roles, or taken entirely new ones upon themselves, or both.
Rather than being relentless reformers, the MAGAs seem to have founded their own victimhood industry to rival the Bumbledicks. Instead of racial and social oppression, the MAGAs bask in political and legal oppression. In both cases, the movements are little more than marketing campaigns to raise vast amounts of cash that achieve nothing but enriching a select few.
If Trump and his merry band of podcasters were serious, he’d simply wave his Magic President Wand and declassify everything in the archives, while immediately inviting some of the top researchers in the country to come in an start going through everything, in a kind of document DOGE group. Trump should pull an Andrew Jackson and tell the courts to enforce their own orders.
By the time CONgress and the “courts” have any chance to act, the damage is done, the secrets are out, and no one will dare stick their head up for fear of what’s in their FBI files.
The ridiculous charade that has marked the past 25 years in Merkin politics has got to end, and only bold, rash action will solve anything. If Trump were serious, he would have long ago vetoed the USA PATRIOT ACT renewal and disbanded the TSA. If he were serious, not one Merkin soldier would have his boots on the ground anywhere outside US borders. If he were serious, he would have cut off the Ukraine and said it was Biden’s (or whomever’s) war and not his. If he were serious, he would have cut off Israel until they stopped acting like those folks back in WW2.
But Trump is not serious. He’s a showman. And what we have is a circus to distract and dissemble, while the Deepsters continue to loot the Treasury and run their parallel government.
The show must go on!
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I’m not a big Warren Beatty fan, but even a blind dog finds the occasional bone, and The Parallax View (1974) is just that bone. A product of the Nixon era, a reporter stumbles into a vast conspiracy, not unlike Epstein, that is completely surrounded with death and dead-ends. Pair it up with Paddy Chayefsky’s masterpiece Network (1976) for a double-feature of unparallelled paranoia, if for no other reason than Ned Beatty’s (see what I did there?) amazing “primal forces” speech.
Contact Bernard Grover: bernard (at) radiofarside (dot) com
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Hit the nail on the head again brother Far Side, I truly believe we are to the point nothing changes until the house of cards collapse, just like the Vistula front in January 1945. We no longer live in a functioning society.
But Rufus-he is giving us one big beautiful missile defense iron dome shield to protect us from our enemies! Furthermore, for 550 billion and more the Lockheed's will have built the ultimate highway to nowhere-but not to worry. The policies of the golden golum of greatness is to
pound the final nail in the coffin of 'merika! The slow motion train wreck we're about to witness is just around the next bend. Where is Casey jones when you need him, maybe is Uruguay on Bush plantation with Ken Lay and Epstein!
Hit the nail on the head again brother Far Side, I truly believe we are to the point nothing changes until the house of cards collapse, just like the Vistula front in January 1945. We no longer live in a functioning society.
Make America Semi-Functional Again !!!!!
But Rufus-he is giving us one big beautiful missile defense iron dome shield to protect us from our enemies! Furthermore, for 550 billion and more the Lockheed's will have built the ultimate highway to nowhere-but not to worry. The policies of the golden golum of greatness is to
pound the final nail in the coffin of 'merika! The slow motion train wreck we're about to witness is just around the next bend. Where is Casey jones when you need him, maybe is Uruguay on Bush plantation with Ken Lay and Epstein!