53percenter's Blog

Even the liberals can’t handle this one.

California Congresswoman Maxine Waters has been providing entertainment for conservatives since long before Donald Trump was even a candidate, but her incessant calls for the 45th president’s impeachment since then have confirmed Trump supporters that she’s beyond salvaging.

Now, though, with former FBI Director James Comey’s anti-Trump road show dominating mainstream media storylines, she’s gone too far even for MSNBC and The Washington Post.

In an interview Monday night on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes,” Waters was confronted with a clip of one of her own statements declaring during the presidential transition period that the then-FBI director was utterly unreliable:

“All I can tell you is the FBI director has no credibility,” she said.

“You and Donald Trump do agree on that,” Hayes said Monday. “That sentence you said that, ‘the FBI director has no credibility.’ You and Donald Trump are in agreement on that.”

Check out the interview segment here:

Obviously not used to being challenged in the normally friendly confines of an MSNBC studio, Waters spluttered a little, then launched into one of her normal, half-baked responses.

“I’ve tried to clarify that and to say, yes, coming out of that classified briefing, I said that, and I certainly meant it,” she told Hayes. “However, I think it is quite different when you take a look at Comey and his relationship to the president, what he said, what he’s done. I believe him.

“Then is then, and now is now.”

At

The Washington Post

, “The Fix” writer Aaron Blake practically spluttered on his keyboard. (His piece is headlined “Maxine Waters’s cringe-worthy explanation for her 180 on James Comey.”)

“Part of being a politician is showing that you have some consistent moral compass — that you don’t just promote things and people because they say things you like and denounce them when it’s inconvenient. Saying Comey has ‘no credibility’ means he lacks character and can’t be trusted to tell the truth. That doesn’t really change with circumstances and with the passage of 15 months,” he wrote.

“Politicians aren’t viewed as the most consistent and trustworthy people; in fact, Gallup polling shows that members of Congress are basically tied with lobbyists as the least-trusted of 21 professions tested. And sometimes they show us why.”

RELATED: Former AG Issues Massive Comey Announcement… Now Jail Time on the Table

That’s one of the more truthful things to be published by The Post since Trump took the oath of office.

Some Twitter commenters were less polite, though.

Oh please. She knew Comey was corrupt. During transition she thought Comey’s self serving interests would drive him switch teams. Her self serving interests drove her to be 1st to denounce him.

Oooppss.
He didn’t switch teams.
Would be great if she got caught in the drag net

— Ginger ?? (@Nunya96693453) April 24, 2018

@MaxineWaters is the one with no credibility

— Political Supper?? (@politicalsupper) April 24, 2018

The Waters statement showed just how willing Democrats are to distort the facts, the truth, and even their own alleged “beliefs” in the service of blind partisan power struggles.

That by itself isn’t much of a surprise, but it’s a rare day indeed when a Democrat like Waters gets called out by hacks at MSNBC and cheerleaders like The Washington Post for putting their perfidy on public display like that.

But sometimes Maxine Waters goes so far even liberals can’t handle it.

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Waffle House is in the news once more, and it’s not good for the quintessential American diner’s image. Thankfully, however, this time no one was shot or killed.

According to CBS News, a row erupted as an Alabama Waffle House insisted on charging two customers, Chikesia Clemons and her friend, 50 cents for using takeout utensils in the diner.

The incensed Clemons reportedly asked restaurant employees for a phone number with which to contact their corporate offices. The employees refused to share the number with the woman and eventually, police were called.

Employees described the woman to police as drunk, saying that she tried to bring alcohol into the diner and threatened to shoot the staff. That brings us, more or less, to the video that has riled up tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

The video can be seen by clicking on this CBS link, but be warned the content is graphic and contains partial, though nonsexual, nudity.

But those taking to social media to decry the diner with the “BoycottWaffleHouse” hashtag have missed a vital detail — two actually — that are game-changers.

First, police tried to get the woman to leave the restaurant on behalf of Waffle House. The video clearly shows them asking, ordering and even tugging at her in an attempt to get her to go. Second, another person, presumably her friend (the videographer) asked her to leave as well.

Those parts of the video are easy to miss, especially because the rest is so graphic, but if you stop to think about it, they’re quite important.

Waffle House is a private company that can charge for utensils if they want. They can even do it unfairly, as long as they’re not doing it based on a protected class (race, religion, etc). It’s pathetic to charge for takeout utensils, and even worse to be capricious about it, but it is their right.

(If you bridle at that a little because it doesn’t seem just, remember that liberty has to be protected, even if it feels yucky. Hate speech is a good example. The people who engage in true hate speech are despicable. But it’s their right to be hateful as long as in doing so, they don’t violate another person’s freedom.)

It’s also the woman’s right to be angry about it and to tell the restaurant so. But it’s not her right to squat on their property, which she appears to have very clearly done, despite the urging of police and her friend.

Everyone’s upset that Waffle House called the police and that the police ultimately used force. But what else were they to do if she refused to leave and they didn’t want to provide a free item? Should the employees have simply stood idly by, helpless in the face of an angry customer impacting business? This woman had the right to say her piece, and Waffle House had the right to say “enough” and send her on her way.

Another reason for this internet outrage is that it’s harder to see Waffle House’s rights than it is to see her being taken to the ground. Her violation of Waffle House’s rights doesn’t make a big impression on the average viewer, but the video of the officers’ intervention does.

RELATED: Not Again: Cops Knew About Murderer Before He Killed Man in Front of 5-Year-Old Daughter

Now, all of that said, it’s perfectly reasonable to boycott Waffle House if they engaged in a ridiculously silly business move to charge for utensils.

What’s not reasonable is boycotting the chain for exercising their right to have an angry squatter removed. After all, would you want to be protested against just because you called the police to kick an angry customer out of your yard sale?

The police also merit our attention. It looks like they were probably very patient (especially since the video abruptly cut to the takedown, potentially editing out much more negotiation with the customer). Still, threatening to break the woman’s arm is over the line (especially for a government representative), as is putting a hand around the front of her neck, which one of the officers appeared to do.

That accomplished nothing and only inflamed things, making cops everywhere look bad.

The final indignity in all of this was the fact that the woman’s dress fell down, exposing her chest. That’s a shame in every way, but it’s also more her fault than anyone else’s. After all, if you’re walking around thinking that your right to inconvenience someone trumps their right to be left alone, then you ought to dress for the occasion — maybe a button-down?

Finally, we need to acknowledge what’s behind all of this: entitlement mentality. We see it everywhere now, regardless of race, creed or religion.

To borrow from the old children’s song,

We all love our unearned rights; All we entitled of the word; Red and yellow, black or white; We all think our way is right; We all love our precious unearned rights.

With the self-esteem movement and postmodernism having yielded incredibly egocentric, egotistical adults, our culture now affirms the idea that we all have a right to do anything we want and hear only what we want. That’s not liberty. It’s narcissism — thinking you’re somehow above someone else’s rights.

Liberty properly understood is the freedom to do as you wish up to the point that your rights encroach on another’s. Anywhere past that point and you are de facto in the wrong because you’re suppressing their rights in favor of your own.

And that’s what the #BoycottWaffleHouse crowd is missing. This woman, very possibly justified in her anger, believed herself entitled to do whatever she wanted, including ignoring apparent requests that she leave the property from management, police and even the person taking the video.

That’s the problem with entitlement. It feels so nice when you’re exercising it, but when it meets the real world it gets crushed like an angry person being takes to the ground by police.

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There’s always been some speculation among CNN watchers that the “Most Trusted Name In News” conspicuously goes to commercial or has their feed cut when one of the talking heads on their network says something inconvenient.

Of course, nobody can prove this happens intentionally — indeed, one almost feels a bit conspiracy theory-ish even saying it — but it’s certainly odd.

The latest instance of the mysterious CNN cutoff happened Monday, when CNN’s national security commentator, Mike Rogers, was interviewed about the Russia investigation.

Rogers, a former congressman who’s also had stints with the Army and FBI, said that if no evidence against the president is turned up, it’s time to end the “eternal investigations” involving Trump and Russian collusion.

“Listen, at some point, you know where I stood on all this,” Rogers said. “I believe Mueller should have the freedom to do the investigation. The IG report on both what the FBI did and what the Russians were up to, all of that’s really important.”

However, he said that “at some point you have to stop. This has been going on for a long time.”

Rogers then laid out something of an ultimatum for the Mueller investigation.

“So my argument to Mueller is, if you have some evidence here, let’s go, bring it out, let’s deal with it,” Rogers said. “If not, at some point we have to stop the … eternal investigations that happen surrounding this, and the clubs that come out. So the investigations that have happened on the Intel Committee already have been candidly, quite partisan, and partisan in nature, both from the Democrats and the Republicans.

“If it switches, you’re going to get more of the same,” he added, a reference to the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House after the November elections. “I don’t know how that’s helpful to the country moving on and trying to heal itself and then actually producing something that would stop the Russians from interfering in our elections.”

And with that, CNN went to commercial.

Given that CNN’s been pushing the Russia thing pretty hard (one is surprised they don’t have a 24-hour feed of a camera trained on the Kremlin in the lower right quarter of the screen just to really drive the point home), it’s somewhat embarrassing when the network’s own national security analyst basically acknowledges that the investigation has become — in the parlance of our time — a nothingburger and ought to be wrapped up.

It’s not a good look. Then again, not much on CNN is, but there you go,.

RELATED: CBS Shamelessly Runs Program on the Inevitable Assassination of Trump

Now, was this one of CNN’s famous cuts — if such cuts even exist? It certainly didn’t seem as suspicious as some of their “accidental” feed drops, like this one when a guest started to suggest a link between terror suspects and incoming refugees.

On the other hand, we’ll really never know if CNN’s “technical difficulties” were intentional. And, quite frankly, I think it’s better that way.

For one, it’s more fun to speculate about whether or not it’s happening, kind of like how it’s more fun speculating whether or not their are aliens at Area 51.

Second, it’s kind of a hard theory to believe. After all, if CNN cut the feed every time someone on their network said or did something that embarrassed the network, they’d be off the air half the time.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below!